Animal Writings

The title of the piece was "Are They Out There?" It was like a thousand other articles on the subject: "Wouldn't it be great if we discovered intelligent life on other planets? We could form friendships, find out how other beings live, trade technologies. It would be super-cool and mutually beneficial."

But I'm not so sure. Of course, the discovery of life elsewhere in the universe would be monumental. And theoretically, there would be great potential for expanded consciousness and intergalactic harmony. But I submit that presumptions of humans treating newly-discovered sentient beings with humility and benevolence are delusional, self-flattering, and not too realistic.

Let's look at how we treat intelligent nonhuman life here on Earth.

Coyotes are intelligent. We hunt them, poison them, and aerial-gun them.

Rabbits are intelligent. We kill them and torture them in cosmetics tests that aren't even accurate. We give them to kids as prizes. We confine them to small, barren outdoor hutches.

Pigs are intelligent. We kill the "culls" by bludgeoning them to death. We force sows to basically stand in place for most of their lives. We torture millions of them in slaughterhouses, where they often die by writhing in pain, bleeding, in tanks of near-boiling water, until they drown.

Whales are intelligent. We've nearly exterminated them.

Dolphins are intelligent. We crowd them into coves so we can slaughter them for their meat. We capture some of them after killing their families and make them live in concrete enclosures that are a fraction of the size of their normal habitat, so that we can be amused.

All the animals we institutionally abuse, enslave, and mass-slaughter are intelligent.

What makes us think we would treat newly discovered intelligent nonhuman beings any better?

Would things be different because the aliens would be like nothing we've ever seen? Would we show restraint because the aliens would clearly be a technologically advanced life form? When the Europeans discovered the native Americans, they were different and new to the Europeans' eyes, though no less intelligent. Throughout our history we've used "different" as an excuse for exploitation and domination; we've equated "different" (from us) with inferior, subordinate, and less deserving.

After a while the novelty of aliens would wear off. They'd just be another species.

What if they had vulnerabilities we could exploit, and that enabled us to have mastery over them? Do we really think we'd behave better than we have in our past? There's not much in our history that indicates that we've gained the humility and self-control to let weaker or more vulnerable beings than ourselves live in peace if we have the power to dominate and control them. We still cling to "might makes right."

What if their flesh tasted good? What if they grew to adult size quickly? What if we could subdue them so that we could control their breeding? Would we confine them in warehouses and mass-slaughter them for food? The public would probably get used to it very quickly. Corporations would think up new advertising campaigns and reap the profits. They'd tell consumers that the aliens were treated humanely. They'd be "free-range."

What if we could tinker with their genes so that they grew super-quickly, thus enabling industry to make even bigger profits, even though a few aliens would die before slaughter because their hearts gave out or because their skeletal systems could not keep up with their hyper-engineered growth rates? (All that messy stuff would be hidden from the public, anyway.) I imagine universities would be competing with one another for government funds and bragging rights over who could produce the first alien clone. Sure, there would be plenty of deformed aliens born along the away, who would die in infancy or be "destroyed." That would be kept out of the news releases. Instead, we'd see cute, contrived pictures of alien twins and interviews with researchers who would boast about the benefits to humanity. Inevitably, there'd be patents for owning alien life forms.

Would scientists get grants for performing experiments on caged aliens? Imagine the security at those labs. Protesters would be labeled "anti-science."

How long would it take until there was a market for hunting aliens? For five thousand dollars, tourists could shoot and kill aliens fenced in on a "ranch," and have their picture taken next to the fallen alien body. Maybe the entrepreneurs would advertise their operations as "sustainable."

If they're water-borne will we stick barbed hooks in their mouths and yank them out of the water, again and again, and before too long defend it as "tradition?" Will the people who inflict this callous torture on the intelligent beings call themselves "sportsmen?" (Not too long ago, a spokesperson for "anglers" said he was excited by news that fish were smart because it would make fishing more of a challenge.)

Before we go looking for aliens with whom to communicate, perhaps we should prove that we're capable of being kind and respectful to nonhuman life on this planet. Perhaps before we look for alien worlds to discover, we should stop destroying the earth and the species that live on it.

Maybe the aliens are out there but they have seen how we treat nonhumans here, and don't want to be seen. Perhaps they have blocked all signs of themselves. We're too violent. They're better off if we don't find them and never know them.

Labels: aliens