On The Shore

The question of why we apparently haven't found any 'other' 'intelligent' 'alien' life in the universe so far is one which sees to have occupied many a human scientist for years and years, now.

From Frank Drake to Carl Sagan  to Stephen Hawking the baton has passed, and with it a curiously materialist, shallow vision of what the universe is. These distinguished scientists have applied their humongous brain power to figuring out the statistical likelihood of Homo Sap. running into any other intelligent civilisations  outside the atmosphere of Earth, And the key words here are intelligent, civilisations and himself.

This is an almost comical rendering of patriarchal hegemony in action. They must be out there, the thinking (or hoping) seems to go. For we have removed ourselves so far outside of Life in the net -  the multi-dimensional sphere, the Ground of Being - that we can't help but consider forms of Life as other...Out There.

Not all humans,or indeed scientists, are so moribund in their brains. Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff are examples of what great evolving consciousness can look like among scientists. They appear to grasp the fact that any Search for Extraterrestrial Life should start within, not without.

And the Drakes, Sagans and Hawkings of this incarnation? They are left like confused little boys, standing on the shore of the Great Ocean, crying out to the sky with tears running down their snotty faces: forever isolated, forever alone, with a huge fear that they will discover that there is nothing more Out There than can be accessed from In Here.

Pic: Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, with geysers. From The Planetary Society Blog