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228 Hopes Those of us who had come from less fortunate planets found it at once a heartening and yet a bitter experience to watch world after world success- fully emerge from a plight which seemed inescapable, to see a world popu- lation of frustrated and hate-poisoned creatures give place to one in which every individual was generously and shrewdly nurtured, and therefore not warped by unconscious envy or hate. OIA £ O4.12 42 199744 For centuries, writings about extraterrestrials have been used as a device for social criticism. Many authors have envisioned alien utopias, implicitly intended to be models for our own future. Some of those skeptical of traditional Christian concepts of heaven or the afterlife imagined planetary paradises populated by angelic extra- terrestrials. Philosopher and statesman Viscount Bolingbroke, writing in 1754, proposed that “all the inhabitants of some other planet may have been, perhaps, from their creation united in one great society, speaking the same language, and living under the same government; or too perfect by their nature to need the restraint of any.” Nearly 200 years later, Stapledon described a galactic society in which each world was “peopled with its unique, multitudinous race of sensitive individual intelligences united in true community.” Sagan revived the utopian vision in the 1970s, imagining alien societies “in excellent harmony with their environments, their biology, and the vagaries of their politics, so that they enjoy extraordinarily long lifetimes.” Drake thought that contact would provide us with a glimpse of what our own future could be. We might learn the best course of action in planning the development of our own civilization; we would learn ways to improve the quality of life on Earth. Once we know what is possible—and maybe even what is desirable—we may find general rules of civilization. Many of the mistakes that we might otherwise make would be avoidable, McDonough hoped, if we just had the benefits of the history of older cultures.“ Several optimists have foreseen that extraterrestrials will tell us how to solve the problems of our own time. “An early message may contain detailed prescriptions for the avoidance of technological disaster,” pro- posed Sagan, “which pathways of cultural evolution are likely to lead to the stability and longevity of an intelligent species, and which other paths lead to stagnation or degeneration or disaster. . . . Perhaps there are straight- forward solutions, still undiscovered on Earth, to problems of food short- ages, population growth, energy supplies, dwindling resources, pollution and war.” Drake thought that information from extraterrestrials about science, technology, and sociology could improve our abilities to deal with socio- logical problems such as poverty; it could advance our medicine and help Paths to Utopia —Olaf Stapledon, 1937"