We could get that on our own if we dump our religious beliefs – all of them. Do you see that happening? Why would an alien’s offer of the same thing, only quicker, cause us to take them up on their offer?
No, actually, I don’t see it happening. Rather, I can see the offer being made, but it would be rejected. For awhile at least.
Damon Knight, Rule Golden. The aliens really are benevolent, and forcibly stop all killing and suffering inflicted by vertebrates on other vertebrates, even if this means the extinction of every carnivorous species. When it’s over, they really do pack up and leave.
Robert Silverberg, The Alien Years. The aliens really are untouchable (like the OP), but they are not benevolent or even understandable (unlike the OP). This, to me, is the more likely scenario. After all, if you’re advanced enough to travel between the stars, why would you pay attention to the opinions of the amoebae you just landed on???
In TAY, the aliens basically ignore humanity until the first dumbass attack on them, and then they retaliate massively, first by negating electricity, then by worldwide plague. With the help of human traitors, they gradually assert more and more control over human society. Cities are walled off and life turns to hell. Then, fifty years later, they just leave, again giving no reason.
The story is told from the point of view of the human “resistance,” which survives principally by 1) being materially self-sufficient, and 2) by not being able to do squat against the aliens. Resistance strategy meetings are divided between “Let’s do something!” and “Noooo, don’t for God’s sake!!!” They can’t even launch a lethal attack until the aliens are nearly ready to leave, and even then the attacker has to be trained to be an emotionless drone so that his emotional state won’t be detected.
The Silverberg scenario to me is more credible than the “get you ready to join galactic civilization” scenario.
Yeah, if they care about something specific like North Korea, that’s kind of a red flag.
I’d expect serious mature aliens to just show up, explain the situation and lay down the terms for our accession to civilized-species status, and leave it to us to get with the program. If North Korea (or whoever) doesn’t and we can’t make them, they’ll just keep our planet in the time-out corner for a few more centuries. I don’t imagine they’re in any particular rush to incorporate petulant youngsters.
Suppose they don’t believe in any sort of diety at all? I think that would be far more likely. While religion has played a role in education and advancement in the past, today it serves more as a hindrance to progress, especially scientific progress. I mean, we STILL have people who believe in Creationism/ID, and who want those subject taught in public science classes, and who DON’T want evolution taught. Understanding evolution is critical to understanding all life sciences. And we have various religious groups oppressing various segments of society (women or certain ethnic groups), and some religious leaders restrict the kind of aid that’s offered around the world. And, of course, there’s the religious people who don’t want public money spent on scientific research, especially space travel.
Maybe they’ll decide Lil Kim is truly our greatest leader. I wouldn’t put dumbshit aliens out of the realm of possibility.
I rather like David Brin’s universe where most of the aliens are way crazier than us, and way more powerful too.
Would they treat us as individuals or as a species?
Probably as a species.
Which is pretty depressing.
But Poe’s Law states:
“Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won’t mistake for the real thing.”
and I’m not sure this is a parody.
So - Doo Gettalong - parody or real?
Did I get whooshed?
and…do they have…waginas?
[/Chekov]
I’d probably grab the wife, kids, and cat, and hole up in our dacha upstate. We can monitor the situation from there. I’d be a little antsy staying on a small island with a million and a half people and aliens wandering around. Even if they do enjoy our wonderful museums. You never know when something might snap. “Hey Glort, check this out!”
Pester them non-stop for an encyclopedia. I want to know as much as possible about the other members of the Galactic Federation.
Regards,
Shodan
One scenario I am surprised to never have seen in Sci-Fi is the traditional “Hi Earthlings, we’re aliens here in Peace” situation is a group of aliens arrive on the moon (or even Mars), and send a nice little message about how they’re here to colonize that place, but have no interest in Earth and have no plans to come down. Just taking a piece of open real-estate and all.
Practically speaking, we can’t do diddly squat to them from where we are given current (or even foreseeable future) technology. I would imagine that the UN would get mightily strong under the control of some of the larger nations, and probably much more militaristic.
Heh. Not a bad idea…except that you’ll either want the Encyclopedia Galactica in a Terran language, or you’ll want language lessons in Lingua Federation. Actually, ask for TWO copies of the encyclopedia, one in Terran, and one in Federation, and for language lessons as well.
Sorry for the hijack, but I just noticed your title, I have a question for you, and you don’t allow PMs. (Seriously, who turns those off?)
“I love the scent of women”?
If they are benevolent, there’s no way they can force an obligate carnivore to stop killing for food without providing it with another source of nourishment. Otherwise, they cease to be benevolent.
The Moon especially I would see as a piece of real estate that would be incredibly pointless to grab unless every other open inch of space in the galaxy is colonized, because of its size (small) and proximity to Earth. Mars, maybe. But even then it would probably have to be terraformed to be of any use, or have sealed bases put on it. So then why not pick a solar system that isn’t already inhabited by a species that’s probably pretty close to the cusp of the point when *it *will want to start expanding?
:p:p:p. Hoooah! 
Larry Niven did something close to that with the short story Losing Mars. The aliens, who as it happened were water breathers from the moon Europa showed up to ask if we intended to dispute their ownership of Mars seeing as they’d colonized it a few centuries ago. We just haven’t noticed because they were all underground in a subsurface ocean they’d “Europaformed”. Since the Chirpsithra, a race that basically claims to own the galaxy said they recognized the Europan claim there wasn’t a great deal we could do about it.
Wouldn’t you be afraid for the most aggressive country in the world?. The one that goes into one nation after another? Would you worry about the nation that does the most polluting of the planet? How about the one that does the most economic exploitation?
We would have to change our ways.
It’s not clear to me why the aliens would focus on the most militarily and geopolitically insignificant actors such as N Korea and the Taliban. Heck, I’d think they would want to keep a couple of dictatorships around, if only to demonstrate how awful and ineffective they are.
Arms control might be another matter, if only to get us into the proper habits. And there might be certain forbidden technologies that they don’t want developed here. Or maybe they don’t believe in arms control or collective government – according to this view, the only thing that could persuade the Earth from building weapons of mass destruction is invasion and overwhelming force. Or maybe that’s just a pretext that would allow the alien advance-men a profitable genome harvest. Intergalactic politics can be tricky.
I think you have to get inside Curtis’ head who, it seems to me, looks at everything from a conservative Christian perspective, and believes everything that happens in the universe is somehow directly connected to Christianity/Jesus/the Christian God. I think conservative Christians, especially the American variety, have difficulty separating events, even hypothetical ones, from their religious beliefs. For example, conservative Christians generally believe N Korea and the Taliban are evil, so naturally aliens would believe the same.
Curtis has come up with some very interesting topics lately. I just wish he’d engage and respond to posters a little more before abandoning the threads he starts.
Perhaps at some level he recognizes that many of his positions are indefensible. They are literally a matter of faith, and there is very little point to discussing them.