#8

Um texto velho que se torna atual com o lançamento de certos filmes...

When dealing with its own insecurities, humanity often falls into existential questions, such as "why are we here?", "where are we going?" and "where did we come from?" One question common to those times of nonsensical pursuit of a never achieved knowledge is "are we alone?". That particular question can be used in a more intimate setting, as one begins to question his or her friendships; or it can be used in a much broader sense as one ponders if humanity is alone in the universe. However, when humans (as a race) begin to ponder about the existence of extra terrestrial life, they aren't satisfied thinking of simple single-celled life forms living on a distant planet -- They resort to fantasizing about superior races with higher intellect and a much improved sense of existing. But let's save humanity's inferiority complex for another post, and talk a bit more about this imaginary life form growing in the outer skirts of our Earth-centered universe.

I have seen many discussions before on the composition of these non-terrestrial life forms, arguing that perhaps other life forms wouldn't be carbon based like all the life in this planet, but they would be based on some other random element of our good old chemistry chart -- silicon seems to be a popular choice here, although I'm not all that sure why. This particular discussion is very interesting to me, because it leaves behind all the religious questioning about life outside our planet and begins to argue about the scientific details of it (yes, I realize science and religion aren't mutually exclusive, but when you begin to argue the atomic composition of an imaginary life form, you're pretty much putting the bible back in the drawer). Now, before we go deeper discussing the chemistry of our newly-found non-earthlings, let's go back to what do know about our own race.

We are, as far as I know, chemical creatures. All of your feelings, emotions and thoughts can be explained (sometimes rather vaguely) by chemical reactions going on inside our bodies. When someone feels sad, or happy, there's an specific part of that person producing whatever elements provoke sadness or happiness in our brains. Of course, I'm not so cold to say that we have any real control over such chemical events, but we're still affected by them and have to deal with their output of happiness, anger, or whatever.

But let me get to the point here... What if these alien life forms are exactly like ours, but lack the specific enzime that makes up an specific emotion? For example, what if they can't produce happiness? What happens if we encounter an entire planet of people incapable of being happy? And then they'll find us, and see us smiling, see us being happy, and they'll say "we want that". Maybe, because we will be so similar to each other, our particular governments will agree to remain peaceful, but in the background there will be a black market for happiness... Some aliens will start a little "happiness cartel" where they will attack earthlings at night and extract our happiness to sell it back in their planet for heaps of money, creating an inter-stellar market of pirates of happiness. Which would contradict our common saying of "money can't buy happiness". But this could work with any emotion -- when you think of it, we humans strive to find new emotions or intensify the ones we already have. Out of the regular narcotics out there, some make you speed up, some make you slow down, some make you happier for a while, some make you sadder, some make you angrier... But back on the aliens, if they start selling happiness as a drug, and it becomes an expensive item, then only the rich people of that planet will be happy... And that will bring about a whole new type of social inequality, one that we humans currently don't have in our planet... At least not in a large scale.

This could work vice-versa as well... Perhaps there is some emotion we humans are incapable of feeling, but those aliens will be filled to the brim with it... And if history has taught humanity anything is that humanity feels free to take away anything from any other creature, so of course we'll kill those darn aliens to get that new emotion and make it ours... And the consequences would be the same.

I guess my point is... There are so many dimensions to explore when we think of life outside our little blue planet, that although it is non-sensical to do so, it lends wings to what we want to find out there. Some people strive to find knowledge, and they imagine aliens with big bulging heads (no dirty stuff here) and huge brains storing gazillions of information still undiscovered by our scientists. Some people have inner prejudices built in them, so they imagine war-faring aliens ready to come and destroy us, so we must destroy them first. The aliens you imagine tells a lot about who you are, so I wonder about what kind of person I am, imagining aliens without happiness.

(texto originalmente cyber-publicado em 25 de janeiro de 2003)