The analogy of a more sophisticated human society rolling over
a less advanced culture may not apply to the galactic realm as
many have often thought.

Until just a matter of decades ago, most human societies were
not that different from each other in terms of technology and
even motives. Plus though the world seems big to small creatures
like us, Earth is really quite small compare to things on a cosmic
scale. There is a lot more room to move about in space, to say
nothing of the real variety of beings that could exist out there.
On Earth, all humans are of the same species, despite what some
"experts" might tell you otherwise.

Unlike on Earth, if there are ETI who pose a threat but do not
have the technological means or will to travel in space, they are
not dangerous to us. The really advanced ones I cannot truly
conceive as wanting to harm us deliberately, as we would not be
a threat to such beings. If they ever decide to expand their
territory we might get run over, though, but it is not like we
couldn’t move or be moved if necessary. I am not saying that is
an ideal situation, but this is not the same as fight or die like the
Native Americans with the European settlers, the former of whom
really had few places to go. But it has been over 4 billion years
of life on Earth and no obvious signs of interstellar moving trucks,
so even this fear may be ungrounded.

As for defending ourselves, I see little we can do, as I have said
before in other threads on this forum. An ETI could simply whip
a relativistic speed craft at Earth and obliterate all life upon our
planet in one shot. Or if they were in the Sol system, they could
attach rocket motors to various NEOs and drop them on our major
population centers. Or create a deadly plague. It wouldn't take
much to get rid of us, which again leads me to think since we're
still here either they haven't found us, they don't consider us a
threat, or they just don't care.

But here is another point I have brought up before: What if we
are not thinking correctly about alien life because we are too
deep within the forest to see the trees? What if the Milky Way
galaxy and all other stellar islands are living beings, perhaps
even sentient (are we and other "small" ETI their minds, thus
literalizing Carl Sagan's comment that we are a way for the
Universe to know itself?) , and we are unable to recognize
such life on such a grand scale?

Sheer speculation, of course, but even thinking about it takes
us out of our usual paradigms about alien life, which is useful
for mental exercise at the least and beneficial in terms of our
finding real alien beings some day.

The fact that galaxies merge and “consume” smaller ones,
disrupting billions of stars and their worlds in the process, may
lend credence to my claim that advanced ETI (or at least just
really immense ones) might treat our fates with indifference,
just as we don’t think about the countless numbers of bacteria
we remove from existence every time we sanitize a kitchen
counter, for example.

If nothing else, this also shows my point that even if there are
no other living creatures in the Universe, we still have to worry
about the "inanimate" Cosmos in general wiping us away with
its total indifference to things on the smaller scales - unless you
buy into pantheism. :^)