I remember a scene in Babylon 5, where G'Kar and his aide are pondering humanity, and G'kar notes that of all the species of sentient aliens, only humans would have persevered as far as Babylon 5 given all the problems and disaster they had with 1 through 4. The Narn, the Mimbari and the like would have declared it a failure, and moved on and done something else, but the determination of humanity triumphed and now they had a fully operation, successful space station as a result.
I liked that little acknowledgement that it was, in many sense, our pig-headedness that made us a successful, and unique, species. Nothing big, nothing flashy and nothing that we should be TOO smug about, but that little something different that set us apart.
Puts me in mind of Bruce Coville's "My Teacher Is An Alien!" series. In the third (and in my opinion, best) book "My Teacher Glows In The Dark", the eponymous teacher of the first book, Mr. Broxholm, admits why the various councils of alien races are so fascinated by humanity yet so hesitant to make direct contact with it: our brains.
This was written back when the whole "We Only Use 10% Of Our Grey Matter" bullshit was still accepted as fact, so Broxholm sadly explains that as jealous as every alien being is of the sheer massive potential in each individually developed human brain - more so than any other species - the tragedy is that we thus far haven't actually used any of it.
I read this when I was 10, so I thought it more funny than tragic. But as far as we know, something along those lines *might* be why we've yet to have close encounters of the third kind yet. That or our lovely habit of aiming nuclear weapons at things.
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scans_daily2013-01-24 09:22 pm
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I liked that little acknowledgement that it was, in many sense, our pig-headedness that made us a successful, and unique, species. Nothing big, nothing flashy and nothing that we should be TOO smug about, but that little something different that set us apart.
no subject
This was written back when the whole "We Only Use 10% Of Our Grey Matter" bullshit was still accepted as fact, so Broxholm sadly explains that as jealous as every alien being is of the sheer massive potential in each individually developed human brain - more so than any other species - the tragedy is that we thus far haven't actually used any of it.
I read this when I was 10, so I thought it more funny than tragic. But as far as we know, something along those lines *might* be why we've yet to have close encounters of the third kind yet. That or our lovely habit of aiming nuclear weapons at things.