One of the smarter people on the planet, Dr. Neil deGrass Tyson, suggested that intelligent life has already visited the earth, glanced over the locals (us), saw nothing of interest, and moved on. On the scale of intelligent life in the cosmos, human beings simply have no rank. We are not intelligent enough to even be considered intelligent.
We have been writing barely 10,000 years, roughly when our earliest civilizations were formed. The industrial revolution is not yet 200 years old. We are not intelligent enough to end wars, feed our hungry, care for our sick, or protect our children from violence. I suspect Dr. Tyson is onto something.
I am going to assume, just for a moment, that true intelligence is, for all practical purposes (or at least from our point of view) eternal. Intelligent beings would be offered a seat at this eternal table. With that image in mind, what would human kind bring to such a setting? We could hardly shed our tribalism, war mongering, violence, prejudices, and still carry the label of "human". Our most popular god (the Jewish/Christian/Muslim god of Abraham) reserves his heaven for the chosen few while condemning most of our species to torture. One of our most cherished beliefs is that He will return with a "holy army" and conquer the world in a orgy of blood and death in one glorious, final battle, and rule supreme. We imagine this same god created the entire cosmos, and all of its other intelligent beings, simply for our benefit. We believe, when this final battle comes, those other intelligent species will be caught up in our tribal battle. This embodies our best image of "goodness".
I suspect, at the eternal table of true intelligence, human kind would be an ill-mannered, loutish guest; at best. Fuck, even our god wouldn't rate an invitation.
