With "our nature" I mean the nature of humanity as a whole rather then individuals. An individual can change the vision of humanity, but it's the vision of humanity as a whole that dictates the road on which we proceed to find new knowledge.

We tend to increase our own believes based on the fact that others agree with us. Quantity means truth. A simple and quite easily visualized example of the importance of the opinion of the masses and throughout our history are our beauty ideals. Being fat was considered beautifull for a while because it meant you were rich and could afford good life. The romans had special "bra's" to prevent growth of breast, because that was considered beautifull; in contrast now we insert silicon to increase breast size because it is a current beauty ideal. Having no ass was considered pretty not too many years ago, now we see big booty's all over tv in rap music video's, movies, commercials, magazines and we consider it beautifull. '

Now for those who consider this type of example too superficial and too ridden of pure scientific logic, lets look at another example that is relates to astronomics. It did find it's manifestation longer ago, but it's just as valid an example. For thousands of years, we thought the earth was flat. It looked flat from our perspective, so that's what it had to be. We all believed it was, so we considered any other opinion to be wrong. It was only later, when our perspective on the world had grown that the idea that the earth was round was stronger, then the beliefs of the masses. Which introduces to us the next important point;

We identify ourselves by the world around us. Even fantasy stories that we know aren't possible find all their roots in resemblance to the world around us. For the largest part of our existence we believed the world to be flat, untill we didnt. For the largest part of our existence we haven't known that there are other worlds besides our own, untill we didnt. For the largest part of our existence we havent had any knowledge that would indicate that there is even the possibility of life somewhere else, because of a lack of a "somewhere else". For the longest time we didn't consider the possibility of life existing in forms significantly different from us, untill we could relate knowledge gained about the world to the point where we could proove the theoretical posibility of silicon-based life-forms. We identify truth by our conseption of reality. Even our gods we've created after our own image. I think maybe it's similarly been ground into our vision of the world over the course of many, many, many thousands of years that life should resemble us, that water means life, that life should be serched for in our likeness.

It's the thought that we are the pinnacle of evolution in the sense that "this is the way life should be, and this is the evolutionary road life should be on" that keeps our quest for extraterrestial life on the road it is on. But is it the only way?

oh, and american idol is hardly related to the search for extraterrestials. Although you might somethimes think some of their "singing" acts could be part of some exotic alien rituals.

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