The Best Way For a Regular Person to Save the World
By Daniel Miessler on May 11th, 2008: Tagged as Civilization
It’s hard for regular people to save the world. We’re facing over-population, pollution, climate change, natural disasters, famine, the potential for nuclear holocaust — just to pick a few of the big ones. Presidents and other heads of state have some power to influence the world, but relying on them obviously isn’t getting us anywhere.
So when the concerned regular people (us) see how screwed we are we can’t help but feel helpless. What is Bob the IT worker or Jane the high school teacher going to do about all these things that require a unified globe to address?
I have the answer.
You go and buy some professional radio equipment, a massive amplifier and an antennae. Then you start broadcasting a plea to the listening aliens to a false attack on Earth. Plead with them to show up, take over all the media and send a simple message: they are the group in charge of galactic cleanliness, and that our race is such a cluster that if we don’t get ourselves in order we’re going to be exterminated.
Ask them to do something big just to prove a point — say carve out another Grand Canyon in the Nevada desert, or maybe have them send video of another planet being exterminated, or worst case scenario have them evacuate something noticeable and destroy it, like maybe New Jersey or something. And then, most importantly, have them leave some instructions on how to become a decent, advanced civilization, e.g. drop religion, embrace science, adopt Bertrand Russell’s morality structure, etc.
Anyway, the world freaks out and either starts getting their act together out of fear or they start unifying for the purpose of combining defensive military power. Either way, we stop fighting amongst ourselves because we realize that we have a common enemy/cause.
In other words, we can’t, as individuals, do anything to convince the world to stop being stupid, but we can try to convince the listening aliens to break their prime directive and perform a false attack on our planet in order to save our civilization.
You might say this is far-fetched, that it’s unlikely. Granted, but how does it compare to you fixing the world another way? Right. See you at Radio Shack.:
