 Good morning to you from Southern California where it's 10 o'clock here on a very wet winter day and from our science circle chief and the Netherlands shantel good evening to you where it's a seven o'clock in the evening according to my world clock here and hello to Jess I saw you just log in Jess from Australia where it's now tomorrow already I think it's about five in the morning there isn't it so glad to see you could join us Jess and so many other familiar faces and names in the room. We really do encompass the world and hello to you wherever you might be our listeners and viewers. I'm glad you can make it. We have a lot to discuss today so let's just jump right into it. This talk is on exo sociology and it's drawn from a two hour seminar I've presented in other times and elsewhere and scholarly settings and also about three years ago we made this presentation in the science circle. It's been updated for today. Now this topic may be a bit of a reach for some especially for any astrophysicists or exobiologists out there. I know we have a couple but that's what researchers do sometimes we reach. So here we go. More and more credible reports predict that we may well make contact with an alien species and intelligent alien species within the next 25 years. So now the question is how are we going to get along with them and what conditions might intelligent creatures elsewhere in the universe have in common with us. And also in common with our own earthly systems the social cultural and economic commonalities we might share. So for the purpose of this presentation we will define intelligent alien civilizations as those who have the advanced technology to communicate with us. Either by radio waves or laser pulses or those who just might visit us here in person. So to speak. We'll be using reason suppositions to help us form some hypotheses as others have will astrophysicists they apply laws of gravitational waves universally to the cosmos astrobiologists well they make suppositions about possible life forms on other worlds. Let there likely be carbon base for example and live on watery planets. So what we're going to do in this session is apply some of what we know about the development of civilizations and cultures and see what we might pluck out and apply intra and enter galactically. And as academia should we'll start with a review of existing facts. And there we go slide one by doctoral work has focused on developments of socio cultural systems and socio economic systems on the planet. Those systems developing with significant cultural differences from one another of peoples around the world. We see that right here in this room as we evolved in comparatively isolated geographies and isolated generations. My research patient will consider how the same sort of research and reasoning might be applied to other civilizations on distant worlds those that have evolved in isolation from our own field of reference and perhaps under similar forces. I love keeping an eye I'm trying to do a split eye here watching my notes watching the slides and, as always, some of the best stuff is happening in chat I see that you're you're active as usual I really do appreciate. Vic and and the others of you that share notes as we go filling any gaps that I may be living as well. So thank you for that. Some people may fear you've heard them talking that reaching out to alien worlds. If we didn't show this xenophobia we see quite a bit of that and they're saying that in it may not be such a good idea of sending out these notes into the void and that in spite of the alien advanced technologies that may have got them here they might be hungering for the rich offerings of our planet, including that Steven Spielberg well he spent many movies on this theme has any and he says in his heart of hearts that he believes any visiting aliens would not be sinister that they've come a long way just to eat us for lunch or to drain our oil. Yeah, you've seen the movies out there. There is a precedent for this. This isn't all that unusual. Alien counters and how we react to them. When European sailors first navigated a course to the Japan's both sides felt that they were in the presence of an alien encounter. Perhaps there was a new world to exploit. We readily expanded our understanding of the world and our place in it. And we have added some great foods to our menu sushi became popular in the United States after the miniseries Shogun ran on TV before that we didn't have much of a taste for it look at us now. And this topic is never too far from our minds aliens on the horizon. There have been plenty of headlines near past and even in the last few weeks about communicating with aliens prior to the big one which haven't come yet of contact actually made. But do note these are mainstream respectable media and not the sensational gossip rags. We have the New York Times Reuters National Geographic. The cosmology that you've likely seen these these figures before it's a common conservative astronomical reference for estimating the number of stars and planets in our universe. Let's go ahead just quickly go over these are some 50 billion visible galaxies in the universe Milky Way. We're just one of those conservative estimate of about 100 billion visible and not visible. There is a conservative estimate of 100 billion stars per galaxy. We got 200 billion of them right here on our own Milky Way. So you got to multiply 100 billion by 100 billion. Well now the numbers get really big don't they 10 sextillion stars in the universe. That's 10,000 billion billion. I don't know if there's a way to say that that makes it more comprehensible. The International Astronomical Union estimates 76 trillion stars. I'm sure these numbers have been updated since I put a conservative estimate at one in a million stars with orbiting planets one planet per star system for 10 million billion planets. I feel like breaking into a song here. A nano mole of stars is my shoe. That's a pretty good way of looking at it. So there is a conservative estimate of one in a million star planet supporting life that gives us 10 billion life populated planets in the universe. And of course we're looking for intelligent life capable of sending us a text message. And thank you if you have updated numbers on this I certainly defer to astrophysicist astronomers in the room who can supply better. We got Carl Sagan is going to be visiting us in just a moment here, Vic. The Hubble Space Telescope. Well that snapped a deep field image of a chunk of the sky including at least 10,000 galaxies which of course is just a sliver isn't it. Very small sliver of watts out there. Vic got to meet Carl Sagan in 1969. You're dating yourself a bit there Vic. I'm assuming you weren't just a baby in a carriage at the time. Let's look at some of my favorite. Vic you're getting a few sideways glances there. Here's one of my favorite galaxies is a California and I do love me some Mexican food. There's the sombrero galaxy. Here is the eye of God galaxy. Very photogenic isn't it? It's a galaxy that's looking back at us. And here's our very own solar system. Our neck of the woods. Obviously not to scale. Our solar system includes the nine planets orbiting our sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. No Pluto in this picture. I wonder why our system has done so well in producing such a prolific planet as Earth. Let's talk a little bit about that. In order to bear life you've heard the term before a planet has to be in the so-called Goldilocks zone. Not too hot, not too cold, but just right. In other words you have to be close enough to a star to have liquid water. Yet not so close that its oceans would boil away and not so far that its oceans would deep freeze. Talking about the Goldilocks zone. Hard to believe we're actually in a Goldilocks zone because we look at the weather around the world today here in the United States. It's getting a little better. So how many other planets might also provide a suitable home for advanced life forms? Well in the famous Drake equation we actually came up with a number of that. N equals the number of planets and civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy that might be capable of radio communications. And astronomer Dr. Frank Drake estimates that in at 10,000. Vic also met Francis Drake not long ago at NASA. You've got a great background. A very gutsy of me giving a presentation like this before a former NASA exobiologist. But here we go anyway. Here's a name you recognize. Remember, well there he is. Astronomer Carl Sagan. The reason so many of us have our interest, even a rudimentary interest in astronomy. He revised the Drake equation and he also raised the estimate to a million advanced alien worlds possible right here in our home Milky Way galaxy. And since the cosmos holds hundreds of millions of galaxies by that analysis, he puts the total number of alien societies as high as roughly 10 trillion. And that's a whole lot of people out there we might be able to talk to people or whatever creatures, whatever they might refer to themselves as. On the other hand, we also have the rare earth hypothesis and Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee. Well they propose conditions suitable for complex life may be very rare throughout the universe. A reason we haven't had any contact. And you know that could be if the rare earth hypothesis is right. We've only wasted some dreams. But if it's wrong, well we've left ourselves unprepared. So here's another reason why we may not have had contact. The question is framed in the Fermi paradox. I know that was a topic here at the Science Circle. If there are so many of these civilizations out there, why don't they just say hi? Well for one, we just haven't been looking all that long. The very first broadcast of human voice on earth was December 24th 1906. That's not much more than 100 years. So we're still infants on the airways. I've been broadcasting on TV and radio airways for about 30 of those already. It just doesn't sound like it's been all that long that we've been broadcasting. Perhaps some of the first things they hear are my drive time news reports on public radio. Many, many years ago. SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Well that's only been seeking space radio signals since 1960. Well that certainly is our life span. Isn't it Vic and me? We've witnessed much of this. We've been looking for less than a human lifetime. And our lifetime on the grand scheme of things may be relatively limited. Our own Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light years wide. And that means it would take 100,000 years for a message traveling at the speed of light to reach us from just the other side of our very own galaxy. Going beyond that, our nearest neighboring galaxy is the Adromeda spiral. That's 2 million light years away. Or 20 times as long as it would take for a radio wave just to reach us at the farthest corners of our own galaxy. I love reading the chat and I'm trying to grab just as much as I can with a quick glance. If I see a question, exclamation point, question mark, I'll say that's one I really got to stop for because I've made a mistake. I'm not seeing any of those yet. We may have already heard from them at least so they once believed back in the 70s. The wow signal was received at the Big Ear Radio Observatory at Ohio State University in 1977. And it was 30 times stronger than the background noise. That was a pretty big bump. And it was coming from where astronomers expected to see these signals coming from. And within the predicted radio spectrum, it lasted, oh I think it lasted 72 seconds. There it is. I see a link there already posted. That might be something useful there. I'm going to go back and look at all the chat. If I miss something here, I will try to catch it afterwards. And if I can send you a note or something, I'll be glad to do that. And of course, this was just a shot in the dark. Who knows what it was, but it was there once. And the most important thing is we are now looking and we are listening back. And perhaps they already have taken notice of it, but just didn't find it very interesting. And considering how primitive our own people would look to us from just a century ago, no telephones, no TV, no radio, no smartphones, no virtual worlds, would we really want to live in that time? And imagine how we might appear to aliens looking at us. They are quite likely millennia more advanced than we. And how might they view our technology? Even as we view ourselves just 100 or 200 years into the past, or even just 50 years into the past, we would see our own selves as primitive, maybe interesting. A few of us would probably want to go and live there. And we'd well want to change them, no doubt, in violation of the prime directive. Or simply based on numbers. We had been visited, they took a quick look and they determined the tardigrade is the dominant form of life on the planet. There are, after all, millions upon millions of them for each one of us. And even we are overwhelmed by the vast diversity of species that share our planet. Yeah, indeed, look at some of these alien looking creatures. I love the swimming lips there. Just looking for a kiss. Most of them we haven't even met yet. We still don't even know what is living down in the depths of our oceans and even our volcanoes. So, where might we best meet other civilizations in the universe? Where should we be looking? What door should we be knocking on? In a Journal of Science article, it was two Australian astronomers. I hope, Jess, are you back in the room? I've seen you bounced in and out. Well, we had two Australian astronomers there in your neck of the woods. And they wrote that they have pinpointed an area of the Milky Way that is most likely to support alien life. There's a few billion stars out there in what they call the Galactic Habitable Zone, which has the appropriate conditions to support complex life. And the article says there, if there is life out there, this is where we are most likely to find it. And that brings us to the heart of our topic today, which is what might any encountered aliens be like? And, of course, it's presumptuous to say with any degree of certainty what we might find in alien civilizations. Pretty gutsy of a thing to even think about, but it is possible to consider what we look like and what kinds of characteristics we might share in common. For example, what forces or powers push a civilization onward to advanced stages of development based on what we know? And here's a very brief and select overview of biological, psychological, and social evolutionary thought. Charles Darwin and his progeny, such as E. O. Wilson, well, they described biological and sociological human development in evolutionary terms and in terms of evolutionary behavior, such as sociobiology. And that our physical and social constructions have been selected according to their survival value. Traits which enhance our chances of survival are retained and encoded, and less suitable traits are typically extinguished on the competitive battlefield of Darwinian selection. You all know this story well, don't you? In stark contrast to that, there is anthropologist Ashley Montague, and he's strenuously and at times derisively challenged Wilson's thesis. And he claimed instead that the human development process has been one of intellectual unfolding, at least for some of us, we are unfolding intellectually. And he says, beyond reductionist processes of sociobiological mutation and adaption, he says, Montague, he proposed the guiding mechanism of development is one of intelligence or a matter of brain over biology. And we have someone out there feeling his mind unfolding, even as we speak. I'm glad to see that. Psychologist Carl Rogers, some of you may have heard him. He observed that regardless of the motivational forces and evolutionary mechanisms that all human and indeed all organic development, especially in the psychological realms, is an irresistible drive that will inevitably find its way forward. Yes, says Vic. Carl Rogers did indeed revise Maslow's ideas. In fact, let's talk about Maslow, another psychologist, Abraham Maslow. He said, our development follows a path pursuing a hierarchy of needs ranging from physiological needs and safety needs, belongingness and love needs, esteem needs, and peaking with a drive for self-actualization, crowned by the oceanic experience. If anybody's feeling that today, please share a note in chat. And these are all forces that may well be at play throughout the universe, as they are here on Earth, or as we've heard before, as above, so below. That's what Hermie says. And here's a picture. This is how some exobiologists and sci-fi artists have envisioned aliens and how they might appear. Vic, do you have any pictures in your pocket? Too bad we can't share those in chat. Any alien characteristics you might have come across that aren't represented here on this slide. For those of you listening and too bad you can't see this, but we'll give you some notes on how you can tune in this video recording later. Vic has an alien avatar. Must they all have heads? These are all good questions. Why do they always have two eyes? Well, let's talk a little bit about that and why people are thinking they might look this way. There is Seth Shostak, who is the senior astronomer at the SETI Institute. That's here in California. It's the nonprofit search for extraterrestrial intelligence. And he talks of a mechanism known to biologists as convergent evolution. I just see Seth has spoken in science in Second Life. Isn't that wonderful? Let's see if we can get him on our podcast. Wouldn't he be a fine interview to have? Especially on this topic. Let me quote him directly. This is again, this is Seth Shostak and he says convergent evolution argues for at least a bit of a resemblance between us as nature works its way down our Darwinian path with natural selection of good designs that enhance survivability. So yeah, we hang on to things that work, tend to work here. They tend to work elsewhere. He says that humans, in many ways, are a reasonably functional design for a technically sophisticated creature. But it's a bit extreme to maintain that an intelligent alien will look like your brother-in-law. He says, after all, an extra set of arms might be useful, as would an eye in the back of our heads. Somebody here I see wants more eyeballs. And also we might see some extra fingers for playing the piano better. That might be a good design improvement. He is convinced that there is intelligent life out there. I'm enjoying this chat too much. Some great one-liners wisdom by gives me just about enough time to grin before I got to go back to my notes here. He says that any aliens out there, well, first of all, they're probably going to have the same carbon-based organic chemistry as humans. That's just too good of a system. He said they'd probably have the central processing system, such as eyes, a mouth or two, legs for locomotion, and of course some form of reproduction. But Chastak says, any intelligent life out there may have grown light years beyond the intelligence of man. And he says, what we are more likely to hear from will be so far beyond our own level that it might not even be biological anymore, but some form, artificial form of life. Your name might even be Siri. Who knows? Here's a little more on convergent evolution. This is such a fascinating topic. It simply means that certain characteristics involve in common with other species, simply because they're a good idea. And notice on this slide, if you can zoom in a little bit, the giant armadillo of North America, the giant pangolin of Africa, and the giant anteater of South America, and the spiny anteater of Oceana. And look at them. They all look familiar. They all look like they may be very close relatives to one another, but they're not even close. Instead, they've evolved similar adaptations, serving a survival advantage because they occupy similar niches in nature. Dining on ants and hunting in the high grass or swimming in the dark, although their evolutionary origins are quite different. Look how similar they look to one another. Dolphins and barracudas also look similar, very similar in silhouette, from very different for bears. They adapted their hydrodynamic shapes, which are the result of convergent evolution. Here's a quote from the Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Astronomy and Space Flight. I imagine you have that right there on your shelf. The frequency with which convergent evolution has occurred on Earth supports the idea that certain basic anatomical structures and physiological mechanisms might be common among life forms throughout the universe. So what evolutionary characteristics might we have in common, at least physically, with similar species on other words, world? And how might we milk that for common cultural and sociological insights? And it all started with a big bang, and I love that show, TV show popular here in the United States. All the energy and matter of our universe started with a big bang. That's a fairly recent understanding in the history of humanity. Just where did we come from? Well, we all come from common seeds. So it's reasonably expected that we may not be all that different from one another on other worlds. The laws of physics and evolution and socialization springing from a single speck, something that the Hindus hinted at millennia ago. Other world religions in their very earliest screeds, well, they may also have hit close to the mark in Genesis. There was an empty void without form until someone hit the light switch or the Hindus day and night of Brahma. A universe alternating between potentiality and expression. Or the Taoists who referred to an undifferentiated reality from which the universe evolved. Some other cultures and nations on earth are more developed than others. Some are older than others, yet we all come from the same seeds. Our apples don't fall far from the same fruit tree, and we are all ripples from the same source to mix metaphors unforgivably. If we do share common soil and seeds, it wouldn't be too surprising to find we have a common resonance in our core. So when we do connect, just how much information can we exchange and how might we do it? That's an important question. How are we going to connect? How are we going to communicate? Carl Young, in a suggestion, identified certain archetypes that transcend cultural differences such as the universal theme of a paradise or golden age. He says that universal resonance to particular themes and images may reside in a collective consciousness. And these archetypal themes include the creation of the cosmos, the symbolism of rebirth, the hero in battle to rescue the distressed sexual images of fertility, symbols of transcendence and release, and so forth. Joseph Campbell, another deep thinker and a treatment on the power of mythologies. He suggested as well that various images and themes may be universally resonant as applied and passed on by storytellers and artists. I know we've got some storytellers in the room here, and probably a few artists. Some of these ancient mythological themes that may be included in your art or stories are Campbell's topics, the mystery of death and life, the procuring of food, the transformation of children into adults, and the relationship of the individual to the group, and so on. And even if these themes may be universally resonant, well, how do we share them? How do we convey them to one another without a common language? Perhaps if we sent pictures, would they be understood? Well, we could send pictures, but something that may be so clear to us in a picture may be misunderstood by others. For example, suppose we see a picture of an adult holding onto a child, and what do we think? We may think that's parental love to them. They may be asking, is this a parent that loves that child, or is this someone about to hurt that child, or possibly even eat that child? You saw that coming, Cal, didn't you? It's a dinnertime. So what exactly are we trying to convey? And there might be just too much left unanswered by a photograph. So one suggestion to get around the ambiguity of pictures is to send messages that portray objects in three-dimensional space, somewhat like possibly in a virtual world or virtual reality, using holographic sculptures that an alien can choose to view from any angle, or possibly using the vocabulary of dance and gestures and pointing to teach and convey information. And the more information that gets sent, well, of course, the better that we have some sort of understanding. And according to the new calculations published by two scientists in the nature and the journal Nature, it is millions of times more efficient to send a long message as a physical package, a cosmic FedEx, rather than using radio waves or a laser pulse. If we can figure out how to get those in a two-day delivery package, I know I am missing so much good stuff here in the chat. Thank you for sharing the notes, especially as you may be filling in some of the gaps that I've left in my wake. Let's go ahead, let's move on and talk about a new concept. It's not that new of a concept of multiversality. As we're looking at what themes and images may be universal, well, we may need to modify our very concept of what universal means with our expanding understanding. And if we want to say that something is true across the vast expanse of all space and time, we may need to revert to it as multi-versal. We can't limit ourselves. Oh, thank you, lovely. Glad you're loving the presentation. I'm sure loving that you're here. I love seeing all this activity. I know I'm going to have fun going back and reading some of this later. Speaking on the topic of universality, let's take a quick look at this universal assessment of facial expressions. One definitive study found that a pan-cultural reaction among diverse cultures in response to photographs expressing a series of facial expressions. You can see them on the screen. Those of you here in the world are watching this video on YouTube. Look at some of these faces. And these pictures were shown to participants in diverse countries and cultures. Some of them had never seen a movie or a TV show or a magazine, yet still they all associated the same emotion with the same face. And is there an evolutionary physiological foundation for facial expressions that we may share and comment along with the physiological characteristics with other alien species? For example, look at that face there of disgust. And what are they doing? Well, expelling the sour taste in our mouth, the tongue pokes out in the face, pulls back. Or look at the surprised expression. The eyes open wide to let in as much light as possible to fully assess the circumstances. Or fear, the body recoils in retreat. And again, the eyes open and the hands come up. Or anger, where the face tenses and the eyes focus on that target. There are biological reasons molded by evolutionary forces for the faces we make, according to this study. What are some sociological scales that we might use for assessing our differences and our similarities? Some may object to Geert Hofstede's methodology, but there's a good Dutchman for you. But his taxonomy has really stood the test of time, measuring cultural differences between us and our own civilizations. Power distance or the breadth of social differences. Individualism, which asks is there an individual or a collective focus on the society. Masculinity, is it an aggressive or a nurturing culture? Uncertainty avoidance or fear of the unknown, or we're certainly going to encounter that initially with an alien encounter. And also long-term orientation, and is there a short or a long-term perspective within that culture? In my years spent in Eastern Europe, I was a journalist covering the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990 area, the 90 to 91. And what I noticed is this near polar opposite between my American culture here from the United States and the Slavic culture. In this case it was in the Soviet Union. And it was this vast stark differences between our two peoples that gave me an incentive to seek commonalities as I managed a Russian news team. Even as I was face to face with these stark differences, trying to find ways to bridge that. And that was my research into bridging cultural differences that's been published, including United Nations, the UNESCO Journal, published my research on this. And there's a little sign here to our right. Feel free to click. You can get a copy of my UNESCO article. There's also, while I'm pointing out here on stage right, you can see there is a PDF of all the slides. I'm whipping through all of this pretty quickly. So if you want to download that PDF, especially on some of these slides that have more content on them, feel free to do that. What else do we have? And there's also, if you click the pretty picture, that will give you some landmarks to my own learning resources just right here. Just take a few paces up towards the north. You can find my build right here on Science Circle Island. Just beware, there are dragons about. Let's take a look just real quickly because this gets to the core of our topic here. How do we bridge differences between very different peoples since 2000, the year 2000? I've taught students. Well, now it's been in the thousands of students that I've taught from more than 40 different countries. Here are some of my students at UCSB and UCLA. I just love these guys. First thing to figure out in this course in these discussions as well. What causes dissonance and discord, even warfare among our human species? And can we extrapolate some of these traits to alien relations? And if so, well, it might be best to avoid telling jokes which are so culturally contextual or hitting on them sexually. That might be a very bad idea. Or trying to convert them to the true faith. Well, that might be another bad idea as well. Or simply trying to imply to them that our planet has the best of all political systems and trying to win their vote in the upcoming election. All of these have demonstrated in my own studies into what works, what doesn't work. Well, these are the topics especially that are going to get us in trouble. So instead, let's consider what themes and images create a resonance between diverse cultures. For example, aliens most likely will have some means of perpetuating themselves. So they may well tenderly care for their offspring. No doubt when we finally learn to communicate fully with dolphins, well, there's another alien intelligence. If we do communicate with those dolphins, I bet they're going to be telling us stories about their children and the games they play and conflicts they have with other dolphins and their rituals of birth and death. And certainly they're going to have a lot to say about water, which is a trans-culturally resonant theme, in my opinion, in my studies. Parallels with these planets within our galaxy, maybe most like ourselves, we share roughly the same cosmic timeframe and astronomical dust as they do, and given the vast expanse of space. Well, we live just right next door to these other star systems. So how might some of the traits of our earth, our social traits, what might be transgalactic among the vast differences that might exist between our worlds? So let's look at a few of those possibilities. Reproducing and preserving life. Well, there is a big one, isn't it? It's right there. It's Maslow's foundation of the pyramid of our social systems. If a species didn't survive, if it didn't reproduce and eat, well, it wouldn't evolve very far, would it? So that's liable to be as common of a universal or even multiversal theme elsewhere as it is here on earth. And if a species, an alien species, does reproduce, well, do they have family issues? Do they mate? Do they retain familial ties with the image of a parent and child serving an effective means of trans-species communication? Possibly the Simpson Show. Who knows what's going to connect? It is hard to imagine an advanced species that didn't interact in social structure somehow. Specialization of labor is such an important component of technological development and economic development. How do they interact with each other? Do they have social networks of common interest? Do they have professional organizations and clubs and circles of friends and art, music, churches? Victor Frankl, one of my favorite philosophers, wrote that much of human development is based on a search for meaning, a sense of purposefulness. Do they have a purpose, a meaning, a reason for being, a motivational force, a recognition of something greater than themselves? And might we find some commonalities with our own world religions? Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Wicca? And somebody is moved by the profundity of Sinatra, who in a sense said, do be, do be, do. Words to live by. I would bring up the song and play it if we were able to take a short break here. I would love to take a short break, actually, if I could just catch up on some of these notes. But we're coming up on the end of it here. Let's just keep plugging along. How can a civilization, strangers in the night, how might a civilization survive if not somehow coordinated with the environment? And we're learning that lesson well, aren't we? The production of food, the protection of non-renewable resources, viability of ecosystems such as water and air, or other biologically life sustaining systems. If they haven't figured out how to do that well, they're going to be facing similar straits that we're facing, which is a planet threatened by lack of stewardship. How about governance? What kinds of governance might they have? How are those environmental systems so important we just talked about? How are they going to be governed and protected for the common good? And how are economic systems governed and coordinating? What insures defense systems an important part of government? Economic systems? Do they have a specialization of abilities? And how are those abilities exchanged? Is there a socialist organization or a free market system? Is technology advanced to the point where all needs are net in a post-scarcity economy? I love that term. What's going to be done with free time? What motivates their participation in a social structure? These are sociological questions we may be asking as we prepare our ethnograph, our first ethnograph on an alien species. How about self-defense? Alien species? Well, they may not necessarily be aggressive or warlike, says Steven Spielberg. It is safe to assume they would be able and eager to defend themselves against an attack. One group of scientists predicted that their weapons load would have to be light if they are traveling to us because of weight restrictions in space travel. Some theorists, well, here we go back to SETI again. They say the theme of altruism is a logical starting point for finding common ground. Dr. Douglas Vaclitch, who is a resident psychologist at SETI, he suggests a notion of reciprocal altruism in which you pick the bugs out of my hair and I'll give you a banana later. And he says, it seems possible that if other beings are sending a transmission to us, in a sense, they are practicing altruism. Investing considerable resources as we are, perhaps in the hope of getting a message out and information back in return someday, and this sense of sharing is something that we might share. So there it is. This is my own feeble attempt, a brave, courageous attempt, perhaps certainly incomplete at paving the way to the universal or multi-versal commonalities that intelligent species might use for the start at communication. Some say, hey, we may have already encountered aliens or that they have encountered us, but it's just being kept secret. Perhaps we do need to consider that secrecy in such an event would be essential. Groups of people can be dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, as we see on this slide, and I quote from Men in Black, one of my favorite all-time movies. And, you know, sometimes strange, something strange, something unknown can certainly threaten a group, and that's only practical, and it's even essential that such a situation encountering something so outside our field of reference that it should evoke an instinctive panic response. But that's where leadership and reason come in. So we shouldn't panic. These are wise words from Douglas Adams. We are once again on a verge of transformational change where the abundance provided by technology. Well, that may downgrade these often polarizing roles of economics and politics and dogma, and we as educators and scientists and students and just well-intentioned informed people, we can help prepare the way, influencing other mindsets by ensuring our own minds are set right. And others are very receptive to our sympathetic influence. One of my students said, when she travels internationally, she leaves her know-it-all face at home, and instead wears a face of humility and questioning, and she finds herself more welcomed because of it as she travels the world. And here is the world. This image, known as the Blue Marble, was taken by the Apollo 17 mission in the 70s. NASA says that even today it is the single most requested image in their archives. And seen from space, our planet, it looks so inviting and vibrant and unified and peaceful, doesn't it? This is the face that we turn to the universe. So let's wear a face of humility and curiosity, and we may find a new and wider welcome to the cosmos. And that's it. That's a wrap. I'm done. Thank you so much for listening. Do feel free to send me an email with any thoughts or updates. Here they come. I'm already getting lots of beings here. As we do wrap up, feel free to take a journey northward just over the wall here, head north about 100 paces. You're going to find some international learning resources, video, audio, and print. Once again, do watch out for the dragon. Jess, I see your name on that one. Again, go ahead and click either on the picture here or the sign or that little eye down there at the bottom of the slides, and that will give you some landmarks. And I'm going to go ahead and shut up here, take a quick look at the notes and see if there's anything I can address before we wrap up. So much good stuff. Thank you. I see it all coming in. I see links. I see updates. I see resources and I'm certainly going to love reading your notes. Thank you so much. I'm going to go ahead and wish you a very pleasant day and hope to catch you again sometime in the near future. Bye.