ALIENS!!!

I figured out the secret to world peace. You’ve probably guessed it from the title of this post, but that won’t stop me from going on and on about how I came to this realization. The short version: I didn’t.

My friend Frank (mentioned here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here) noticed that his father only truly hit rock bottom after his divorce and when his kids grew up. Frank’s diagnosis: his father didn’t have a goal anymore.

Remember the beauty that was the cold war? Remember when growing up was fun? Sure, I’m glossing over the mortal terror at the possibility of an all-engulfing nuclear holocaust at any moment, but there was at least something that united the country. And sure, I’m glossing over the fact that the worst atrocities and invasions of sovereignty were initiated in that period, but my point remains: we had a unified goal and a unified purpose. Nothing exemplified that better than when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon.

We can have those days back. Actually, we can have better days.

Please follow my train of thought below the fold.

Humanity has proven itself unable to deal with problems until they are imminent (global warming, China, etc.). As a whole, people have this fallacious induction that things will be the same when their kids grow up as when they grew up.

The secret, then, comes from combining these two pieces of information– that fear unites and that problems must be imminent– and put them to a good purpose.

Imagine the movie Contact, only imagine that instead of Jodie Foster and the VLA getting the signal, everyone received a loud pulsing sound through their stereo, television and iPod.

Fast forward a few days of media panic and government scrutiny to when they discover the hidden message translated into words from pictures and pictures from binary: “WE. COME. BRING. DEATH.”

Add some high-tech analysis that confirms that the signal came from Sirius or Antares or some other relatively far away star and that given near-light speeds, we can expect aliens here in short order.

That kind of a global terror at something external would motivate every industrial nation to work on a path toward defense. Peace would be a working assumption! All of a sudden, the extraterrestrial threat would be far greater than any petty earth problems.

Now allow me to counter any objections before they come up:

1. The signal would obviously have to be faked by some really high-up people in various governments. Since I’m just the idea man, this work would fall on someone else. I’m thinking Breakerslion at this point. 😀
2. Some people would obviously use this great threat to push some anti-progressive measures (think the PATRIOT Act only bigger). Again, this is probably something best left to the detail men. I’m more of a ‘grand scheme’ planner.
3. Sure, in my grand scheme, there would be mass panic and quite possibly some end-of-the-world crazies starting wars and blowing up stuff, but that’ll fall on someone else too. I’m more of an abstract guy.
4. Oh, and of course I’m militarizing the future with no hope to disarm, thus creating the mother of all arms races, but… okay, fine, it’s a bad idea. But it’s not as if that is going to stop me from attaching my name to this and sending it off into the Internet!

I figured out the secret to world peace. You’ve probably guessed it from the title of this post, but that won’t stop me from going on and on about how I came to this realization. The short version: I didn’t. My friend Frank (mentioned here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and…