[twinkletwinkle_]

There's a song by one of my favorite artists, Peter Mulvey, which touches on this point. It's more of a spoken word poem, titled "Vlad the Astrophysicist". In the song, Peter asks Vlad if there are aliens, and if there are, why haven't they contacted us? Vlad answers basically that there almost certainly are aliens, but civilizations don't last for long enough compared to the size of the universe.

> "You see?" He said, "They never meet each other. Time is too long, space is too large. I mean sure, maybe at one time, right next to each other at the same time, fss, fss - Two civilizations sprang up and they had war, better yet they had peace, They had arts exchanges, they had an intergalactic library... but they are all dead now, too. In all likelihood, we are alone, and by the time the next civilization arises, We'll have been gone for a long, long time."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9kbcGfX35M