Page Content (OCR)
359 virtues, or we must accept them as gods who will raise humanity from its fallen condition. Here we display fear, insecurity, wishful thinking, defeatism, even self- loathing, everything but the calm maturity appropriate for our emergence into the galactic community. We are not ready.’ Are we any more prepared now? Space lawyer Steven Doyle, speaking in 1997, thought that the world was probably as ready then for discovering extraterrestrial intelligence as it ever would be.° In the sense of popular culture, he may have been right, although the expectations of the general public may not match the reality of contact. Drake sounded a note of urgency. The sooner contact occurs, the less prepared humanity is likely to be, and the greater the impact. Drake wanted to get thinking adults ready for what he called “the imminent detection of signals from an extraterrestrial civilization.”° Once contact happens, warned White, we will be playing “catch-up ball” on an issue that demands the maximum amount of foresight. What would have happened to Native American societies if they could have prepared for the Europeans coming to North America? It might have been far better for both cultures if forethought had informed the process.’ We will be well prepared for the initial discovery, Beck believed, because we have to know what it will be in order to know when it has occurred. We are not prepared for the next discovery and the discovery after that; we have no idea what they will be.* We will need imagination and flexibility of mind. Many people dismiss—even ridicule—the idea of preparing for contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. Despite this giggle factor, a small but active invisible college has been making modest efforts to prepare. As these issues are unlikely to engage the sustained attention of govern- ments in advance of contact, the task has been left to nongovernmental organizations and individuals. Two of the earliest approaches to preparing came from lawyers. Andrew Haley argued in 1956 that we need legal con- cepts to govern our relations with other intelligences we might encounter. In his 1965 book Space Law and Government, he included a chapter on “Metalaw” that suggested broad legal principles for relations among dif- ferent societies that may exist in our Galaxy. Austrian lawyer Ernst Fasan further developed these concepts in a book published in 1970.° Your present author published an article in 1972 that speculated about how we might conduct relations with an alien civilization. Aimed at foreign policy-makers, that article argued that we could learn much by studying relations among different civilizations on Earth and by considering the lessons of our own history. Although this idea was developed further Principles, Protocols, and Declarations Principles, Protocols, and Declarations