The second possibility is a little more intriguing. Imagine a benevolent or benign spacefaring alien species, akin to the Vulcans from Star Trek. If they’ve figured out how to successfully traverse the distances between the stars, then they have technology that’s at least hundreds of years beyond our own, and potentially thousands, tens of thousands or more. We have enough problems on our world figuring out how to manage our own planet, and we have the resources of an entire world, a solar system, and a massive, energy-giving Sun. For a species to come as far as an intelligent, spacefaring alien would have come, they must have figured out a solution to a whole slew of problems that humanity clearly still grapples with. Meeting a civilization such as this could only have positive outcomes for our own.