I have asked time and again village folks and urban dwellers, religious zealots and secular thinkers, Easterners and Westerners, musicians and scientists, children and adults what they consider would bring about the biggest paradigm shift on the earth. And I have always got one answer. It is amazing to find out how on some issues there is only one view across cultures, economies, ages and people.

It is not simply today that I get this answer from people around the world. If I had asked this question a thousand years ago, I would have probably got the same answer. And if I ask the same question a thousand years from now, I might still get the same answer if the question is still valid until then if the earth survives for its people to answer it.

Stephen Hawking and Craig Venter, undoubtedly the two greatest scientists of our time, have indicated in their utterances that they have found the same answer. I am almost certain that Confucius, Galileo, Newton, Christopher Columbus, Ibn Khaldoun, Avicenna, Bertrand Russell, and other great men and women would have found the same answer, though I must confess that I have not read all their works where they might have addressed this question.

The answer is straight forward. Everyone I have read and heard seems to believe that the greatest paradigm shift will take place on the earth when our planet comes in intense contact with habitants of another planet, though opinions are divided whether there might exist one or more such planets in the universe. There is no scientific evidence that intelligent life exists elsewhere, though the laws of probability demonstrate that it should. In fact, SETI, an institute in California engaged in search for extra-terrestrial intelligence believes that it does.

Much of discourse about interaction with habitants of another planet is dominated by one concern: Will they attack us, if they are more intelligent and advanced than human civilization? Popular depiction of ‘people’ from other planets in movies and television serials also presupposes that those on other planets have the same values as those on our planet, based on selfishness, acquisitiveness and attack. This presupposes that the concept and intention of ‘attack’ are natural and something to be presumed. Much of the interaction between societies on our planet, from the times of Alexander to Napoleon and from Hans and Umayyad to capitalists and communists has taken place using the concept of attack or expansion. Several political scientists believe that it is in the nature of state to aggrandise itself and therefore it is natural for its intercourse with another state or another society to include the possibility of attack. This logic can be traced back to interface between tribes before the state and society came into being and even to the earlier encounter between Homo Sapiens and other mammals. Therefore, attack, expansion, aggrandisement, acquisitiveness have been part of our mental framework almost since the birth of humanity.

It is, however, presumptuous to believe that habitants of another planet, more advanced than us, also believe in the ideas of attack and aggrandisement. Human civilization in its organised form has existed for 10-12,000 years and perhaps 27,000 if we accept the logic of some experts who date a counting tablet found in the Great Lakes area to circa 25,000 BC. Already within this life span, humanity has faced the prospects of its termination on a few occasions. Scientists such as Sir Martin Rees argue that the 21st century might prove to be the last century of this planet. Others give us a maximum of a thousand years. If compared to this track record of our surviving for 12-15,000 years, we encounter population on another planet that has survived and flourished for a few million years, it will only be because they have a different set of principles which eschew the notions based on self-aggrandisement. If indeed we encounter such an advanced civilization based on totally different values, it will be unfamiliar with the concept of attack and therefore we need not fear its invasion on the earth. But our ideas that have helped us achieve what we consider progress but which have already cost 400 million lives in the last 2000 years and which can annihilate all life in future will prove to be much inferior to theirs. Nothing will therefore change our basic thinking more than an encounter with advanced life forms from another planet, though we may live in our comfort zone since the possibility of such an encounter does not appear real.

The greatest paradigm shift will take place when villagers and urban dwellers, Easterners and Westerners, religious zealots and secular thinkers, children and adults across the world realise that it is possible to achieve progress without conquest, actualisation without invasion, and enrichment without aggrandisement. In the absence of this mental transformation, survival of humanity is threatened in this century or next or sometime soon. It will as much depend on a chance encounter with advanced beings as on our own deep introspection.