Alien Intelligence

Online postings explain to us that war is caused by the wealthy and powerful seeking more wealth and power.

Everyone knows this. It’s insulting to our intelligence to suggest we do not.

In the late 1930’s the german government controlled the information that was given to the german people. Propaganda works on intelligent people, as long as they have no access to contrary information.

For over a decade, however, we have had free access to information.

So why has nothing changed? Because we are animals and animals attack their own species. Our intelligence does not change that.

In 2003 America’s military industrial complex lied to the world about there being weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. That was the reason given for starting a war there, for invading a sovereign nation, and for killing two hundred thousand innocent people who had never harmed any one of us.

And two years later, before Bush’s reelection campaign, the truth came out. There were no weapons of mass destruction and Iraq had posed no danger to us at all. It was simply that the Sunni tribe that America had installed in power in the seventies was no longer obedient to America and was striving for independence. The American response was to kick out the disobedient Sunnis and install a Shia tribe in power over them.

This is what an empire does. Otherwise, an empire would just be a mere country. And before America it was England doing this. And France, Germany, Russia, Turkey, everyone in their turn.

Yet despite the truth coming out, Bush won the election. A large majority of Americans voted him in for a second term. Knowing what they were doing.

Because he had increased American’s wealth and power. America had regained control over their former colony and its oil fields.

And many other countries went along with it and profited from it.

Again, we see postings explaining to us that war is caused by the wealthy and powerful seeking more wealth and power.

Yeah. Yeah we know. We’re intelligent. We can read.

That’s the thing, that we know this and change nothing.

The Sunni Iraqis thrown out of power. And now trying to recover their nationhood in the empty deserts of northern Iraq and Syria. Trying to rebuild across artificial borders drawn by the Sykes Pico Agreement that England and France imposed on Arabia in 1916. Back when it was England and France playing empire.

And every now and then the weak and dispossessed Sunnis, trying to pretend that they are a real and powerful country, calling themselves the Islamic State, manage to kill civilians in Europe. You kill pawns when you don’t have the power to attack the king or his soldiers.

The killing of people on both sides works perfectly. The people on both sides have their excuse for permanent war, permanent power and wealth.

As humans, we talk in Exodus 10 of god inflicting a plague of locusts upon us. But perhaps we are the plague of locusts that god has released upon the world.

And when our species ends, as all species do, will we be missed? No, the planet will carry along, not missing us even one bit.

The evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins said the definition of a chicken should include the nest it builds. Similarly, I think the definition of our species should include eternal war. It’s as important as the opposable thumb or walking upright.

If intelligence is an evolutionary advantage, why are we the only ones who have it? And beyond this world, why is there never any contact from alien intelligence? Because our intelligence is animal intelligence. And animal intelligence is self limiting. Because any animal that develops it, soon destroys its environment and its own species.

When you combine animal hungers and fears with high intelligence, you get war. Some individuals develop ethics and resist their animal nature, but it’s enough that many do not.

If raccoons become highly intelligent they’d form raccoon armies right away. They’d start talking about how the raccoons over in the other valley are bad and dangerous raccoons. And must be attacked and subjected to regime change. And their rivers must be diverted and their nut collection taken.

Some pacifist raccoons would follow little racoon buddhas and would restrain themselves, but that would not stop the war from proceeding.

If there is any alien intelligence out there that has lived long enough to spread beyond their world and communicate across galaxies, it could not be animal intelligence. It would be machine intelligence or plant intelligence. And they would not want to talk to us. Any planet that is suffering from animal intelligence likely has a big red X through it and all traffic is detoured way around it.

We wrongly imagine that all intelligence would think like animal intelligence.

In the Terminator movies, we imagine that machine based intelligence would act like animal intelligence. We imagine that a machine based intelligence would create human looking creatures that want to fight and kill other humans. Humans enjoy watching these movies because the computer intelligence builds human looking robots for us to shoot at. Robots that walk slowly, so they are easy to shoot. Because we are drawn to killing our own species.

In the zombie movies, we imagine that virus based intelligence would act like animal intelligence. We imagine that a virus based intelligence would create human looking creatures that want to fight and kill other humans. A virus intelligence would create human looking zombies for us to shoot at. Zombies that walk slowly, so they are easy to shoot. Because we are drawn to killing our own species.

The truth is that animal intelligence is so different from machine or plant intelligence that they could not understand each other. The satellites that we send out beyond our solar system, they always contain those information plates with pictures of us standing, hands up, palms open in what we think is a gesture of peace. With words along the lines of “Greetings, and do not worry, we come in peace.”

Those ideas of peace or war would be meaningless to a machine or plant intelligence.

Imagine a pack of wolves which learns to build railroads. And they run their railroads back and forth, killing caribou and other wolves. And barking all the time, implying something like “We feel very aggressive! We feel very strong!”

An alien intelligence visiting from another galaxy would film it and say “Oh look, they’re barking. Animal intelligence does that.”

They’d never even think of barking back at them.

The SETI program continues. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence continues sending out radio broadcasts, looking for a response.

And the same country that is doing that, America, also has legislation in place to the effect that if aliens do communicate with us, they are required by law to communicate with the American federal government first. And no other country. It’s the law.

And the alien intelligence in the universe gives back a big Nope and carries on.

John Morrison Noble 2015