Stephen Hawking recently said in one of Discovery's Into the Universe shows that meeting ET's could be risky. Well, of course it could... meeting a new civilization is always risky. I'd like to share my thoughts on this. He does make some very good points and I will take them one at a time.

 First point, I can see his analogy of what happened with the New World regarding Native Americans when the Europeans arrived. I disagree that it would have the same effect on our culture. Modern culture is far more advanced comparatively than the cultures that European culture encountered in places like the Americas, the South Seas and Africa. We are familiar with fairly (to us anyway) advanced technology, we do have some limited experience with space travel. Popular culture has accustomed us to the idea of aliens and technology far in advance of our own. Star Trek and Star Wars, not to mention many years of sci-fi literature  have somewhat accustomed most of us to the idea of aliens and advanced tech.  I really doubt, no matter how advanced a tech we encounter, that it would affect us as much as European tech affected the peoples they ran into.

We already have our own alien myths going on, I really don't think it would be the huge culture shock that many think it would be. I'm not saying that it wouldn't be a shock, just that I think most people would be far more prepared for such a thing than the American Indians were when the Europeans arrived. I guess it does depend on how far in advance of us they are, but still we are far more prepared culturally than those primitive tribes in dealing with advanced tech.

I think we could deal with exposure to a far more advanced culture now than we could in the past.

Second point, Steven also brings up the boogy man of aliens having used up their own planet's resources and becoming nomads, out to take any planet they can use.  I don't agree with that idea... as if they have the tech for faster than light travel and they wanted to do us harm, I think they would have already.  We would  have seen an Independence Day scenario by now.  Why should they play coy with us when they have the power to take us down whenever they want to?

I believe we are being watched... I've personally seen 3 UFO's and there are lots of incidents in recent times that really can't be explained away with swamp gas or weather balloon arguments.  I think they are waiting to see if we are "civilized" and past the point of racial suicide before they contact us. While I think we are far better off in that regard since the end of the Cold War, we really aren't quite there yet. We still have the potential to kill ourselves off.

Throughout history, in every culture on this planet, there has been sightings and experiences of strange things and beings both in the sky and on the ground.  Aliens have been here for a long time... If they wanted to enslave or wipe us out, I really don't see why they wouldn't have already if they could. While I suppose they could be infiltrating us ala  V or any number of  similar sci-fi  stories out there, I don't see as that would  be anymore beneficial to them than just taking us over by force. But the infiltration idea kinda gets into tinfoil hat territory for me, just doesn't make sense to me. As does the idea that governments are already in contact but keeping it from us.

Now to my thoughts on this.....

If they are here already as I believe, they have FTL and undoubtedly more than enough power to wipe our planet clean if they wanted to. If they don't have FTL, then we would be dealing with either generation ships or a very long lived race indeed to travel between stars.

Non FTL ships would just arrive here. They would not really have many choices about contacting or conquering us as they would be here and most likely not be able to go anywhere else easily. Neither has happened so they must have FTL.

Sure we've no idea how FTL can work, but I have to think it's gonna take a bit of power to propel a ship across light years in less time than light can travel.  That power would, I'd guess, be just as useful as a power source for weapons.

So... if you believe as I do, that they are already here and watching us... what does that mean?

To me it means the visitations must have come from FTL aliens.  Otherwise they would have either contacted us or tried to conquer us. So we are being watched as I said earlier... if I were an alien, I would be watching us too. We are a pretty violent race; and more important, not united as a race.  A star faring race is not likely willing to try and deal with new races on anything less than a planetary level. And hell, they may not even be that interested in us til we figure out FTL ourselves.  We may not be worth their time until we do, or at least until we have colonies off planet.

Really, just put yourself in the place of these hypothetical aliens... would you want to get in touch with us just yet?  I wouldn't, we are dangerous and not in control of our own world.  We are busy shitting where we live and still killing each other.  No... I'd wait and see too.

Maybe they have a Prime Directive like the Star Trek Federation.  Lol, if so, I wish an alien Kirk would roll along.  He never gave a crap about the Prime Directive :)

Either way, I firmly believe they are watching us and fervently wish they would make formal contact.  I truly believe contact with an alien race could actually unite us and make all our petty squabbles irrelevant. We would have to unite as a world and species to deal with aliens, that to me would be a very good thing.  :)

And if a UFO ever lands in front of me, my thumb is gonna be out and I will have my towel.  :)

My 2cp...