METI signals and Extraterrestrials

I've been reading a lot about aliens lately, and getting myself all sorts of terrified.

I think I sort of knew this was going to happen, the instant that the kid Robin on my Discord channel insisted we create a "science fiction" section for the server.  I did not want to create the sci-fi section, because I'm terrified of sci-fi. But Robin was only 13 years old a big fan of my roleplaying server. So I let him have his way and create it....

I had wanted the server to stay strictly fantasy. No aliens! Just elves, half elves, pirates, and some weird monsters. But not alien monsters. Just regular ones, like medieval giants and strange little gremlins who slash at things with swords. 

I lost, as I say. The 13 year old boy Robin won. The sci-fi channel was created, sci-fi roleplay began, and from there, this week long obsession with aliens --- the real ones, not the kind we see in movies like Predator or Star Wars -- quickly began. And now of course, I've learned weird real life things that I wish I had never learned.  The universe apparently insisted I learn these things. Why? God damn this universe! I am too small and poor to be knowing this stuff. I'm too... scared...

What did I learn? I'm too simple to completely explain it, but basically i've been learning about some signals they're calling "METI" signals now. So far as I understand the tale, some particularly rich & intelligent humans have recently commenced to sending out signals -- "active signals" -- across the universe. The signals are aimed at certain star systems and planets very far from here. You know, trillions of light years away and all that shit. Like i say, I don't understand all of it, but I did quickly come to understand the reason its terrifying and controversial, and basically what seems to be happening is that certain notable people (like Elon Musk and the now late Stephen Hawking) are actually opposed to these signals being sent out.

They're opposed because they think its going to get us all KILLED. By lunatic aliens who will get the message, realize we exist, and immediately come zooming over to our humble Planet Earth and slaughter us.

I must admit that I (and my friend Maria from Spain) were particularly mortified, when we found out that people like Hawking and Musk were opposed to this. That made it all sound that much worse, you know? Like, Musk and Hawking are intelligent. Certainly Hawking was extremely intelligent. Michio Kaku is also intelligent and, though i don't think he signed documents against this METI shit (Musk did), he still seems opposed to it too. That sort of means everybody is, in a way. So who the hell is sending the signals? Random rich Earthlings, more or less. And they're going to get us KILLED!!!!! As I said before.

The past few days have been a mental terror for me. I have laid up day and night reading endless articles on aliens, on the Fermi Paradox (i had never heard of it before) and other such things. I have been watching Star Wars and praying, yes praying, that we will somehow turn into Jedi Masters and be able to fight the aliens when they come. I have been hoping... hoping that the aliens will either not receive the signals these lunatics sent into deep space or that...they will get them and...be benevolent. I don't want to see Earth destroyed! I want to live a decently long while here. I don't want to be dragged off the planet by extraterrestrials!

Oh my lord I'm so scared.

At the same time tho, some deep part of me finds this all funny and I'll tell my reader why. Basically, i feel like everything has come full circle for this world all over again. For example, centuries ago, it's well known that superstitious humans, totally unaware of the cosmos, were usually terrified of things like demons and all-powerful Gods and other stuff like this. Then of course, we suddenly had this enlightenment period where all the intellectuals became atheists overnight, and once they were atheists, they essentially lost this fear of all-powerful Gods and demons sucking them into Hell, etcetera. They lived, in a very real way, without a fear that had seriously tortured the minds of humans for all of time previously.

But now it seems that fear is back, don't it? Now we have managed to look out not just beyond our planet, but also beyond the solar system, the Milky Way galaxy, et cetera, and we realize how grandiose this all really is. And it seems that the "big dogs" of our planet are scared again, just like they used to be, befre atheism got in vogue. Elon Musk, in some sense, is like some English king from the year 1450. The English King used to fear judgement from the Lord msot high. Elon, with his billions, now fears this apocalyptic alien invasion.

I fear it too of course, but in a way, maybe I'm more accustomed to fear. For me its almost normal to feel small and insigificant, and so the appearance of yet another "big dog boss" -- in this case an alien who will destroy us all -- is almst not that surprising. But its still terrifying....