Them Life Goals

hang in there, world. 

Alexander Semenov Continues to Photograph the Earth’s Most Fragile Marine Wildlife Near the Arctic Circle

Hey kids let’s get meta for a moment.

Let’s say aliens are real, and let’s say we communicate with them, and let’s say they find out about this weird internet thing where humans write little mini stories about future human interactions with aliens.

Can you imagine how fucking confused and concerned they would be? These two-legged assholes who were so enamored with the concept of meeting other intelligent species, even though for the longest time they had NO CONCLUSIVE PROOF that said other species exist, that they wrote stories about those other species, to the point of making up creatures and systems of mood communication and names for their made up aliens? 

Which brings me to my Great Theory About The Purpose Of Storytelling: it’s practice. We tell stories about that time we had the flu really bad to practice getting the flu with our friends so we all know how to properly manage the symptoms. We tell stories about our children to practice dealing with their unpredictability. We tell stories about war and famine and pestilence to practice dealing with disaster. And we tell stories about aliens to practice etiquette for dealing with aliens. 

We tell stories of our own ferocity and ingenuity to practice for the day we have to either defend our planet or invite ourselves into an alliance. We tell stories of our aggressive pack-bonding to practice bonding with creatures that are literally alien to us. We tell stories about trading chores for passage on space ships to practice Just Because They’re Aliens Doesn’t Mean You Can Be Rude. 

And of course, if we can practice bonding and cooperating with creatures that may not even breathe oxygen, we can practice bonding and cooperating with each other.

Humans in spaaaaace

Had this thought last night as I lay falling asleep. We have all these space-exploration-ensemble shows with a bunch of aliens each of which has some sort of super-human power, more or less. And humans are always given ~leadership~ as their special power. The ability to bring people together, to organize shit, and I always thought, like…what a shitty power. What a shitty colonial “you were a mess until we came in and saved you” power. Drives me nuts. Seems like if an alien species builds a got-damn ship that can fly through got-damn space they probably have their shit together, right? At least somewhat?

So then I figure, what is humanity got to contribute to all these super-beings? We’re just nonsense reckless critters careening through space. Seems like we’d be more trouble than we’re worth.

But what if…I mean, what if that’s us. We’re the universe’s huckleberries. We’ll run headlong into danger, and we’ll *laugh*. And what if…what if we survive and a weirdly abnormally high rate. Like any alien with two bits of math can put together that we should have wiped ourselves out a long time ago with the first set of “hold my beer, and watch this.” So what the shit, how are we still banging around the universe building shit and flying off solar ramps into the sun while doing some spaceship equivalent of an ollie while crushing beer cans on our forehead. Why. Why do we exist.

And then it hits me. We survive. We’re super good at it. Uncannily good at it. So much so that we…I mean, we actually bend probability in our favor. It’s absurd. And it totally falls flat if you actually tell us this (“Never tell me the odds,” said Solo, knowing full well that knowing the odds kills a human’s chances of survival).

So there we are. Careening around the universe. Joining alien crews because they know that with a human on board, especially a cocky human in some kind of leadership position, can warp probability to stretch success in their favor. And they can never ever tell us this. So instead they just pat our heads and tell us we’re just so good at ~leadership~ and that’s what makes humans special

But really…we’re just a bunch of space dinguses.

I’ve seen the truth, Mulder. Now what I want are the answers.  (strip; insp)

George Barbier, Le Feu (The Fire), lithograph from Falbalas et Fanfreluches, Almanach des Modes Presentes, Passees et Futures, 1925.

Stray Child sky, clouds

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