Alex McColgan

We would do well not to provoke them.

Both of these ideas about alien behaviour are bleak, so you'll be glad to know that there is one alternative to hatred and indifference.

And in fact, it may prove to be the most realistic for higher levels of society – cooperation.

Cooperation exists within nature, not all life competes.

Within species, packs of wolves can cooperate to achieve their goals, protecting those within the group even as they attack those outside it.

There are giant super colonies of ants that do this, working together and spanning entire countries, with each hill all considering themselves as part of the same colony.

Aggressive to those outside of it, but supportive and even self-sacrificing towards those within.

There are advantages to this, as we humans are well aware.

We would not have gotten anywhere if we hadn't learned how to work together.

Knowledge pooled allows the creation of all kinds of technology.

Ironically, no one really knows how to build a computer from scratch, but there are people who know how to build a motherboard, other people who know how to build a screen, and other people that know how to mine the resources.

And all these people know that the other people exist, and so can work together.

Historically speaking, there is compelling evidence that as time has gone on, we humans have become better at this kind of cooperative thinking too.

It used to be that groups of humans were localized into small tribes, fighting other small tribes.

However, that elevated to small kingdoms, then big ones, then whole countries and alliances spanning across national borders.

Following that to its natural conclusion, at some point, a nation may exist that all humans in the world feel a part of, a unified planet Earth.

But why is this a more likely outcome than violence?

Simply put, technology forces it.

Not only do we remove barriers to communication the more advanced our communication gets, but as our ability to destroy ourselves increases, there simply isn't an alternative except learning how to get along.

other than total annihilation of course, but that's a pretty unappealing alternative, one would hope.