Misconceptions About Outer Space

Mankind has long looked up into the stars and dreamed of traveling those heavens, meeting new races, discovering new wonders. However, there is a large misconception about how those adventures would unfold out in space; so very, very far away from our home world. The general problem resides in mankind's mind, or rather our beliefs as to what dwells out there.
Our misconceptions, for the most part of this generation, began with those unforgettable words 'A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...' Star Wars is probably the most plausible view of a space traveling age. But afterwards, things went a little too far toward the unreasonable human ideals of life in outer space. Humanity sees things too close to Earthling standards and concepts, to fully take in the perceptions of outer space. Shows like Andromeda, and Star Gate-SG1 are interesting, if not slightly diluted ideas. Unfortunately, there is too much humanity in every idea. This is why comedians are able to make fun of Star Trek so very often. Alien life forms will never speak perfect English on any planet you visit and no universal translator will ever be able do its job that quickly. Although each show has its own truths related to a possible future reality, they lack total comprehension of the complete scope of elements that exist outside our atmosphere.
Douglas Adams wrote it best in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy 'The universe is big, really big, you wouldn't believe how mind boggling big it is...". The notion that the entire universe, or at least a very large part of it, would evolve with even the slightest hint of human mannerisms or speech is a pretty narrow view. Larry Niven, in his book RingWorld, gives a description of a race that dwells there and it is far closer to the truth to the 'alien' than we could ever expect. A conscious silicon-based species, which lives for seven thousand years, can only breed once for several minutes of its lifespan, believes it to be complete insanity to put itself in even the slightest hint of danger, and will avoid all contact with anything unfamiliar.
We believe that relations between us and alien races will be thought out and mutually beneficial. One of the most hilarious pictures I have ever seen is the image of a man shaking hands with an extraterrestrial. This is due to the fact that the handshake is a mere Earthling custom and is probably not shared with any other race. It certainly would ruin a lot of photos if humping a leg was an alien form of greeting. But these are the things that people fail to see or conceive for themselves. Certainly a science fiction television show may have an episode about a certain race's silly customs and we would all have an excellent laugh.
But what we don't understand is that those kinds of episodes are actually closer to how things will happen in the future. One race may only communicate through a series of musical bowel noises, while another may consider it polite to defecate in front of someone. Given the human perception at this present time, I really don't think we would be ready to meet even a single other species from another galaxy. For all we know anal probing could be very beneficial or a well-meant high-five. It's really not a large wonder when people get abducted and can't understand or remember anything. They are trying to understand things in human terms.
The fact remains that we really aren't ready to travel into deep space and we certainly shouldn't try to meet any new life forms. What we should concentrate on is helping ourselves and perhaps not taking the job of expanding into space to seriously, at least not at the moment. Space may be the final frontier, but we need to remember that it is a really, really big frontier and it probably doesn't like us very much. Therefore, I wish all those future astronauts luck and urge them to just lay back, let the probing happen, rather then screaming because screaming might be considered rude.