The Aliens are Coming! The Aliens are Coming!
Well, and so what if they are?
Is anyone looking around this planet and thinking we’re doing a particularly good job? We seem to have problems without measure that exceed our capabilities with solutions. Whether because our technology isn’t suitably advanced, our politics prevents progress, or our culture simply doesn’t care very much, we’re failing as a species on most measurable levels. And it’s looking increasingly likely we may take a large part of the ecosystem down with us.
This morning’s congressional testimony that we have (possibly) recovered alien craft with alien bodies is met with the usual fears of Independence Day-style annihilation and the intergalactic wars of a hundred thousand sci-fi novels. We presume any aliens must be hostile and power-grasping because that’s what humans have proved to be, over and over. If they’re crashing their vehicles here on a regular basis, we at least know they aren’t very good drivers, so that’s one worrying trait we share.
But is it likely that aliens are driving by to do us in eventually? Almost every other creature on Earth, when left in the environment in belongs in and not bothered by human interference, does not act destructively. Ecosystems thrive on a carefully constructed balance, and one of the miraculous truths of this world is that when that balance is working, life flourishes. I read an article today about California’s efforts to protect beavers, because beavers, it turns out, stop wildfires, clean the water, restore groundwater sources, and produce a beneficial biome for hundreds of flora and fauna species. We decided that beavers were bad because beavers upset farmers and fisherman and loggers, but paid no attention to the fact that the reason humans wanted to farm and fish and log there was *because of the beavers.* Most creatures know how to act in balance with their environment; humans manifestly do not.
And I don’t know how to fix that, and neither do you. I don’t know how we fix climate change, or Covid, or racism, or homophobia, or illiteracy, or, hell, football injuries, in a species steadfastly committed to not fixing things. Our problems are so global, so systemic, that this can’t be solved by one good president, one supermajority, or one popular environmentalist. Maybe the world used to be small enough that Jesus or Gandhi could come along and make a big difference; today, it feels too large and too far out of balance for any single human endeavor to overcome.
So if the aliens are real, I hope they stop by. I hope they bring a large report card with red ink on it that says “See me after class.” That was always scary when it happened, because no one wants to be “in trouble,” especially if there are space lasers involved, but with good teachers, trouble wasn’t the outcome of failure. Good teachers redirect failure into learning, and have the authority and space to do so. I hope the aliens are real. I hope they’re very powerful, and have figured a lot of stuff out. The fact that they’re shitty drivers encourage me, because I’m not looking for God in a flying saucer, I don’t seek perfection. Just good teachers.
And perhaps the time has come to broaden our ideas of who good teachers can be. If a beaver can teach us to filter water and foster native grasses, an alien could teach us to solve climate change and act with empathy. I don’t believe a lot of good things about humans these days, but I do believe we still have a chance to learn.
