alien lifestyles

[ivy_chan]

I find myself thinking of odd things. Just today, I was sitting in Astronomy and listening to this boring movie about the desperate search for life in our galaxy, and I wondered about actual intelligent life equal to our own level of technology somewhere. See, usually, in science fiction I read or watch, aliens seem so uniform. They all share one

Comments

[brownie_utonium]

See, usually, in science fiction I read or watch, aliens seem so uniform. They all share one culture that appears to be the only culture their planet has, one language, one coloration, one mindset.

Clearly, you have not watched enough Star Wars. XD

Except that in Star Wars, humans are the protagonists for some bizarre reason. And Planets tend to be entirely ruled by one person, because it would be far too complicated to have countries on planets... With the exception of Naboo, where the dry part is ruled by Natalie Portman (incidentally, this is my dream home) and the underwater part is ruled by a giant farting toad.

I think Earth should try to follow in their footsteps. We can start by making Natalie Portman queen of the world and move from there. *sage nod*

[ivy_chan]

Yeah, but see, even with Star Wars we get the Wookies and the Ewoks and the alien nations that all seem to banner together under one big Hut/Ewok/Wookie whathaveyou flag. And don't get me started about planets being ruled by one person. That is a hugely inefficient way to rule an entire planet. ARGHARGHARGH.

You *would* want to live on Natalie Portman planet. Unfortunately, she seemed to lose all her coolness after she was subjected to an overdose of Ananakin.

[brownie_utonium]

SEE, that's why she should have stuck to her freaking handmaidens. Or not have been written by George Lucas, who is a complete nincompoop. *is sued to hell by Lucasfilm*

[darcenciel]

DUDE. I thought I was the ONLY person who thought this!!

[ivy_chan]

People with highly strange thought processes UNITE!

[natsuko1978]

Two things really get me about aliens (in addition to your points about the fact that sci-fi planets tend to have one culture per species (fantasy worlds are far more imaginative).

1. Why do we have the audacity to assume that intelligence MUST develop in other worlds? Stephen Pinker (Pychologist at MIT) once compared it to going around the universe looking for another species with elephant like trunks. I mean SURE intelligence is USEFUL, but so are trunks. To evolution the two things are the same: it works without an end product in mind.

2. Why do we assume that aliens, no matter how intelligent, would be remotely like us PSYCHOLOGICALLY and therefore give a flying fuck about whether or not WE are here?

Speciesist arrogance anyone?

[natsuko1978]

I meant, out course that SP is a PSYCHOLOGIST. A psycholinguist, actually. See. I CAN spell.

[ivy_chan]

1. From what I've seen in this galaxy, life is hard to come by without making it intelligent. I hope there's intelligent life rather than asuming there must be, because it would feel much more interesting to talk to an alien species and share thoughts and feelings that one can't do with less intelligent species. It would feel lonely, thinking that in the entire wide universe, life on the scale of ours has only occurred once. It's not audacity, it's more of a hope, because communication with an alien species seems so exciting.

2. If they exist, I hope they're the furthest thing from us psychologically. If they're like us, they will enslave and subjugate us and make us third-rate citizens barely thought of as people, they will use all our resources, they will steal all our land, and they will claim it's for our own good.