Space opera

 

- I was the Cakravartin for a billion years, dude! 

The most obvious solution to Fermi´s paradox is that there is no paradox to begin with. The "paradox" is really the discrepancy between the subjective delusions of cornucopian cultists about a future space-faring civilization, and the bleak reality that of course that´s just BS and that´s that. 

But let´s play along and assume that there is a real "paradox" here. 

Then, three solutions are possible. One is that we really are alone and has been so all along. Of course, this is unacceptable to the cornucopian Western mind. The high brow scientist may despise the superstitious hoi polloi who believe in ancient or current aliens, while not-so-secretely wishing for contact with future aliens, since such contact would prove that his fever dreams about fusion power and cyborgs can all come true. In secret, he also wants to do puja to the future aliens.

The second solution is that the universe is teeming with intelligent life forms, but the vast expanses of outer space makes it impossible or at the very least extremely unpractical to traverse them - provided alien intelligences even give a damn. Why should we expect them to be 20th century Homo sapiens elite Cosmists? Maybe they are intelligent octopi who just love basking in the rays of an alien blue sun...

The third solution - which I wasn´t even thinking about at first and probably saw on Reddit - is that an intergalactic space empire might actually have existed...10 billions years ago. Then it disappeared (for whatever reason) and now *nothing* is left to prove that it even existed. Maybe at the moment we really are alone and have been for billions of years. We look out at the stars and wonder "where the heck is everyone", completely unaware that we missed out on the best space opera ever performed!

My preferred solution is number two, but perhaps the third one is more humbling.