Friday, February 14, 2025

Why Meeting Another Species Just Like Us Would Be a Disaster

If we were to have First Contact with a species that, like us, had a Sainthood Complex, the result would no doubt be some type of escalated conflict. Of course, humans do have a Sainthood Complex. We each want to believe we are just and right and we go to great lengths to prove our own righteousness. We founded and follow religions. We ardently argue that humans are good. There is even the anti-religious belief system of Humanism, which still puts human goodness at the center. Why it is so important that we believe we are good? Please return to what I call the Sainthood Complex. It takes a simple objective view of the suffering in the world to see that humans are not good. Still, we are so dedicated to the idea. If we meet another species who wants to argue their goodness while we argue our own, both of our true selves will be released and conflict will follow. That could be a simple disagreement or it could be war.

It is human instinct to be self-righteous. Or to be humble with the false appearance of saintliness. What an absolute nightmare it would be to encounter another species just like us who had just as much to prove. An insecure sentient species is a dangerous species. Scholars such as Lisa Bortolotti, Daniel Dennett, and Kengo Miyazono teach us we are prone to delusions and that includes delusions about our own rationality. For me, that includes delusions about humanity’s own “goodness.” First Contact with another self-deluded species would no doubt lead to communication issues. The worst thing would be that we could understand each other just fine. Diplomacy would fail shortly and then we would be negotiating whether they should just leave us alone or if we will provoke them further into attacking us. No, meeting ourselves, as we have proven in our present reality among ourselves, in within our long, bloody history, would no doubt be a bad mixture.