Abstract
Modern political thought arrived on the heels of two revolutionary realizations: We are not at the center of the universe (Copernicus), which was not created for us (Darwin). How might political theory respond to a third revolutionary realization, that we are not alone, that other creatures, sentient and highly intelligent, share our vast universe? We explore answers through a dialogue between two political theorists, a human and an alien. Rather than superimposing astropolitics upon anthropolitics, we use the encounter to ask new questions, e.g., should PT foster bridges between humans and aliens, or harden the boundaries? Pitting Dark Forest Theory against the Campfire Theory, we outline the coming existential and existentialist turns in political theory, complementing Earth politics with exopolitics.
Keywords
Dear colleagues, Arthur C. Clarke once said, “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe, or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” He was right. For eons we have lived with the terror of cosmic solitude. If in the infinite expanse of the universe no other civilization has endured, what chance do we stand to survive—and what for? Today we face Clarke’s inverse postulation, terrifying but thrilling. Two weeks ago, Advena, an alien, landed on San Cristóbal Island, changing the course of human history. Advena has met with Earth leaders and publics to make an extraordinary case, and today we have Advena with us, at the 2088 global conference of political theory.
I know many of you object to welcoming an agent of such an advanced alien civilization. But I, for one, believe we should hear Advena’s plea, however—literally—outlandish. As Advena departs tomorrow, the eyes of the world are upon us. Heeding our benevolent monarch’s request, we shall end this meeting by voting on our professional recommendation, whether or not to send a human representative to join Advena as he journeys to other civilizations.
My friends, never has PT mattered more. The “UFO taboo” is broken; we must transcend anthropocentric sovereignty (Wendt and Duvall 2008); it is time to theorize astropolitics. I ask for your patience, attentiveness, and open mindedness as we listen to the conversation. Please welcome Advena alongside our dear colleague, former president of the Association, Professor Clarice Sans-Cœur.
Thank you, Beatrice. Let me start by admitting that when Advena introduced themselves I first thought it was a hoax. Then, my political theory stress disorder kicked in: what does extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) mean for our discipline? Beatrice, I couldn’t agree more: so many of our ideas, beliefs, and theories boil down to this moment, and to the question before us today. Advena, I applaud your courage, but reject your proposal, and will do my best to persuade my colleagues. Still, in the spirit of open conversation, the floor is now yours.
Hello Clarice, and Beatrice, I appreciate your invitation and candor. As you all know, I am from Kepler-442b, traveling through space to make the case for connecting with alien civilizations. I too, on 442b, was a political theorist, with a sociological bent, so I approach you today as colleagues, and urge you: think beyond Earth and reach out. Later might be too late—for me and for you, and for the entire universe, our home.
Thank you, Advena, I hear your concern, yet must stress: our focus on Earth is not self-indulgence; it is a matter of survival. Throughout the twenty-first century, existential dangers mushroomed: ruinous climate change, the 2052 nuclear war, ongoing energy crises, pandemics, growing inequality, environmental collapse, AI-driven dehumanization, and the looming specter of Malthusian crunch (Bostrom 2013). We, political theorists, stepped out of our conceptual comfort zone to meet these enormous real-world challenges. Indeed, many now dub this the “existential turn” in political theory. Consider the Association’s recent code of ethics for a global one-child policy and Soylent Gravy. Whoever thought PT would devote its annual conference, just 2 years ago, to cannibalism? But when our very survival is at stake, we have no choice; we have to evolve not just biologically but intellectually as well.
I hear you too, Clarice, which is why I beg you to think—and theorize—beyond Earth, not least for your species’ own survival. I propose to you a cosmic political theory (CPT) that is literally universal: complementing Earth politics with exopolitics by studying about the universe, from alien civilizations, and for them—both apart and together. Reorienting political theory toward the universe need not distract, nor detract, from engaging Earthly challenges.
No need to preach to the choir, Advena, I’m always up for theorizing! I recall reading, as a kid, Fermi’s legendary 1950 lunchtime question “Where is everybody?” and wonder: with so many exoplanets discovered since then, in just a fraction of an infinite universe, why haven’t we made contact? Surely the “great silence” is made by the “great filter,” I thought, ET civilizations are either very rare or perish before they can make contact (Ćirković 2018). I devoted my life to making sure we don’t destroy ourselves; I shrugged off the risk aliens may annihilate us. I used to think searching ETI (SETI), let alone messaging them (METI), was a waste of time. Now I believe it’s dangerous—I believe you are. Advena, I’ll be blunt; why are you visiting alone?
I am alone, Clarice, because I’ve failed my mission. I am a refugee. For nearly 16,000 Earth years I have been traveling the universe, using hyper-hibernation to visit 127 civilizations, urging them to unveil their locations and peacefully reach out to other aliens. Some civilizations were kind enough to simply kick me out, with others I had to use undesirable means to avoid capture or worse. I could have revealed their locations, despite their objections, but this defeats the very purpose of my quest. I’m 115 Earth years old, and you might be my last hope. I want a human to join my journey to other civilizations, to try and persuade them to open up.
Advena, I find your loneliness touching, your failure uplifting. It’s a cosmic sign of sanity and safety. Decades ago, the director of the US national intelligence (Director of National Intelligence 2021) warned that with their “breakthrough or disruptive technology,” unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) may “challenge . . . national security.” And challenge they do—the security of our entire species. In a heavily populated universe, species survival is ethics (cf. Schmidt 2019).
Advena, your CPT needs Cixin Liu’s “cosmic sociology,” and I’m afraid you won’t like it. His argument is plain and piercing. Survival is the prime imperative of all civilizations that compete for their share of limited resources—remember that atoms count for just 5% of the universe, the rest is one huge mystery. Any civilization desperate enough to venture beyond its home planet and reveal its location is at great risk. Let me directly cite Liu (2015, 484):
The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost. . . . If he finds other life. . . . there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out.
I strongly subscribe to the dark forest theory, Advena, and I believe you should too, if only to understand why you are alone, and why we, humans, prefer to stay so.
This bleak dark forest theory, Clarice, makes little sense even in, and on, your own planet’s terms. I have read enough of your key scientists and theorists over the past two weeks. However suspicious, your species has collaborated since time immemorial. The political implications are vast, from anarchism (Kropotkin [1902] 1972) to monarchism. Even Hobbes ([1651] 1996) prescribed a Leviathan, which you enacted on a global scale just twenty years ago.
You have done your homework, Advena, but remain undone by your blind spots. Had Hobbes gazed more at the stars—as all of us political theorists should have!—he would have quickly realized: not just Homo homini lupus, ETIs too will devour each other with fear for survival and lust for power. In a universe prone to pernicious “chains of suspicion,” it is always better to be safe than sorry. But you rightly ask: if here, on Earth, we have erected empires, states, and now, following the 2052 war, a global monarchy, why can’t we have a cosmic leviathan? Why would we rather hide in the dark forest?
Because we can—and should. We are not merely miles but light-years away from alien civilizations; a cosmic hide-and-seek can last billions of years, aiding survival. But most importantly, we, humans, would rather be a quiet hunter because, unlike our shared humanity, there is no shared cosmic “we”! You and we are not the same species and will never share a social identity, let alone a polity—and the latter always falters without the former. Huge biological and cultural differences between cosmic species make attempts at cooperation not just vain but outright delirious. Have you noticed what we, super-predators that we are, have been doing to nonhuman animals? Cosmic Darwinism will tear species apart. Advena, in the spirit of this legitimate caution, I want to make my implicit concern explicit, even blunt: Are you a refugee or a spy? Why do you seek cosmic partners so desperately? What are you really after?
I will tell you, Clarice. You mentioned that our universe is composed of merely 5% of ordinary matter. The rest is indeed the biggest mystery of the universe—what you call dark energy (68%) and dark matter (27%), which you cannot observe nor know anything about. Many advanced civilizations have speculated a big bang as the origin of our 15-billion-year-old universe and have expected it to expand fast, then more slowly, until gravitational pulls would make it gradually contract. We all eventually noticed the opposite: around 6 billion years ago, our universe had a midlife crisis and began expanding in an ever-accelerated pace. We all came up with names for this mysterious, mushrooming, antigravitational force. But trying to explain this dark energy, we all reached a dead end, and some realized this literally: we are heading toward a lethal end, the big rip, when the universe’s expansion surpasses its gravity, tearing everything apart—all galaxies, black holes, stars, and planets. Yours too. We have seen the future, colleagues, and it is murder.
It’s billions of years ahead, Advena; why should we care about it now when there’s obviously nothing we can do about it?
Not so fast, Clarice, though in a sense—faster than you imagine. Civilizations far advanced than yours predict an exponentially accelerated expansion. The end is not nigh, but not that far either. More importantly, we can do something about it. But before I explain, I beg you all to heed Beatrice’s kind opening words; please bear with me as I reveal this to you.
Trying to entwine political theory and comparative historical sociology, I started my research abroad as field work on the cosmic fears of alien civilizations. The phases of evolution are the same on every habitable planet, like a step pyramid: organisms form the foundation. Then some become sentient, capable of feeling. Some sentients then turn conscious. Finally, some conscious creatures become conscientious, developing a moral sense. With every evolutionary step you find a new variant of fear. Sentients have fright, an instinctive, immediate reaction to threat. Conscious creatures develop anxiety; they can imagine impalpable threats. Then we, endowed with conscience—distinguishing right and wrong, believing we can choose between the two—develop angst: we fear our own freedom, that is, the heavy burden of reflection, choice, action, and responsibility. I have amassed data from all the civilizations I have visited: fear grows, and always beyond population growth.
Then I met a brilliant astronomer working in the Hercules Globular Cluster, one of the oldest in our galaxy. He showed me a detailed historical chart of the universe’s expansion through dark energy. Something in the chart looked familiar. It clicked, and a strange pattern emerged: an almost too-perfect correlation between fear and the universe’s expansion. Clarice, dark energy is dread.
What are you telling us here, Advena, we’re making dark energy? We’re responsible for the coming big rip?
Yes, Clarice, all living beings are, and most of all, the conscientious, the free, who truly bear responsibility, partly because they trigger the fear of other creatures. But moreover, according to my data, what your philosophers called “the flight from freedom” (Fromm 1941) or “bad faith” (Sartre 1956) make up over half of dark energy. We unwittingly made the universe the dominion of fear. But now, aware, we can try to turn from feardom to freedom. You see, your dark forest is fearful dark energy, and a self-fulfilling prophecy: the more we fear, the more the universe expands, and civilizations drift apart, amplifying their fear of the unknown. This is a vicious cycle. We make it; we can break it.
You are missing the point, Advena. Even if we accept your thesis, and I still need to see the evidence, what’s so bad about fear? You make too much of freedom. Contemporary PT learned to distinguish freedom as choice from liberty as control. “Who controls what?” is the question of politics; “who should?” is the question of PT. Choice is the privilege of those in control, who enjoy liberties, negative and positive (Berlin 2002). Once we gain control, I’ll join you in freedom. But for now, fear, not freedom, keeps us safe, keeps the living alive.
In a sense you are right. Fear is the emotional fuel of the evolutionary engine—but in a good way. Fight, flight, or freeze? Precisely, and that’s what the dark forest theory captures so well. Civilizations drifting apart make each more, not less, secure. Given limited resources, should we encourage an encounter that might result in a cosmic war? Humans have suffered so much over the past generations, and PT took note. We have not discarded the old liberal ideals. This is why we allow this dialogue. But we have rediscovered the merits of conservative cautiousness. Curiosity didn’t kill the cat, I just saw one entering the hall, but cosmic curiosity may well kill humanity.
If you wish to fear, Clarice, fear the big rip, into which our dreads lead. CPT should foster freedom; it should help make choice, not control, our goal. I heard you once knew, then killed, God, and now believe that the universe is silent. I revealed to you that it speaks to us through our inner voices. The objective and the (inter)subjective mesh, not just at the subatomic level. From quantum physics to qualian astrophysics, the universe is the mental makeup of its organisms, reflecting their physical, emotional, and moral experiences. One day, when you’re ready, you’ll be able to listen to that carefree cat; get what it’s like to be an anxious bat; become, for a moment, a sanguine apple tree in the autumn; and finally know yourself, freely.
Many civilizations like yours are politically trapped in a legitimacy loop: you obey authority because it’s legitimate, but it’s only legitimate because you obey it. Now I show you a way out. The universe does not impart or retract legitimacy; there is no “mandate of heaven” (Zhao 2009). Mirroring us, the universe allows us to truly see ourselves—and become better.
This is in our hands; the Universe is what we make of it. If anything, “cosmic Darwinism” instructs that natural selection is driven by conscientious choice, or lack thereof. Strange that you, that we, have not suspected this before. Strange, as we have seen how fears shape our societies, cultures, politics, indeed our planets. Why would it not shape the universe? Strange, as your civilization already realized one can see a world in a grain of sand: the universe through one galaxy, the cosmos’s network of galaxies through the brain’s complex web of neurons (Vazza and Feletti 2020). The universe is a mental landscape we can shape.
Uh-oh, what’s next, black holes are dark souls?
Close enough, Clarice, you’re getting the hang of it. Your experts discovered that primordial black holes begot dark matter, that every large galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center, and that as the universe expands so do black holes. Most importantly, you know well the physics of black holes: the gravitational collapse of a body onto itself, which then absorbs everything around it, including light, up to the hole’s “absolute horizon.” If so, I can only confirm what you may already cynically suspect: black holes are driven by mental gravitational collapse, the self-absorption of organisms, a dragon devouring its own tail. This ouroboros too steps on the evolutionary pyramid: survival for survival’s sake; power for power’s sake; and at the conscientious edge, self-righteousness. It’s your mythical story of Narcissus in love—not with himself but with his own reflection, his aesthetics and ethics alike. It’s personal, and political, turning communities into self-worshiping tribes. Your political theorists already noted the pathological “rampant narcissism” of Hobbesian modernity (Glass 1980), and on Earth as elsewhere, narcissism rises (Post 2015). Our social lives revolve around such black holes; no wonder that so do our galaxies.
Advena, your cosmic PT sounds increasingly like a cosmic guilt trip. And I won’t play along. Neither a lion, nor a butterfly, should apologize for their “selfish gene,” and the same goes for civilizations. Collectives should prioritize their own survival and well-being. Jean-Jacques Rousseau lamented how civilization corrupted amour de soi, instinctive, preservative self-love. I now realize we should use your visit to regain it. As Strauss said, “Men can be unified only in a unity against” an enemy (Meier 1995, 125), who is, “in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien” (Schmitt [1932] 2007, 27). Advena, as the Latin name we gave you implies, you are It. In this dark forest, it’s humanity first: against potential threats to our very existence, we can finally rekindle our own natural, instinctive, collective self-love, for our special species. You wanted us to change our mental landscape; we shall, not by joining you—by rejecting you and learning to love ourselves above all.
It is your choice to make, Clarice, but remember the fate of self-fixation. In the oldest version of your myth, Narcissus lost his will to live and killed himself. I urge you to stop looking at your facile reflection and jump into the water for deep introspection. You mentioned that Earth PT took an “existential turn.” You can now take an “existentialist turn,” asking the big 3B questions: Why breathe? Why breed? Why bleed? What’s worth living, creating new lives, killing, and dying for? If we can turn black holes from the tautological to the teleological, let purpose supplant power, absolute horizons may become our new frontiers.
If civilization corrupts, inter-civilization connection can heal. You foster Hobbesian fears to justify a cosmic “state of nature,” with the wishful twist of gaining its Rousseauian boons. But Rosseau’s ( [1755] 1984, 109) exhortation against “this is mine” should also apply to species claiming planets. Your politicians should follow your physicists, who already learned that the universe is made of dependent relationships, not independent substances; we exist only in our interactions with one another (Rovelli 2021). Together, we can turn black holes into hubs of hopes that emit, not kill, light, that create bright, not dark, matter.
Clarice, you made a case for the dark forest theory; I give you the campfire theory, wherein civilizations across the universe get closer, in solidarity and warmth. And mind you, we’ll be getting closer not just to one another, but to the many resources out there, which, like the fire, we can share—to survive, thrive, and relish. Yes, be in yourself, be for yourself, but also be for others. We are better together.
No, we are not. There will be no singing and dancing around your campfire. The bigger the fire, the more predators and plunderers it attracts, with civilizations wrangling over space and firewood duties, always tempted to push one another to the fire. “In this dark forest, there’s a stupid child called humanity, who has built a bonfire and is standing beside it shouting, ‘Here I am! Here I am!’” (Liu 2015, 485). How stupid do you think we are?
Not stupid, Clarice, simply afraid, as I shall be if we fail to act. Self-absorption, individual or social, creates banality that kills critical thinking (Arendt 1971) and impairs political imagination (Skey and Antonsich 2017). Transcending the ouroboros, you can conceive aliens having inalienable rights; draft a cosmic social contract; and create intergalactic police, policies, and even polity. You want to foster a cosmopolitan identity for humanity as a whole; why not envision a cosmos-politan identity for all conscious beings, working to make a better universe? Your own origins lie in Homo sapiens and Neanderthals meeting and mating, why not tolerate human-alien interbreeding?
Look, Advena, I do not wish to burn you at the stake of your own kumbaya campfire (and, in any case, I understand that we might not be able to, yet), so better to conclude by completing a circle, indeed your theory devouring its starting point. You said that with the universe’s accelerated expansion we’re heading toward a big rip. But if we follow your advice—galaxies, planets, and civilizations coming together—we’ll be heading for the big crunch, cosmic gravity crushing us together. How is this any better?
If our universe must perish, I hold with those who favor fire. But freedom, Clarice, is far more creative. Don’t you see that we inhabit a multiverse, built not by natural selection (Smolin 1997) but by conscientious choices? Coming together, in freedom, for each universe dying, thousands are born.
Clarice, you need not accept my cosmic theories. Read them as metaphors if you will, or better yet as dreams. Perhaps I too am a figment of your imagination, a mysterious stranger of your species’ delirious mind, and you are still drifting forlorn in an empty universe (Twain 1992 [1916]). Why then did you invent me and our dialogue? Perhaps—as humans throughout history have, to find celestial answers (Vallee 1993)—realizing that to solve Earth’s big problems, you must think bigger still. Now I have revealed you to yourself. Dare to dream other dreams, and better.
Ah, Advena, you’re one wild alien; I’d like to have what you’re having! But our time is up. Let’s vote.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
This dialogue benefitted immensely from a conversation with David Barash and Judith Lipton, whose inspiring ideas helped us forge our take on exopolitics. We also thank Nevo Abulof, Shani Abel, Richard Bensel, Michael Bertenthal, Matthew Evangelista, Peter Katzenstein, Talia Shoval, and Natalia Tosoni, for their valuable feedback.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.