It is much easier to imagine some
aspects of alien society, such as their energy sources, than other
aspects, such as their goals, because we have on Earth made some
progress in understanding the possible sources of energy and can make
some good guesses as to what might exist in a more advanced society.
But with respect to social goals, our technology is very primitive.
We hardly understand anything about societies and their goals; even
the basis for this technology or scientific knowledge is vague and
undeveloped. We have some observations, but nothing equivalent of
Newton's law has been figured out yet. Just to appreciate the
difficulty involved, think of asking someone in Columbus' time about
energy, after explaining the concept to him. He might answer there
was wind power, and that's about all. A person who had some
education involving ancient Greek science and who had heard of Hero
of Alexandria's aeolipile might add steam power, which comes from
fire. There would be no way that such a person could estimate what
energy usage would look like five hundred years later, or a thousand.
On the other hand, we have some
confidence now in understanding electromagnetic energy, kinetic
energy, chemical energy, equation of state energy such as
compression, and nuclear energy, along with the many ways they exist
in nature and how they can be harnessed and converted. A person on
Earth today might be able to do a good job in describing the use of
energy, and might even be able to imagine how energy
might be used in the far future. And if we subscribe to the
concept of societal convergence, meaning technology drives society
and since technology is the same no matter what planet you live on,
all sufficiently advanced societies will have similar features, and
therefore what this person imagines for Earth five hunderd years from
now would be quite insightful as to what a similarly advanced alien
civilization might be doing.
We are in the Columbus era stage of
understanding neurology, politics, governance, societal arrangements
and whatever else relate to the goals of an alien civilization. We
would make grave mis-assumptions to try and use what we think are the
goals of Earth's various societies, current and historical, as
possible goals of an alien civilization.
Some goals that might pop up from the
study of Earth societies' history include empire expansion,
maintenance of the existing power structure and factionalization,
development of profitable trade connections and routes, collection of
items of universal value such as gold, the pursuit of scientific
progress and technology, revenge or hatred directed toward some
group, usage of a particular economic system, the spread of medical
technology to various factions, and so on. These are goals which are
appropriate, if at all, for a single planet. Ones which relate to
multiple planets might be the expansion of life to dead planets,
resettling on other planets as an insurance policy against
catastrophes or other events which eliminate life on the home world,
and a few others.
Our knowledge of energy and astronomy
enable us to realize that some of the one-world goals are ineffectual
for a multi-solar system civilization. Each planet of the
civilization is almost totally isolated with respect to
transportation and communication, not absolutely, but almost totally,
by the distances between different solar systems and the huge amounts
of energy needed to move anything from one civilization to another.
Some
minimal communication might be attempted between two solar systems
which are not too far from one another, but little can be done with
simple information transfer with no transport to implement any
agreements, requests, or orders from one planet to another.
An alien civilization which is somehow
frozen in its level of technology at something like what Earth has
now might also have its goals be chosen from the ones listed above,
but technology does not plateau easily. It proceeds forward to the
asymptotic conclusion or the society degenerates. So at the very
least, we can say that multi-planet civilizations do not have
empire-building as their goal, nor the development of trade routes,
collection of items to be brought from one solar system to another,
and perhaps more.
After an alien civilization moves
through its technological development of electronics, robotics, and
artificial intelligence, the next area it encounters is genetics.
The genetic revolution will overwhelm the electronics revolution, and
the concept of factionalization, based on legacy concepts of
genetics, local origins, language preferences and so on, will drift
away as good genes are made available to all members of future
generations beyond some point in time. Technology has shown cost
reductions in the electronics phase of development, and when this
wave passes genetics, there will be little reason to suspect that
good genes would not be universally available.
The same wave of technology would also
pass through the quasi-sciences of politics and economics,
transforming them into fact-based sciences and enabling an alien
society to have wise political structures and economic arrangements.
The idea of an alien society having a goal of enforcing some legacy
economic system on its members seems a little ridiculous; the optimal
system would be known and used everywhere. Why would any region or
goup want to use antiquated systems when better ones were instantly
available?
For one-planet goals, the one which
passes through the filter of advanced society might be the
preservation of the civilization via wise use of resources, and the
expansion of it to other appropriate planets. The other one is the
preservation of life in general on the planet, but more importantly
of spreading it to other planets. These are quite dissimilar goals
in their effect on the civilization, even though they both originate
from the abstraction of the goals of life across all species. There
is no reason that both of them could not be accepted and acted upon
by any particular alien civilization, except for the cost in
resources they both have. If it is true that civilization can
establish itself on a much different class of planets that life can
evolve upon, it is fair to say that they operate almost
independently.
It does not seem possible to
extrapolate from goals of Earth societies, current and recent, to
goals of a civilization with more advanced technology, by a few
centuries of progress. The only way forward is to look for the
simplest possible ones, those which derive from the nature of
life. Perhaps some others can be found with a different approach,
and that is certainly an interesting avenue to follow.
