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237 The Japanese Model The impact of encountering a more powerful culture may vary with the cultural resilience of the receiving society. In the human case, some elites have sought to control the transmission of a foreign culture to their own. Leaders who fear the destabilizing influence of an extra- terrestrial culture could seek to limit access to alien information to a narrow window. Japan’s shoguns expelled many foreigners, closing off contact except through a small group of Dutchmen confined to an island off Nagasaki. Shostak questioned this course of action, arguing that “those who fear SETI efforts because of the possibility that it would put us into actual cultural contact with aliens, who insist on isolation for Earth, may be advocating the same mistaken policy adopted by Japanese emperors of the early 16" century.””° Yet, the Japanese arguably managed the impact of Westernization better than any other Asian society. Some contact optimists foresee a more hopeful scenario, based on prin- ciples similar to “Star Trek” ’s often-violated Prime Directive. If the aliens were experienced in contacts with less advanced civilizations and were concerned about the damage they could do, they might seek to reduce the shock of contact, or even avoid continuing it. Morrison questioned whether any civilization with superior technology would wish to harm one that has just entered the community of intel- ligence. A starfaring species that encountered nontechnical civilizations might wish to leave such cultures alone and allow them to slowly evolve in their own fashion, Stern suggested; direct contact might be delayed until natives developed a technical society. Ulmschneider thought that a more advanced civilization, knowing that contact would be an irresponsible act, would avoid it entirely.”” There might be a practical reason for such apparently altruistic behavior. The only thing we could possibly offer them is new ideas, claimed Rood. As soon as they intervene, our development stops and our ideas rapidly become theirs. Aliens may be hiding from us until we develop to a point where we are interesting.** Harrison foresaw a kind of intellectual Darwinism. Efforts to propagate belief systems on an interstellar scale might lead to a mixing of cultural elements; a “natural selection” among those elements might lead to the further evolution of societies.” Judging by our own history, the cultures of more powerful societies have a greater chance of being selected. In the long term, external cultural influences can be positive. What we now call Western Civilization was the product of many forces, including interactions between indigenous people and conquerors from outside. Cultural Shock