Similarly, one of the least plausible—if most inspiring—scenes in Independence Day occurs when citizens of the world join hands to repel the aliens and the screen is filled with images of Israeli and Arab militaries, side by side, working together, the dire circumstances turning enemies into brothers. But the fact is, it’s hard to imagine even the nominally confederated nations of the European Union pulling together that way without France crabbing to Belgium that Italy needs to pull its own weight, Germany scolding Greece that a military costs money and they should have thought about that before they ran up such huge deficits, and Great Britain trying to figure out if ETs can swim and if maybe, one more time, the Sceptered Isle could wait out the whole mess on the other side of the Channel.
We don’t need an alien landing to show us how we respond to a perceived external threat. Consider the hysterical reaction to the Ebola virus alighting on American shores (ground all flights! quarantine all travelers!). Consider the incessant drumbeat about the need to seal the U.S.-Mexican border against swine flu or ISIS or Al Qaeda or whatever other menace is lighting up cable news that day.
Harder to determine is how proof of extraterrestrial life would affect our religious beliefs. The last half-millennium has been a difficult time for some of the most fundamentally devout. Far from living on a world that sits at the center of the universe, we have come to learn that we’re barely in the cosmic countryside, camping out on a lone planet circling one of 300 billion stars in the Milky Way, which itself is one of perhaps 100 billion galaxies in the universe. Our final claim to uniqueness is that for the moment, we remain the only known planet with life. If that changes—when that changes—we’ll all have to find our own ways to adjust. And on that score, there is hope.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member