A friend of mine complained that rabbits eat up the flowers in her garden. I explained that the rabbits probably hold the view that she is feeding them by seeding the flowers in the garden every year. The rabbits have no bad intentions whatsoever and find the flowers tasty. Her frustration stems from a misunderstanding.
This is an important lesson for life. Frustration from the actions of others can be cured by understanding why they do what they do. Societal polarization would be reduced if both sides of the debate internalized this principle. The only people we hate are those that we do not know.
At the same time, we have to recognize that some human actions are ill conceived. Consider the tribal pleasure of belonging to a group that looks down at outsiders. This toxic tendency seeded racism in Nazi Germany nearly a century ago, and is currently the source of political polarization in our society. The toxic pleasure of belonging to a superior tribe can infiltrate all people irrespective of intelligence, including intellectuals who marvel at the prestige of academic accolades in elite universities. For a leader like Hitler, the toxicity was triggered by jealousy of the success of Austrian Jews and his frustration for not accomplishing personal goals by conventional means. And for every hate message there are spectators who enjoy the blood on stage, like the audience in the Colosseum of Ancient Rome or the cheerleaders of cancel culture on social media. These unfortunate human traits are very different from those of rabbits eating flowers. They are akin to smashing beautiful flowers just for the toxic fun of destroying them.
Human settlements on the Moon or Mars open new opportunities for promoting a better future without the scars of our terrestrial past. Today, I had a fascinating conversation with the brilliant Steve Tidball on his bold new visions for humanity’s future, including what humans might wear on Mars and how Martians might interact with earthlings in the distant future. I would love to continue this conversation with Steve during a jog at sunrise on the Martian surface.
Earlier this week, another path opened for promoting a better future when I accepted an invitation to become a member of the selection committee for a newly established Miwon Peace Prize that promotes global wisdom and practice in this new era of civilizational transition. This Prize aims to honor individual(s) or organization(s) that have contributed to creating a transformative social and cultural milieu for human civilization and world peace. Learning about the candidates will offer me a peace of mind by providing specific examples for how to make the world better.
Tikkun Olam, Hebrew for “repairing the world,” is an important concept in the Jewish Talmud. The Kabbalistic Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534–1572) was troubled by the problem of evil in the world. How could a world created by the `Infinite’ or God — the embodiment of perfection, contain evil? To explain, Luria suggested a mystical theory of “the broken vessels.” When God created the world, the divine light from the Infinite was stored in finite vessels. But these vessels were not strong enough to withstand the strain and shattered, bringing disharmony and evil into the world. Sparks of this light, trapped in the shards of the vessels, were scattered throughout the cosmos. The task of humanity is to reunite the scattered sparks of light, repair the broken world and participate in finishing God’s work by ridding the world of evil.
As a scientist, I view the concept of God as analogous to an advanced technological civilization. After all, the technological products we can buy online today would have appeared as miracles to those who founded our religions thousands of years ago. From this vantage point, Luria’s metaphor could imply that life was seeded on Earth by directed panspermia of an extraterrestrial probe sent by an interstellar gardener. This seeding attempt was not perfectly successful and we are tasked to complete the job. When the beauty of terrestrial intelligence is being sabotaged by toxicity, it is our responsibility to repair the world and restore peace and harmony in it.
On the other hand, if intelligent life on Earth was simply a consequence of Darwinian natural selection, starting from the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) 4.2 billion years ago, then the imperfections we witness on Earth must be corrected by artificial means.
Some suggest that artificial intelligence (AI) will help us do better. I am not sure about that. As I noted in my recent TED talk, AI which is trained on human content and supervised by humans ends up being a digital mirror that reflects human faults.
Perhaps finding actual alien intelligence from another star will guide us to a better future by bringing a messianic message of peace and prosperity to Earth. There is definitely a lot of room for improvement when considering how our terrestrial leaders behave. But as we search for an extraterrestrial partner through our telescopes, there is also a lingering concern that we might encounter a serial killer rather than a Messiah on our first date.
Either way, it should be exciting. To find out how the first date goes, stay tuned for future scientific data from the Galileo Project observatories and expeditions.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. His new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2023.
