The original post: /r/aliens by /u/gmoshiro on 2024-08-23 14:00:38.
First thing first, I'll go with the direction that inteligent Life is the rarest thing in the universe, so the NHIs aren't exactly here because of natural resources we got. They're interested in us.
We're not as advanced as them, so they'll always have the upper hand on whatever they do, benevolent or malevolent. But we aren't as primitive either as uncontacted tribemen in isolated islands.
Perhaps they've encountered all sorts of life forms everywhere, mostly bacterias or small animals & insects, and when they found actual inteligent beings, they weren't technologically too distant from eachother. So it lead to both positive interactions and cooperation, or straight up wars like what we have here amongst the powerful nations throughout history.
For beings in the "middle of the road" like us, still struggling to launch humans to the moon and yet to step foot to the closest neighboring planet, they see us with curiosity and caution.
Let's say past planetary wars between 2 or more different NHIs lead to some horrible shit going on with lesser evolved life forms. They used them as pawns in the wars, did some nasty experiments to test weapons or to advance medicine, some gave them the tech and limited knowledge to fight side by side... Overall, it was a mess. And some of them don't want to repeat the same mistakes.
Now, assuming they may be in a more peaceful era - so the huge wars are things in the past like WWI and WWII to us - or in a more peaceful part of the universe, maybe there're still NHIs that we could compare to, say, North Korea or Russia (dictatoships still in existence even now) while others are like current Japan or Germany (nations who were in the wrong side of history in the WWII, who made a 180⁰ and not only learned from past mistakes, but are now great positive examples), with us in the middle of the ocean (universe) unaware of our surroundings.
Tons of NHIs from all over the universe are coming and doing their own thing, individually and apart from eachother. Hence why we have experiencers telling about different species and shapes of UAPs.
From anthropologists going alone and living with the tribes to study and learn, documentary crews recording rare and unusual traditions and lifestyles to show to the world, doctors taking vaccines to help them with foreign diseases, linguists studying their languages for better communication, to stuff like illegal companies worsening the deforestation, colonizers (from history books) enslaving them and taking their resources & land, or to use the lesser beings for wars like in the context I presented.
Even though wars aren't happening, it could be a universal Cold War scenario. You never let go of your nuclear weapons in hopes that the world is peaceful enough. You make everyone have their nuclear warheads so no one attacks eachother.
Not that we are their nuclear weapons. But I believe the more species they befriend or control, the better. The situation now is that there're many NHIs with different agendas, doing their stuff with us while avoiding starting major wars (see the situation with Ukraine x Russia, or China in the process of invading Taiwan, and how the world is dealing with all this. We all want peace, but interfereing too much could escalate to WWIII).
