Looking For ET, And Carrying On, Even thougth There Is No Hope

SUPPOSE, IF YOU WILL, that there exists a planet orbiting a star one thousand light years from earth, on which adheres a highly technologically advanced, intelligent civilization. Advanced, because they have smart phones and space flight; intelligent, because they have avoided self destruction through nuclear bombs, environmental suicide, and the like. They know when to turn their smart phones off, say, and they know when to stop worrying about manufacturing wealth and when to start caring for their planetary ecosystem, for instance. Thus, they have survived, so far, just like, so far, we have. (knock on wood). They are curious, like we are, let's assume, and like we do, they turn their telescopes towards the heavens and start looking for other intelligent life, like, say, us, assuming you can call us "intelligent". They point their antennae at us, by sheer happenstance. Out of the entire sky, they just happen to take a look at little old blue earth, which is a stretch, but could happen. We humans are their next door neighbors, because a thousand light years is nothing; a mere hop, skip, and jump. The point is, they are seeing the Earth as the light from earth arrives at their telescope, which means they are looking at the earth as it was in the year 1017, before we started sending signals and spacecraft into outer space. They have no way, in other words, of knowing that we are here, in the year 2017. The whole point here is; even if there is a perfect storm; a smart alien species living on a planet fairly close to us, looking for us, and they happen to find us; they will not be able to see us, because they will not be able to see us as we are now, but as we were, when we were, um, primitive. Which means they won't see us at all, because in 1017, we gave off no signals or light of any kind. The whole point is that, no matter how many advanced, intelligent life forms there are in the galaxy, looking around, the chances of their finding us, and the chances of our finding them with our search projects, is, well, infinitesimally slim. Here on Earth we have been looking for smart life on other planets for over half a century, with several different projects. The SETI (Search (for) Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) project is now privately funded, because government lost interest, but it is up and running, still. And yet, in all these years, the actual amount of space we have covered in our search is equivalent to one glass of water in the Atlantic ocean. Not surprisingly, we have found nothing, so far. we probably never will. And anyone who thinks that there has been, currently is, or soon will be contact with extraterrestrials, is, well, most probably completely full of it. And that, I for one find incredibly depressing. Somehow, we must carry on.