Shouting into Space.

The first things we did when we gained the ability to travel through space was to affix plaques of our science and data-cards of our culture to our rudimentary spacecraft. We beam waves that scream ,“Hello! Here I am!”, without any regard to who may hear them. We attach our spiritual cave paintings to our untamed radio waves and makeshift instruments as they hurtle through the dark. It is a uniquely human desire to make contact with people who are not like us. It is one half inspiring and one half equally damning that we desire to be remembered. 

We are not even babies as a species, more like single celled amoeba in the chemical soup of space, floating around and going where the environment takes us gurgling in a pool of our own filth. If there was other life out there, would they even want to talk to us? If they could detect our childish cooing in the mind bogglingly massive expanse of space, would they even care to visit us? We beam all these messages and launch all these probes because we think ourselves a species worthy of being heard. It’s likely that if any life happened to exist, their instruments of expression would have advanced so far beyond ours that they would be unable to translate what are essentially nicks and cracks in a prehistoric rock. They’d probably have advanced beyond physical forms. They’d probably advanced beyond the desire to be remembered. 

And so I think Earth is like an impish child, screaming in its cradle, but not matter how loud it screams, it will not be tended to. There is no one there to hear it. Even so, you can’t help but wonder if we’re truly alone out here. But it should be ask, is it a good idea to make our planet known to a life that may be stronger than our own? In the Greek Tragedy, fate is something the hero goes the whole story doing things to avoid, but in the process, inadvertently brings about the very fate we are running from. Maybe God’s judgement of this world in the End Times will be conducted by a species we sought out ourselves.