What instincts (drives) might an extraterrestrial species have?
Copyright 2023, InterAmerica, Inc.
Those drives which living creatures are immersed in or
control their behavior developed by experience (or awareness, conscious
awareness, which is a matter for discussion in many quarters nowadays): survival is the major force, instinctive – intrinsic – to all species on our planet.
The ubiquity of the sex drive – developed and supported by the factual observations of all of us – has been delineated by Freud, of course, and flush in the historical records of humanity since time immemorial.
The sex drive, libido (actual or sublimated), is patently obvious, and necessary for the survival of species, animal and vegetable. It, supplemented by pleasures, insures the continuation of all life forms, and goes beyond the profound abstraction of species survival over the long-haul.
The idea of prey is at the top of almost every species, extant or once-living, and is a drive endemic to virtually every living thing on Earth.
All other drives are subservient to these two instinctive behavioral patterns of evolution.
But what of species elsewhere in the vast cosmos of the Universe?
Did their emergence derive from the same kind of exigencies that faced the early forms of life on this planet?
Was survival at the top of the list facing developing life elsewhere?
That is, would other species be prone to the surrounding problems that faced Earth’s emerging life-forms?
Or was (is) life elsewhere devoid of the problematic environment(s) that faced (and still face) early life forms here on this planet?
Curiosity is considered by some to be an instinctive drive of humanity (and some other forms of Earth-life), but I’d set that aside, to be debated within the corridors of academia where the vicissitudes of consciousness are struggled with.
Are extraterrestrial species subject to the pleasures and pains of the sex drive? Or the need to pursue sustaining survival needs such as food, shelter, or environmental dangers?
How can we know?
The patently bizarre accounts of contact with alien beings in the vast library (lore) of UFO encounters haven’t provided any clue to the matter of what drives alleged visitors to our Earth.
And conjecture by cosmologists can’t be sustained by what little is known of possible life-forms off Earth.
Once UFOs are contained by science or the military and opened to informational scrutiny maybe we’ll get an understanding of extraterrestrial “evolution” – if there is such a thing.
Meanwhile, we can only speculate about what might drive ETs to visit here, if UFOs are, in fact, their spacecraft – a remote probability but grudging possibility for me.
RR
The ubiquity of the sex drive – developed and supported by the factual observations of all of us – has been delineated by Freud, of course, and flush in the historical records of humanity since time immemorial.
The sex drive, libido (actual or sublimated), is patently obvious, and necessary for the survival of species, animal and vegetable. It, supplemented by pleasures, insures the continuation of all life forms, and goes beyond the profound abstraction of species survival over the long-haul.
The idea of prey is at the top of almost every species, extant or once-living, and is a drive endemic to virtually every living thing on Earth.
All other drives are subservient to these two instinctive behavioral patterns of evolution.
But what of species elsewhere in the vast cosmos of the Universe?
Did their emergence derive from the same kind of exigencies that faced the early forms of life on this planet?
Was survival at the top of the list facing developing life elsewhere?
That is, would other species be prone to the surrounding problems that faced Earth’s emerging life-forms?
Or was (is) life elsewhere devoid of the problematic environment(s) that faced (and still face) early life forms here on this planet?
Curiosity is considered by some to be an instinctive drive of humanity (and some other forms of Earth-life), but I’d set that aside, to be debated within the corridors of academia where the vicissitudes of consciousness are struggled with.
Are extraterrestrial species subject to the pleasures and pains of the sex drive? Or the need to pursue sustaining survival needs such as food, shelter, or environmental dangers?
How can we know?
The patently bizarre accounts of contact with alien beings in the vast library (lore) of UFO encounters haven’t provided any clue to the matter of what drives alleged visitors to our Earth.
And conjecture by cosmologists can’t be sustained by what little is known of possible life-forms off Earth.
Once UFOs are contained by science or the military and opened to informational scrutiny maybe we’ll get an understanding of extraterrestrial “evolution” – if there is such a thing.
Meanwhile, we can only speculate about what might drive ETs to visit here, if UFOs are, in fact, their spacecraft – a remote probability but grudging possibility for me.
RR
posted by RRRGroup at
Saturday, February 25, 2023
8 Comments:
This is a very interesting line of questioning to which I have little answer. However, because I like to give it a go, I would add the observation that those societies on Earth that have mastered survival etc. have a tendency to decadence. Do those species from environments that do not force survival mechanisms avoid the cycle of decay also, or is there starting point merely decadent? Is the seeming folly of the phenomenon that of decadent visitors with irreducible whims and foibles? I would also say that even those human societies that master survival find sexual strife a continuing problem, as if sex is an *eternal* difficulty for us where food can be moderately "solved". A species that solves the problem of sex wold be mighty indeed. The Bible puts food and sex at the root of our difficulties (the apple and Eve etc.) but if Freud sees woman as an unknown quantity, yet more unknown are ... the thoughts of the apple! And what of the drive to interpret? All animals instinctual or otherwise must interpret their environments to eat and find mates. Amongst humans the need to interpret is free and in surplus, perhaps an indicator of a post-survival mechanism or drive amongst us. Perhaps to answer your question we need to look at what interpretation is like. It creates theology and literature, the latter being an infinity beyond space and time. Is the UFO the "literature" of a species knowing only abundance in the art of propagation? Riddles more than answers, of that I am guilty!
By
Tom Livesey, at Sunday, February 26, 2023
Tom,
As you note, the food "problem" was (and remains, for now) easily rectified: primitive mankind finding sustenance among the flora and fauna around them; Neanderthals also resorting to cannibalism.
The inordinate pleasures of sex seem to have been with humankind since the beginning -- the gods stoking the matter (procreation) with the orgasmic aftermath.
But would an alien species be subject to sexual desires? Was there an Eve in their history?
Is food abundant or even necessary?
Do alien species resort to tilling their planet? Do they have to?
Do they prey on other species - or even like the Neanderthals, their own species?
What might cause an alien species to seek out our planet -- among all the others in the Universe?
Is it the waters? The flora? The fauna, including us?
Or is there a curiosity instinct within their being? A drive to know things outside their existence?
We have no idea. But a "captured" UFO, that I keep harping about and hope to hear about one, would resolve the question of instinct and other things more important, yes?
RR
By
RRRGroup, at Sunday, February 26, 2023
Well, I am prone to like the testimony of some books to the effect that the ET species with which we are primarily dealing is vegetable in origin not animal. It strikes me that a plant species, for example, would not suffer scarcity of food to the degree an animal one does. The sun and environment, if water is plentiful, provide most energy. Carniverous plants merely supplement their diet with flies. Certainly no need for tilling or shepherding, hence no Cain and Abel, except as a luxury. Of course, I speculate - and if you do not accept the ET hypothesis my thoughts will fall largely flat. Eve? Wow, interesting question! I guess in this example, it would depend on whether they are an invasive plant or not - who cultivates their garden in an original sense and did the garden belong to them *originally*? The six million dollar question is, I agree with you, the nature of a UFO and what drives it. We can look at human transport and see sexual analogues - pistons, pumps, the penetrative nature of a rocket etc - motion being caused *in general* by movement from fullness to vacuum etc. To a human that looks sexual (I hope I do not embarass anyone!), to a plant not so much, but more to do with food. Gosh! Although we can talk of fuel feeding the engine. Maybe a UFO relies on more homeostatic principles? The capture of a "disc" would, I think you are right, indeed reveal all, but we need to think of what metaphors may be in play for the ET and their transport. Do they experience transport as transcendent, as we do when we say we are transported, in sex for example, or love? And where there is love, there are games, although game can be a type of food. Language is a curious thing.
By
Tom Livesey, at Sunday, February 26, 2023
Forgive me, but I have to add, we could discus/discuss> further, ad infinitum ;)
By
Tom Livesey, at Sunday, February 26, 2023
All this may be moot, Thomas...
If what we're dealing with are machines, even machines made of vegetable matter, easier to construct as the material needed may be found (and obtained) so much easier than metals.
By the way, vegetables (plant "life") have already proven to be (on Earth) capable of communication and construction of a high kind.
"Things" from Another World are not as fanciful and some think.
RR
By
RRRGroup, at Sunday, February 26, 2023
Rich, I bow to your higher wisdom, but would say if it is machines and they are AI is it not the consciousness question that is moot? Regards as ever, T.
By
Tom Livesey, at Sunday, February 26, 2023
Two books, that influence thinking about the (higher) consciousness of plant life are:
The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird [Harper & Row, 1973] and
Ingenious Kingdom: The Remarkable World of Plants by Henry and Rebecca Northen [Prentice-Hall, 1970]
Newer tomes on trees confirm the manipulative thinking of trees (and their societies).
RR
By
RRRGroup, at Sunday, February 26, 2023
Thanks for the tip-off! Yes.
I should also have said earlier that the questions you raise here are some of the most interesting I have ever come across in the UFO field. I thank you for giving me free rein for a moment, and if I go too far, it is my fault.
There is after all such a thing as responsibility, even in inquiry. But we must inquire. As a teacher of mine once said: "the philosopher must both let and not let the sleeping dogs lie".
On that note, god bless; it is late here in old blighty! And this old dog might sleep.
By
Tom Livesey, at Sunday, February 26, 2023
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