Astronomers searching for intelligence beyond the Earth’s atmosphere have detected a strong signal from a star 94 light years away. If it’s artificially produced, it is strong enough to suggest a more advanced civilisation than our own. This could be the year we discover life on another planet. More depressingly, this could be the year that life discovers us. Frankly, it’s kind of an awkward moment in human history to be discovered, like your mum walking in on you one evening during your formative teenage years. If Aliens discover us in 2016, then they have caught us with our trousers down.

It isn’t just the man buns, the fixies, the septum piercings, Jared Leto’s joker or the way that 2016 seems to be killing off anyone with any discernible talent: this is a truly cringeworthy year to be discovered by creatures smarter than ourselves. Our claim to intelligence is fatally undermined by how we treat our achievements as a species. Our global communications network promises near-infinite knowledge and connectivity, but is overburdened by pornography, cat photos, and anonymous abuse aimed at women. We crash cars that aren’t as self-driving as we hope them to be. We watch television shows in which other people just watch television shows. The most exciting recent development has been the creation of an autonomous drone for delivering pizzas in New Zealand, but there are parts of the world we can’t reach with basic aid.

Modern culture circles the bowl of the toilet, as we define ourselves in reference to either side of a dispute between millionaire pop musicians whose confected disputes are as performative and superficial as their relationships. 87 million of us follow Justin Bieber on Twitter, more than even the President of the United States, Judge Judy is the highest paid star on US TV and the great British public voted Mrs Brown’s Boys the best situational comedy of the 21st Century. Television shows now consist of men and women being revealed naked to one another. Cinema has been infantilised, with half of the ten top-grossing films of 2016 being superhero franchises. Another four were CGI children’s films about animals, the final one being a Chinese movie about mermaids.

Some of our leading figures describe refugees in dehumanizing, disparaging terms, and around the world there are seemingly intractable conflicts. We over-consume food while under-developed countries suffer famine. Over 400,000 have died in the Syrian civil war, fighting rages in Afghanistan, and the Israel-Palestine conflict rumbles on without a shred of new hope for lasting peace. Added to this mix, the most powerful nation on earth is in the throes of a contest to see which of two deeply divisive and unpopular candidates can make it to the White House. If Donald Trump wins, Aliens would watch on as world peace rapidly unravels.

Closer to home, the majority of the population have voted for a new political approach to our neighbours which nobody fully understands, and which – when it finally happens – is likely to disappoint nearly everybody. Our unelected Prime Minister is challenged by perhaps the least effective opposition leader in history, a man who found himself embroiled in a political scandal about whether he could find a seat on a train. Men are busy writing and reading articles about how to harass women who are wearing headphones. Our political class excites itself with the prospect of a return to imperial measurements and blue passports while the world is – literally – burning. Nasa believes that the Earth is warming up at a speed not experienced within the past millennium meaning that it is now “very unlikely” that we’ll stay within globally-agreed temperature limits designed to see off the worst of climate change. While we get hot and bothered on the internet, our planet is experiencing the hottest years on record as sequential events, threatening mass extinction, population movement, and unparalleled human suffering.

The planet of Shakespeare, Mozart, Aristotle and Einstein is within months and a few bad decisions of making Donald Trump – a man about to face trial for rape - the leader of the free world. We mourn the death of a gorilla shot in Cincinnati zoo while the corpses of children wash up on Mediterranean shores. We distract ourselves from the overwhelmingly huge problems we face with entertainment, box sets, and – dare I say it – the tantalising prospect that aliens might exist. Like so many other intangible hopes for an easier future, perhaps intelligent life might save us from having to act to fix the situation ourselves. If aliens do find us, then they will be shocked. If aliens don’t land and start sharing their advanced knowledge, then we’re going to have to start wondering what more intelligent life forms would do about the state we’re in.