Radical speculation anticipating radical extraterrestrials?

Coming Out as a Radical -- or Coming In? (Part #14)

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Any hypothesis regarding extraterrestrials is readily framed as radical. The very nature of extraterrestrials, as frequently explored in blockbuster movies, may well be terrifying -- if not the "worst dream" of humanity. Clearly they would then lend themselves to conventional definitions of being "terrorists". Their aspirations to establish some analogue to a caliphate is consistent with the logic of a strategy they might be expected to adopt -- as understood from a human perspective. It could of course take subtler form -- perhaps a trade caliphate, somehow equivalent to a free trade zone, or the frameworks offered by TTIP-TPP-TISA. The heroic response of humanity has been frequently explored in fiction -- readily to be seen as analogous to eradication.

Matching fictional aspiration and speculation is the active -- if not frenetic -- quest for "life" on other planets and in other parts of the galaxy. The possibility that such life may take forms which could easily be perceived as "radical" is seldom considered -- especially in terms of the fundamental danger they might constitute for humanity. This quest for extreme difference by science is in curious contrast to the political commitment to the eradication of those embodying such difference.

The situation has been paralleled in recent centuries by the engagement of colonizing humanity with the wildlife it has encountered. Readily framed as a danger to human life and livelihood, systematic efforts have been successfully made to eliminate it -- as with tigers, snakes, crocodiles and wolves. These are commonly represented as terrifying -- and appreciated for that reason in zoos, circuses and other forms of entertainment. Only tardily, and to a limited degree, has it become possible to recognize the vital role that such species may perform in an ecosystem.

There is of course the strange possibility that humanity may be framed radically in such terms by extraterrestrials, as separately argued (Self-reflective Embodiment of Transdisciplinary Integration (SETI): the universal criteria of species maturity? 2008).

There is further irony to the possibility that such extraterrestrials, in the light of their own values, might seek to engage with humanity on the terms which it has itself defined, if inadvertently (Writing Guidelines for Future Occupation of Earth by Extraterrestrials: Be done by as you did? 2010)

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