[Skybird]

When I am not using my system - I switch it off.

And although SETI is a passive program, we also try a lot to make ourselves known to "those out there", with Voyager 1+2 for example, and radio wave pollution (in fact, having listened to the radio occasionally my greatest fear is that our radios are the first thing others would learn about us - they could not escape and think we are totally nut dumbheads, I expect). I wonder if it really is clever to let everybody know that we are there, and where. From our history we know that when cultures make contact, the superior one most of the time conquers and shatters the inferior. the Nazi scientists showed us what man is capable to do to his next, in gruel horrific deeds and procedures. We do not know if this must be true for other life forms as well, of course, but it is a consideration you can'T wave off the table - with which argument should that be possible, regarding the unknown alien? Also, if others have the possibility to reach us, we can assume they are friendly ETs. But we also must take into account that they are hostile to us, or want our planet or ressources, or ourselves. Or maybe they just trample on us like little kids smash a fly for fun or trample on an ant'S hill just because it is there, headlessly. No human ethics can be used to make prjections about the behavior and motives of alien ethics - because they are alien. On earth, species in oceans for example used to kept separate by space, temperatures differences, tidings, different salt saturation in the water, or in the vertical: pressure. Often it results into desaster when a species gets transplanted into a new ecosystem where it was unknown before, like it happens due to man'S friendly help (traffic, climate change). the newcomer kill estaiblished species and bring them to the brink of extinction, and by that destabilize a complete running ecosystem.

Maybe the wide abyss between worlds in space is not for nothing. Just imgaine man would reach a world with some kind of life forms - we would be greedy for the ressources nevertheless, and say that it took a lot of effort to go there, we now cannot return with nothing. So we would colonize it nevertheless. This is the point where we talk about ants again, and maybe about Incas and Mayas and Indians, too.

Most likely it would be the other way around, though. Earth lies in those 10% of the galaxy's space that are the galaxy'S youngest 10%. that means that over 90% of solar systems in this galaxy are very very much older than our sun is, and we talk of up to hundreds of millions of years. Most civilisations maybe would not survive that time anyway, but those who eventually did - will have had time to develope that they are probably in possession of capabilities and knowledge that we cannot match them in any way, and that they would apear to us as pure magic. We even do niot know if we have the intelliegence to recognioze such a superior intelligence as such. So, chances that in a future contact we will not be the shining heroes, but the ants, are at least 9:1. that might hurt our ego, but if it does, this would just indicate that we still consider the Earth to be the centre of all universe around which everything is revolving. If we want to say that we know a lot, or not, depends on the scaling standard to which we compare. Those saying that we can communicate with Gods by ripping somebody's heart out of his chest, or that we would fall off the Earth if we sail to the edge of the disc, also thought they "knew". It turned out that they knew wrong, completely, although they had "evidence" and "proof".

Seen that way, SETI is funny, but a bit of a carricature of the way our minds are ticking.

There is one explanation why we have not been contacted so far, btw. First, maybe the contact almost is there, but to their terms, not to ours. Second, maybe we have been monitored and judged, and it was decided that one does not wish to have to deal with this crazy civilisation at all.