Would Extraterrestrial Visitors Be Friendly?

Most people who believe there is alien life (which may or may not have visited us) believe they are likely to be friendly. They figure any society that has advanced so far must have long ago lost any need for aggression. As with almost all liberal thought, that is absurd, for two indisputable reasons.

1) All life, regardless of its form, consumes other life in order to survive. All life must have a source of fuel. Whether an animal that feeds on other animals, or on vegetation, or even vegetation that feeds on the decaying remnants of life, all living things must feed.

That said, any species that becomes dominant on their planet, if left unchecked, and simply by virtue of that dominance, will eventually reproduce beyond the planet's ability to sustain the numbers. The only way to avoid starvation and to expand is to go to war and take the resources of others. War and killing is nature's way of keeping a dominant specie in check. This is the First Law of Nature - survival of the fittest. The strong will live, the weak will perish. Cruel, perhaps, but every bit as necessary to survival as eating. Every living thing must be "prey" to some other living thing, and when you are at the top of the food chain, the only predator that can keep our numbers in check is ourselves.

2) Add to this the simple fact that all technology and advancements are the result of survival needs and war. Someone invents a spear, so his adversary must invent the crossbow, which, in turn results in an adversary inventing a gun. The gun results in an adversary having to invent bombs, then planes to drop bombs, and then rocket-powered bombs like those Hitler used against London.

Those rocket bombs led to rocketry for space exploration, which, in reality, is really a race for dominance in space for purposes of "defense" and war, and gaining resources.


Despite the ideological people who try to claim space exploration is for "scientific and educational purposes", that is actually a ruse. All scientific and educational research is conducted for one reason - the same reason: SURVIVAL. We need room to expand. We need resources to sustain our growing number. And that brings with it a need for aggression. If you are not superior, you become prey. And humans do not fare well as prey.

Our space exploration has been made possible only from a need to survive, which requires superiority. Created by war and aggression.

When you combine both of these facts of nature, you would realize that only the ultimate predator would ever be capable of space exploration.

For example, because our own resources are dwindling, we are already considering the possibility of mining on asteroids to take what we need. We are even considering the colonization of other celestial bodies. You either move forward, or perish.

We should assume that in the event there is other intelligent life "out there", that they, too, are motivated by survival. They, too, must consume. Any living thing that does not consume will perish. In short, there is only one viable way for any dominant life form to survive - by conquest.Think of the "Old West". White men needed the land to expand. They needed the gold to pay for the expansion. So the native Americans were conquered. Just like the Aztecs before them. Hitler, Napoleon, Attila the Hun, Alexander the Great, Caesar - throughout history, progress was marked by conquest.

It still is. That is what the First Law of Nature (survival of the fittest) means.

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