The fate of humanity

I recently read a very interesting slashdot story on the dangers of the active search for extraterrestial intelligence.
Some of the questions addressed in the story and the comments have repeatedly returned to me while meditating, and I wish to clear out some of my thoughts on this matter.

Firstly, it's the question of whether the Aliens we might come in contact with will be peaceful or not.
There are, in my opinion, only two logical alternatives here. For a society to achive that kind of technological progress, they must either first survive the development of superweapons, or be a totally peaceful race from the very beginning.
If we relate this to out situation here on earth, we find ourself firmly stuck in the struggle for survival from our own mix of techology and hatred. I do not believe we ever will pass this phase by our self.

Secondly there is the question of whether we will be the race to initiate the contact, or if we will be the race to receive visitors. I do not believe we are interesting enough to be a viable target for contact, but we might be visited and studied. Kind of like the human race studies the other races of the Earth. As I already mentioned, I do not believe we will reach a socially stable state to actually start off our own space age our self.

While I have enormous fate in our chance of developing the technological prerequisites for advanced space travel, we have still a couple of matters to finish here on Earth first. Food and water for everyone should be high on that list.