The Silver Lining of Alien Invasion

Though the concept is treated often as the stuff of horrors, in novels, movies, comic books, and television, there are some positive aspects to the prospect of alien invasion.

To be sure, some bad shit will go down when those aliens come around. They’ll blow up buildings, maybe whole cities. They’ll steal resources. They’ll kidnap humans and do peculiar things with our anuses and wombs. There will be death, suffering, posttraumatic stress from horrific and irreconcilably awkward events.

While optimism and hopefulness appeal to me, I am practical. It’s nice to hypothesize that when we first come into contact with alien lifeforms, they will be kindly, beneficent beings who will befriend the human race, aiding us scientifically and technologically. But, thinking pragmatically, the likeliest outcome is that they will conquer the fuck out of us, that we’ll be murdered and/or enslaved. That is, unfortunately, the way things have gone among humankind, and there’s little reason to think things would go differently in this scenario. Anytime in human history, when a group of more technologically advanced, more powerful humans have traveled to new lands and found other humans there, the pattern has been for the stronger humans to murder and/or rape and/or enslave the weaker humans. Aliens with the capability for intergalactic travel are by that virtue alone our technological superiors. We are, therefore, fucked.

But it is necessary for us to endure the terrible part of alien invasion so that we can appreciate the silver lining.

The unequivocally greatest potential result of alien invasion, which is often shown to one degree or another in fictional portrayals, is the way that the invasions bring people together. Petty squabbles of culture, religion, race, nation states, all of it seems to be put aside for the time being in the interest of banding together against the monstrous alien invaders. Humans realize how silly are our wars, how futile and self-destructive our behaviors toward our fellow humans have been. We unite against the alien threat and are better for it.

So much of human strife is attributed to tribalism and the notion of otherness, the idea that humans are drawn to other humans whose appearance, beliefs, language, behavior are similar to ours, and that we fear and reject those that are dissimilar. We draw comfort from familiarity, shun and behave violently towards those who are different. Well, nothing could be more unfamiliar and different than a goddamn giant cyclopian cockroach with tentacular appendages, shrieking at us telepathically as it stomps on our homes. When a player like that is on the table, who cares that the family next door comes from another country, worships a god by another name, and wears what we perceive to be silly clothes? There’s a giant hideous alien monster attacking, screeching things which Google is powerless to translate, who worships a crablike warlord, and parades around in the nude. The differences between us as humans are, given this broader perspective, insignificant. A devout Muslim trans-lady from Somalia and an atheist cis-fella from Belgium both have two lungs and one tongue apiece. That’s more than enough commonality upon which to build an alliance.

Having a common enemy is important. Humans have no real enemies, no other living thing on this planet that could conquer us, even sufficiently threaten us as a species. It is this absence of a source of mutual universal hatred which contributes to us turning against each other, creating enemies among our own kind. All the grievances between different factions of humankind are and have always been based on the most superficially negligible of differences. There is so little difference between us, biologically. Humans have 99.9% similar DNA to one another. There is more genetic diversity among worms. Say what you will of worms, judge their behavior as filthy, immoral and unChristian, but compared to them, we humans might as well all be fucking our first-cousins. Humankind is a very large inbred family, and we need another, uglier, more foreign and strange family to hate so we can stop bickering amongst ourselves.

Do I want aliens to invade? Do I want much of the human race to be exterminated? Jesus! The fuck’s the matter with you? Asking me something like that... It would make me very happy if we humans could all stop acting like a bunch of hostile baby-bitches, come to terms with the fact that we’re in this together, that we should be devoting our energy and resources to aiding and improving life for ourselves and all others on this little mudball, instead of shitting in the mud and hurling it at one another. Cooperation and universal respect for one another among our species in the pursuit of mutual survival and advancement, the notion of world peace, is wonderful. Barring the malice, paranoia and inclination toward self-sabotage of a relative handful of bad actors, it is also certainly possible.

BUT, because of those shittier-minded types in our global gene pool, those prone to bigotry, violence, stupidity, and militarism, an alien invasion could be helpful, even the most practical route to take.

So, how do we accomplish peace while appeasing those jackoffs without actually having to suffer a genuine alien invasion?

Easy! We fake it.

A la Alan Moore’s Watchmen, we, like Ozymandias, stage an apparent alien invasion (30 year old spoiler) so that the idiot fear present in too many of us is turned outward, away from here, among our own kind, to the presumed threat out there. So that we are forced to redirect our hostile aggression from ourselves to the presumed threat of giant cyclopian anus-mouthed squid monsters whose staged faulty teleportation devastated Times Square. Or the Pentagon. Or the White House.

Simple.