Will Chuck Berry save a future alien race from Millennial-driven genocide?

Pictured: Chuck Berry, a future alien messiah? 

What do Chuck Berry, aliens, the Prime Directive, and Millennials have in common? This blogpost. They've also all been in the news lately. And, as we'll see, they're more connected than you might think at first.

First, Chuck Berry. The legendary musician died last week at age 90. Many consider him the founder of rock 'n' roll. Between his guitar-centric, bluesy output, his theatrical stage persona, and wild personal life, it's hard to object to this title (unless you think Marty McFly deserves credit). The semi-autobiographical* "Johnny B Goode" may not have technically been the first rock 'n' roll song, but it was probably the most influential of rock's early period, earning Berry a legion of fans and imitators:



When the British Invasion began, many of its soldiers professed and demonstrated an admiration for Berry. The Beatles were fans; the first song they played at their first American concert was a cover of his "Roll Over Beethoven":



And here's The Beatles' version:



For further testament of Berry's influence on The Beatles, witness John Lennon's live performance with Berry:



And George Harrison's rendition of "Johnny B. Goode":


As befits the band that John Lennon (rightly) called "Son of Beatles," Electric Light Orchestra also covered Berry's hit, producing a raucous, 8-minute long uptempo rocker with orchestral snippets and backing that I consider the song's best cover:

Even without being inducted to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame's inaugural class, Chuck Berry has earned a place in rock 'n' roll history. Looking at the state of rock today, a cynic could even say he outlived rock itself.

Though Chuck Berry may have died to this world, he will actually outlive all of us. For in 1977, NASA affixed a golden record to two probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, sent into deep space for a journey from which they would not return. Scientist Carl Sagan, among others, chose the contents of that record to maximize the information an intelligent alien race that might find it would glean about Earth and humanity from it. According to Smithsonian Magazine, the record includes "15 analog-encoded photographs, greetings in 55 languages, a 12-minute montage of sounds on Earth and 90 minutes of music." Some specific items include:
-A silhouette of a male and a pregnant female
-DNA structure
-Diagrams of eating, licking (but remember: Licking doorknobs is illegal on other planets!), and drinking

The music selections included were some more classically-oriented works...and Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode." One of the Voyager record's other compilers objected to Berry's inclusion, calling the song "adolescent." To which Sagan replied: "There are a lot of adolescents on the planet." Indeed, some of those adolescents may have watched the 1977 Saturday Night Live sketch in which Steve Martin played a psychic who revealed the first four words uttered by extraterrestrials, words that would appear on the front cover of the next week's Time Magazine: Send More Chuck Berry.



There are far worse ways to establish first contact. In fact, a recent poll revealed that American human beings might not be so accommodating if we find the aliens first. We would, instead, be quite likely to violate what is known in Star Trek lore as the Prime Directive, the principle (routinely ignored in the show) that dictated strict non-interference in the affairs of civilizations that had not yet achieved faster-than-light travel.

The YouGov Poll (full results here), released last week, asked the following:

How I wasn't called about this poll, despite my expertise in this area, is a mystery and a rank injustice of the highest order. Anyway, here were the overall responses: 

I would have gone with option four myself. 

A plurality of overall respondents favor breaking the Prime Directive to help the alien race advance. And eight percent (!) of the human race would favor revealing ourselves to a discovered alien race, and either enslaving or destroying it. Go humanity.

Millennials, a demographic cohort still being defined (stipulated in this poll as current 18-24 year-olds which seems about right to me), but to which I belong, had the most fascinating responses to these questions:




Yes, you read the correctly: Millennials, supposedly the most tolerant and open-minded generation in American history, are more enthusiastic about enslaving or exterminating an alien race than any other polled demographic. To be fair, we're also more enthusiastic about helping that race advance than any other demographic (though "Generation Z" or whatever it's called wasn't polled). Maybe it's just that we're more sure of ourselves in general. Whatever you think, though, it's an interesting result. The fate of a future alien race may depend on whether it and and the humans who ultimately make first contact know about Chuck Berry**. Be good, Johnny. Be good.

*The lyrics speak of a young person who learns how to play guitar in a bid for immortality:

Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans,
Way back up in the woods among the evergreens
There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood,
Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode
Who never ever learned to read or write so well,
But he could play a guitar just like a ringing a bell...

...His mother told him, "Someday you will be a man,
And you will be the leader of a big old band.
Many people coming from miles around
To hear you play your music when the sun go down.
Maybe someday your name will be in lights
Saying 'Johnny B. Goode tonight'."

**Maybe history will remember Chuck Berry as the "representative" of the rock era. And maybe we will find that the aliens have fashioned their civilization after the Chuck Berry recording; something similar happened in many Star Trek episodes.