Alien view of Planet Earth
There’s this book — The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. I can’t say I’ve read it. But once in a while when I feel confused and lost, I just read a part of it. Helps me navigate through life. This one, (and probably many other) books have a mention of an Encyclopaedia Galactica. One guidebook to navigate the whole explored universe. I’ve always wondered what it would be like, how would it describe us and our world etc.
Recently, I came across this series called Parallax by Adam Westbrook. The description talks about the history of the Encyclopaedia Galactica and how it could be imagined.
37 years ago, Carl Sagan imagined the ‘Encyclopaedia Galactica’, a “vast repository of the knowledge of many worlds”. “Imagine” he pondered, “the impact on us if we could study a rich compilation of not merely one world but billions.”
It’s a wonderful series. It can open up your thinking, make you feel how small and insignificant you’re in this universe.
There were two specific things in the series that got me thinking way too much. One, the concept of advancing from a planetary to a galactic civilization and two, the way life is described, especially the Employees.
I work in Sustainable Development. As a part of this, I’ve briefly studied our current approach to growth in terms of economy and energy and the concept of degrowth. Both seem very contradicting. One is ruthless economic development consuming & polluting the whole planet’s resources and the other is to stop all this and live a bare minimum lifestyle. Both don’t make sense to me. What I believe in is Sustainable Development. Decent economic growth while preserving social and environmental harmony. But the concept of advancing from a planetary civilization to a stellar civilization to a galactic civilization gets me thinking on what’s the right approach. We’ll have to exhaust all planetary resources to advance to a stellar civilization and then exhaust all of Sun’s energy to advance to a Galactic civilization. Lot of things we’re doing makes sense in this regard. Corporations sending rockets to Mars, Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement(there’s a funny clip in the series) and the US’s climate plan at COP2017 etc seem very much aligned to this kind of progress. This gets me thinking, should we protect the planet or should we consume all the resources faster so we advance to a stellar civilization and start exploring other planets, maybe Mars. We’ll also be one step closer to being a galactic civilization.
It’s also amazing how alien species could possibly look at life on Earth. They might imagine the bikes and cars as bipeds and quadrupeds. But the most bothering imagination is Corporation and Employees as species. A symbiotic relationship between Autotrophs and Heterotrophs. Humans, as employees are an inferior species on this planet. Each one of us, in some form or the other, are Employees. We’re all controlled by corporations and governments who might eventually be controlled by corporations. This gets me thinking again on what’s life? Are corporations alive and controlling us? Will they form the galactic civilization using us? That’s kinda high level.
Let’s think of ourselves. If we’re an inferior species to the Corporations, something like dogs(for eg) to Humans. What would you want to be? Somebody’s pet dog in an apartment or a street dog scavenging food or wild and free? The choice is yours. It might be hard, but that’s what you want to do. Secondly, Just like how the civilizations need to exhaust energy resources to advance from one stage to another, us as humans also need to maximize the use of human potential. It could be physical strength, emotional or mental capability or even leadership. We need to use the fullest extent possible so we can advance to the next level. We do that, probably we’ll advance better than the corporations and take over control again.
Watch and think about it. Let me know what you think.
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