10. Aliens Again!

One afternoon in the year 2425, four hundred years in the future, everyone’s face screen lit up with an image of a flower and some words. This message appeared on the screens at the same moment, all across the world. It was the aliens again. This time they reached out to the masses directly, no intermediaries like clergy or designated business elites. They announced their presence with a nonthreatening image and text displayed in many languages.

Because of the message, many people thought it came directly from God and dropped to their knees. Most were skeptical of that and responded with curiosity. The aliens sent simple and calm words to our screens:

Warm greetings, people of Earth. Centuries ago, we visited you and decided we could not stay. We still want to engage with you, and we would like to see whether you have grown in your understanding and acceptance of values and codes of behavior. Instead of hearing from your representatives, we would like to hear from you directly. Please share your thoughts on this . . .

The question was almost the same as before. They asked about our values and how we lived, what our ethics codes were. Mainly, they wanted to assess the risk of dealing with us and learn whether we were still the primitive and unprincipled species we were generations prior. The alien civilization had advanced over four hundred years. They messaged us individually in 2425 instead of traveling through space. Besides utilizing face screen technology, have we advanced too?

Most people replied to the aliens. It wasn’t hard. All each person had to do was start talking to the flower image on their face screen. As expected, the responses were all over the board, but the aliens had the technology to analyze the messages and break them down to recurring themes.

The aliens learned that since the first visit four hundred years prior, many things had changed.

There is now more of this:

 ·         More awareness that people are fully part of nature, not removed from it in some special way.

·         More belief that the odd phenomena we experience may be real and natural parts of the Universe that are simply not yet understood.

·         More recognition that humanity is connected to all life, that our success as a species depends on how we work together, and that we must be mindful of life broadly.

·         More discussion and debate about what values help humanity and life thrive. This active discourse eventually helps to bring about a consensus on the best values to honor.

·         More willingness to resist and protest peacefully when people do things that conflict with key values.

And less of this:

 ·         Less belief in supernatural involvement in our lives.

·         Less faith-based conflict.

·         Less fabrication of supernatural stories to explain the phenomena we experience.

·         Less taking or doing whatever we want without consequences.

This happened through evolution of thought and many tough conversations rather than through dictates by any authority.

The aliens also learned that the 2025 alien visit was a big deal. Great-grandparents passed along stories of that arrival day, describing it as the biggest event ever. There is a building-shaped monument in the field now, and many people make pilgrimages to the site.

Most people think of that alien arrival and subsequent rushed departure as an embarrassment, a failure for humanity. This sparked some initial calls for changes in how humans relate to one another.

Change was terribly inconsistent and slow. In fact, brutality and falsity spiked for many decades after that event. Some state leaders rushed to implement codes of conduct and restrictive morality laws. These mostly failed. Codes will not accomplish much if there are no underlying commonly held values. Plus, forcing a morality view on a country’s population turned out to be unsuccessful.

Some people tried to contact the aliens so they could tell us what to value and how we should behave. Many pleas went out. No answer came back.

Change started when more humans began seeing themselves as connected to others and began appreciating their connectedness to other humans and to nonhuman life. Life-centered values slowly emerged.

The change fully came when the conversations about morality shifted to human interaction rather than sin and heaven/hell. The discussions about morality became more about problem-solving and societal or human interactions. Fear-based supernatural-oriented discussions fell out of favor.

For generations, this was an on-again, off-again process. Dominators were hard to convince, difficult to sway, but over time, humans made actual progress.

Humanity still struggles with this, but most people think the world is on the right track and are hopeful about the future. There is hope!

Our alien friends now conclude that dealing with us has potential. The moral terrain here is still unstable, but has improved. We may now be worth the risk.