Surviving First Contact

The Science Channel this month is asking "Are we alone?" In a THROUGH THE WORMHOLE this week, scientists suggest our first contact with an interstellar civilization might lead to humanity's doom. They argue that a species intelligent enough to build such a society would have arisen as a predator, because predators have the large, active brains required for hunting and politics, engineering and science. Predators, of course, are also aggressive by nature, so, the argument goes, if They come to Earth, we could be facing an aggressive, powerful foe that wants to take over Earth.

That might make for interesting television, but it might be extrapolating too far from too little. Aggression would be only one trait in a suite of traits, after all. A society that reaches the level of being able to reach the stars would have learned a lot along the way. It might well have successfully negotiated developmental bottlenecks that would have destroyed a civilization that simply followed its base instincts. Intelligence adds subtlety and judgment and control to the basic structure of needs and drives and reactions. Maybe some human subtlety and judgment and disciplined imagination is called for in this area.