Anyway, I've finally gotten bored of World of Warcraft. There's really not much more to do now, other than go on raid after raid in an attempt to snatch a piece of better gear. Unfortunately, that process is not only time consuming, but it also destroys your faith in humanity. This is mainly because you get to see just how selfish and moronic a lot of people are, even when they're supposed to be on your side of the war.
The internet doesn't make people dumb. It makes their stupidity more accessible to you.
I wonder what will happen when earth finally makes contact with aliens. We'll assume that the aliens had a huge head-start in terms of evolution and technology, and that they are the ones who would be visiting us. Thus, they would be an ancient and knowledgeable race, possibly fine-tuned and engineered to the point that self-destructive behaviours would have been completely weeded out from their psyche.
When would this happen? It really depends. It could be tomorrow. It could be in millions of years time. If we were visited by hyper-intelligent and benign aliens tomorrow, how would the people of Earth respond? This is assuming that we are capable of response, and that some form of relatively easy communication system has been developed between us and the extra-terrestrials. Most science fiction portrays each planet as a united force. No matter the geographical aspects of a planet, the dominant sentient species always seems to follow one ruler. There is no great social divide between one section of Coruscant and another. There is a social hierarchy, but judgment based on where a person comes from is non-existent.
The explanation given is usually that with the exponentially-increasing rate of advancement of communications and transportation technology, these advanced civilisations have learned to put aside differences based on geography, and to unite under one flag. This could possibly have been the result of pressure placed upon the entire species, such as someone threatening to blow them up.
Futurama is set in the year 3000, and earth is now The United States of Earth. Obviously, the Americans are the higher-ups. Richard Nixon's preserved head is president. But the point is, that other countries still exist. The other races still exist. Chinese, Jamaican people for example. No where in the show is there any form of racism.
Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that all of the well-known science fiction is like this. Sure, it's an ideal world, but can it really happen? The current situation suggests not. People have always had something to fight over. Land. Items. Shoving ideas down other peoples' throats. As Zapp Brannigan said, "Ever since man first left his cave and met a stranger with a different language and a new way of looking at things, the human race has had a dream: to kill him, so we don't have to learn his language or his new way of looking at things."
So yeah.
If aliens show up tomorrow, we're probably screwed. Some asshole country will most likely try to convince the aliens to destroy their enemies. Then they would rise to power.
Or, the aliens would decide that humanity is a bunch of sniveling rats and turn Earth into a barbecue pit.
Heh heh.
-Joe