Alex McColgan

We thus have quite a few ideas to compare when considering how aliens might behave.

Broadly speaking though, let's examine two great extremes and see how they might influence alien civilization.

These two extremes are altruism and aggression, love and violence.

Let's start with violence.

that while this may be a pessimistic starting point, it is sadly one we must consider, because as human civilisation has developed throughout eras, different groups of humans have almost always clashed violently.

This ties into the evolutionary idea that competition always occurs when there are more organisms than there are resources,

Humans are organisms, and we need resources to survive.

And so, all too often, war throughout the ages has been fought over resources.

Agricultural land, people, and all the labour power and industry they can produce.

Gold.

Oil.

Even when a civilization develops space travel and reaches for the stars, this issue will still likely exist.

After all, we are nearly at the stars ourselves, and there certainly seems to be no shortage of violent conflict amongst us today.

So, with a sample size of exactly one, we have to at least consider the possibility that the other alien races are the same as us, driven by a need for resources to support an ever-growing population.

Of course, when it comes to societies, there are even more reasons why clashes might occur.

For instance, religious or ideological differences.

The Cold War was largely fought between countries that espoused different political ideologies, capitalism and communism, that threatened each other.

Alien civilisation might equally differ from us ideologically.

In fact, it would be surprising if they didn't.

and so it's possible they might feel their ideology is threatened in some way by ours.