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238 Fears Europe’s major religions came from the Middle East; all of them were enriched by ideas from the older beliefs and practices of their aan te converts. Cultural reformer Hu Shih, commenting on the impact of the West on China early in the twentieth century, observed that “contact with strange civilizations brings new standards of value, with which the native culture is re-examined and re-evaluated, and conscious reformation and regen- eration are the natural outcome.”*? Nonetheless, the experience can be demoralizing. Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges told the fictional story of how a Lombard “barbarian” is changed when he enters the Byzantine city of Ravenna. He is seized by wonder at the achievements of the more advanced - TT. Lan Le afanns La society. He becomes aware of desires he has never known before; he becomes a stranger to what he was. He will always be an outsider; because of that, he will be compelled to be little more than a child or a dog. However, he and his descendants will have begun the long journey on the road toward civilization.” Some believe that an influx of alien knowledge much more advanced than our own, and the solutions to problems we have struggled with for genera- tions, could break the intellectual morale of human scientists and other scholars. We might simply wait for alien answers, translating them into our Awe tae own terms. Biologist Wald thought that receiving information from advanced extra- terrestrials would be like attaching ourselves to the other civilization by an umbilical cord. Alien transmissions might completely supercede all further human efforts in the direction of hard-won creative understanding; superior alien knowledge could degrade the human enterprise. “What are you going to do” he asked, “when all the things that make you proud and think it worthy to be a man are demonstrated to be unimaginably inferior to what creatures out there know and do?”*” All of our efforts would be devalued if they were not part of a continuing process, Rees predicted, if they did not have consequences that resonated into the far future. Barrow worried that leapfrogging the normal scientific and cultural progression might sap our motivation, keep fundamental discoveries forever out of reach, and put us in the dangerous position of manipulating things that we do not understand.* The New York Times had issued a warning 80 years ago. It would be better to find out things in our own slow, blundering way rather than to have knowledge for which we are unprepared precipitated on us by superior intelligences.** Demoralized Researchers