The Extraterrestrial Mind
Copyright 2018, InterAmerica, Inc.
My dear pal, Bryan Sentes (who teaches at Dawson College in Montreal, is a poet of
some stature, and an award-noted philosopher) writes elsewhere here about ET
thinking:
“… to argue Earth is insignificant to some imagined ET race
must assume some knowledge of the concerns of said race
“I can't claim that earth is any more insignificant than any
other heavenly body without claiming to know the scale of significance that ET
uses.”
The comments come in reference to my obtuse belief that
Earth is puny and insignificant to the point that no alien (ET) species would
be visiting here, certainly not in the droves that UFO sightings/reports
indicate, a position that Bryan states is Jacques Vallee’s also.
But the essence of Bryan’s commentary is that we humans
can’t know how ETs think.
Although there is a whiff of human understanding of the ET
mind in Bryan’s position, it is so subliminal that I may be projecting my own
predilection on his thought about the matter.
At any rate, human thought derives from the evolutionary
processes unique to this planet, which would not be similar elsewhere in
the living cosmos.
In reading a review, by Adrian Woolfson, of a book in the June
8, 2018 TLS (a particularly intellectually fecund issue), The
Origins of Creativity by Edward O. Wilson [Allen Lane publisher], that
argues for the use of nature in the humanities, I found the references to ants
particularly interesting, having discussed at length here, early on, about how
ant behavior seemed more like thought than instinct.
I also ascribe thought rather than instinct to other
creatures, as noted in my monographs on sea and animal life as portrayed and
filmed by The Living Planet people.
But here, with the review cited, ants are the center of the
topic. Biologist W.M. Mann’s 1934 work, Stalking Ants, Savage and Civilized
told his readers, reviewer Woolfson relates, that “the Japanese word for ‘ant’
is formed from the conjunction of the character for ‘insect’ with that for
‘unselfishness, justice, and courtesy”. [sic] Mann “also ominously reminded us,
however, that ants may be as ruthless as the ancient Huns or Moguls.” [sic]
And “Edward O. Wilson warns us that if human-like life is
found elsewhere in the universe, we should not expect it to be benign.” [TLS,
Page 27]
This goes to the heart of my musings about insect, animal,
sea life, et cetera recorded here on Earth: creatures creatively
seek mates and food, omnivorously.
There is thought in such voracious endeavors but no
recognizable compassion or kindness.
The behavior, while creative and thought-filled, as I see
it, is not oriented around what we would call humane activity.
So if I’m extrapolating such “behavior” to that, possibly, of
an alien (ET) species, one that Bryan guesses we can never really know the
thought processes of, it is incumbent upon us (UFO buffs) to consider that the
alleged UFO encounters that often report interactions of a human-like kind are
either truly farfetched, concoctions of febrile minds, or a botched reading
(understanding) of a mundane experience.
If an alien (ET) species were showing up here, they very
likely are not looking for sexual partners – a human trait culturally developed
and biologically encouraged by the proclivities and procreative needs of
mankind (and the creatures alongside him) – nor food, which would be
startlingly different on a planet elsewhere in the cosmos I should think.
But an alien (ET) species, like ants (or other creature
societies) might have an agenda totally foreign to anything we can think of, as
Bryan intuits.
How can we know? We can’t.
An alien (ET) mind would be so out of tune with what we know
or have experienced that it would be almost impossible to deal with it despite
the thinking of film-makers (The Arrival, in the latest incarnation of
alien visitation) and the hordes of sci-fi writings over the years.
Fortunately, the idea that ET has been and is on the
doorstep of Earth is so faulty that we don’t have to worry, do we?
RR
posted by RRRGroup at
Sunday, July 15, 2018
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