Aliens provide me with a similar hope that religious people get from God. I think as I grow older humanity's prospect look bleaker and bleaker, it might very well be my generation. I'm relatively young and so I'm pretty sure I will be alive to live the "okay, we really are screwed" or "yes, we've successfully pulled out of this one" moment.<p>But Aliens? I think the discovery that there is some intelligent life out there would completely shake humanity. That would be a kind of event that I would most definitely want to live through. I would want to experience how humanity changes with it... positively or negatively.