For Small Creatures Such as We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World

by Sasha Sagan

We almost always imagine they look like us but they’re smaller. They have large eyes and no hair. They don’t talk. They don’t know the social mores. They might be good or they might be evil, but they definitely want something from us and as soon as they arrive, everything will be different forever. Babies are not like aliens. Our idea of aliens is like our idea of babies.

There is wisdom, insight, and poetry in it, but it’s not what we believe.