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230 Hopes Some of those involved in the search have been more cautious; five sci- entists warned that we should not look to contact as a cosmic cure for the problems of Earth. Harrison recognized that alien ideas will not magically cure our ills, although he thought that we are more likely to gain than to lose from exploring those ideas. Salvation The frustrations and limitations of human life on Earth, the overhanging threat of disastrous conflict, the lack of moral anchors, our isolation amid the vastness of an unfeeling universe, our apparent helplessness against uncaring entropy, all have driven many humans to hope for intervention from above. Aldiss observed that the wish for a redemptive guardian to rescue us from our difficulties is deeply embedded in the human psyche.** Some carry this farther, to a hope that intelligent aliens will save our troubled species. Access to the galactic heritage, wrote the Cyclopeans, “might well be the salvation of any race whose technological prowess quali- fies it.” Brin found it no surprise that millions of humans yearn for contact; in their minds, that idea is linked with Salvation.* Sagan cited the tendency of some UFO advocates to expect that “we are going to be saved from ourselves by some miraculous interstellar interven- tion.”*° Such expectations can lead to extreme behavior. In 1997, 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult committed suicide in the apparent belief that a UFO accompanying a comet was their ticket to extraterrestrial bliss.” On a gentler level, the film “Cocoon” envisioned aliens rescuing humans from aging and death. Many also seek moral approval—or censure—from our superiors. Contact could lead either to our rapidly attaining superior status ourselves, proposed Maxwell Cade, or it could lead to our extinction. It probably depends on how well we can conceal, or overcome, our own grave failures as social beings.** This desire to be judged has powerful resonances in religion. The search, and the detection of others, could encourage us to think in terms of what Gregory Benford called Deep Time. We humans have a growing influence on events hundreds or thousands of years into the future. We send “messages” to our distant descendants, such as nuclear waste, An Opening into Deep Time