Quote:
Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction
To be fair to humans, most of our existence has been a slog. The competition for resources was driven more by climate cycles and habitat changes for most of our existence. The resources available to us were relatively small. We adapted to meet the challenges, mainly by biologically selecting for intelligence and aggression. But like putting a starving person in front of a buffet, it's instinct to take what you can when you can get it. When we gain the ability to exploit new resources, we are driven to take advantage of it. It's the way our species has been able to survive in a world as dynamic as Earth. The agricultural revolution kicked it off, but it has really only been since the industrial revolution that we have needed to start considering the limitations of our nature. This requires social cooperating and social contracts to curb our natural tendencies in a way that reconciles with the carrying capacity of the planet. We are a post-natural animal at this point and we need to force adaptation to that reality, no different than how our species had to adapt to live through ice ages and interglacial periods.
It's possible that an advanced alien civilization evolved to be benevolent, or maybe becoming benevolent was a social ideal they adopted because it suited their post-natural existence.
One thing to keep in mind is that while competition, lack of resources, and adversity can lead to aggressive behaviour, as evident in numerous species on our planet, it is also one of the main driving factors of evolution. Without that, our planet likely would have never developed the biodiversity it has, which has given life forms here the resiliency to survive multiple mass extinction events. In a static world without competition, species would settle into their perfect niche and as long as they were surviving, there would be little evolutionary pressure to adapt to anything else. It's why an animal like crocodiles have been around longer than humans, but never had to become clever or adapt much. They found their static niche and settled in.
It makes me wonder what factors would drive evolution in the direction of being cleaver tool users if having to struggle for finding new resources wasn't a factor. The first tools humans developed were for extracting food sources while expanding into new habitats. The same things that made us an aggressive species, also drove our intelligence. Maybe it doesn't need to be that way, but we know for sure that it can be because we are proof of that.
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Humans are capable of striving to accomplish without the pressures you're talking about. I was just watching a YouTube video about a skateboarder attempting to replicate a trick. It took thousands of attempts to accomplish it. Similarly, humans can apply the same motivation to accomplish greater works. At a certain point a society can leave behind a violent competitive nature. They would then make great accomplishments and evolve for the purpose of furthering themselves, without the need destroy something else.
Technologies that would supply unlimited energy and food would likely be easier to attain than technologies that would allow for interstellar travel. So you could assume that an alien species visiting us may not be interested in harvesting resources.