The Great Filter
Why we should hope not to find alien life
Silence is a precious thing. It can be every bit as expressive as conversation or the vibrant verses in a piece of music. A person’s hesitation to answer a question reveals their conflict; they stitch their brows closer together, perhaps only now and again blinking as they attempt to string together a careful set of words. We can learn just as much from the absence of a thing as from its presence. This is one of the main ideas threading the Great Filter theory.
We are met with this distinctive silence when we scour the stoic cosmos enveloping our world. We do not hear chattering. We do not see blooms of plant life or treading herds of animals. Just empty, rotating planets with beautiful scenery but little to say. Alien life has sent us no message and left us no ruins. As far as we can tell humanity is alone in the universe, faced with only this world of music and language. Surrounded by a lonely quietude.
This quietude has meaning. Because of the lack of extraterrestrials, logic bids us to imagine that a filter must lie either ahead or behind us. The filter is a challenge so great that it prevents life from flourishing throughout the galaxy. Whether we have already faced the filter or whether it lies in wait remains uncertain. If we have yet to face the great filter, our future seems bleak. For…
