On Being

 by   shaun lawton

   We must all strive to share a mutual perspective on the fecundity of the question "Is there any such thing as alien life?"  If our own ideas of where we stand on the great cosmic scale of existence were to expand themselves to consider our home as being merely identified as the greater set of the entire universe, then all life within said parameters might suddenly become not so alien to us, after all.   We should each be able to see that the question of *whether or not* there is alien life out there and *what* it might be are indeed two separate and thorny questions, and our situation here seems to be in the habit of lumping them together as if they were one and the same.  Ah,  "To be, or not to be..."

     When we participants of this discussion all agree to stick with the spirit of the question, and then decide we mean "any sentient species that happens to exist upon other planets", we put ourselves in the position wherein we may necessarily exclude the term "alien" in favor of "extraterrestrial;" it depends on whether or not our DNA is being shared (setting aside for the moment what our definition of "sentient" happens to be).  Because if we cannot be compelled to agree on what the spirit of the question is in the first place, it renders this topic nearly obsolete in terms of conducting a rational discussion about it.  For instance, one possible outcome of this debate about extraterrestrial life is that our own species may end up being discovered to actually be indigenous to the whole Universe, for all we know.  This example might render all technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations in our cosmos to be bipedal by nature and homo sapiens by definition. 

     The spirit of this question then becomes an integral consideration in our guesswork of not only what the true nature of the so-called "alien" might actually be, but also our own true nature in the context of all creation.  It renders the meaning of the term "alien" with the caveat that it must then define something truly separate from us, in the sense that it may not even share our DNA(!), or even not be of this universe at all(!?).   

    And as some of us are already beginning to suspect, our existence may in fact be an aspect of a singularity. These perspectives become crucial for us to keep in mind when defining life itself and our universe.   If you ask me, the very fact we are still struggling with (and on different pages of) our own explanations for life and our place in the universe itself renders any discussion on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence all the more challenging. At this stage of our comprehension of the universe around us, I often suspect it is ourselves who are being more effectively searched for, and not the other way around.  Unless, perhaps, the universe is like some strange game where we must first lose ourselves in order to then begin the search all over again...