The Alien Tour Guide

I think about what it would be like to be a tour guide for an alien visiting from another planet.

Of all there is about humanity to know, what would I show someone who has absolutely no context about our planet? Where does one even start? What would demonstrate that we're more than just pieces of meat?

We start with the best of what we are. What are the things that show what we are when we are at our best? Or when we are most human? Most humane?

I'd show them the National Parks, often called America's best idea. It shows the care we have for creation, and our appreciation for beauty. I'd show them our most cherished public libraries, demonstrating our commitment to making knowledge accessible, and putting learning at the center of our communities.

I'd take them to a locally loved marathon, like ours in Detroit - because it would show them sport and community at the same time. Marathons are electric places, there are the inspiring runners - who are everyday people - that each have an inspiring story of why they run, thousands of volunteers, people lining the streets and cheering on strangers from their porches. And in Detroit, there's a polka house handing out beer, and a group of people with Scottish heritage handing out whiskey shots to runners going by.

I'd take them to the neighborhoods of our cities, and the community meetings in smaller towns - to see people who look out for others, for no applause or compensation. I'd take them to a wedding, a funeral, and a child's first birthday party so they can see the full spectrum of what love can be.

I'd take them to a local company's production of a Shakespeare classic, as an example of a human condition so timeless people care to share the story centuries later. I'd take them to a water treatment plant to show them we've cared about problems as basic as sanitation for centuries, too.

I'd take them to a backyard bonfire to see friendship at its purest. Or caroling, with people singing for the sheer joy of it and sharing it, to see music at its purest. Or to a playground to see play at its purest. I'd take them to a Thanksgiving dinner to see family, gratitude, and tradition all rolled into one.

The beauty of thinking this way - about being a tour guide to an alien - is that they probably wouldn't care about what's famous. They would care about what's real, and ordinary because those are the things that are universal. And I think these things - the best of who we are - do show that we are more than pieces of meat. Much more.

The best of who we are as human beings, are not big things. They are small moments of beauty, peace, love, service, compassion, and friendship. The best of what we are as a species is not indulgence, or perhaps even innovation. The best of what we are is our humanity, and the small moments where it's most alive.

Disclosure on my use of ai

I owe it to you, the reader, to be honest about what I use generative artificial intelligence (ai) tools for, what I do not, and my rationale. This disclosure was last updated on October 4, 2026. I believe this is important so that you have the information you need to assess the intrinsic value, veracity, and trustworthiness of what I create.

DISCLOSURE

I do not and will not use ai to generate drafts, in full or in part, of a blog post or other document. This is the vast majority of the types of information on this website. I do not use ai to generate significant sections or paragraphs of content during rewrites.

I do use ai for proofreading and for suggesting the top ways to improve my posts. I do use ai to render images from creative briefs that I define. I use ai to generate ideas for titles, image concepts, or summary descriptions of posts I write.

I use ai for some things because I'm not good at them (like titles) or can't produce them myself (images). They aren't what I actually care about creating.

I occasionally use ai to help me understand how my ideas compare to other work, or to understand previous work done on a subject area I am writing about.

RATIONALE

I tried using ai more significantly for drafting, experimentally, in late 2025 and early 2026. But no longer. Here is why:

1. I didn't like it. No matter how much I tried, my voice and style were lost. The words I chose and the turns of phrase that provide nuance were washed away. My work was no longer authentic and it wasn't fun for me to publish something that didn't feel like my voice or my ideas.

2. I had to decide what I wanted to be and I decided I wanted to be an artist. I don't publish for commercial purposes. I don't do this for volume. I don't do this for the clicks or to sell ads. I do this because I have a point of view to share. I have something to say. I cannot be an artist if I concede the primary creative act to ai, or any other person for that matter.

3. There are deeper questions and beliefs at play too. Ai copies from the works of authors I have not paid, and that I cannot even cite. There's also the question of blurring truth and responsibility. I can't regulate the nuance of what I say or own up to it, if I let ai write it. And first and foremost, I believe the world needs novel ideas, that are brave and also strange. Ai cannot do that, because it does not have lived experience. It does not feel. It does not suffer. It does not desire anything. It does not imagine and it does not die. It does not seek free will nor can it be granted it.

4. And there of course is the ontological discomfort. Should we be conceding the act of creation to something that cannot suffer and that we cannot control? Why would I willingly give something so sacred and divine up? The act of creation is a humanizing act - it makes us more fully alive. Similar to love, joy, sex and reproduction, friendship, learning, experiencing the natural world or our faith in God. I want to give ai the parts of my life that are dehumanizing, not the ones that are most humanizing. To give up what makes us human is dangerous and has far-reaching consequences - some that are obvious to predict (a plummeting of meaning) and others that are not.

I am of the belief, after much reflection, that anyone - especially artists and any person or organization that serves people - should disclose how they use ai - so the audience and the customer can judge for themselves, decide whether they want to engage, and determine if the use of ai is humanizing or dehumanizing.

That is why I disclose this to you.

With love from Detroit,
Neil

What is family? What is holiness?

There is a T.S. Eliot quote our pastor shared at a homily recently that stuck with me.

“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm—but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”

There are a lot of ways to define what a family is. One is this: family are the people to whom you do not need to prove that you are important.

This touches on a fear that undergirds how I show up as a father. I fear losing a son to suicide—that they’ll feel their life is unimportant. The pressures of being kid today, that are beyond what I ever carried, rattle me. I want them to know that they matter to me, that I love and value their mere existence, without condition, without pretense.

To embrace someone as important, without requiring them to prove or justify it, takes a kind of moral strength. It’s easier—though not trivial—to love your spouse and children this way. But what about friends? Neighbors and colleagues? Strangers? Enemies? What about those who try to violently hurt, exploit, and abuse us? What about them?

To value and love them is harder. To embrace them in a way where they do not have to prove and justify their importance? I think that’s a way of defining another elusive concept: holiness. To embrace, wholly, those people who are not already part of your community, and that may even try to destroy it? To see the value and human dignity in them? Without condition or pretense?

That’s holiness.

—

With all this, I wonder.

How much of injustice, of violence, perhaps of senseless suffering even, disappears. Just disappears, if those who yearn to be seen and valued feel important. Without condition and without pretense.

How much of that disappears with holiness?

Would they stop for us?

Encountering another intelligent species from elsewhere in the universe is a problem for the distant future. Still, it is an instructive one for our time.

Imagine that we had the capacity for first contact—say, through faster-than-light travel. Our interstellar flagship passes near a distant world. The first question its crew would ask is simple: Do we want to stop?

If they had the luxury of choice, they would likely evaluate that civilization along two dimensions.

First: What is their intent? Do they seek cooperation and mutual enrichment, or exploitation and dominance?

Second: What is their capability? Do they actually possess the power to carry out their intentions—peaceful or otherwise?

A civilization that is hostile and capable would be dangerous. One that is peaceful but utterly incapable might not be worth engaging. Intent and capability, together, would shape our decision.

Of course, determining either would be extraordinarily difficult. Learning to assess an alien civilization might take centuries. But these questions are not merely hypothetical.

We may create an artificially intelligent, Earth-based species in our lifetimes. But long before AI takes on physical form, we will face the same dilemma: What are its intentions? And how powerfully can it impose its will?

Yet before worrying about how we evaluate others, a more uncomfortable question presents itself.

What about us?

If an extraterrestrial civilization were passing through our solar system, how would they assess humanity’s intent and capability? Given the choice, would they stop—or continue on their way?

When I look in the mirror, and consider the history of our species up to the present, here is what I see.

I see a civilization whose intent has long been fearful and exploitative, yet has slowly, unevenly, inched toward governing itself more justly. Our past includes conquest, slavery, genocide, and monopolistic corporations. Empires swallowed continents. Entire peoples were systematically pillaged or murdered. Private power frequently corrupted public life. It is arguable that all these are still part of our reality.

And yet, over centuries, something has shifted.

Large-scale territorial conquest has become less acceptable, even when it still occurs. International institutions intervene—imperfectly, but meaningfully. Economic power remains unequal, but counterweights exist: unions, industry associations, regulatory regimes, and cultural movements that attempt to restrain abuse.

History does not move in a straight line. Exploitation resurfaces in new forms. But over long periods, the trajectory seems to bend—slowly—toward cooperative enrichment rather than exploitation. Two steps forward, one step back.

That progress matters. It suggests that, in the long run, our species has shown some capacity for moral learning. We inherit exploitative systems, but we also attempt—however inconsistently—to reform them rather than let them expand.

Our capability, however, tells a different story.

We have not harnessed the energy of our own planet, let alone our sun. We cannot survive beyond Earth without elaborate life support. We are actively degrading the habitability of the only home we have. We do not fully understand our ecosystems, our biology, or even our own minds.

Technological power has grown faster than wisdom. We build tools whose consequences we cannot fully contain. From nuclear weapons to climate systems to algorithmic platforms, our inventions routinely outrun our ability to govern them.

We are both feeble and reckless.

If I were the captain of a spacefaring vessel, I might conclude that, whatever our intentions, humanity remains a relatively immature civilization—morally improving, yet operationally juvenile. I would probably keep moving. Why risk engagement with a species still learning how to manage itself?

And yet, I wonder what we might still offer.

Perhaps our stories would matter. Homer and Shakespeare, Whitman and Rowling, express something enduring about love, fear, identity, and loss. Even an advanced civilization might find in human literature a unique window into our shared experience of consciousness.

Perhaps our experience with diversity would be instructive. Earth’s extraordinary ecological and cultural variation has forced us—imperfectly—to negotiate difference. Managing pluralism is central to our history. It may not be universal across intelligent life.

Perhaps even our physical fragility is meaningful. We are short-lived creatures, acutely aware of mortality. “Life is short” is not a cliché for us; it is a through line of how we navigate reality. For a species that lives centuries, or never dies, our relationship to time and death might offer unexpected insight.

It is possible that artificial intelligence will become our first true encounter with another form of intelligence. It is also possible that, centuries from now, we will meet non-Terran life. In either case, the same questions will apply.

What are our intentions? And are we capable of living up to them?

These questions offer a kind of civilizational north star. If we can cultivate a shared commitment to enrichment rather than exploitation—and if we can build institutions and technologies capable of sustaining that commitment—we will not only prepare ourselves for first contact.

We will make life better, here and now, for the people who already call our sacred, fragile, beautiful planet home.

Who’s In, and Who’s Out?

Each of us—myself included—draws a line somewhere: a boundary between who belongs and who doesn’t. Who’s in, and who’s out?

It’s not just a social question—it’s moral, political, and spiritual too.

To us as social animals: Who will I treat with respect—and even associate with?

To our inner souls: Who has intrinsic worth, and who doesn’t?

To the policymaker: Who gets to participate as equals in public life—and share in public goods?

To followers of Christ: Whose feet am I willing to wash?

Every version of these questions asks us to take a position—on human dignity.

And in our daily lives, we all answer them through our choices, whether intentionally or not.

Humans have grappled with these questions for generations.

But these questions are especially urgent now—because of the sweeping transformations that may reshape the human race within our lifetimes.

We need to be concrete in our values before these changes come—so we’re not tempted to rationalize our way into betraying them when the stakes are at their peak and “winners” and “losers”emerge.

We need to take a position on human dignity—before AI, AGI, and humanoid robots are advanced enough to replace human bodies and even human connection at scale.

We need to take a position on the intrinsic value of life—before therapeutics emerge that could extend human lifespans by decades, or even indefinitely.

We need to take a position on our relationship with Earth—and its natural resources—before we expand to other worlds and risk exporting a disregard for life and dignity beyond this planet.

So who’s in—and who’s out?

Our family and friends?

People who annoy us? “Weirdos”?

People who can help us get “ahead”?

Those who went to a rival school—or cheer for a rival team?

What about people with questionable integrity?

Who’s in and who’s out?

Returning citizens?

Foreign nationals?

What if they are chronically sick—or infectious?

What if they’re uneducated?

Or homeless? Or poor?

Who’s in and who’s out?

What about children—and others who can’t advocate for themselves?

What about people with “disabilities”?

What if it’s a genetic condition—versus someone who drove drunk and ended up paralyzed?

Who’s in and who’s out?

What about people who voted for “the bad guys”?

What about criminals? What if they’ve repented?

What about people who have committed heinous crimes—like massive fraud or genocide?

What about someone we could exploit—if we wanted to?

What about someone we’re afraid of—for any of a thousand rational or irrational reasons?

Who’s in and who’s out?

Even if it costs us money, is in comfortable, or requires sacrifice?

Where do we draw the line?

Who do we treat with dignity and respect?

Who’s in—and who’s out?