The reason aliens never come visiting

WELL, I don’t know what to say really.

I had hoped I belonged to a superior species. One that had a brain to be proud of; or at least one that learned from its mistakes. Even dogs do that.

But no, I guess I’m a human and I just have to learn to live with it – until some mutant from a compassion and morality warp zone decides to drive an airplane through my office, that is.

I hope I never get abducted by Martians; they might want to know what I am. Whose team I’m in, so to speak. I have a feeling that admitting to visitors from outer space that you were human would be like admitting you were a Broncos fan at a Cowboys home game.

Come to think of it, our capacity to inflict widespread and extreme pain indifferently on our own kind is probably why we never get visitors from outer space.

All those UFOs are people (or things) driving by, taking a peek, and saying, “No…I don’t think so. Let’s try somewhere else.” A bit like we do when we’re looking for a decent cup of coffee and all we can find is a dingy caff with skinheads, tattoos and fag ends in the cups.

Of course, there are valuable lessons to be learned from the appalling horror of acts like New York’s terrorist blitzkrieg. The first one is that the human race is never going to learn any valuable lessons from the appalling horror of acts like New York’s terrorist blitzkrieg.

We’ll just go on stumbling along, feeling our way like blindworms that have just arrived from somewhere else and has no experience to draw on.

Did you know goldfish are supposed to have a 12-second memory? They swim round their little bowls, pass the same rock with dizzying monotony all their lives, and still say, every time, “Wow, what a cool rock!” because they don’t remember it from the last circuit.

I reckon goldfish have got the edge on people. Even 12 seconds is beyond us. We certainly can’t seem to remember that all violence achieves is more violence.

Oh yes, and more suffering, more pain, more bitterness, more anger, more hostility, more resentment and fewer solutions.

Not only will we not learn anything from this latest insanity, we’ve never learned anything since the first Neanderthal picked up a mammoth tibia outside his cave and stove in the skull of one of the tree people.

Correction – we have learned something: get a bigger tibia. And use it first.

I’m not suggesting we’re any dumber than we were then. We’re just exactly as dumb as we were then, and it’s embarrassing and sad.

I give it a few months and New York will have carpeted over the hole, ironed out the wrinkles and erected a monument so people won’t forget – and people will forget.

Not those who suffered the anguish of direct loss, of course, but People with a capital P will forget. Until the next time. And there will be a next a next time. We already know that because if we’ve learned anything it’s that we never learn.

Meanwhile I’m going to improve my swimming. Who knows – I might pass for a dolphin.