Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason
The idea that "any society sufficiently advanced enough to travel through space will also be advanced enough to avoid violence," is a very old one. It pops up in the words of scientists in '50s movies all the time, usually just before they try to make peaceful contact with the advanced aliens and are destroyed by them. See for example The Thing From Another World, in which the scientist Carrington makes almost that exact argument.
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And I personally disagree with it. Oh I don't think they will be the slavering beast fiends from beyond, but our own experience with first contact has shown that meetings between different cultures can have drastic results. It only takes one to make war. I agree it will likely require large scale cooperation within culture to build a star-fairing civilization, but even if that includes their entire species, it doesn't rule out xenophobia. If anything it enhances it.
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