Being an airhead certainly hasn't made Paris Hilton less rich or influential.

I am reminded of Kurt Vonnegut's 1985 novel Galapagos, where humanity
has evolved (or devolved) into a species resembling seals, where they
spend their days eating, mating, and laying on the beach.

Or this great quote from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy:

"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons."

Another thought has occured to me, after reading and posting the article on the Copernican Myths. There were people who did not like the
idea of Earth and consequently people "just" circling the Sun instead of being the center of it all not because of the seeming absurdity of the notion of an Earth that went flinging about in space, but because putting our planet in orbit around the Sun, which consequently made it one of the many stars in the Universe, made us all "better" and closer to Heaven and God as a result. It was always much easier to imagine humans (and control them) as being members of the very pit of the Cosmos, where all the muck and filth settle to. It also in a way made us
"special", in the way those who consider themselves victims of a greater system often like to be thought of, consciously or not.

Tell me straight out and honestly - if you dare - does this notion and
promotion of a Universe devoid of all other life, intelligent or otherwise,
except that which dwells on Earth do you find more appealing not just
because we haven't found any alien life yet - and ignoring the other fact
that it is a huge Universe and we have barely begun to stratch its surface regarding such things - but that being the only smart and living
ones around retains us as "special"? Would other beings just mess up
our perceived notions of ourselves as God's chosen ones?

If we had already really explored a big chunk of the Cosmos and did not
find so much as an alien microbe, I might be inclined to say yep, there ain't too many of us organic living type creatures out there. But we haven't. SETI is only just beginning to expand and operate on a time period lasting more than a few weekly sessions or less. And as for actually going to other worlds in our Sol system to find life - Viking was asking the wrong questions, scientists are too queasy about some of the odd looking little objects the Mars rovers have imaged, and Phoenix is only looking for organics, not life. All other probes have either just flown by the planets and moons and the ones that landed on Venus only lasted an hour or two and were not equipped to search for life.

We have a LONG way to go in the finding alien life department, THAT
is why I object to this Oh, we don't see it, it hasn't knocked on our doors, so it must not exist thinking. Yes, I know we haven't found it yet, but when our backyard is 13.7 billion light years across at least,
and we have barely even stepped off the porch, I do not consider it
scientific to say nobody else is out there.