The Hybrid Filter: Trauma, Culture, and the Silence of the Stars The Hybrid Filter Hypothesis is a falsifiable cultural‑ecological model predicting transient technosignatures (ʻOumuamua‑like anomalies, faint infrared excesses, derelict habitats) and excluding faster‑than‑light colonization or galactic empires. Civilizations do not live forever: some burn bright and brief, devouring their planets in conquest; others whisper quietly until their biospheres fail. Only societies that integrate high‑energy redundancy with ecological‑cultural stewardship, carrying both the Sky Father and the Mother, can survive planetary death and persist across interstellar timescales. This framework explains the absence of Dyson swarms and the presence of ambiguous anomalies as the wreckage or rare success of hybrid trajectories. The cosmos may be full of Rama‑like ships: some alive with gardens and rituals, others dead husks adrift. The Fermi paradox is not merely a question of rarity; it is a story of trauma, survival, and silence, and whether a civilization remembers to bring its Mother when it leaves home.