Miller.pasa@Xerox.ARPA (08/08/85)
From: Miller.pasa@Xerox.ARPA In reference to why we're the way we are AND why we're not being visited by aliens AND why aliens might come a long way to visit us...... I just read Saberhagen's first Berserker book (yes, I had a deprived childhood) it occured to me that he offers a plausible, if somewhat off-the-wall explanation. During the historian's introduction, he makes comments about how thankful his race is that humankind retained the violent, warlike, fighting instinct and, consequently, not only had techniques but also some equipment for fighting the berserkers when they first appeared. Now, I'm not at all sure how much I believe this, but just for the sake of discussion, mightn't it be possible that (a) Starfaring races, to survive long enough to achieve the technology necessary for galactic-wide travel, tend to develop socially and "morally" to the point where they are effectively no longer capable of warfare? (b) Such races still see a need for the capacity to violently defend against violence-- perhaps even violence from an unknown outside force (i.e. the Berserkers. C'mon, maybe they've read Saberhagen.)? (c) Said races would therefore need to import their warfarers. This sufficiently desperate need for a commodity which they did not possess would be sufficient to motivate travel of great distances to obtain it. (d) But in all times other than those of direst emergency, it would be more safe, more adviseable, and proabably more pleasant to leave your warlike resource pools on their own. A few unlucky ones might get the job of monitoring the available resources, but there would certainly be nothing to gain (and something to be lost) by displaying yourself to the population. Either you would get nuked, or the population would come to its senses, stop fighting among itself and 'grow up'-- in which case you lose your warriors. Of course, a slightly less "moral" civilization (or a slightly different conception of the "moral" development of a spacegoing race) might allow them to encourage the fighting to go on. And you always thought those polliticians were just stupid . . . . Anyway, food for thought. --Chris