Here’s a recap of something I was contemplating earlier today for why we’ve not (to my knowledge) been visited by alien species with the technology to travel the light-years necessary to visit us within the last several hundred thousands of years humanity has likely existed:
I think that if an alien civilization were to advance to the point of having the technology to travel light-years away to another planet, they would almost undoubtedly be anarchists. The reason I think that, is because the technology necessary to easily destroy an entire civilization would be so great that any civilization that reaches a certain point in technology will undoubtedly destroy themselves completely if they still (if ever they did) embrace ridiculous beliefs in things like "authority over others" and/or "government" (for lack of a better term). That is my best guess at an explanation for the Fermi paradox, anyway..
You will often find statements akin to the following:
"It may be that the growth of science and engineering inevitably outstrips the development of political expertise, leading to disaster."
^ I found that statement in the following location:
However, I think that statement is in error because it is made by someone who presupposes that it is only through political means, that disaster can be prevented. In other words, it assumes that politics is necessary when in fact, I think a lack of politics is necessary to achieve interstellar travel and to eventually make physical contact with other intelligent species that exist light-years away in the cosmos. I think a better explanation would be that only a civilization that has managed to evolve beyond politics and authoritarianism could ever manage to avoid self-destruction that is made far more possible and probable by advances in science and engineering. In fact, I would argue that self-destruction is an eventual inevitability for any civilization that does not evolve beyond politics and authoritarianism by a certain point in their technological evolution.
To me, this also highlights the great importance (from a species-survival point of view) of consciousness evolution and helping others to embrace anarchy and free themselves from authoritarian thought-paradigms. As technology advances exponentially, so too does the probability that the human species will destroy itself as long as the human species fails to overcome its belief in "government", "authority" and the myriad of "necessary evils" so many humans falsely imagine must exist.
An evolution in consciousness must grow exponentially if it is to avoid self-destruction and keep up with technological evolution. At some point, we will hit a breaking point. We either evolve beyond politics and the belief in “authority”, or our species will self-destruct just like so many other species in the cosmos have done before us. Well… that’s my theory anyway.