Our message to the stars…
One of my favourite things to read are the silly old news stories you often find in grocery stores, declaring that Elvis Presley is still around. It’s hard not believe that Elvis may still be alive when you know that he still lives on in the digital or analog version and is probably one of the longer lasting artists still spewing music into the vastness of outer space via thousands of radio and television stations at any given time. Those signals reached the nearest 70 stars by 1989, and are still traveling nearly 40 light years later to another 1800 stars, that is, since 1973, when Elvis first broadcast live around the world by satellite.
So it’s possible, that if any alien civilization were to keep track of us, they would most likely think Elvis is King of Earth and we worship Him by throwing ourselves at him and swooning a lot. Of course, our interesting shaking, rattling and rolling is most likely a mating ritual that leads to collapsing into the arms of an Elvis look-a-like male, that leads hopefully to procreation.
Since this may be fact, because of its incredible scientific backing to prove that this has been happening since the radio was invented a century ago. It’s possible that our own Cree language has been out there for a while now, since the middle of the ’80s, flooding the nearest planets with our superior mathematics, where the numbers are more than 10-based; actually a complex and random algorithm using 75 numbers segmented by five. They would probably also believe that we respect those numbers so much that we reward those who wish to win the gods’ admirations when we shout out “BINGO” in praise of the great mathematician in the sky. Yes, prayer does have its rewards for those faithful followers.
Think this may be unreal? What will happen when the present signals reach those aliens in 15 years? They might think that we have swayed from our gods’ wishes and have gone completely crazy with self-satisfaction, murder and mayhem, blowing up and shooting everything and, of course, procreating and procreating. If we are concerned citizens and wish to stop ourselves from being completely wiped off the face of Earth by some pissed-off and insulted alien civilization because they might believe what they see in our televised broadcasts and won’t be able to differentiate between fact and fiction, we could be in trouble if we don’t send out messages of apologies.
At least, in our own cultural innocence, we kept and still strive to keep what we value and I hope that this message doesn’t have to reach some alien civilization to remind us that we still have a cultural and traditional responsibility to maintain who we are – Eeyouch. Then I guess we are doing the right thing by espousing our language and culture using the most modern means possible, to offset all that other crap we watch and hear on the air. We need to show those aliens that, hey, we’re trying to do good – so please don’t zap us into oblivion just because we like to hunt and eat animals, fish and harvest and don’t like destructive development on pristine lands.
So citizens of Alpha Centauri and Sirius, I apologize on behalf of the citizens of Earth for the last 30 years of crappy TV shows and reruns, and by the time you get this, also for all the reality shows and soap operas. You can, however, peruse APTN, any First Nation or Inuit broadcaster or local radio station without a worry.