David Shorter, University of California Los Angeles – Contact with ETs Might Not Go Well, Based on Our History

First contact with extraterrestrials has been imagined many times, but what would happen in reality?

David Shorter, professor of world arts and culture at the University of California Los Angeles, has an idea.

Dr. David Shorter is a tenured professor at UCLA, where he has taught “Aliens, Psychics, and Ghosts” for over a decade. He has been researching how science helps and doesn’t help us understand the paranormal. He is also the Director of the Archive of Healing, having been raised by a curandera, and learning with healers in Indigenous communities as well as in Japan. Most recently, Dr. Shorter has been named the Editor in Chief for the American Indian Culture and Research Journal, a leading scholarly journal in the field of Indigenous Studies. He has published scholarly essays in anthropology, Indigenous Studies, and the history of the sciences. He has produced films, created digital content, curated art exhibits, and written articles for popular media outlets.

Contact with ETs Might Not Go Well, Based on Our History

It sure seems like the year of alien contact.

In 2023, President Biden gave orders to shoot down three UFOs. Then, a navy pilot leaked footage of a UFO, and then whistleblowers told congress on July 26^th, that there were crashes, there were bodies, they are visiting, and they are engaging our aircraft.  

Are we facing a historic paradigm shift? And who else is managing the issues surrounding contact?

Corporate entities already have rights to profit from their discoveries off-planet. Obviously, the military would play a primary role. And then there are organizations like NASA; the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, and their affiliates around the world. These are mostly scientists from astrobiology or astronomy, with few exceptions.

For example, one of SETI’s affiliates asked a group of Indigenous Studies scholars to weigh in on how ET contact might play out. Based on the history of culture contact on Earth, we explained that our current approach shares those of colonization. We showed that currently leading scientific concepts are projections of our values. Just as before, we are led by military and corporate interests. And our planning is similarly dictated by technology. Before it was large sea faring ships. Now we use telescopes and observatories.

Colonization does not benefit all involved equally. We might want to avoid repeating it by more fully considering earth’s own history. Based on the news lately,  sooner is better than later.