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We believe that humanity is about fine music, happy families, and good food. People look at things like the golden record and take pride in what humanity has to accomplish, and look forward to a future where Klingons and humans can cooperate.
What we should have done is included some photos of warfare, mushroom clouds, … all that stuff we do all the time that we pretend we don’t. If we’re going to give aliens or future humans a good idea of what we’re about, shan’t we offer forth both our best and our worst?
Except we’re embarrassed of ourselves, and we tell ourselves our achievements are great, and we look out into the stars in search of people like we are — the same way we once saw faces in nature in the sky, and called those “gods”. Our narcissism is so strong that we don’t even need reflections, and we just see ourselves in everything wherever we go. All I have to say is we’ll be damn lucky if aliens are even half like the ones you see on Star Trek.
There’s this saying that a deal predicated on a lie can only go downhill. If you were an extraterrestrial and you discovered humanity was lying to you, how would that make you feel? I, for one, would slowly back away and never return.
We’ll be fortunate if an alien life form can “feel” at all besides hungry. For all we know, the predominant life forms in the universe are just big blobs that consume solar systems like plankton in a cosmic ocean. But our hubris made us send out a beacon that not only signals nearby intelligent life, but we included a map on how to find us. Fortunately, it has later turned out to be woefully inaccurate.