You may have heard of the levels of technological civilization that might exist in the universe, called the Kardashev scale, named after the Soviet astronomer who thought it up, Nicolai Kardashev, in 1964. The scale depends mostly upon the size of the energy usage by the civilization in question. The scale normally goes from one to seven, but people have extended it - for instance Carl Sagan added detailing within the levels (it occurred to me on writing this that if this interest you, you might also like Olaf Stapledon’s science fiction book “Last and First Men” written in 1930, which in many ways predates Kardashev’s ideas).
The human species is
not yet on the first rung of this ladder. An advanced cosmic civilization on
the seventh rung would be able to control the entire universe or multiverse and
harness its total energy. The first level is capable of using the power only of
the planet that the civilization is born on. So, a type two civilization is
capable of using the total energy of its planet and its local star. Etc.
Our human definition of civilization is very
likely to be biased towards what we currently think of as our civilized status,
but setting this aside, in the original scale by Kardashev, as stated, it
relies upon energy use as a way to decide its position on the scoreboard. One
of the reasons why this might be flawed is that advances in science can find
ways of making energy go further or have more dramatic effects with a smaller
amount, or at least we might infer that advancement ought to mean this. But
nevertheless, the scale as such assumes that the goal of advancement will
always be greater power and greater power use. It is obsessed with power.
This assumption derives
from the notion of technological advancement considered in isolation from other
kinds of advancement, such as social and political. Peculiarly, but not
surprisingly, the scale seems to fix the advancement at a technological level embedded
in twentieth century Earth based Eurocentric capitalism, which fought imperialist
wars over energy resources (and we are still doing this).
But clearly, we must
not only consider technological advancement but also biological and evolutionary,
as well as advancement in art and, design, and philosophy, and social and
political advancement. Not all of these correspond to each other harmoniously
or develop in time at the same rate. Kardashev, a pretty good astronomer, was
not such a good philosopher. Imagine therefore if we kept to his scale the
sheer amount of rubbish, pollution, and kitsch that the advanced technological civilizations
would produce, say about Type 3. The cosmic scale equivalent of kitten videos
but with the ability and power to have them transmitted everywhere all at once.
Sagan once said that a lot also depended on the civilization’s storage and use
of information. Our internet carries multiple terabytes of information for instance.
Unfortunately, however, a great deal of it is lies, trolling, and fascist. A concept
of quality has gone missing.
There are infinite
resources available in the universe, so no need to fight over any of it. And
even if civilizations were super abundant, the universe is so colossal that we
might never be able to communicate even with just one, in any case. And the
physical constraints on the speed of travel (light speed) would probably lead
to advanced civilisations giving it up as unnecessary and concentrating instead
on other areas of life, in other words they have eschewed the imperialist social
misadventures of their distant past which led them to always want to physically
expand. It is not impossible that an advanced civilization might even consider using
such power a sign of gross immaturity, philosophically speaking, and they would
snobbishly avoid such doltish aliens; as for us, we would not even be worth a glance.
Or what would a Type 7
civilization artist want to do with the universe? Maybe we are in fact living
in one of their works of art, and Dark Matter is a kind of clue of this, a bit
of Cow Gum used to fill in the gaps to make it all look good.