If Aliens Arrived Tomorrow, My First Question Would Be: Why?

By Orlando J. Alvarez

If aliens arrived tomorrow, my first question would be simple: why?

Out of all the planets they could visit, why would they come here? If a species has developed the technology necessary to travel across interstellar distances and deliberately reach Earth, then it would already possess capabilities far beyond anything humanity has accomplished. It could probably observe us long before deciding whether to make contact. It could see what we have built, how we live, how we govern ourselves, and how we use the technology we already possess.

That is why I would not begin by asking how their spacecraft works or what they could teach us. I would want to understand their reason for coming before I became interested in what they could give us.

Why Earth? Why humanity? Why now?

Why Would They Come Here?

I remember Stephen Hawking warning about this possibility years ago. He compared the arrival of a technologically superior extraterrestrial civilization with what happened when Columbus arrived in the Americas. He was not claiming that aliens had been proven hostile. His warning was about the consequences of an encounter between civilizations when one possesses overwhelming advantages over the other. His comparison was direct: Columbus’s arrival did not turn out well for Native Americans. 

That comparison has stayed with me because human history gives us very little reason to assume that technological superiority automatically means moral superiority. We often use words like advanced and civilized as though they mean the same thing. I do not think they necessarily do.

A society can become extremely good at building things without becoming equally good at stewarding what it builds.

Of course, aliens would not have to think like us. That is part of the problem with imagining extraterrestrial intelligence. We naturally project human motives onto something that, by definition, would have developed outside the human experience. Their ideas about morality, ownership, resources, life, cooperation, or even individuality could be completely different from ours.

Maybe they would come out of curiosity. Maybe they would be studying life. Maybe they would be looking for something. Maybe their purpose would be something we do not even have the language to understand.

I do not know.

And that is precisely why my first question would be why.

Would They Even Teach Us?

Then there is another assumption hidden inside these conversations about alien contact. We often imagine that if extraterrestrials arrived peacefully, they would teach us something.

Would they?

This is where I begin thinking less about them and more about us. Everything humanity learns that can be used for good eventually seems to find some harmful application as well. The discovery itself may be neutral. The knowledge may be extraordinary. Yet once human beings possess it, someone eventually begins asking how it can create power, profit, control, military advantage, or domination.

We have already seen this pattern with our own technologies. Nuclear physics expanded our understanding of matter and energy while also giving humanity nuclear weapons. Digital communication created the ability to connect people across the planet while also creating systems capable of surveillance, manipulation, deception, and exploitation.

The problem is not knowledge. The problem is what we do with knowledge once power becomes attached to it.

Now imagine giving humanity technology hundreds or thousands of years beyond our own.

What would we do with it?

That is not a comfortable question.

We are still fighting wars over territory, resources, religion, ideology, political authority, and economic power. Nations still compete for military superiority. Companies compete for control of markets and information. People still divide themselves into groups and then find reasons why their group deserves something another group should not have.

So why would a civilization capable of traveling between stars immediately hand us greater power?

Maybe they would look at us and conclude that we are not ready.

What Does an Advanced Civilization Actually Mean?

I also wonder whether a civilization could survive long enough to achieve interstellar travel without learning some form of restraint.

That does not mean I believe extraterrestrials would necessarily be peaceful. We have no evidence that allows us to make that conclusion. But the question interests me because survival itself may require more than technological intelligence.

Human beings have developed enough technology to alter the environment of an entire planet. We have weapons capable of destroying cities in seconds. We can communicate almost instantly across continents. We can manipulate biology, build artificial intelligence, explore other worlds with machines, and observe parts of the universe our ancestors did not even know existed.

Yet our ability to create has repeatedly advanced faster than our ability to agree on how creation should be used.

Maybe that is one of the real thresholds of civilization.

It may not be enough to discover how to cross the stars. A species might also have to learn how to survive its own intelligence long enough to get there.

If that is true, extraterrestrial contact could expose something uncomfortable about how we measure progress. We tend to measure advancement by what a civilization can build. Perhaps a more important measurement is what a civilization can build without destroying itself with it.

We Can Barely Steward Ourselves

That is ultimately where this hypothetical takes me.

We are a species that can barely steward ourselves, let alone handle an encounter with beings possessing knowledge and technology far beyond ours.

I am not saying that because I believe humanity is hopeless. If I believed that, there would be very little reason for me to write about stewardship in the first place. I believe we are capable of learning, correcting ourselves, and becoming better.

But capability is not the same as accomplishment.

We have become enormously powerful while still struggling with some of the oldest problems in human history. Greed still influences decisions. Fear still influences decisions. Identity still divides people. Power still tempts those who possess it. Knowledge has not automatically removed any of those things.

That is why the possibility of peaceful alien contact may actually raise a more difficult question than the possibility of invasion.

What happens if they come peacefully and offer us something we are not mature enough to handle?

We usually imagine the danger as something arriving from the stars. Maybe part of the danger would be what we would do after the encounter.

The Question Would Still Be Why

If aliens arrived tomorrow, I would not be standing there thinking first about everything I wanted them to teach me. Before asking about their science, their history, their planet, or the technology that brought them here, I would want to understand what brought them to us.

Why did they choose Earth?

Why did they choose humanity?

What did they see when they looked at us?

Maybe they would see potential. Maybe they would see danger. Maybe they would simply be curious. Maybe the reason would be something none of us has imagined.

But I would listen very carefully to their answer.

Because their explanation for why they came might tell us something about the universe.

It might also tell us something about ourselves.

And perhaps that would be the more important discovery.

Related reading

This question of whether intelligence is accompanied by judgment connects directly with the broader work of The Resilient Philosopher, where examination comes before certainty and power is tested against conscience and responsibility. The Silence of a Free Mind examines that relationship through ideology, systems, dignity, and independent judgment. 

Explore the books by Orlando J. Alvarez⁠

Source

Stephen Hawking’s 2010 warning about possible extraterrestrial contact, including his comparison with Columbus’s arrival in the Americas, is documented in contemporary reporting discussing his Discovery Channel documentary.