If you were an alien, would you live here?

There's been controversy brewing within the SETI community as is evident from this SEED article. The issue at hand? Should we send out signals to contact possible alien civilizations out there? And of course the constant worry about the responsibility surrounding first contact.

I'm going to keep an open mind here and not say anything about life in other planets. What I was interested in was the main arguments about "responsible contact" with aliens.

Amidst SETI members, the major disagreement is actually over how soon we can expect powerful transmission tools to become widely available to those who would signal at whim. Does this translate as governments and organizations should be in charge as opposed to the public, us mere whimsical human beings? I hear you; these organizations have diplomats with degrees, historians with out of print books and scientists with super telescopes. And let's face it, you don't want first contact to be initiated by your neighbor who also tapes episodes of Judge Judy.

Guess my question is, how much faith do you have in gov't or such orgs that you want to happily hand over responsibility to them? Most of us don't vote; we complain about our gov't, we say they don't do enough or the system is a joke. The nations in our world don't even get along; everyone's bickering over trade or oil and, in what can only be called the greatest irony in the history of the world, one of the most powerful nations in this world recently brought the pioneer of human civilization to its knees. Yes, the country that was the cradle of human civilization, the first area million years ago to start cultivation, one of the first to use alphabet - this country's infrastructure, historical artifacts, precious writings and so many other treasures were lost or damaged beyond repair when a giant amongst nations felt it had to teach the little deviant guy a lesson, irrespective of the consequences for human historical and cultural research. Seriously, you want the governments and organizations in charge? For what? The greater goodness of humanity? That's another irony then.

Humans seem to be territorial and violent; read a history book if you don't believe me. So keeping this in mind, do we really want us to influence or wipe out aliens for fear of attack of WMD? Rudimentary weapons or not, chances are, we are the ones who will feel threatened or eliminate any sign of life out there. What's funny is the reason behind this search - humans have sized each other up in this world and assessed their danger levels; now the paranoid human mind needs to know if there is a threat out there.