Why do we assume UFO/Aliens are always hostile?

[Yelchor]

The whole point with an alien civilization is that it is -alien-. We know little if anything of how life could develop independently outside Earth. They could be completely different from us biologically to molecular levels. Who's to say their concept of civilization would not be vastly different as well? Heck, many of the things we automatically connect together with a civilization might not be taken for granted by an alien species. How much do they value communication? Have they even any understanding of concepts such as "warfare" or "diplomacy"? They might not even have anything that we humans might consider weapons.

Simply put, we don't know. What we do know is that life loves diversity.

Of course this doesn't stop our media from exploring the subject in more or less biased ways, making the alien presence more human-like than what would be reasonably expected. While in all likelyhood inaccurate in every shape and form, I see the concept's exploration as a good thing regardless of what tone or message it tries to bring forth. Helps us as a species to mentally "prepare" ourselves for such a possibility, enabling us to be more mature when the line between fiction and reality begins to blur.

If an intelligence has discovered us, and knows where we are right now, it would seem that they are of friendly intentions so far. Why? Because they have not tried to interfere with our independent development. In other words, they seem keen on letting us find our own way, which I would be thankful for.

 

[Coffeejack]

Hey, would YOU like us?

Anyway, we'd probably try to capture and exploit them, learning whatever we could from them about technology and resource management before killing them with our diseases.

 

[Piorn]

Arthur C. Clarke had a short story about this, with a nice twist to it.

Spoiler

It involved a very successful sci-fi horror movie that coincided with a peaceful first contact. Influenced by the media, the humans reacted very hostile, and the aliens had no choice but to destroy them all.

 

[Zakarath]

There are numerous tales about not-hostile aliens, I'd say likely as many as there are hostile aliens. In the end, there isn't some zeitgeist that aliens are hostile, There's just numerous writers all looking to tell stories, some of which are about hostile aliens, and some of which are not. In all honesty, I'd say that aliens are evil so often because that's easy to write.

 

[370999]

There are many references of aliens being friendly. I know that, I have kept up with pop-culture thank ou.
!BUT! Why isn't it the default assumption? Why is it the rare exceptions compared to the negative portrayal.

Again, YOU are making the assumption on what the "default" is. Stop that.

It IS the default assumption though. If you were to walk up to a random person on the street and ask them how they would feel if we made contact with intelligent ET's their first response would probably be fear. The amount of alien invasion movies has kind of ingrained this thought into pop culture. Also, one of many people's most basic fears is the fear of the unknown. Aliens are very much a huge unknown.

I don't personally think that aliens are going to be hostile. If they are, then it will probably be because they are afraid of us or they are some super powerful being who view us as no more than ants. I refuse to believe though that every other life form in the universe is just as violent as us.

Why? Who's to say that we aren't the Ghandi of the universe?

For the OP the answer can be divided into two main categories.

The first being that works of fiction often need to have an enemy. Aliens can do this. They are more advanced then us (making us the underdog), they are well alien (making them creepy) and we don't feel that sad when they die.

The second is absed on human history. Now it is wrong to categorise the relationship between different cultures as being solely reliant on coercion. There was a huge need for co-operation. Now it was always co-operation in favour of the more advanced party but it was there. It takes a lot of resources to wipe people of the map so it isn't efficent.

But going by the sterotype that different cultures only use violence as there means of social interraction, it would follow that aliens would act the same.

 

[Soundwave]

Has there been much with aliens not caring about humans one way or another? Like the way we feel about ants.

 

[Agayek]

I been just thinking while watching some really bad TV-documentary about aliens.
Simple question came to mind: "Why do we always assume that alien creature will be hostile towards us?"
Question is interesting in my opinion - so what you think?

Honestly? Because that's most likely how we would behave should the roles be reversed. Aliens are just that, and their thought patterns are utterly alien to our understanding. As such, people tend to project their own perspective/bias onto said aliens, and assume that they would be hostile, as that is what humanity would be.

You can argue against it all you like, but the last 4,000 years of human history have made it rather clear that we are a violent species.

Plus there's also the whole "Interstellar travel takes mindbogglingly large amounts of resources, and if they come in peace, they're not likely to see a return on that investment (since, you know, we're not gonna just give them the majority of ours). Thus, it only makes logical sense for them to be hostile and take it."

 

[RedDeadFred]

There are many references of aliens being friendly. I know that, I have kept up with pop-culture thank ou.
!BUT! Why isn't it the default assumption? Why is it the rare exceptions compared to the negative portrayal.

Again, YOU are making the assumption on what the "default" is. Stop that.

It IS the default assumption though. If you were to walk up to a random person on the street and ask them how they would feel if we made contact with intelligent ET's their first response would probably be fear. The amount of alien invasion movies has kind of ingrained this thought into pop culture. Also, one of many people's most basic fears is the fear of the unknown. Aliens are very much a huge unknown.

I don't personally think that aliens are going to be hostile. If they are, then it will probably be because they are afraid of us or they are some super powerful being who view us as no more than ants. I refuse to believe though that every other life form in the universe is just as violent as us.

Why? Who's to say that we aren't the Ghandi of the universe?

For the OP the answer can be divided into two main categories.

The first being that works of fiction often need to have an enemy. Aliens can do this. They are more advanced then us (making us the underdog), they are well alien (making them creepy) and we don't feel that sad when they die.

The second is absed on human history. Now it is wrong to categorise the relationship between different cultures as being solely reliant on coercion. There was a huge need for co-operation. Now it was always co-operation in favour of the more advanced party but it was there. It takes a lot of resources to wipe people of the map so it isn't efficent.

But going by the sterotype that different cultures only use violence as there means of social interraction, it would follow that aliens would act the same.

I guess I have always assumed that aliens would be non-violent because in order to advance that far, they would need to have put war behind them. Then again, war has caused some major technological developments so I guess you're right. We can't assume that they would be friendly. I guess that's just me hoping that they would be friendly because really, if they weren't, we wouldn't stand a chance.

 

[RufusMcLaser]

I guess I have always assumed that aliens would be non-violent because in order to advance that far, they would need to have put war behind them. Then again, war has caused some major technological developments so I guess you're right. We can't assume that they would be friendly. I guess that's just me hoping that they would be friendly because really, if they weren't, we wouldn't stand a chance.

The problem I see is that it seems to make a lot of assumptions, such as attributing human behaviors and attitudes to our notional aliens. Who's to say they would share our understanding of conflict, or even violence? The classic "hive mind" aliens might not have any concept that relates to "killing others is bad." They might not even have the concept of "others," and be unable to recognize another sentient race as anything other than wildlife. They may completely ignore us and spend all of their time constructing pyramids on the Moon, until they discover our offensive and blasphemous leftover lunar probes and respond in what they see as the culturally sensitive manner, by turning our oceans into custard.
I don't think any of these scenarios are particularly likely, but inasmuch as our understanding of physics and biology makes interstellar travel look nearly impossible it is very hard to imagine how we would be perceived by beings who can accomplish it, or what would actually motivate them.