We Think Too Highly Of Our Visitors

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Douglas

The New Message from God speaks of the shock of the future and how to mitigate it. One thing I am doing is reading science-fiction novels. One book I have particularly enjoyed is the book “The Three-Body Problem,” written in 2014 by Liu Cixin, and translated into English by Ken Liu. Here is the premise.

Set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision.

We think too highly of our visitors

One of the main characters of the book is Ye Wenjie, an astrophysicist. During the Cultural Revolution, she witnessed her father, a physics professor, beaten to death by Red Guards. Later, through an unusual turn of events, she got to read the book “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson. This book was not readily available in China at that time. After reading Silent Spring, Ye Wenjie thought: “If this was so, then how many other acts of humankind that had seemed normal or even righteous were, in reality, evil?” As a result of these two events, Ye Wenjie lost her faith in humanity.

I have already written about the possible disastrous consequences of seeking to establish contact with aliens. The New Message from God teaches there is an extraterrestrial intervention currently underway. Part of this is an attempt to cause humanity to lose faith in human leadership and human institutions.

Perhaps we should rethink our attitude

We think too highly of our visitors. Liu Cixin wrote a postscript to The Three-Body Problem. In this postscript he shares something he considers to be an anomaly:

“There’s a strange contradiction revealed by the naïveté and kindness demonstrated by humanity when faced with the universe. On Earth, humankind can step onto another continent, and without a thought, destroy the kindred civilizations found there through warfare and disease. But when they gaze up at the stars, they turn sentimental and believe that if extraterrestrial intelligences exist, they must be civilizations bound by universal, noble moral constraints, as if cherishing and loving different forms of life are parts of a self-evident universal code of conduct.

I think it should be precisely the opposite. Let’s turn the kindness we show toward the stars to members of the human race on Earth and build up the trust and understanding between the different peoples and civilizations that make up humanity. But for the universe outside the solar system, we should be ever vigilant, and be ready to attribute the worst of intentions to any Others that might exist in space. For a fragile civilization like ours, this is without a doubt the most responsible path.”

Will we take the most responsible path?

We think too highly of our visitors. We confuse advanced technology with advanced spirituality. The Europeans had better technology than the Native Americans and the Aztecs. It didn’t make them better people. Are extraterrestrials spiritually advanced? It ain’t necessarily so. The New Message from God teaches what is currently a minority viewpoint on the subject of extraterrestrials.

1) Intelligent extraterrestrial life exists
2) Extraterrestrials are intervening in human affairs today
3) This extraterrestrial intervention is a threat to human freedom

Maybe there are other things we should work on. How about developing our vigilance? How about developing the requirements for freedom (unity, self-sufficiency and discretion)? I’m with Liu Cixin. Let’s turn the kindness we show toward the stars to members of the human race on earth. We think too highly of our visitors.

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Welcome to Mystery of Ascension! We are students and advocates of the the New Message from God. We are members of a worldwide community. We seek to assist the world in successfully navigating difficult times ahead. We seek to assist the world in successfully emerging into a greater community of intelligent life. You will also find some poetry. Find out more about us here. Contact us here.

Is This Whole SETI Thing A Good Idea?

Posted on March 29, 2015 by Douglas

From as early as 1960 to the present, various scientists have been searching for signs of extraterrestrial civilizations in outer space. The acronym SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) is now used to describe the efforts of these scientists.

Is this whole SETI thing a good idea?

How have people been searching? By pointing various kinds of telescopes at various locations. Some researchers, like SETI pioneer Frank Drake, pointed radio telescopes at nearby, sun-like stars. Russian researchers performed sweeps of wider portions of the sky.

Is this whole SETI thing a good idea? What frequencies are they tuning into? Scientists have searched on many different frequencies. The band of frequencies between 1,420 Megahertz and 1,666 Megahertz have captured the imagination of astronomers as a band of frequencies a civilization would use if it wanted to be heard.

Is this whole SETI thing a good idea? Have they found anything? The closest that anyone has come to finding anything, as far as I can tell, is an event in 1977 called “The Wow! signal.” On the other hand, there is no record of a repeat of that event, and no other events from the general direction of that signal (the constellation Sagittarius) have been recorded.

Is this whole SETI thing a good idea? What are they going to do now? The vast majority of the SETI research up to now is what is now being called passive SETI, looking and listening for evidence of alien civilizations. Some people who are involved in SETI plan to continue this strategy of looking and listening. Who knows, maybe our technology just isn’t good enough yet. But some scientists (most notably astronomer Seth Shostak) are contemplating the possibility of active SETI (or METI “messaging extraterrestrial intelligence”). Active SETI involves sending messages into space advertising our presence. Some scientists have suggested that this is a bad idea, as we don’t know what kind of response our messages would produce.

Is this whole SETI thing a good idea? It seems to me that the researchers are operating under a certain set of assumptions. They assume that advanced civilizations wish to make their existence and affairs a public fact. No commerce could be conducted on the internet without a way of keeping the details of the transaction hidden from third parties. Nations on earth make efforts to keep certain information secret from other nations. Why wouldn’t advanced civilizations make efforts to keep certain information secret from other worlds such as our own?

Is this whole SETI thing a good idea? There is a belief in the world that more technically advanced races are somehow more spiritually advanced as well. But is this necessarily so? Were the Conquistadores more spiritually advanced than the Aztecs? Were the European colonists of North America more spiritually advanced than the tribes they encountered? Were the British more spiritually advanced than the Chinese, when the British introduced opium into China?

Is this whole SETI thing a good idea? The New Message from God has an answer to this question, and I wish to share that answer with you. However, it’s part of a larger conversation, and I believe it would be more profitable at this point to set the table, as it were, for that larger conversation.