Reflection: Children of God

Who to send...

As sad as it seems, in the closing month of our social science fiction class, I seem to have reached a unanimous decision: it's not worth it. Of all the books we've read, Speaker for the Dead seemed to have the best outcome, as far as alien interactions. Which is sad, really, because the entire scenario relied on the actions of a 3,000 year old super intelligent human. No one in our reality comes close to Ender. The next best bet would be Grass, but even then, the aliens almost managed to wipe out all of humanity before they were barely stopped. What gives here?

Of course, maybe PTJ has an affinity for humanity's destruction (I don't know if he'd ever admit to this), but more seriously, the situation calls for us to ask whether or not a positive interaction is even possible. By and large, isn't this an essential question for international relations? And on a more specific level, doesn't this answer the question posed by Russell in her duology?

We can break up options into two categories: intervention and non-intervention. The non-intervention option is clearly the Trekkian option, a carbon copy of the prime directive. The problem with the prime directive is the limits of such a policy; at what point does following an absolutist non-intervention policy become foolish? Conversely, the problem of intervention is presented in Russell's duology. Intervention is risky, and more often than not, goes horribly wrong.

I almost feel bad for suggesting this, but maybe in this case, we best prescribe ourselves a blissful ignorance. Hell, shut down SETI now, or at least pray we never gain the ability to meaningfully communicate with aliens. It's just not worth it. But then again, attempting to prevent humans from doing what comes natural; the process of reaching out, communicating, and interacting; would be oppression.

What we reach is a sad conclusion - if we allow persons to find their own path of interacting with the other, human nature leads to chaos in interaction. Not necessarily chaos in terms of unpredictability (if IR wasn't predictable to some degree, we probably wouldn't call it a science), but chaos in terms of uncontrollability. You can't prevent someone like Emilio from going to Rakhat, if he truly wanted to go, without resorting to oppressive measures. And you can't prevent someone like Jimmy from discovering Rakhat in the first place. It doesn't matter if we send priests, poets, or scientists to Rakhat, or any other planet with intelligent life on it.

Whoever we send are always subject to basic human error - the inability to process the vast amount of variables needed to steer a situation to a guaranteed peaceful solution. We must be content with visualizing what we as individuals would like to happen, and accepting our inability to enact these steps to reach a guaranteed solution.