I found it interesting that the social darwinist society, with a kind of genetic caste system, had a pre-World War II feel with mid-21st century technology. (A bit more modern than “Steam Punk,” with a film noir feel.) Reminds me a bit of Alphaville in that way.

Also, I enjoyed seeing Gore Vidal in an acting role, not just as the writer of someone else’s role.

Engineering people for becoming more ethical sounds great, assuming it’s everyone else that does it. That leaves the field open for my, non engineered, kids to take advantage of them. Unless you wish to impose a control state that forces everyone to undergo these changes I just don’t see how it would work. Unethical parents would cheat.

Aliens are just a metaphor for ourselves. We will do the destroying, and why, because western society is built on the antisocial principles of capitalism. Surely it is obvious. Our characteristics are those of a social animal, and that is why we have an instinct to be moral. Morality is simply caring for and sharing with others — “Do unto others as you would be done by”. Yet capitalism fosters dog eat dog, might is right, selfishness is natural, and greed is a blessing of God. These are the characteristics of the solitary animal, and even the solitary mother loves her infant. Social animals are supposed to love each other. That, incidentally, is the teaching of Christianity, and America constantly boasts it is a Christian nation, when in terms of practice, as opposed to wishful thinking, it transparently is not. Even more paradoxically, the American political system buried socialism and communism, when they at least were attempting to bring the importance of human society to the forefront. Yep, the aliens are among us, but they are not the commies, they are the greedy and selfish accumulators of all our social assets, the bankers and financiers swapping their wealth here and there as long as it keep growing, and too bad for the rest of us. They are the ones in the spaceships, and the ones who need to be given a cold by some Goldblum-like genius.

But, nevertheless, in my humble opinion, the way forward is not led by geniuses, but by well-oiled conglomerates of educated people, drawing from present and past solutions to come to solutions better adapted to current problems; all of this happening in a finite universe with a finite number of problems and a finite number of possible solutions (and with some problems not having a solution).

Though Goldblum’s character would never have got that lucky opening – there might have been others, but unlikely, given the apparent technological sophistication represented.

What gives people a “righteous” society is not abundance of smart or able people, it is the permissive environment.

For example, in “Independence day”, Goldblum did come up with a solution, but only because there was a solution to come to in the first place! If the aliens did their homework like they were supposed to, there would be no security vulnerability for Goldblum’s character to exploit, no solution, and humanity would have died out.
In reality, what saved humanity was not a lone genius, but a lucky opening in the environment.

Same goes for the real life.

Perhaps, maybe, we should take a leaf out of Neal Stephenson’s Anathem, and create secular monastic orders… but unlike Mensa, which sounds like it’s full of people who need to prove to themselves, and to others – that they are smart. Just seems like they’re insecure.

After all, what does being a member of Mensa give you? Sweet Fanny Adams.

What’s the likelihood that the future belongs to either memes without theatre-of-consciousness personalities, or organizations without humans?

Whatever would compete with us, let’s hope they waste as least as much resources bullshitting on these topics.