Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Blog #6: ALIEN ATTACK... or Not...


When first thinking about my response to this week’s blog post, I immediately wanted to take the stance that it would be frivolous to assign someone to be the maybe ambassador to the aliens that are maybe going to be contacting us maybe in the future. There were just to many maybes for me to think that this was a good idea. However, then I started to think about District 9. The aliens are people too…or are they? I think that the question of preparing for extraterrestrial contact is an interesting one because it raises issues of the rights aliens may be guaranteed upon contact.

As seen in the film District 9 there are issues surrounding how to treat extraterrestrials if we ever come into contact with them. In the film a large alien spacecraft hovers above Johannesburg, South Africa and, after time, the humans go to explore the spacecraft and find a race of aliens in need of help. While I’m not arguing that we’re likely to experience anything like District 9 in the near future, the film does bring up the issue of “human” rights. Due to the fact that the aliens aren’t human, some individuals feel that they belong in the same class as cows or pigs. However, it is clear that the aliens in District 9 are intelligent life forms; they have a language, a power structure, a type of culture, family structures and self-awareness. So the question becomes where is the line draw between human rights and the rights of all living creatures?

If only for this question, spurred on by District 9, I find myself rethinking my original view. Not only would it probably be smart to have a contingency plan for how to deal with extraterrestrials who may be aggressive upon contact, it may also be smart to have a contingency plan for how to approach them if we find ourselves in a District 9 situation. Having an ambassador for extraterrestrial contact affairs may not be the worst thing. This post would be the ultimate exercise in cross-cultural communications and it would be challenging work that wouldn’t have defined expectations or any previous experiences to work off of or from. The main issue that I find myself struggling with still is that creating this post would seem frivolous until we actually came into contact with aliens and then it would seem like the best idea we’d ever had! So perhaps, creating a plan as to how to tackle the issue of extraterrestrial life forms contacting us is a good idea but creating a United Nations post reserved for it is a bit extreme.

1 comment:

  1. I would like to point out that I agree with your post. It does seem absurd to PAY an official to research an incident that might never happen. But too many times have we been ill prepared for an incident. Take Hurricane Katrina and our (lack of) response towards that. As you mentioned, would we really want to be in a position like that? A good way to think about it is studying for a test that might not happen. If a teacher hints that there might be a test, it is always safe to study and prepare for it in case it should happen. It is always best to be safe rather than sorry...

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