The Alien Within

Projection, as Carl Jung defined it, is loosely understood as the unconscious, i.e. unintentional transfer of subjective ideas and emotions onto someone else - 'an outer object': when we 'project', we attribute to others motives they may not have or emotions they may not be experiencing. Most likely, those projected motives and emotions reflect what we've learned to expect from others, and our own motives and emotions.

In that sense, Professor Hawking's warning against seeking contact with aliens seems like a perfect example of species-wide projection: "We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet" warned Professor Hawking alien enthusiasts (BBC). In his view, while it's perfectly rational to assume that intelligent life must have evolved, and exist as we speak, on other planets, alien visitors might well turn out to be ruthless space conquistadors.

 The German poster for War of the Worlds (1953), based on H.G. Wells's novel.

Stephen Hawking definitely has a point so far as 'we' and the way we've developed are concerned. And he may well turn out to have a point about those so far hypothetical aliens: as Jung stressed, 'projection' is not an arbitrary delusion. Very seldom is what we project all in our mind. Usually, there's at least a small element of what we attribute to another person actually there, except that we tend to blow it out of all proportion - and act accordingly.

Which makes Professor Hawking's argument against seeking contact with aliens all the more persuasive: even if alien visitors are not predatory conquerors, since that's what our species has learned to expect from its infancy, we're likely to treat them as such, and rush to apply the Bush Doctrine onto an intergalactic scale. That'd be fun.

 Image: Stray Snippets