Many years ago there was a Twilight Zone episode that depicted an alien race making contact with earth. Initially the aliens proved quite helpful as they provided supplies which eliminated food shortages and starvation throughout the world. The visitors seemed quite altruistic, but a skeptical scientist found that the visitors brought with them a book entitled To Serve Man. It was only in the last minute of that episode, after the scientist had boarded a spaceship headed back to their homeland, that his assistant gave him the horrible news that To Serve Man was a cookbook.
It occurred to me that the episode ended where a fine one could begin. The human race has so many conflicting races, religions, and ethnicities that the only thing that could truly unite us is an external threat. For example, if someone had told Alex Haley’s great-great-great-great grandfather Kunta Kinte the day before he was kidnapped that he was an African, he would have had no comprehension of what that term meant. It won’t be until a hostile species shows up that homo sapiens will realize that we are all Earthlings.
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