While I have no doubt that the universe is teeming with life, I would like to put forward an idea which suggests that conscious life (that also has the ability to manipulate its environment and therefore the capability of announcing its existence) is either very rare or even non-existent elsewhere in the universe. I hasten to add that this is not a religious argument concerning God-given uniqueness, but a purely philosophical one about man's unsuitability for survival.
This idea starts from the viewpoint that consciousness, far from being an attribute which puts us at the top of the evolutionary tree, is just another of nature's many genetic mistakes. This particular mistake will prove short lived. This attribute has caused our species to quickly step outside nature's constraints and bring about changes to it, the outcomes of which we are neither clever enough to calculate nor intelligent enough to avoid. As we have seen on a small scale throughout history, we are more than capable of destroying the environment which sustains us - we are now doing so on a planetary scale. Add to this idea the possibility of some major, natural disaster either wiping us out, or at least setting us back a good few thousand years, and I would suggest that it begins to look increasingly unlikely that we will survive for any reasonable length of time.
I suggest that consciousness coupled with an ability to manipulate creates a species which will suffer the same fate anywhere in the universe. The survival strategy which drives this type of species to succeed at its beginning is not bred out quickly enough to enable it to deal with the conditions it creates for itself in the future. This is mainly due to it being incapable of selecting for the best attributes, as it could never be intelligent enough to determine what they should be.
This idea starts from the viewpoint that consciousness, far from being an attribute which puts us at the top of the evolutionary tree, is just another of nature's many genetic mistakes. This particular mistake will prove short lived. This attribute has caused our species to quickly step outside nature's constraints and bring about changes to it, the outcomes of which we are neither clever enough to calculate nor intelligent enough to avoid. As we have seen on a small scale throughout history, we are more than capable of destroying the environment which sustains us - we are now doing so on a planetary scale. Add to this idea the possibility of some major, natural disaster either wiping us out, or at least setting us back a good few thousand years, and I would suggest that it begins to look increasingly unlikely that we will survive for any reasonable length of time.
I suggest that consciousness coupled with an ability to manipulate creates a species which will suffer the same fate anywhere in the universe. The survival strategy which drives this type of species to succeed at its beginning is not bred out quickly enough to enable it to deal with the conditions it creates for itself in the future. This is mainly due to it being incapable of selecting for the best attributes, as it could never be intelligent enough to determine what they should be.
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