Add new comment

I agree. Apes emerged only 40M years ago, gray wolves less than 10M years ago. When you are talking a billion years of evolution beyond that, the gap will get closer to human and bug. I wouldn't be surprised if life started taking a different form at that point.
At the same time, I'm of the belief that any alien species capable of visiting us would be benevolent in nature. Our predator nature is a result of our 'winning' out in evolution on earth. But since we've only won recently, our instincts and nature haven't had time to catch up.
I think the next level of evolution will require a spiritual evolution in addition to a physical one. If it doesn't happen, I could easily see humanity killing each other off and/or destroying the planet before we go any further. I think that would be true of any other species that got to our level of evolution. Love is a necessity to move any further.
As to why an alien species wouldn't help despite being benevolent in nature? I think its due to them being far too advanced to the point that we probably can't even communicate with them and we likely aren't even capable of receiving their help. How do you help a mosquito? Or show compassion to a beetle? We are likely too irrelevant to even pay attention to yet. There are still a few major hurdles we need to clear.