View From The Cockpit

I love reading articles about rare glimpses into undiscovered tribes of humans deep in remote parts of the Earth. There are always photos or videos of, by now, a typical format- grainy aerial shots from up in the air looking down at odd angles. Obvious results of amateur photography from a moving plane. Inevitably, the “discovered” humans have reactions as extreme as their explanations of what they, too, are seeing for the first time. They throw spears and rocks and arrows into the air at a moving plane hundreds of feet out of their range and reach. They stand united in a line, unfazed by these strange visitors in the sky, as if to build a wall of themselves to stand against intrusion. If visitors approach on the ground, the “discovered” humans ambush and attack them and shoot arrows into their bodies and stab them to death with spears. And then, sometimes, they eat them. Sometimes, the “discovered humans” send their warriors to greet with a show of power and their females to hide in retreat with their young. It is fascinating, really, how these undiscovered peoples react and respond to out-of-their-world threats. Nearly all of initial and early encounters end in death for the more civilized visitors. Those violent encounters are common early on. The visitors could, of course, respond in kind or with overwhelming force and destroy the native people with a flick. That they don’t, is a choice that they make. It takes years- decades- of this violence for the visitors to establish any real or meaningful connection or communication with these peoples. The choice to undertake and fulfill this process without retribution against the native peoples is a voluntary one. We do it for their good and our own knowledge and advancement as a civilization. 

I also love reading articles about UFO/UAP encounters as well as any headlines concerning interstellar oddities, such the 3I/Atlas “comet”. Maybe it’s just me, but if I’m in the cockpit of the UFO snapping grainy photos of earthlings tossing F-22’s and F-35’s at me even though I’m clearly out of reach and range, I’d say we civilized earthly humans look and act a helluva lot like the “undiscovered” humans in the remote jungles of our planet. We scatter and scramble to define the out-of-our-world Visitors. We muse about their origins. Our advanced notions are as silly as the jungle-dwellars calling the snooping airplane a shining silver bird. There would be years- decades- of this stupidity and violence while the advanced species works to establish meaningful connection or communication…with us.

That the more advanced Visitors exercise that kind of restraint for the overall good and protection of the lesser advanced humans is a credit to their species. It is not deterrence created by the natives’ show of force. We would do well to remember that.