A Thought…

I often imagine that I am a boy or girl or whatever scout from the planet Zarg who wants to earn a merit badge in primitive cultures, so I came to this piece of debris orbiting a middle aged, yellow dwarf star.

My first impression was that there are no highly intelligent species on the planet, so I looked at lower lifeforms. Certain creatures that you call insects have highly evolved societies that work very well together. Then there are funny creatures in your seas with 8 (to use your number system) legs. They are also very intelligent and flexible too.

You have air breathing creatures in your seas that also have organized societies and even speech, which is quite interesting, even though nobody else on your planet seems to understand it.

I decided that I would settle on the technological beings: a bipedal species that your documents call homo sapiens. The main reason for this is that this species actually documents what it does. I don’t know why. If I acted the way you do, I’d be ashamed to admit it.

When I look at your culture from the outside, I see that it is both tragic and comic at the same time. Most of the things you take as sacred are arbitrary.

One of the things that confuse this scout is all the infighting. You all look the same to me. There are some minor, trivial differences, but you are more than 99% the same. Even though I am only 12 Zargian years old, I can see that you have much more to gain by cooperating with each other than fighting each other.

Silly Oblivions (our name for your planet is Oblivious).

P. S. I hope Google Translate did a good job with this.

   — dflak, Calvin and Hobbes comic letters