CONVERGENT EVOLUTION AND THE FERMI PARADOX

“We human beings are still divided into nation states, but these states are rapidly becoming a global civilization…We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope, some day, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations.”

–         Message for extra-terrestrial life inscribed on the Golden Record aboard the space probe Voyager One in 1977.

 The krikkit wars

In Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a solitary planet called Krikkit revolves around a distant sun, encircled by a huge dust cloud. Since they cannot see any stars other than their own, much less other planets, they have no conception of any universe beyond the ink black sky that surrounds them. They live together peacefully and harmoniously, sound in the knowledge that they are the only sentient creatures in creation. The entire universe has been made for them and them alone. Truly they are god’s children.

When, upon inventing space travel, they pierce through the dust cloud to see a universe populated with billions upon billions of stars and planets, presumably populated with yet more billions of sentient beings much like themselves, and come face to face with the juddering reality that their entire worldview and most deeply held beliefs are completely wrong – how are they to respond to this newly discovered universe out there?

Quite simply, it turns out:

“It’ll have to go”.

They wage war on the entire universe in what comes to be known as The Krikkit Wars – the greatest devastation ever visited upon the galaxy.

heresy

Fiction aside, it should not be forgotten that when Galileo and Copernicus deduced that the earth was not the centre of the universe in 1543 it was considered heresy by the Catholic church, punishable by death. Depending on your philosophical disposition, the notion that humans are not alone in the universe is capable of inspiring terror and prejudice. But for others it inspires wonder in equal measure. After all, it has inspired many of the greatest works of science fiction – Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy included.

Most of the fascination with aliens in popular fiction tends to revolve around the question of what they would do to us were they to arrive on earth. Would they invade and destroy us, control our minds and mine our minerals? Or would they inspire and enlighten us, show us the workings of the universe and guide us on the path to a united planetary civilisation.

Far less frequently considered is the equally important question: what effect might we have on them?

I believe a well-considered response holds the key to the Fermi paradox. Briefly, the Fermi paradox states that given how big our galaxy is and how long it has been around, it is highly probable that there are many planets on which highly intelligent life has evolved and that it’s therefore statistically likely that some of them must have developed the capacity for interstellar travel. And yet if this is the case, where are they all?

It's useful to consider humanity’s current predicament. If we can understand what it would take for humanity to develop the technological capabilities to contact other civilisations, perhaps that might shed some light on the parameters within which a hypothetical extra-terrestrial species could achieve the same capabilities.

don’t bring down the house before you step out the door

At the dawn of the third millennium, humanity finds itself at a crossroads.

On the one hand, humanity is faced with a perfect storm of converging crises, any one of which could lead to cascading systemic collapse, a new dark age and possibly our extinction. 

All of these crises have their roots in cooperation – or rather, a lack of it. Nuclear proliferation, climate change and AI are all game theoretical problems resulting from powerful technologies combined with destructive competition between nations and between corporations. None of them can be resolved without a coordinated global response.

If, on the other hand, we can find a way to unite as a species and use our technological power not against one another, but for the good of the whole, we have the potential to bring about the emergence of a higher order of complexity, a new collective intelligence, and a relative utopia.

It is only this second fork in the road which has the potential to lead to a civilisation capable of interstellar communication.

Convergent evolution is the observation that some evolutionary adaptations are so valuable across so many different biological contexts that they have evolved multiple times in discrete branches of the tree of life. Take eyes for example – eyes are just so obviously helpful for survival and reproduction in almost any context that life might find itself that they appear to have evolved independently at least 50 times.

The game theoretical and existential nature of the problems humanity faces today mean that the insights and structures required to resolve them are likely to be evolutionarily convergent in a cross-planetary way. That is to say, the way through our current evolutionary bottleneck probably holds true in principle for any civilisation on any planet which evolves to the same level of complexity. Therefore, one thing we can say with some certainty is that any truly interstellar planetary civilisation would first have to achieve a relative degree of global cooperation and internal harmony. If not, they are overwhelmingly likely to bring down the house before they can step outside the door.

As John Stewart argues convincingly in his Evolutionary Manifesto, global cooperation is impossible without an evolutionary morality. Assuming he’s correct, we can also say, with a relative degree of certainty, that any alien species capable of making contact with planet earth would hail from a consciously evolving civilisation with an evolutionary morality.

As a set of moral guidelines and values, Conscious Evolution is therefore an outstanding candidate for cross-planetary convergent evolution. Much like the evolution of eyes, it’s so obviously beneficial for any planetary civilisation that it’s hard to conceive that one could exist without adopting its basic tenets at least for a crucial transitionary period. After all, how likely is it that a civilisation could endure the slings and arrows of relentless entropy for long if its values and principles are not aligned with the arrow of evolution? Late-stage capitalism is about to learn this lesson rather sharply.

How many planetary civilisations have failed at this hurdle? And how many have made it through?

“The need for universal union is the third and last torment of men.”

– Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Brothers Karamazov

Now finally, we can speculate why it is that no alien civilisation has made its presence known to us here on earth. It’s not necessarily that they aren’t capable of communicating with earth, or even visiting it. It’s that they’ve chosen not to.

From an evolutionary point of view, each planet is its own unique evolutionary experiment. The trajectories and pathways which led it to this point are part of its heritage and tapestry and the adaptations and quirks which inform its uniqueness are a jewel in the biodiversity of the universe, a note in the great orchestra of life without which it would be incomplete.

A consciously evolving alien civilisation probably views life on earth in much the same way we view a critically endangered species or a rare dialect spoken by a small tribe, except on a much richer and larger scale  –  the instinct is to preserve and protect, not to meddle.

This is why tourist boats to the Galapagos Islands make such a point of giving the giant tortoises their space. Its isolation from outside interference for so long makes the Galapagos Islands, and all the species which live there, immensely valuable to evolutionary science and biodiversity in general. Interfering with their habitats or their biology or endangering their survival would be a desecration of something so precious that the thought is repellent on an instinctual level.

Interfering with another planet’s evolutionary trajectory while it’s still birthing a planetary civilisation – much less rubbing it out altogether – would be to mar the fruition of a magnificent evolutionary success while depriving the rest of the intelligent universe of all the hard-won wisdom along the way.

 grow up

The Krikkit Wars provides another clue as to why aliens might have decided to leave us alone. Until humanity has learnt how to play nicely on our own planet, it’s unlikely that we would suddenly develop the same wisdom when interacting with other planets. At the moment, humanity is like an adolescent in the middle of a temper tantrum – we’re growing fast, but we’re emotionally reactive and painfully lacking in self-awareness. Best to let us stew for a while till we learn about ourselves enough not to be a pain in the ass for whoever happens to be in the vicinity.

In the words of the Golden Record aboard Voyager One – we’re simply not mature or evolved enough to “join a community of galactic civilisations”.

Which raises the tantalising question. Given the widely varying degrees of human development and the increasing prevalence of what you might call planetary consciousness, could it be that some of us are indeed ready?

I know from personal experience that extraordinary states of consciousness are possible which open avenues of direct perception rarely discussed in the public domain. In those states – when we are at our most receptive, most loving and most wise – when we have meaningfully graduated from adolescence to adulthood, communication with non-human intelligence, whether from this universe or others, is possible.