Klaatu Drums His Fingers

Fermi's Paradox will experience it's 60th Anniversary next year. Another unanswerable question humanity has only proposed widely ranging divergent explanations for.

Not familiar? Enrico Fermi - physicist of renown - posed the question "Where is everybody?" over lunch to colleagues one day in 1950, following a discussion about the possibilities of extraterrestrial life existing in the universe and if it did why they hadn't visited yet.

A bunch of math was done and it seemed the inevitability should've been long past. So we must be alone right? The disagreements abound with possible reasons being bandied about everywhere from Internet conspiracy sites, to learned academic papers from places like The Royal Astronomical Society, Cambridge, Yale, etc.

Here's the fifty most common solutions of the last 60 year split into three categories: (1) they're here - (2) they haven't communicated - (3) they don't exist.

Personally, believe its a combination of things in 1 and 2. The vastness of the universe and the math alone fully precludes any chance of number 3 being correct. But because we're an arrogant species option 3 has its many proponents.

Just being a member of the human race makes the answer obvious.

As a species we're jealous, xenophobic, aggressive, suspicious and willful, generally lacking in empathy and common sense.

There's too much unexplained phenomenon throughout history to think we haven't been visited. UFO sightings by ethically unchallenged individuals - and to say we have no evidence is disingenuous - just because aliens don't have a Twitter account doesn't mean there's no proof.

Sure they're here taking in our stunning idiocy. But to a sophisticated resident of the galaxy are you going to want to hang out with the local Earther - is that seen as the cosmic version of Cosmopolitanism or is it Third Planet slumming?

We can't even get along with one another when we're all more alike than different, but somehow we manage to always disparage this or that about one another. Groups that ostensibly are on the same side, can't even agree to disagree in a civil manner, let alone those of differing mindsets.

We gun each other down indiscriminately for no apparent reason. At an alarming rate. Just because we can

Why would any galactic race want to have anything to do with such an emotionally stunted species?

Hell, if Klaatu made his presence known and said "Take me to your leader" - humanity would go to war trying to decide who that is, while Klaatu impatiently drums his fingers.

No wonder Klaatu has us for dinner after Gort fries us all.

My own personal opinion is we're a galactic vacation spot. Kind of like how we take Africa safari vacations, these aliens want to see/experience life among a species teetering on the edge of unsustainability - oohing and ahhing over our pomposity, short-sightedness, coarseness, and inhumainty.

Of course I'm informed by shows like Fringe - remember that one - where bald "Observers" made themselves present at all notable events throughout history.

So the primary answer to Fermi's Paradox is they're here visiting, but don't want to burn a good vacation spot, so aren't coming "out" any time soon, but aren't going to sweat a few encounters with the primitives - and secondarily - never trust a bald guy.