All this talk about the mentality and physiology of extraterrestrial organisms is really nothing more than our intrinsic disdain toward that void we have in our knowledge. So what happens? We end up being compelled to fill that void with our imaginations.
A perfect example are pre-Columbian Europeans imagining what the other peoples out there across the world might look like and behave as. They imagined them having bizarre appearances and behaviours. But when they started sailing out from Europe and encountering these people, they ended up discovering that those people were both the same as them yet different from them. AKA exotic.
The same will go for any other sapient organisms out there in the universe. They will be exotic in that they are different from us yet the same as us.
-Brandon Payne
P.S. Exoticness goes both ways.
Received on Thu Aug 08 2013 - 10:41:09 CDT