How do Exoplanet Leaders Create Highly Sustainable Worlds? The 9 Leadership Principles of Really Prescient Aliens

So scientists are now finding a staggering number of exoplanets. My guess is that, eventually, we are going to find out that they harbor, or have harbored, an uncountable number of alien civilizations.

I am also guessing that, of this huge number of alien civilizations, the vast majority will have, like us, destroyed or are destroying the sustainability of their planetary homes and thus gone extinct. But even the small percentage that isn’t in that category still represents a vast number anyway.

Any alien life will be of existential interest of course. But those aliens who have discovered the secret to saving their planets will be right up there. Because that feat is likely to have been a result of their own special leadership approaches.

Take Me to Your Leader

So I know it sounds weird, or even, hmm, out of this world. But that’s why, it seems to me, studying the leadership practices of aliens is going to be a really important thing to do (once we find them of course). That is, so we find out how to save our own little exoplanet. It’s likely to be even more important than finding out what these aliens are made of, although that’s really important too.

But there can’t be anything more important to us humans than to find out how to save our rapidly decaying planet and with it, us all including yours truly.

And maybe, amongst all the many sustainability issues, they can also give us the answer to climate change.

To see some of the questions I would ask of these laudable creatures, look to the bottom of this post.

Don’t Judge a Rook by its Brother

OK so maybe I’m jumping the gun a little (ok, a lot) since we haven’t exactly found any aliens yet, let alone alien civilizations. But Schrodinger hadn’t found a black cat that was both dead and alive at the same time when he proposed his famous thought experiment. But later we found it (kind of, in the form of quantum indeterminacy). So we might have to rely on a thought experiment as a source of epistemological respectability for now.

So the thought experiment is this: when and if we find aliens and can communicate with them, or at least analyze them from afar, what will we find out about the leadership habits of successful aliens? That is, those who neither destroyed their own planetary abode and at the same time kept it healthy enough to sustain their alien civilization indefinitely?

Yep, I realize that I am sooo constrained by our stupendously narrow human horizons. But someone’s gotta try, right?

Nothing New Under the Suns?

First let’s make a few working assumptions, just to make things a bit easier.

• ·         Law of evolution; Darwin’s laws of evolution work on exoplanets, no matter what the form of the species; there will also be epigenetic means of expression even though they might be completely different chemically to such mechanisms on Earth
• ·         Individual intelligence: no matter what the physical form of the species, intelligence is individualized, not collective i.e. it is not distributed as for example in the famous astrophysicist Fred Hoyle’s Black Cloud
• ·         Biological, information expression: every alien species will have a way of reproducing through a an information expression mechanism such as genes although it could be completely different in its actually molecular structure and composition; these genes will function so as to perpetuate themselves and the group to which they are most closely related
• ·         Aliens will live in societies that will probably have totally different ways of expression to ours, but will still embody concepts such as community, competition, power and love
• ·         Alien civilizations will not have perpetual motion so still have to get their energy from somewhere, with all that this entails for planetary entropy
• ·         Aliens are capable of rational thought, even if they are often irrational; they have self-awareness, consciousness, emotions and they can communicate with these to other aliens

The Big 9 Alien Leadership Principles

So, here are the results of my thought experiment, namely which particular out-of-this-world leadership practices led to the achievement of true planetary sustainability of the uber-successful alien civilizations we will have found.

1.       1. All important corporate and governmental decisions measured against the criterion of long-term planetary sustainability, not just short-term profit.

2.       2. A formal legal theory of sustainability, incorporating legal rights for both animated and inanimate planetary forms is the basis for planetary leadership practice. The aliens are considered to be just one type of planetary form and their rights are not superior to other forms, both animate and inanimate.

3.       3. Other species and planetary forms  also have legal rights and can sue aliens. Inanimate objects (such as rocks, water etc.) are considered to be a key part of sustainability with legal rights under the law. Inanimate forms are protected since they are habitats for other species and impact global climate.

4.       4. Societal decisions are all evaluated based on the happiness and emotional welfare of both the aliens and all other species on the exoplanet. The impact on other species (including plants) and inanimate planetary forms of any changes to the planet’s systems caused by the aliens are formally considered in this process.

5.       5. The impact on other planets and extraterrestrial bodies of planetary emissions (chemical and electromagnetic), both incoming and outgoing,  are also formally considered in this process

6.       6. Everyone on the planet is educated in sustainability and given an SQ (Sustainability Quotient) rating which they carry with their planetary identification number. Leaders are selected in part based on their SQ quotient. A leader’s ability to consider others’ feelings on sustainability is also a formal part of this process

7.       7 All organizations have to demonstrate that their products and services will increase the level of planetary sustainability. Teams in organizations are also awarded SQ quotients based on team objectives and structure  and on the level of alignment between team sustainability objectives and individual objectives.

8.       8. All commercial and government transactions involving exchanges of resources have to be accounted for using SQ accounting which reveals the true cost of any decision in sustainability terms. Government decisions can only be implemented if SQ transaction outcomes are positive.

9.       9. All of the above also applies to other planets visited or colonized by the aliens, as if they were their own exoplanet.

 Sounds like a nice place to live, right? Maybe we could learn a thing or two from these alien guys?

 All aboard for the Mars Explorer!