Extraterrestrial Compassion
As child, at aged around 10 years old, we watched a film at School for Christmas. It was Steven Spielberg’s Extraterrestrial (ET). I sat towards the front, the lights were dimmed and we enjoyed watching the film. Yet, the moment when the ET was under the bridge half dying, caused me great emotional distress. I reacted to it unusually for a young lad, in that it made me cry. There I was emotionally upset at the site of a dying ET on television, but afraid of being judged by the boys and girls around me in the classroom. Somewhat embarrassed, I quietly wiped away the tears and nobody noticed.
When I was a teenager, I was walking in a field by some trees and noticed two Magpi birds flying above the tree line in distress. I went into the trees and found one of their babies, a small Magpi. I gathered it must be injured so I picked it up and took it home. The bird’s parents were yelling at me the whole time but I did not listen to them and just wanted to help the baby bird. I placed it into a box in my bedroom and went down to the local pet shop for some advice. The owner suggested using tweezers to feed it with a tin of dog food. So I did this. I tried hard to feed the bird just wanting to help it. But in the attempt, I guess I caused the bird so much distress in trying to open its beak, that it died of shock in my hands. I was absolutely devastated, to think that I had killed a bird that I just wanted to help. I recall getting very emotional in my over reaction and smashing up my room I was so overcome by the moment. My family and the neighbours were outside in the garden concerned about me that I might do something to harm myself. Eventually my elder brother got into the room and calmed me down. They all thought it was funny and a bit ridiculous that I had reacted so badly to the death of a bird, but I was overwhelmed by grief that I might have played a role. To this day, this incident influences me and I still think about it decades later.
Another incident that effected me in recent years as an adult, was a local aquarium had an Octopus in one of its glass tanks. One day I was in there and I saw it looking at me from behind the rocks. Its eyes on me like it was communicating its distress to me that it wanted to get out. I felt I was being silly and such a thing is impossible and I ignored it, although not particularly happy about the limited size of its enclosure. It still bothered me and I thought about campaigning to the aquarium to have it released. I had planned to start to write a letter, but alas life gets in the way and I never did. When I next visited I discovered it had died. I always remembered that octopus and I have a photo of it.
Just recently, with my children we had a summer project to grow some Butterflies at home. We had nine in total and at the end we produced eight which I think shows we did a good job in taking care of them and following the instructions. We had released them into the garden and it was such a joyous day to witness. But one of the Butterflies was tangled up in the remaining skin of the Chrysalis material. I tried to help it and got out a large magnifying glass and some tweezers to see if I could separate it. But it was obvious its wing was completely broken and ripped and it had no chance of survival. I knew I had to take it out into the garden to end its life. But first I wanted it to see the Sun. So like a silly person, I took the Butterfly out and did a circuit of the garden and showed it the Sun and allowed it to enjoy it for a few minutes, before I ended its life. It was heart breaking for me, but was necessary since it really stood no chance at all.
For some reason, I have an emotional reaction to animals that might appear to be trapped or in distress. This is perhaps just my human compassion speaking. In 2010 the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society was involved in organising the Rights of Cetaceans out of Helsinki in Finland, and I was glad to be a signatory to such an important piece of writing that hopes to foster moral and legal change to the rights of the animals in our oceans.
But such feelings of compassion are bought to a heightened state of awareness when I consider the claims made by some that human beings may at some points in our history have had an alien being in a facility and not taken care of it. This is particularly the case in a video that has been doing the rounds online for some years. Although many point to it being a hoax, others are not so sure. I am not offering an opinion here, just presenting the information that such a video exists. If you wish to see a part of it the link is below:
The Alien Interview released in 1997 - clip of alien in distress
The very thought that we could have a being in captivity and not treat it with the absolute best care we can muster, overwhelms me with disappointment but also anger; and so I hope it is not true. That if we were to go to another star system I would like think that they would take care of us. If it was the case that beings travelled here and suffered in distress under our supervision, I cannot think of a greater crime to have committed. Any person involved in such an activity would be the epitome of evil and I would certainly advocate for their prosecution.
We must also acknowledge that the idea there may be beings walking among us on Earth is difficult to understand. We know that any organism has evolved within the microbiome of its environment and so it is not clear that any biological ETI that visited Earth would be able to survive here, the same way we might not survive on another planet that already had an indigenous life population. This might suggest that any visitors would have to adopt some form of artificial body, for the purposes of interacting and communicating with humans. That is, unless they have figured out some form of advanced genetic engineering that allows them to hack into our biology and survive in our environment.
Although such creatures would by definition be alien, if one was stranded here, we have a duty to take care of them as best we can so that we may learn from each other. Any form of first contact would represent an important moment in our species history and it is important we treat it with the appropriate amount of respect. There is so much we can learn from them. Do they have art, poetry, music? What is their culture like? What is their cosmological models of reality? What grand planetary problems did they overcome (and not) and how can they advise us? Do they play sports and write literature? What is their architecture like? Do they believe in God and what physics have they understood? There are so many questions. I also think they would be equally curious about us. We may appear primitive to them, but perhaps a glimpse into their own past maybe millions of years ago. The humans, capable of so much beauty yet also so much destruction. We must at least represent an enigma.
It is for this reason that a couple of years ago I started working on a document related to the rights of intelligent kind, to include humans and aliens, in the exploration and use of outer space. This has been a substantial piece of writing taking into account some of the greatest pieces of literature in human history. In 2025 I plan to submit this document to a peer reviewed journal in the hope they will publish it and start a conversation about the rights of all life wherever it may have originated, with the purpose of facilitating for peaceful relations.
Some years ago I visited the United Nations in Vienna and I attempted to get a meeting with someone from the Office of Outer Space Affairs but I was unsuccessful. The organisation seems to do good work, but it is very difficult to get involved in it or even to find out how to get involved in it. I have found this situation highly frustrating and certainly not consistent with openness in a democracy. I know that there is so much they are not looking at when they need to be. For this reason, I have been working on this document in isolation and without the guidance of others. I hope that when I publish it, the UNOOSA will at least read it and think about the rights of humanity and other beings that we may encounter in the future, on Earth and in Space - assuming we havn’t encountered them already?
