Interstellar travellers would have to check on Earth thousands of times to have a hope of dropping by in our era -- and if they arrived today, they probably wouldn't want to stick around.
Yes, the scale of time is not understood. I once spread a 21 foot tiny adding-machine roll across my dining-room and kitchen floor and carefully divided it into the 4.5 billion years you describe, divided by periods like Quaternary, Jurassic, Cambrian and so on. Arriving at the end of the role, my pencil was too wide to fit the time since what we call civilization began. Such a small sliver from ancient Sumer and Egypt that it was simply the edge of the role.
I have a feeling that this "take me to your leader" concept is very culturally specific. Why would a planet have an individual as a leader? Why does the current (I believe temporary) notion of a nation-state have an individual claimed to be its leader?
It feels to me that more advanced societies that had Interstellar travel (and didn't want to wipe out and colonize anything they "discovered" - falsely claim this planet was "empty") wouldn't be using hierarchical governance structures that resemble what is still promoted in Western societies at all.
As to evolution and ideas around linear time, I found the following book to be a very interesting read:
For sure, but the whole premise is culturally specific to begin with. In reality if a foreign civilisation decided to explore the universe, it would be far more likely to be about looking for resources rather than out of sheer curiosity. On that score, they'd both be a threat to Earth from our point of view, and likely too small to bother from theirs. Any civilisation advanced enough to be looking for resources beyond their own solar systems would likely be looking for planetary resources at a much larger scale than what we can offer. It hurts humans egos I suspect, but any spacefaring civilisation out there that were to be aware of us would in all probability consider us either too primitive or too insignificant to bother with, especially if they'd already encountered others at their own level.
There's also the possibility, however vague and unlikely, that we really are the first spacefaring civilisation in the universe. Consider how many billions of years it took for stars to develop and supernova and recongeal to give us the higher elements necessary for complex life and technology in the first place, and the numerous bullets Earth has dodged over the years to get where we are.
But to.your original point, I also suspect that a non-hierarchal society would be less likely to organise a sparefaring adventure on an interstellar or intergalactic level than a hierarchal one. Cooperative societies tend to live within their means while hierarchal ones tend to be the expansionists and conquerors.
"Why would a planet have an individual as a leader?" I agree entirely. But given the universality of "hierarchical governance structures" in our past and present, and our almost complete ignorance of extraterrestrial societies... I have no way of guessing whether "more advanced societies" would dispense with such structures. And of greater interest to me: Are there any useful attempts out there at analyzing why these structures arose on earth, and why, despite all real or supposed efforts at "democracy", they continue to afflict us with no end in sight? You've got me wondering.
If this wondering is deep, my suggestion is to read outside Western thought, including outside of how Western anthropologists have projected Western thinking onto other peoples they have studied.
When I started my personal special interest learning (Autistic deep dives) on anti-racism, I started to finally learn that these hierarchical societies are not universal on this planet. Much of what I had been taught in my life as "human nature" was actually culturally specific.
I live in Ottawa, which can be seen as part of the Dish with One Spoon Territories. For other reasons related to where my ancestors have lived on this continent I have focused learning around Anishinaabe and Haudenosaune governance.
There are more resources widely available on the Haudenosaune, so I suggest taking a look there if this region is of interest.
I don't know where you live, but if on the continent that Europeans want to call North America, there are likely Indigenous peoples around where you are that represent far less hierarchical governance structures. On the West coast there are some governance structures based on potlatch where representatives make themselves fully dependent on the community (IE: that the governance representatives are the most dependent, not the most powerful, within a given community).
Disclaimer: as I write about often, and have even spoken about on podcasts, this is all lifelong learning for me and not something I knew in the past. I don’t write any of these to perform as if I was superior, but someone who believes in learning and sharing what I have learned.
Yes, the scale of time is not understood. I once spread a 21 foot tiny adding-machine roll across my dining-room and kitchen floor and carefully divided it into the 4.5 billion years you describe, divided by periods like Quaternary, Jurassic, Cambrian and so on. Arriving at the end of the role, my pencil was too wide to fit the time since what we call civilization began. Such a small sliver from ancient Sumer and Egypt that it was simply the edge of the role.
I have a feeling that this "take me to your leader" concept is very culturally specific. Why would a planet have an individual as a leader? Why does the current (I believe temporary) notion of a nation-state have an individual claimed to be its leader?
It feels to me that more advanced societies that had Interstellar travel (and didn't want to wipe out and colonize anything they "discovered" - falsely claim this planet was "empty") wouldn't be using hierarchical governance structures that resemble what is still promoted in Western societies at all.
As to evolution and ideas around linear time, I found the following book to be a very interesting read:
Evolution, Creationism & Other Modern Myths
https://goodminds.com/products/1555914586
For sure, but the whole premise is culturally specific to begin with. In reality if a foreign civilisation decided to explore the universe, it would be far more likely to be about looking for resources rather than out of sheer curiosity. On that score, they'd both be a threat to Earth from our point of view, and likely too small to bother from theirs. Any civilisation advanced enough to be looking for resources beyond their own solar systems would likely be looking for planetary resources at a much larger scale than what we can offer. It hurts humans egos I suspect, but any spacefaring civilisation out there that were to be aware of us would in all probability consider us either too primitive or too insignificant to bother with, especially if they'd already encountered others at their own level.
There's also the possibility, however vague and unlikely, that we really are the first spacefaring civilisation in the universe. Consider how many billions of years it took for stars to develop and supernova and recongeal to give us the higher elements necessary for complex life and technology in the first place, and the numerous bullets Earth has dodged over the years to get where we are.
But to.your original point, I also suspect that a non-hierarchal society would be less likely to organise a sparefaring adventure on an interstellar or intergalactic level than a hierarchal one. Cooperative societies tend to live within their means while hierarchal ones tend to be the expansionists and conquerors.
"Why would a planet have an individual as a leader?" I agree entirely. But given the universality of "hierarchical governance structures" in our past and present, and our almost complete ignorance of extraterrestrial societies... I have no way of guessing whether "more advanced societies" would dispense with such structures. And of greater interest to me: Are there any useful attempts out there at analyzing why these structures arose on earth, and why, despite all real or supposed efforts at "democracy", they continue to afflict us with no end in sight? You've got me wondering.
If this wondering is deep, my suggestion is to read outside Western thought, including outside of how Western anthropologists have projected Western thinking onto other peoples they have studied.
When I started my personal special interest learning (Autistic deep dives) on anti-racism, I started to finally learn that these hierarchical societies are not universal on this planet. Much of what I had been taught in my life as "human nature" was actually culturally specific.
I live in Ottawa, which can be seen as part of the Dish with One Spoon Territories. For other reasons related to where my ancestors have lived on this continent I have focused learning around Anishinaabe and Haudenosaune governance.
There are more resources widely available on the Haudenosaune, so I suggest taking a look there if this region is of interest.
I don't know where you live, but if on the continent that Europeans want to call North America, there are likely Indigenous peoples around where you are that represent far less hierarchical governance structures. On the West coast there are some governance structures based on potlatch where representatives make themselves fully dependent on the community (IE: that the governance representatives are the most dependent, not the most powerful, within a given community).
Disclaimer: as I write about often, and have even spoken about on podcasts, this is all lifelong learning for me and not something I knew in the past. I don’t write any of these to perform as if I was superior, but someone who believes in learning and sharing what I have learned.