A warrior-race of pack-hunting opportunistic scavengers from _____, a sweltering, ecologically volatile forest/ocean planet revolving around a yellow giant deep in the uninhabited wilderness of the Orion Arm. Naturally resistant to damage and poisons, they have no claws or venoms of their own but rely entirely on things fashioned from available materials or forcibly extracted from other beings. Most of their brain matter is optimized towards problems of food, weapons and territorial displays, with a small non-reproductive caste dedicated to inquiries not directly related thereto. Capable of some limited hivemind-swarming, partially coordinated through their otherwise primitive displays.
Their homeworld rotates on an unusal axial tilt that is just enough to create significant climate differences on the surface while preventing any part of it from being permanently frozen over the year; it is speculated that their natural aggressiveness created a need to rapidly spread out across their world and adapt to its numerous varied climates and sources of nutrients. Their legends say that the planet has been subject to several mass extinctions in the past, apparently the last one perpetuated by these creatures themselves.
A lot of “irrational” human behaviour makes perfect sense if you consider that all our moral instincts have developed, as their default, no-corrective-conscious-reasoning-needed starting point, in terms of:
This all happens on a totally intuitive level, to the point where it’s impossible to pick apart and question if you’re not consciously looking for it.
Most people never, ever think to look for it.
Those who do, still routinely fail, because at the speeds and volumes these things go it’s like trying to stand up by moving every associated muscle voluntarily. It almost goes without saying that the firehose of social media engagement just makes it worse, but I'm inclined to believe that it has been getting worse since the newspaper - or the printing press.
I can't leave this at "information age bad", though, because that same technologically augmented access to information helps many people even discover the idea that they can question these things and examine them rationally and critically, instead of being absolutely honour/ethics/morals-bound to enforce the party line (whatever form that "party" might take).
Nobody is immune to this pattern. It's why the ideas of "good people" and "bad people" have such a lasting grip on our imaginations and not a single story that has protagonists is free of it. Even if you believe that real morality comes from doing good, the most we can do here is to exploit it for our own advantage, through virtue ethics-adjacent patterns that help us attract and emulate the kind of person whose training reliably directs them towards good deeds.
Classified guide for deep-space agents
When you see the fleshy dorsal brain-stalks, please remember the following basic rules:
- Do not ask a any manner of direct question to which the earthling is privy, whether actually directed to the earthling or not, if that particular earthling did not initiate the contact to tell you the answer.
- Try to aim for 2-3 layers of indirect phrasing to sufficiently distract an earthling's thoughts before the combat instinct kicks in and your query is responded to as an honour-challenge.
- Simple methods include using a descriptive phrase in place of a noun, or "baby-talk" avoidance of a pronoun, as well as turning the question into a meta-statement about how you feel about the issue at hand.
- When a earthling accuses you of some terrible non-specific violence, it may be a simple figure of speech congratulating you for something you did well or they otherwise enjoyed watching. They do not mean any offence, but may take offence if they notice you cringing at their well-intentioned compliment (they are surprisingly good at reading normal body language even though they claim to rely greatly on their peculiar eye- and mouth-flaps and headstalk-waving).
- If attempting to capture a earthling ship, DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, SURROUND IT WITH OVERWHELMING FORCES AND ATTEMPT TO NEGOTIATE USING REASON. A statement that there is no rational alternative but surrender has a special meaning in their honour code as a licence to fight to the death of every living being in the area (cf. the catastrophic Galaga siege). Disable the ship by stealth and isolate unarmed crew members (risky—
the only unarmed earthling has had their arms cut off) or cargo to use as hostages or bait (less effective—there have been cases where earthlings have jettisoned high-value cargo because of some thing or other triggered in their honour code).- If captured by multiple earthlings wearing non-matching colours, try to get one of them to state out loud a very specific means that is the best means of killing you, or even better, our entire people. This is extremely counterintuitive but many of our best agents swear by it: such a statement, once heard, is inadvertently accepted as a challenge, they will fight each other over which method is the best and you can escape in the confusion.
- Do not let them see your fear. Earthlings have unfortunately assumed a deeply-ingrained fear response to the appearance of our own fear-response displays. Which would seem relatively harmless, except that, having evolved as a slow-moving apex-predator opportunistic scavenger, their fear response is attack.
- Use the name they give you, however unpronounceable. Earthlings routinely slaughter people over perceived slights respecting names, killing earthling, myconian, aerealine, spacer, prosophosid or otherwise indiscriminately.