This is explored somewhat in District 9, but also in the 1988 movie and TV show “Alien Nation.” IMO, the latter is overdue for a reboot.
At the time, as there is now, a concern within the US around illegal immigration. Alien Nation, with the one-the-nose wordplay in its title, sets out to explore this uncomfortable spot in the US psyche by replacing illegal aliens for space aliens. The writes pour gasoline on this fire by making the aliens superior to humans in nearly every way: reaching maturity faster, stronger, smarter, and with tougher stomachs because why not?
To answer your question, the show above does a good job setting up a plausible narrative around similar subject matter. I think it’s plausible that we would protect aliens were they weaker than us in some way. But in the case where they’re a threat to the status quo, we might do worse on the way to re-envisioning civil rights in light of multiple sapient lifeforms on this planet.
No. We don’t even have laws protecting the rights and dignity of terrestrial beings. We put them in factory farms and gas them by the billions.
If aliens were to come here to Earth, they’d have such advanced technologies and capabilities compared to us that what our laws say is entirely moot. Our interactions will happen in whatever manner they desire.
Science fiction has given a very poor idea of what intelligent aliens would “really” be like. The odds of us encountering them at anywhere near parity to our level of development is microscopic, and if they’re coming here then it’s impossible. They’d be millions of years older than us.
Could you imagine aliens rolling up in space ships near our level? They land in a rocket and then have to ask for fuel to leave. They have bulky pressure suits and have to shit their pants. They left their polluted and dying planet generations ago trying to settle a habitable world. They have been terrified for generations because they started detecting radio transmissions from their target planet. Later on they got a coherent enough signal to decrypt it and saw what they were going to end up dealing with was hostiles on another dying planet.
We in the US can’t even get rights to protect ourselves. Good luck, aliens!
Srsly. Would the aliens get the right to control their bodies or would they get a lecture about what Texans think Jesus would’ve wanted.
Fucking aliens coming to earth to get an abortion
The way I see it, to understand what would happen to us if aliens with more advanced technology came to Earth, we can simply read history books about the various waves of Europeans coming to the Americas a few centuries ago.
(Heads-up: we would be playing the parts of the various native societies)
Nah fuck extra terrestrials
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As an interesting perspective on contact you should read The Three Body Problem series by Cixin Liu.
I’m on the third book rn and its an interesting thought experiment. Haven’t read much Eastern literature before so its cool to get a different perspective on society as well
Would there be? Certainly. As soon as intelligent life elsewhere was discovered, laywers/policy makers all over the world would scramble to make laws on how to treat them.
Now, how those laws will look is difficult to say. Different countries might treat it very differently.
Perhaps human rights would be extended as “intelligent” rights or something.
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I think it depends on the aliens. If it’s a Strogg situation screw those guys, same goes for machine intelligence. If they’re just humanoid colonizers I’d say it would be closer to a human conflict.
Yes, the US has laws that are considered innate, or by default. They exist and we simply acknowledge that they exist on paper.
