A common enemy

I have watched enough SciFy to conclude that there is a basic premise behind most of them. That the emergence of Aliens, that is recognized as Aliens. Not the never seen green ones, that seem to abduct mostly Americans and probe their bodily cavities, but an actual other species. Whether they look like us, in the Vulcans from Star Trek, or are the odd looking ones from Independence Day, or even the obscure shrouded ones from Contact it has to be a clearly recognizable Alien. Across it all there is the premise that the discovery of an outer-worldly presence would somehow unite the people of earth and we would put aside our local struggles. Join in the “Earth race” as just humans and face the others as joint species. What is a slight color difference between ourselves, if the other guy has tentacles and can breathe liquid Helium. And those maintaining a nationalistic attitude in the face of an entire Universe is always considered, the idiots.

So how likely is it that we would react this way. Well, just looking at Syria lately, the existence of a clear and common enemy for all the insurgence groups, has not united them the the point they agree on nothing more than they will shoot at that common enemy, but they maintain a conflict with each other also. The Sanskrit saying of “The Enemy of my Enemy is my friend” does not seem to work….ever. Most likely what will happen is that if an Alien race started to drop by, they would just be one more element in a grand giant conflict stew, where we hate liberally across races (humans), borders religions and now planets and species. We have enough conflict to include Aliens.

In the meantime, I will enjoy the fantasy a little longer, hope is as you know, like Aliens ever green.