If there’s intelligent life out there, it probably already has destroyed itself or is well on its way to doing so, as is our species on our own little planet. At least, that’s what a number of scientists who do research about these kinds of things say.
I won’t pretend to understand what scientists who think about alien civilizations do with the numbers to arrive at their conclusions, but, essentially, they hypothesize that, as civilizations evolve and develop technologies, they eventually wipe themselves out through war, climate change and technology.
Sounds familiar, yes? The scientists think so. They suggest the probability of self-annihilation for the human race, like other alien races on other planets before us, is pretty high.
Susan Shaw
But if other technological alien civilizations are out there, why haven’t we heard from them? That, the scientists say, is a bad sign. They explain, “As far as we can tell, when a civilization develops the technology to communicate over large distances it also has the technology to destroy itself, and this is unfortunately likely universal.”
Believing self-annihilation is in our future is not difficult. Climate change already is wreaking havoc around the globe. Russia has started a war with Ukraine that could engulf much of the world in ways we can’t even yet imagine. To a great extent, we’re at the mercy of the very technologies that were supposed to make our lives easier, and a global pandemic has shown us how ill-equipped we are to deal with a health catastrophe.
A recent reassessment of a 1970s report found that human society is on track to collapse in the next two decades, resulting in significantly lowered standards of living globally. The problem these researchers identified is population growth combined with unbridled economic growth that increases pollution and depletes natural resources.
Obviously, none of this inspires hope.
Is self-annihilation inevitable?
Reading these scientists’ conclusions, I began to wonder what might make a difference. Is any intervention possible that could keep civilizations, including ours, from destroying themselves?
“Is any intervention possible that could keep civilizations, including ours, from destroying themselves?”
Unchecked economic and population growth, war and ever-more-destructive technologies of war, and pollution result when self-interest outweighs concern for others and the environment. The fittest survive until they destroy themselves and everything else in their quest for power, wealth and conquest.
Gordon Gekko summed it up in the 1987 movie Wall Street when Bud Fox asked him, “How much is enough?” Gekko responded, “It’s not a question of enough, pal. It’s a zero-sum game: Somebody wins, somebody loses.” The problem is that the ultimate result of this philosophy, according to the scientists, is that eventually everybody loses.
What, then, might motivate us to put the interests of our species above self-interest? We could choose to prioritize the survival of the weakest over economic growth; we could create sustainable structures that ensure everyone has enough. We could engage in environmentally friendly practices that nurture the planet. We could do all of this. But we don’t.
“Why not?” is the perplexing question.
Do all intelligent species have so little love, empathy and compassion that we can’t figure out how to live together before we destroy ourselves entirely?
Is it an evolutionary impossibility for the pace of love to outstrip the pace of self-interest, technology and war? Must love develop too late in a species’ evolution to prevent self-annihilation?
“Saying love is the intervention we need almost sounds hopelessly naïve.”
We seem to be at a pivotal moment. Climate scientists only give us a few years to mend our polluting ways before we’re past the point of no return. Democracy is shaky at best, with a new rise of authoritarianism around the world. We have technologies to destroy ourselves many times over. And we find ourselves more and more divided from one another, more likely to see others as the enemy, more willing to use coercion, force and violence to achieve our goals.
Saying love is the intervention we need almost sounds hopelessly naïve. Yet love is the force that can propel us to choose the interests of us all over the interests of the self.
For Jesus, love was the only answer. Yet in 2,000 years, the church has hardly begun to apply love as its central principle. The church seems mostly to have been more concerned with theological orthodoxy, political power and the subordination of entire groups of people than the propagation of a love that could literally save us all, not in the sweet by and by, but in the here and now in the material world God created and so loved.
In his science fiction, C.S. Lewis imagined God’s interactions with worlds other than our own. If the scientists are right, God must not have had any better luck with them than with us.
Maybe intelligent life in the cosmos just isn’t far enough down the evolutionary path yet to save itself. Surely, being able to imagine a world of love and peace and justice is an important step, an evolutionary milestone in itself. If we can imagine it, can we not become it?
I guess the question for the human race is whether or not we can figure that out in time.
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With all this talk of UFOs, what’s a Christian to think? | Analysis by Rick Pidcock