Posted on 10/21/2019 4:44:39 PM PDT by LibWhacker
After fumbling with her chopsticks for a bit the alien known as the Guardian soon gave up and decided to switch to a fork for greater speed in allowing her to quickly consume the delicious cornucopia of Chinese food items. Samantha Carter gave her a serving of stir fry and dumplings, which of course the Guardian also ate enthusiastically.
The Guardian talked with her mouth full, “This is heavenly, even better than I ever imagined. These food items are all fresh?”
Carter swallowed. “I think so.”
“You must be a very wealthy person to afford all this.”
Carter chuckled, “Oh no. Everybody eats stuff like this.”
“Amazing. This food is seasonal?”
“No, you can buy it year around.”
“Then this meal is a miracle.”
“Really? How do you mean?”
“Just look at all this.” The Guardian pointed at her plate of stir fry with her fork. “The tomatoes, the peppers, and the shredded lettuce are summer crops; the dumplings are made of wheat, a fall crop; the meat is typically butchered in the winter when other food sources are not available; the shrimp comes from thousands of miles away. To provide all these fresh food items simultaneously year-round requires collecting them from opposite hemispheres of your planet using an incredibly fast and efficient worldwide transportation supply chain. The logistics must be mind-boggling to allow billions of people to eat foods of this kind daily.”
“Really? It seems pretty routine.”
“It is absolutely amazing to me.”
“Sara, isn’t your technology far more advanced than Earth’s? Your people have flying jumpers and hyperspace drives.”
“True, but we have nothing like your scale, your logistics. The worldwide effort required to create meals to feed billions like this routinely and at such minimal cost is truly a miracle.”
Carter made a small shrug, “Huh. I never thought of it like that to be honest.”
“Earth is indeed incredible.”
It was past midnight. The Guardian was alone in the guest bedroom. She was unable to sleep, gazing up at the ceiling of her bedroom, pondering everything that she had seen that evening.
During that short time she had seen only the barest glimpse of what Earth was like. It still seemed like a fantasy to her.
Earth was fascinating. It was incredible.
No, it was impossible.
No civilization should be able to survive that way, not on that scale, not for that long, not without immediately falling apart into a total anarchy of chaos, famine, and mass death.
Earth had no central government, no controlling authority. At least a half dozen nations owned civilization-destroying weapons that could be launched on a moments notice. And yet Earth’s humanity was happily fed and clothed in relative comfort, driving blissfully to and fro in their automobiles, watching silly TV shows, eating Chinese-takeout, all while living their lives with no awareness of just how incredible it all was.
Something or something had to be watching over this planet.
It was the only explanation.
Planets were rare. Planets with life were rarer still. Earth, the planet with the such an astounding quantity of intelligent life flourishing on such an astounding scale, was unique. It was the most amazing planet in the known universe.
Surely the Designer had to be watching this world with keen interest.
More than watching. Earth was impossibly stable. He had to be doing something, either directly or indirectly, to prevent such a miraculous planet from immediately self-destructing into total chaos and anarchy.
Her people had believed that the Designer was a high and remote entity who did not interfere or participate in his own Creation, indifferent to the suffering and yearnings of mere mortals.
But now she knew that they were wrong.
The evidence for it was right here. It was right under her feet. It was so obvious that a child could see it.
She remembered her conversation with Doctor Kurosawa:
“Doctor Kurosawa, your God not only interacts with you and interferes with his Creation, but according to your religious writings He actually injected himself into his Creation as a human being, to experience it all for himself? All because he cares for you?”
“Yes. Because He cares for us. He cares that much.”
“This is completely beyond me.”
She sighed. She continued to gaze up at the ceiling. Having now seen Earth first hand she began to understand. It was obvious to her now that He did indeed care for these people. He cared for them enough to create and sustain such an incredible world.
He was indeed interfering with His Creation, participating in it, interacting with it. Nothing else could explain a planet like Earth.
But how was He doing it?
What was the best way to interact with them?
Do it as one of them.
It made sense.
But why? What was the reason?
Was it simply because it made His interaction with them all the more precious? More special? Or was there something more to it than that?
She felt that there was something missing in her line of reasoning, something important.
Yes, something was missing. She couldn’t put her finger on it.
She kept on pondering the question until she gave up. Eventually she fell asleep.
“Might humans develop technology that can be used to destroy us?”
Perhaps, but EVERY STAR is LIFE. Our STAR is LIFE. It is the source of life. Without it , we would not exist.
Every star is a source of life. With the countless numbers of stars in just the 'observable' universe, the possibility that others stars may have provided LIFE to a planet seem rather high.
There may be countless forms of life on other planets. But the space between us all is so far, that we will likely never meet any of them.
Which is probably a good thing.
We've already developed technology that can be used to destroy any other life forms..... unless they happen to live on the surface of a star.
Nice bedtime story.
Russian scientist Alexander Berezin’s simple answer to the Fermi Paradox:
I'd say the probabilities are against you. WAY against you.
Every star is life?
Perhaps, but...
Life is a combination of many thousands, perhaps millions or billions, even trillions, of events and characteristics, which may be impossible to match anywhere else in the universe.
If there is any ‘other’ life out there in the universe, it likely got there through some event that caused some form of life to be shot out into unknown parts of that universe.
I, as a chef myself, knew that. I just thought it was funny.
(Also, I am one of those who don’t stuff my bird, but that’s another thread for next month.)
Without going into the details, I will disagree with some, perhaps many, of the points proposed by Berezin.
See you next month on the "Stuffing is Evil" thread.
As do I...Posting a link to his papers on the subject in no way means I agree with any of it...Just offered for general interest...An interesting take...
I don’t believe we can know an answer to the “where is everyone” question for a long time, if ever...
This earth is fabulous!
However, we are intelligent and warlike. We will continue to develop our weaponry. It would be perfectly rational for alien civilizations to regard us as a potential future threat.
“Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the universe are pointed away from Earth?”
And scientists said that there was no life in the bottom of the oceans, no life could survive near volcanic chimneys, etc.
Then again, it could be very possible (given the parameters of time and material) that is a common occurrence. If only one in a million stars produced a life bearing planet, there would still be an almost uncountable number of them in the Universe.
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