Science Fiction and Leftism
Science Fiction
| September 9, 2006
| Tim
When I was a kid, I used to love science fiction. At first, I read everything I could by Asimov, Clarke, etc. Eventually I drifted into Steven King. When I became a Christian, I dropped the horror and started reading more broadly. I don't know whether I abandoned science fiction books (never completely, but I was no longer as obsessive about the genre) because I hit puberty (and out go the horses and SF novels?), or because there was a religious element to my fascination, and that need disappeared when I became a Christian. (Indeed, I have observed that for many, SF appears to be a kind of religion. Three words: "Star Trek convention." The most far-out Christians sects have nothing on these people. At least they dress as humans.)
In college and thereafter I started to think more about politics, and noticed several predominant streams of thought in SF which would be considered 'liberal' in our comtemporary political climate. I wondered if they might have some contribution to the wide embrace of "liberal" ideas, which, at the time, puzzled me.
So today, I'm just going to jot those down. Star Trek will play a rather broad role, since it is arguably one of the most popular and accessible forms of SF most will encounter. It certainly was something I grew up watching.
Note there may also be a few 'conservative' elements in SF. I'm not going to dwell on that angle (maybe another day) though for balance I'll try to mention any I think of. ("Of which I think?" That's more grammatical, but rather geeky.) This essay isn't meant to be a searing indictment, just a recording of some observations I've been thinking in the wake of one particular novel.
So, without further ado...
Trend 1: The Misunderstood Villain
A common theme in SF is contact with alien races. And the seemingly inevitable conflict which results. Often, these races are simply misunderstood: they apppear villainous at first, but really turn out to be very sweet in their own alien way.
Star Trek: The Horta. Miners are being killed by a rock-like being who, it turns out, is just protecting her young. How cute. Even wrathful god-like entities like Apollo become more reasonable with a good talking-to.
The peaceful Vulcans, we learned, were the same race as the warlike Romulans, only they'd embraced reason. Eventually even the pugnacious Klingons joined the Federation. And esrtwhile Republican Darth Vader? He just needed a family intervention.
"What we have here," typically, "is a failure to communicate."
And so if world-destroying entities are merely 'misunderstood', we grow up thinking perhaps most enemies are we encounter must be just like that. You know, if we'd just have OBL over for tea -- and extra scones with jelly for the other 0.1-30% of Muslims who have a radical bent -- we'd all have a jolly laugh and share the planet happily ever after.
Of course, there are a few implacable foes, too: The Borg, Bruce Sterling's Swarm. Most seem to be hive-minds, so perhaps that's something even SF writers find scary: complete loss of individuality. (A love of collectivism only goes so far, I guess.) But the truly implacable foe, though certainly helpful for tension, seems to be in the minority.
Like Ghengis Khan in China, in time, they are all assimilated.
Trend 2: Moral 'Evolution'
I'm writing this essay using a book-sized computer. It will be read by about 20 people (I guess) located in many places on earth, though mostly in the US. One generation ago, this would have been an SF plotline -- and indeed, the idea was, in the novel I just finished. Now it is reality. So, of course, things are "evolving" technologically.
But are we evolving morally?
Popular SF like Star Trek certainly believes so. STTNG: "In the past, we had war... now we don't. In the past we had capitalism... now we don't. We learned..."
I don't think we're evolving morally. Sure, we've got neat gadgets, but when I read the writings of our grandparents' generation I realize how far we've fallen in some ways. And when I read ancient writings (Psalms, the Oddessy), I find minds which are, as best I can tell, just the same as our own. Looking at the biomechanics, we're no different than ancient Greeks, who were constantly at war. Sorry, but we are not visibly "evolving", morally.
I fear we're simply becoming apes with iPods.
A basic 'leftist' assumption is that humans are basicly good. Thus, when you see evil, the "root" problem must either be "society" (I don't understand that answer -- if people are good, how can a collection of them be evil?) or ignorance. And if the problem is just "ignorance", then of course, as knowlege increases, so will morality.
But history tells me it ain't so: For years Germany was at the pinnacle of technological progress. If you wanted to know something in the hard sciences, a technical knowledge of German was a must. Near the end of WWII, Hitler bombed London with V2 missiles, and the Luftwaffe flew Messerschmidt jets past our primitive prop-driven aircraft. (We're darned fortunate Hitler undermined these German breakthroughs.)
The Germans were the most technological 'evolved' society on earth, and certainly one of the most learned. But that clearly didn't mean they wouldn't toss Jews into ovens, or believe Jews were in secret plots behind all the world's problems, or decide that Poland needed more German tourism.
A counter-trend is dystopian Cyberpunk, like William Gibson's Neuromancer and Bruce Sterling's Mirrorshades anthology. In that future, we're all just oversexed, blissed-out addicts with brightly-colored hair, tatoos, nano-built do-dads, and wires hanging out of our skulls.
That was popular for what, 4 years in the early 1990s? At least we got the Matrix from that.
Trend 3: Atheism
There are very few theistic SF authors. C.S. Lewis took a few attempts at it, but at the core, he was a literary scholar and fantasicst. (I consider Fantasy a completely different genre from hardcore SF, despite their being lumped together in bookstores and libraries.)
So typically, religion is a quant element of the past, something we outgrew. (This being a belief held by full-grown men in Spock ears and Klingon armor at SF conventions who clearly never outgrew their childhood religion.)
Where did we come from? We evolved of course. (And we may have, or may not -- but for many of us, it doesn't answer the question any more than learning we came from our mothers.)
Or -- better yet -- our evolution was guided or seeded by aliens. Which also doesn't answer the ontological question, it just removes it one step. (Though some clearly seem to think otherwise.)
Examples include Clarke's 2001, in which the human race was caused, basicly, by aliens, and Childhood's End, in which scary-looking aliens help move us up to the next technological plateau.
When religion does make an appearance, we usually learn that all religions are the same: none are really true, but a good many are better than the earth-based Western ones. (Think of the Martian religion in Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.) Or religion is yet another primitive impulse we must overcome. (As though chimps or the lesser apes were really into theology.) And, when useful or true at all, there's always a materialistic explanation.
So need I mention that religion plays a huge rule in political alignment? Here in the US, the fact of one's weekly church attendance, or not, correlates very strongly (though not absolutely) with one's voting patterns. So of course I'm discussing the theological implications of SF because they also have political implications. But you knew that, clever you.
Trend 4: Globalism
Imagine there's no countries,
It isn't hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
And no religion too.
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world....
- John Lennon, "Imagine"
When the aliens come, of course, the whole earth bands together to meet / fight / join them. Our distinctions, you see, are what keep us weak. Eventually, we form a global Federation, which everyone joins. Voluntarily of course. (Even the warlike Klingons!) The Federation is all-powerful, of course, but totally non-coercive. (Dream on.)
It is a conservative belief that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So political conservatives disperse that threat through competition. Even the US governmental model is set up to keep three co-equal branches of government at odds with each other.
So US conservatives don't tend to believe all our problems will be magically solved by a one-world government. (In fact, we see it as a danger.) But most SF stories certainly present or are grounded in that view.
Just machines will make big decisions
Programmed by fellows of compassion and vision
We'll be clean when their work is done,
We'll be eternally free, and eternally young...
- Donald Fagan (of Steely Dan), "IGY"
Trend 5: Child-Worship
If you believe that people are born basicly good, as many on the left do, then of course, children are the most moral, being closest to that original, pristine state. If you believe people must learn goodness, as we conservatives do, then of course, you don't believe children should lead the way.
We often about the goodness and leadership abilities of children in pop songs...
I believe that children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside...
- Whitney Houston, "The Greatest Love" [is Narcissism]
SF stories are also replete with child geniuses and leaders. We have the ever-annoying Wesley Crusher (rumor says he was based on Gene Roddenbury's imagine of himself as a child -- eeew), the children in Ender's Game. We have Paul, the teenage messiah in Dune. Luke Skywalker is also little more than a teenager. Anakin is a wonderful until he hits puberty. (Puberty as "the fall." Even Yoda comes off a child-like, eternally unfallen.) And most annoyingly, George Lucas depicts teenaged "Senators" losing their virginity and wisely representing the interests of whole planets at the bequest of a teenage Queen. ("Progressive" indeed!)
I can think of only one counter-example: The Star Trek episode "Miri", which depicts a horde of wild and badly-behaved children, lost and confused without adult guidance. ("Grups burn, and yell and hurt..." Kirk to the rescue, as always.)
Trend 6: Moral and Cultural Relativism
The "Prime Directive" in Star Trek: The Next Generation annoyed most of us -- so it certainly wasn't put there by popular demand. Variants of the idea show up in countless other places, including Stargate SG1. You can't interfere with more primitive races, or let them know about your presence too much.
(Funny, but they think God shouldn't behave that way.)
The basic idea is that "evolution" must run its course, and who are we to judge or interefere? Evolution is obviously much wiser than we are (evolution as 'God') and we must not stop, change, or control it.
Their culture is no better than ours, and no worse: all options are valid, morally-neutral permutations. (Except for cultures which interfere, like ours.)
Amusingly, this idea always seems to break down when we're attacked by superior aliens. If "the Borg" is the next evolutionary step, the Federation certainly did all they could to interfere with that culture and its logical 'evolutionary' consequence to ours. (Somehow 'survival of the fittest' breaks down when humanity is clearly the obsolescent model.)
Or, as I mentioned above, it's often a positive idea that 'superior' aliens are guiding and shaping ours, as long as they're beneficent. In that paradigm, presumably, we're inherantly bad and must not influence "lesser" cultures, but they're both morally good and technologically superior, and should -- subtly. (Aliens as 'God'.)
Trend 7: Free Love
Nobody in the SF world seems to have hang-ups about sex outside of marriage. And some authors, notably Heinlein, really pushed non-traditional sexual arrangements -- despite the fact he himself never apparently practiced them. How many families did we see on the Enterprise, again?
The world of SF is a world of single people. Families change your thinking -- stats show having kids makes people a lot more conservative. Some things which seemed to be great ideas when you were single (unattached sex) suddenly seem kind of stupid or bankrupt when little sets of eyes are watching you and asking questions.
SF is fine as a form of entertainment -- in small doses, especially. I think it's probably a fundamentally 'adolescent' genre, which might explain some of these trends, and why it can be, when done properly, so much fun.
But it also makes a lousy religion, and shouldn't be taken seriously as a guide to social structure, theology, or any practical matter -- except, perhaps, surviving the Borg. ;-)
We seem to have had similar childhood reading lists. Though personally I prefered Asimov's non-fiction essays, since I could get his ideas directly there without the impediment of a plot.
Of course, there are a few implacable foes, too: The Borg, Bruce Sterling's Swarm. Most seem to be hive-minds, so perhaps that's something even SF writers find scary: complete loss of individuality. (A love of collectivism only goes so far, I guess.) But the truly implacable foe, though certainly helpful for tension, seems to be in the minority.
There were certainly evil characters in TGN and in most sci fi stories. But is a reminder to try your best to convert someone before killing them really that morally repugnant? Granted, Vader deserved a few millenia in the electric chair for all the people he killed, but still...If your dad was doing somthing evil, would you try and convert him or would you try and kill him outright? I'd think that the notion that people can change and be forgiven would be seen as a fundamentally Christian one, no? It seems to take more ability to write a complex villan who has some good and sympathetic qualities. As you seemed to support in your earlier review of Cinderella Man, Hollywood has a tendency to make one character an unsympathetic villan and that often doesn't mesh with reality.
Like Ghengis Khan in China, in time, they are all assimilated.
There are numerous human colonists who live apart from the body and power of the federation, losing contact for generations. Perhaps there's somthing to the notion that separation of people through space can substitute partially for the separation of powers? "The mountains are high and the emperor is far away" was the old Chinese road to freedom. And voting patterns in dense urban areas and sparser rural areas seems to support this.
Star Trek never really did deal with the actual planet earth itself much.
(I don't understand that answer -- if people are good, how can a collection of them be evil?)
One of the post episodic Star Trek TGN movies gave a "sci fi" answer to that which I've passionately hated for years, and it amounts to an adoption of the 'great man' hypothesis. In short, Nazi Germany happened only because of Hitler. The Borg were essentially recast as vampires under control of a queen. When the TGN cast killed the Borg queen, all the people in the borg hive were freed of her evil spell. It's one of the oldest moral copouts in literature, which allows for a perfect, instant happy ending like nothing I know. Kill Saddam Hussein and Iraq will be cleansed. Etc. Granted Saddam was evil, but his removal doesn't automatically create a paradise. I don't claim to know whether the 'great man' historical hypothesis is generally predictive or not. Do people really get the governments that they deserve, or are they pawns of their leaders and larger forces when it comes to things like war? I tend to view people as responsible for their actions.I would have prefered to have seen a culture which was forced to become the "efficient" borg due to a competitive capitalist society. That seems like it could happen, sometimes, if we're not careful. You could get the equivalent of a graduate degree without going to college, after all. I'm sure there would at least be some folks in Japan who would jump at that sort of chance, with the rest of the world having to compete. Imagine If a few Star Trek characters could have gone back in time and seen a world where people were "voluntarily" joining the Borg (just to get a decent job), and they had to consider what to do about it? At least that would have put responsibility for the Borg back on the shoulders of the individuals who composed it. The Animatrix kindof touched on that. But it would have been better, I think, if the Matrix agents were voluntary cyborgs.
The basic idea is that "evolution" must run its course, and who are we to judge or interefere?
Or perhaps that a person has to be ready in order to receive certain truths?
"Give me chastity and continence, but not yet." st. Augustine
Though I think the below TGN episode might speak to the point you're making. I especially like the refernce in the title. who watches the watchers The ending pretty blatantly casts Picard as a type of Christ figure for a rational faith who allows himself to be killed and brought back to life (by Dr. Crusher).
Amusingly, this idea always seems to break down when we're attacked by superior aliens. If "the Borg" is the next evolutionary step, the Federation certainly did all they could to interfere with that culture and its logical 'evolutionary' consequence to ours. (Somehow 'survival of the fittest' breaks down when humanity is clearly the obsolescent model.)
But the Borg lost. Which means the authors don't think we're really inferior. TGN started with Picard admitting that the Borg was beyond the Federation's ability to deal with, but the movies show the Federation adapting and defeating the Borg. Besides, the prime directive only applies to pre-warp capacity socieities. Once you build a ship to make the jump to warp (a societal coming-of-age ritual), you get a little visit from your stellar neighibors.
The Federation is all-powerful, of course, but totally non-coercive.
I've never really seen it explicitly stated what powers the federation does or doesn't have. Maybe I'm missing somthing. Star Trek TGN seemed to be focused mostly on StarFleet (how democratic is the current millitary hierarchy?)
If you believe that people are born basicly good, as many on the left do, then of course, children are the most moral, being closest to that original, pristine state. If you believe people must learn goodness, as we conservatives do, then of course, you don't believe children should lead the way.
True, but doesn't that SF meme also have a messianic element?
"The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them."Isa 11:6
If nothing else, a child with wisdom beyond his years can be used by an author to hint that some other supernatural force is behind things.
(I've never had the time to read Dune, but the Bene Geserit seem to match that last part)
And most annoyingly, George Lucas depicts teenaged "Senators" losing their virginity
Well Anakin and Padme did get married.
Or is this what you're referring to?
PADMÉ: I don't know...
ANAKIN: Sure you do... you just don't want to tell me.
PADMÉ: Are you going to use one of your Jedi mind tricks on me?
ANAKIN: They only work on the weak-minded. You are anything but weak-minded.
PADMÉ: All right... I was twelve. His name was Palo. We were both in the Legislative Youth Program. He was a few years older then I... very cute... dark curly hair... dreamy eyes.
ANAKIN: All right, I get the picture... whatever happened to him?
PADMÉ: I went into public service. He went on to become an artist.
ANAKIN: Maybe he was the smart one.
The fact that she was that young suggests she could have been talking about her first kiss or first boyfriend. She's very conservative with Anakin and they get married in secret instead of just fooling around. Where does it say Padme lost her virginity before she was married? And what harm is it if she loses it afterwards? Or was there some visual depiction that bothered you? I suppose the word 'depiction' implies that, but I don't remember anything terribly explicit.
Of course, Padme and Anakin are both presented as being manipulated by other forces to disasterous results, so it doesn't seem like a... what'd the term for government by
kids? Pedocracy? is truly being advocated. Don't knock yoda, man. He seems small and foolish but he's actually powerful and wise. It's a nice metaphor.
Just my 2c.
But is a reminder to try your best to convert someone before killing them really that morally repugnant?
Sigh. Here we go again, Ryan...
I have never said it is "morally repugnant" to attempt to "convert" someone before killing them. I have simply stated that it is misleading to believe every enemy is merely misunderstood.
That is what the word "implacable" means, Ryan. It means "cannot be placated." It doesn't mean you haven't given it a shot. It just means that, when all is said and done, their goal is anthetical to, say, your continued existence.
There are implacable foes, Ryan. We never did convert, say, Hitler. And we didn't "convert" the Japanese during WWII either, unless you considered "conquering" a mere form of persuasion.
If your dad was doing somthing evil, would you try and convert him or would you try and kill him outright?...
Ryan, you ramble on and on refuting arguments I've never made -- and obligate me to waste just as much space and time correcting the record.
Of course, people convert. Of course that's a Christian idea. But it's also a Christian idea that some don't convert because there's this little thing called "free will".
The question isn't about "converting", anyway -- it's about what to do about people / armies / forces / alien races who are killing people by the score -- or millions. I'm simply pointing out that "implacable" foes are rare in science fiction. That's all.
Is that really so hard or elusive? Am I that bad at communicating such a simple message?
It seems to take more ability to write a complex villan who has some good and sympathetic qualities. As you seemed to support in your earlier review of Cinderella Man, Hollywood has a tendency to make one character an unsympathetic villan and that often doesn't mesh with reality.
Here, you seem to imply that I'm opposed to the idea that people are complex, and have good and bad traits. Or that villians should ever be portrayed as complex.
Yet again, you are imparting a view to me that I've never stated.
I don't mind that Darth Vader converted. Please re-read the article: the problem is that there are almost no foes depicted who don't come around to reason. I am arguing against the trend, not one individual case.
Let's say someone said a school was a problem because it was "all white" and thus not racially diverse enough. Would you then suddenly argue there was nothing wrong with, say, little Lenny being "white"? The problem isn't the individual case. The problem is the trend. Please learn to draw such distinctions.
Ryan, this is frustrating for me, because I'm not actually defending anything I have said. Instead, you make me point out, over and over, that I've never stated the views you're attributing to me.
In real life, there are unrepentant villains. They do exist. There are Nazis who went to their deaths hating Jews. There are KKK members who have never admitted their wrongdoing. There are serial killers who have not an ounce of regret. There are people who will not stop before they have done as much damage as possible -- even if you talk to them nicely.
I don't hate the story of the bad man gone good -- as you say, it is utterly common to Christianity. I'm simply pointing out that not every case is like that, and thus the presentation is unrealistic. And, when people are being killed, you can't wait forever for each enemy to maybe, possibly have an epiphany and stop murdering.
I don't claim to know whether the 'great man' historical hypothesis is generally predictive or not. Do people really get the governments that they deserve, or are they pawns of their leaders and larger forces when it comes to things like war? I tend to view people as responsible for their actions.
Finally, something I can actually respond to, not simply disclaim!
Yes, I agree completely. Perhaps, without Hitler, Germany might have done slightly different things. "Great men" (usually evil men) do have a tremendous impact on history. But I agree that without a willing, consenting populace they can only go so far. Hitler would have washed out in about two seconds in colonial America.
Look at Somolia: Hundreds of thousands picked up machettes to kill their neighbors. Nobody forced them.
In the end, I'm a Christian, so I also believe in a "higher evil" behind such actions. Hitler felt he was destined to do what he did, and that he was being protected for that purpose.
Perhaps he was right.
Kill Saddam Hussein and Iraq will be cleansed. Etc. Granted Saddam was evil, but his removal doesn't automatically create a paradise.
For the record, as a Iraq war supporter, I never expected paradise. I was hoping for Kuwait at best, and expected an Egyptian/Syrian-style dictatorship would still be an improvement. I also considered civil war (which seems to be threatening) and fragmentation, and reasoned that less would still be killed than under Saddam. That view stands.
I can't say what others were thinking.
Tim: The basic idea is that "evolution" must run its course, and who are we to judge or interefere?
Ryan: Or perhaps that a person has to be ready in order to receive certain truths?
You appear to be repeating what I said.
who watches the watchers...
That is the primary episode of which I was thinking. Upon re-reading the synopsis (thanks for the link) I see it also conforms to the view of religion I mention above, and also throws in Russeau's "noble savage" to boot.
Tim: If "the Borg" is the next evolutionary step, the Federation certainly did all they could to interfere...
Ryan (my emphasis): But the Borg lost. Which means the authors don't think we're really inferior.
Yes, precisely as I said:
that's something even SF writers find scary: complete loss of individuality. (A love of collectivism only goes so far, I guess.)
Certainly, the authors believe the existence of individual identities is philosophically superior or more desirable the borg-style collective. But that sentiment doesn't necessarily translate into technical/competitive/evolutionary superority.
But the authors, and needs of the audience, must say otherwise. So the battle is won by humans, even though there was no reason to think that outcome was probable, or would be the usual outcome in a strict evolutionary context.
What, no race had ever thought of such approaches before? Gimme a break. If the borg had beaten them, and learned faster than they did, there was no good reason for them not to have done so in this case as well.
Their only 'evolutionary' disadvantage seems to have been that the script writers had it in for them. ;-)
"The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb... and a little child shall lead them."
Unless I'm mistaken, that turn of phrase is being used to show how safe and docile the wolf and lamb are -- not to predict a little child is in charge of the entire world.
... she could have been talking about her first kiss or first boyfriend.
Right. That's why she's so hesitant to discuss it. Kissing was really embarassing to her.
She's very conservative with Anakin and they get married in secret...
Ummm, Ryan? It was Anakin, not Padme, who insisted on marriage. And, far from being a positive element, that's another "conservative" element which was part of why he turned evil.
The Jedi are loosely modelled on Buddhism, where attachments are the big no-no. Jedi were forbidden to marry. (Hence the secret ceremony.) And in the end, this view is confirmed: Anakin's attachment to Padme is what causes him to become Darth Vader.
"Sigh. Here we go again, Ryan..."
You're an ass.
And, Ryan: you're wasting your breath. This is a poorly thought out and scantily researched post.
Josh - And, Ryan: you're wasting your breath. This is a poorly thought out and scantily researched post.
Thanks Josh, but do you expect me to argue if I think he's right? He has some good posts, but I don't touch those.
Tim -
First, does 'implacable' mean cannot be reasoned with, appeased, placated or talked out of and must therefore be resisted, fought or coerced and possibly even conquered?"
Or does it refer to a nation (not individual) that cannot even be coerced into pacivity and must be destroyed to the absolute last man because the devotees will never change their minds? I can think of many real nations which correspond to the first, but few if any which correspond to the second.
I have simply stated that it is misleading to believe every enemy is merely misunderstood.
I agree. But I don't think that the sci fi canons you mention depict a majority of wars being because of misunderstandings. Most of the 'misunderstandings' are from breif, temporary contacts between individuals of vastly different civilizations. Most of the wars are because of genuine conflicts between the civilizations.
Let's say someone said a school was a problem because it was "all white" and thus not racially diverse enough. Would you then suddenly argue there was nothing wrong with, say, little Lenny being "white"? The problem isn't the individual case. The problem is the trend. Please learn to draw such distinctions.
The problem wouldn't be with little Lenny being white, of course. The problem would be an absence of (or insufficient amount of) counterexamples to his whiteness. But just using the two canons you've presented (I'm not so familiar with most of Heinlein), there are plenty of counterexamples of people who couldn't be reasoned with or reached emotionally.
Star Wars doesn't suggest that wars are a misunderstanding that can be reasoned away. The Rebelion didn't reason with the emperor, and the Emperor was evil till destroyed. He was accurately depicted as someone who shouldn't be granted mercy in Episode III. There are attempts to bargain with Jabba, but not after a certain point. In "Star Trek The Next Generation" the Federation is on hostile footing with a half dozen different societies, and goes to war with some of them. But in the process of crafting a peace with the Romulans they're congnizant of the insecurities of the other side. After a long war, The Federation agrees not to build cloaking technology as part of a peace treaty with the Romulans, for instance. The theme is one of enemies who need to be confronted, sometimes violently, and who test the federation's weaknesses regularly, but who can also be more easily dealt with if their own needs and emotional states are taken into account. It's your call whether you consider coercing a viable peace treaty removes the enemy from the "implaccable" list. But I think it's a realistic depiction. Star Trek Nemesis deals with a truly implaccable enemy, but the threat is short lived since the person carrying out the threat is self destructive. As are a lot of totally implacable foes.
In the movie version of Heinlein's Starship Troopers we have a war based on what might be considered outright misunderstanding. That's the only example of war based on misunderstanding in sci-fi that comes to my mind.
Real life situations often result in genuine misunderstandings. Especially when they involve people from different cultures. Yes, Sometimes people use this as an excuse. And yes, there are truly evil people who cannot be changed. But one of my friends once made the observation that when he traveled to a foreign country one of the first phrases he learned was "It was a misunderstanding." He said it worked better than "sorry", and he made very good and frequent use of the phrase.
In short, I think that sci fi, and particularly the shows cited, more or less tend to accurately model individual and societal encounters between wildly different cultures. They're accurate regarding conflicts on both an individual and society wide level, and they differentiate in character between the two levels.
Here's the problem as I see it; People are used to using certain rules of thumb to try and settle the everyday differences in their life (follow the law. Consider whether your problems might just be a misunderstanding, etc.) These rules of thumb fail when applied to international politics because personal conflicts often have substantially different causes and solutions than wars do. It's this attempt to apply our day to day problem solving skills to international problems that leads some people to place a great deal of weight on 'international law' and bodies to enforce it, because they believe in the benefit of law and law enforcement in their day to day lives.
We never did convert, say, Hitler. And we didn't "convert" the Japanese during WWII either, unless you considered "conquering" a mere form of persuasion.
I consider coercion a form of persuasion if it substantially changes how people feel and think and doesn't just elicit superficial compliance. There's conquering and then there's conquering. To put it another way, I think we handled the situation with Japan after WWII better than the Russians or Chinese would have. In part this was because Japan never did to our civilian population what Japan did to China's. Possibly this was also because it was part of our culture to grant mercy. Japan rated pretty high on the 'implacable' scale. But they had a breaking point.
For the record, as a Iraq war supporter, I never expected paradise. I was hoping for Kuwait at best, and expected an Egyptian/Syrian-style dictatorship would still be an improvement. I also considered civil war (which seems to be threatening) and fragmentation, and reasoned that less would still be killed than under Saddam. That
view stands.
I can't say what others were thinking.
Fair enough.
Right. That's why she's so hesitant to discuss it. Kissing was really embarassing to her.
Seriouslly though, she was 12? I've never met a girl who voluntarily lost her virginity at 12. If she was 14-15 I'd think maybe that's what they were discussing. For some girls discussing relationships is outright taboo. Specifically because of the unhappy reaction Anakin gives when Padme fawns over her ex-whateverhewas. *shrug* It's possible since they didn't have him actually say his question that it was what you suggest, but it's unclear at best. I can't find anything that proves author's intent one way or another. But then, Anakin had a coming of age story when he was about 8, so maybe Lucas has as poor a grasp of adolescent development as he does at writing dialoge.
Certainly, the authors believe the existence of individual identities is philosophically superior or more desirable the borg-style collective. But that sentiment doesn't necessarily translate into technical/competitive/evolutionary superority.
Their only 'evolutionary' disadvantage seems to have been that the script writers had it in for them. ;-)
lol. Okay, the authors didn't give a plausible technical/competitive/evolutionary reason for the Federation victory and they suck and should be replaced with Borg. Or at least better writers.
Re moral evolution;
Granted, neither technological progress nor moral progress are immune from backsliding in certain areas. However...You're Christian. You see Christianity as a good doctrine. Christianity and other monotheistic faiths have spread dramatically in the past 1000 years (we could debate demographic proportions and relative levels of devoutness, # of Catholics compared to # of preists etc). But you really don't think the world is in a better position morally despite this? You've just been treding water? I don't follow. Perhaps you're looking at certain ancient individuals who were considered as 'good' and comparing them to modern individuals who were considered 'good' in the present. And you infer from that that the world as a whole is not advancing. Are the past and present samples that you use representative samples of the whole world?
It is a conservative belief that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I think that belief is "progressive" just as much as it's conservative.
Anarchists, who are usually considered leftist (as opposed to libertarians, who are usually considered conservative) also believe, at the least, that centralization of power is a potential threat to freedom, or that it is corrupting. Politically, my experience is that the party out of power tends to assert, at least rhetorically, that power corrupts. Neither party is anywhere close to 100% in followthrough. Funny how that is.
Please re-read the article: the problem is that there are almost no foes depicted who don't come around to reason.
It's a nitpick perhaps, but Jedi don't really use much reasoning. They 'search their feelings' and 'trust the force.' They're mystics, not rationalists. Vader didn't come around because Luke presented a logical argument against rule by empire. He came around because he was watching his son get fried. (live by your attachments, die by your attachments I suppose? Or perhaps episodes 1-3 were of lower quality without Leigh Bracket to hold Lucas's hand?)
Tim: "Sigh. Here we go again, Ryan..."
Josh: You're an ass.
Perhaps. But apparently I'm not alone.
If what I've written is poorly-researched, you're more than welcomed to decimate it. Go right ahead.
First, does 'implacable' mean cannot be reasoned with, appeased, placated or talked out of and must therefore be resisted, fought or coerced and possibly even conquered?" Or does it refer to a nation (not individual) that cannot even be coerced into pacivity and must be destroyed to the absolute last man because the devotees will never change their minds?
As I said, I use it to mean "cannot be placated", where "placated" simply means appeased or pacified -- e.g. stopping the killing.
As far as "destroyed to the last man": Huh? Note the context: I've already suggested Germany and Japan. Did we "destroy them" to "the last man"? If not, then why would you assume I meant that?
Please: arguing endlessly about odd definitions of words is not interesting or a good use of space here.
...the Emperor was evil till destroyed.
If that's true (I didn't see the last episode) it's a good counterexample. (Of course, that makes sense if the Emperor actually represents a Republican, as some allege: the same thing was true of the Reagan-quoting, Rolex-wearing, anti-environmentalist aliens in They Live. I know firsthand that liberals often seem to view us conservatives as irredeemable.)
So you've got like, what, two implacable foes now? (It would have been three, but you pointed out the bit about the Borg Queen, thus showing the Borg could indeed be "converted", as you put it.)
Good points, but not enough to constitute a serious countertrend. Perhaps a few more?
Mindshattingeringly important question of the hour: Was Padme referring to "doing it" in her discussion with Anakin?
Seriouslly though, she was 12? I've never met a girl who voluntarily lost her virginity at 12.
Sure, and I've never met a girl who represented the interests of a whole planet (or even district) in a senate at 14. Nor an elected, barely-pubescent "Queen". (Elected royalty???) Clearly, you can't use "reality" as a gauge for what Lucas means to convey. (And don't even get me started on the midichlorians...)
So I'm willing to concede the reference is ambiguous. (Though I'd be more than willing to bet that most people heard it the way I did.)
For some girls discussing relationships is outright taboo.
Only relationships with guys they respect or are very serious about. Otherwise, they're much worse than we are. (Or so my female friends tell me.)
Anakin had a coming of age story when he was about 8, so maybe Lucas has as poor a grasp of adolescent development as he does at writing dialoge.
I'm tellin' ya man: that's my whole thesis right there, in a nutshell.
Are we "evolving" morally?
You see Christianity as a good doctrine. Christianity and other monotheistic faiths have spread dramatically in the past 1000 years... But you really don't think the world is in a better position morally despite this? You've just been treding water?
Good point, Ryan: I'd been thinking same thing after I wrote that last comment.
There are several major sources of trouble facing humanity. There are the standard ones everyone knows and talks about: ignorance and mother nature (including hurricanes, old age, cancer, scarcity, etc.).
But Christianity also adds this idea of "sin" -- an internal, deliberate tendency towards evil, right here inside me. This tendency of mine -- multiplied by everyone on earth -- plays a huge role in making this world as awful as it can be at times. What the Nazis did, for example, wasn't primarily out of ignorance: it was primarly evil within their own hearts.
I believe Christianity does help somewhat with this problem -- minimally, at least, by making us more aware of it. Do I have problems and failings now? As Josh (perhaps correctly) points out, yes, I can come off as a jerk at times (more in print than in person). But overall, I'm still significantly improved over what I was before I 'converted'. And even if you suspect I'm not much improved, I can give you much better examples of people who have -- guys like Charles Colson, or Barry Minkow, Walid Shoebat, Corrie Ten Boom, or her former Nazi tormentor and guard.
But even so, there still are several considerations:
(1) There's a personal upper limit. Charles Colson (to pick an example), who once bragged that he would "walk over his own grandmother to re-elect Richard Nixon." Clearly, since he's given his life to helping prisoners, he's vastly improved. And he's still improving -- but he still does bad things; he still "sins".
Even the Apostle Paul faced this problem, and wrote, candidly:
I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.... When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body... (Romans 7:14)
[Regarding moral perfection:] Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. (Phil 3:12)
Certianly, since he was a murderer trying to kill Christians before, he was vastly improved. But he also knew he had a long way to go and was still deeply sinful in some ways. Christians certainly aren't perfect, and should never claim to be -- just forgiven. We're just wretches like everyone else, morally hungry beggars who just happen to have found a source of food and are more than willing to share it with others.
(2) There's a upper limit to the number of people amenable or open to such improvement. I'm pleasantly surprised to find Christainity is the most popular belief on earth at the moment (yes, with all the caveats you mention) but I don't think 50% or 90% is going to happen.
In fact, Jesus implies that when he returns there might be very few believers left. ("When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?")
(3) To broaden the question: What about other religions? My view: Other religions also have good things, and share/offer some great truths. But overall, I don't view others as positively. (Or I would have adopted one.) I'm not a relativist. (No-one is, really: but some will not be honest about that that.)
(4) And even with those good things, there's still going to be an upper limit: I suspect certain flavors of Islam, despite some of its extreme fringes, can also be helpful in reforming some people's behavior. As definitely can Mormonism (which I also do not embrace). And Judaism, etc. But there are upper limits in these systems too.
And I think we're rapidly approaching all these upper limits, or even have gone over the cusp. (I can support this assertion further, if neccessary.)
(5) The "evolution" in STTNG (for example) is not a theistic one, as you've noted in the episode you've cited, but rather is an anti-theistic one.
(6) If one believes Christianity is largely or partially responsible for said "improvement", then it is questionable as to whether the term "evolution" should even be used.
Question: Do you know coined the idea for "origin of species"? Darwin actually stole the term from a -- believe it or not -- a leading scientist and creationist named "Edward Blyth" who wrote "Origination of the Species". (See here and here.) "Evolution" didn't mean, at the time, a strictly/only naturalistic process -- just the ascention of forms from simple to complex, usually assumedly as part of God's plan.
Today "evolution" usually implies a purely naturalistic progression. So would it be right to apply the word "evolution" to something claimed to be a result of theistic intervention? Certainly, one could argue the point, but I think the word choice would be misleading to many people -- and I always try to choose the most ordinary, accepted, and understandable definition.
[Total side note, regarding "monotheistic religions". Christianity, Judaism, Islam... all the world's great monotheistic religions sprang from ONE root: Judiasm. I don't understand why so many people hate the Jews so: They have given the world so very, very much. God bless them.]
And you infer from that that the world as a whole is not advancing. Are the past and present samples that you use representative samples of the whole world?
I think some parts of the world are advancing. India, for example, is much better off for having had contact with the west. South Korea is vastly improved from even a decade ago.
But are the people generally better, kinder, wiser people? Are we?
The west, as I see it, has plateaued and is now headed downhill. Not yet in standard of living, perhaps, but certainly in wisdom, morality, and general civility. So there's no reason to think this curve won't apply to other places as well. Perhap it will cycle back again, but it still implies a ceiling has been reached.
Tim: It is a conservative belief that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Ryan: I think that belief is "progressive" just as much as it's conservative.
Really? Then why do "progressive" candidates always run on a platform of increased governmental control and coercion?
In terms of rhetoric, you're right, but not in terms of any meaningful behavior. Republican leaders are sometimes (not always) hypocrites (I can name a few who actually have tried to cut spending and devolve power), but at least Republicans voters try to favor small-government candidates.
Tim: ... there are almost no foes depicted who don't come around to reason.
Ryan: It's a nitpick perhaps, but Jedi don't really use much reasoning.
It is a nitpick, but I agree with your point. They're not merely mystics, but also Buddhists, and -- recall -- the problem is attachments -- including (in Zen) attachment to 'reason'.
In zazen (Zen meditation) reason has to be transcended, because reason lies in the domain of ideas and concepts, whilst true Being is beyond all reason.... To be liberated from the domain of reason, to reach enlightenment, the practitioner needs to transcend the mind (reason)... [1]
He came around because he was watching his son get fried.
True enough. I was, again, using the term "reason" as a loose synomym for a reasonable state of being -- the result, not the crucial stimuli.
I don't see how "child worship" is a left wing political trait. The old refrain "think of the children" usually comes from social conservatives.
And Ender's Game, one of your supporting examples, is written by one of the most politicaly conservative authors writing in the genre.
But that's a relatively minor point. My biggest problem with this entire post is that you substitue "left" for "secular" and "christian" with "right". Sure there's a correlation between the two but that doesn't justify and out and out substitution. Not ever athiest is a lefty and not every conservative is a christian.
In my review of Heinlein's HAVE SPACE SUIT WILL TRAVEL, I made a comment that reminds me of your observation that the Prime Directive is never violated when we fight the Borg--for some reason, evolution is all-wise up until she rules against mankind.
The flipside of this idea is one we might call Heinlein Realpolitick. In several Heinlein books, he dwells on the theme that overpopulation causes wars, and wars are won by strength, smarts, and ruthlessness, and that there is no room for sentimentality: the galaxy is a Hobbesian war of All against All, with no umpire.
This is the anti-prime-directive: we must wipe out the bugs of Klendathu because they are enemies, and compromise is not to be thought of.
The only problem with the anti-prime-directive is that logic requires we humans be treated as mercilessly as any superior aliens who see us as a threat. And there is a precisely a scene in HAVE SPACE SUIT where humanity is put on trial for just this purpose, to assess if we are like a rapid dog, and must be put down for the collective security of our interstellar neighbors.
Christian notions of charity toward the enemy or chivalry toward the weak appear nowhere in this work, or in others I can think of, although Ghandi-like notions of peace through superior spirituality are frequent (starting with DARKNESS AND LIGHT by Olaf Stabledon) or peace through superior science (THINGS TO COME by HG Wells).
Free Market notions of the mutual benefit to be found in trade and commerce with inferior or superior species are likewise rare: can you think of a single example?
Your comment on the ease with which bad aliens can be talked out of their designs--I am not sure if this is a Leftist idea so much as a dramatic one.
In real life, real wars do not end dramatically. Japan knew she was finished months before the A Bomb was dropped. In order to be dramatic, the end must come unexpectedly and suddenly.
A war based on a simple misunderstanding--the miners were killing the horta eggs--can be reversed suddenly and unexpected. A war based on real deep-seated antithesis--Boskone vs. Arisia--cannot be talked away.
But the sudden understanding of a misunderstanding is a dramatic machine, much the same way that the sudden understanding of a fatal alien weakness is a machine, simply a mechanism to resolve the plot dramatically. Have you noticed how many aliens can be killed off by ordinary things?
water (SIGNS)
a head-cold (WAR OF THE WORLDS)
a computer virus (INDEPENDENCE DAY)
sunlight (STAR TREK-the episode Operation: Annihilate!)
country music (MARS ATTACKS)
cleaning fluid (The Slitheen of DOCTOR WHO)
This is not because writers are of a political orientation that demands every alien species be equipped with one Achilles' Heel; it is because drama favors a story with an Achilles' Heel.
Wow, really seem to have generated some good though and counterpoints here. How wonderful! Whether I agree or not, there's a lot of good and provcative thoughts there.
Lots of answers to different people:
Jose: I don't see how "child worship" is a left wing political trait. The old refrain "think of the children" usually comes from social conservatives.
I think I see what you're trying to say: and I think it means I didn't communicately clearly what I meant. Sorry for the confusion!
By "child worship", I don't mean loving children or not wanting them to be harmed in some manner. That's not "worship" -- that's a completely normal, healthy response. (But it encourages me somewhat to hear you believe conservatives manifest it more often.)
By "worship", I mean having an unduly high opinon of the moral goodness and abilities or responsibility of children. That's why I'm citing examples where children are put into positions of leadership, or are much smarter than adults.
Let me give you an example of why this is predominantly a "leftist" view. First, as I've already mentioned, liberals, much more often than conservatives, feel people are born good. Do you disagree? If not, then you must admit that it implies we start life good, and then often head downhill.
Second, study the teaching techniques which come out of (strongly left-leaning) education schools: One current trend is to put children into a circle and let them "discover" (say) the mathematical principles which it took civilization thousands of years to work out. Whether you think that's sensible or not, you must surely be able to see that few (if any) conservatives think this is sensible, and that most children will be capable of doing such effectively.
Let me give you another example: voting ages. There's a push among Democrats to lower the voting age. Conservatives don't support this. So, again, this clearly indicates Democrats have a higher view of teenagers' decision-making abilities and political wisdom than conservatives do.
One final example: Childrens' rights. There are a number of legal activists who are arguing that children should have the right to self-determination. These people aren't coming from the "right", Jose.
But thanks for raising a really good question, because I suspect a lot of people have the same impression.
Jose: And Ender's Game, one of your supporting examples, is written by one of the most politicaly conservative authors writing in the genre.
Yes, he certainly is! My point here is NOT that SF authors are all (or even mostly) liberals. I say nothing of the sort. (Though it may be true or not: I honestly don't claim to know.) My thesis is only to ask whether, and to what extent, the primarly popular themes of SF happen to align with encouraging a more 'liberal' political outlook among the average SF reader/consumer.
In fact, the whole reason that I wrote this is because I just finished Ender's Game and noted that some of the main ideas seemed faily "liberal" (war is bad, aliens are nice, kids are brilliant) despite Card's political leanings.
Perhaps his views changed. Perhaps it came about because this was a story he started to come up with while very young. Perhaps he wrote it to challenge his own beliefs. Perhaps it never even occurred to him to think of it that way. There are all kinds of possible answers.
But I think it's fun to have these kinds of thought and conversations anyway, don't you?
My biggest problem with this entire post is that you substitue "left" for "secular" and "christian" with "right". Sure there's a correlation between the two but that doesn't justify and out and out substitution. Not ever athiest is a lefty and not every conservative is a christian.
This is an odd argument to make -- especially as a "biggest problem" since, other than in my own biography at the introduction (as a historical event) I never once mention the word "Christian" anywhere in the main body of the article, or speak at all of it.
And, regarding atheism, I made the exact same point you just made, apparently claiming I said otherwise:
Here in the US, the fact of one's weekly church attendance, or not, correlates very strongly (though not absolutely) with one's voting patterns.
So I'm not sure why you think I'm saying something different, such as that all Christians are conservatives, or something like that.
John C. Wright: for some reason, evolution is all-wise up until she rules against mankind.
Precisely!
Politically, this might be analgous to the left's stance on materialism: One minute, we in the West are living too high on the hog, too materialisticly and it's a shame that we live at a standard of living many times that of the third world. The next minute, they're harping about the evils of global capitalism, complaining that we're shipping our jobs to those very same poor people in the third world! We say we like the idea, but not when the rubber really meets the road (so to speak).
Your comment on the ease with which bad aliens can be talked out of their designs...
Only "easily" in the sense that it's nearly always possible, it seems to me. I'm not saying the talking is portrayed as easy -- certainly, it isn't always -- just that they very frequently turn out to be nice or convertable.
Oh, and your mention of the War of the Worlds adds a third implacable foe. I should also add the animal in "Alien", making a fourth.
This is not because writers are of a political orientation that demands every alien species be equipped with one Achilles' Heel; it is because drama favors a story with an Achilles' Heel.
I think you've got something there, but I'd argue its more because many writers aren't very imaginative. It's usually just:
Zorg X43: "We're in a jam with no way out! How will we possibly defeat this incredible alien menace?"
Thule L7: "Hey! What about this big red button here, labeled 'defeat aliens'? Do you think we should push it?"
It's an easy way to resolve things -- like the murder mystery which is solved by some bizarre clue at the end that the reader wasn't even told about. There's even a formal name for this technique:
Deus ex machina is a Latin phrase that is used to describe an unexpected, artificial, or improbable character, device, or event introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot (e.g., having the protagonist wake up and realize it was all a dream or an angel suddenly appear to solve all the plot problems of a story...
This is not because writers are of a political orientation that demands every alien species be equipped with one Achilles' Heel...
(1) Again, I'm not saying, at all, that SF writers are all liberal. That's a separate question, and I never raise it even once in the article.
(2) You're talking about something completely different than I was. I'm not talking about stories that are "resolved" by some dramatic victory or change of heart. To review the examples I gave...
The Horta: The story is not resolved by finding the creature's achilles heel. Ender's Game: The aliens have a very tiny achilles heel, but nothing special -- and it's not the main point of the story anyway, and isn't really how the story resolves. The Vulcans and Klingons becoming more peaceful have nothing to do (as far as I remember) with resolving any particular plotline. Nor is Darth Vader's conversion a quick technique for resolving tension.
I'm not saying your point isn't valid or interesting (true on both counts), but it's not really a response (positive or negative) to anything I've written.
I certainly don't mind if people want to bring up other tangential topics. But I rather amused that people keep putting all these things I've never said -- or even the exact opposite of what I've said -- into my mouth.
This is a phenomenon I don't entirely understand.
Oh, one last one...
Free Market notions of the mutual benefit to be found in trade and commerce with inferior or superior species are likewise rare: can you think of a single example?
I can think of two examples, but they're both kind of obscure, and both aren't even clearly positive portrayals.
One is Fredrich Pohl's Gateway, where people engage in the dangerous process of being teleported to alien worlds -- or possibly nowhere -- in order to come back with great discoveries that benefit earth and themselves. It's not entirely positive because the corporation running the gateway isn't portrayed in entirely positive terms.
The other is a series of Bruce Sterling short stories (in the intriguing Shaper/Mechanic series) about the "Investors" -- a race of tyrannasaurs-Rex shaped aliens (the ones we meet are all female) who grow fabulously wealthy by trading with other worlds -- to the benefit of those worlds as well. But, again, they're not portrayed in entirely positive terms -- they're a bit vain.
Stack that up against a host of negative examples: Most aliens come to earth to "exploit" it because they're used up all their water (how does that work, anyway?) or something like that. The Ferrengee are greedy little creeps. Almost all utopian worlds seem to have ditched money -- as though Marxism truly worked. (Perhaps it would on an alien psyche -- but it sure doesn't with humans.)
Oh, I just thought of one huge positive portrayal of capitalism -- or at least an open-handed slap at socialism:
TANSTAAFL!
... from Robert Heinlein: "There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch." I think Heinlein was pretty strongly anti-socialist. But, again, he's one of the sources I cite above as being pro-group marraige, so, again, it's not like a conservative author, at least on one count, won't sometimes be found pushing some more typically "liberal" ideas on another.
As far as "destroyed to the last man": Huh? Note the context: I've already suggested Germany and Japan. Did we "destroy them" to "the last man"? If not, then why would you assume I meant that?
Because the sci fi examples you gave were creatures like the Borg that had to be fought to the last man rather than the Romulans who were fought to an uneasy truce or other numerous counterexamples in TGN. So I thought you might be using a very strict definition of "implacable" to get your conclusion, or else ignoring what I saw as obvious counterexamples. I wanted to make sure if i gave a list of 5 examples where coercion was a necessity you didn't point to four of them and say "nope, not implacable enough for me."
If that's true (I didn't see the last episode) it's a good counterexample. (Of course, that makes sense if the Emperor actually represents a Republican, as some allege:
My impression was that in the original Star Wars series Lucas based the Empire on the Third Reich. If there was an extension to the Republican party (or if Lucas believes the Republican party is the Fourth Reich) it would have been made in episodes 1-3. I don't know if there was such a switch or not. However the whole;
Anakin: you're either with me or you're my enemey
Obi-Wan: only the Sith deal in absolutes
exchange between Obi-Wan and Anakin supports such a contention. Lucas tries to claim the reference wasn't topical. However putting the "you're either with me or you're my enemy" line into Anakin's mouth is hard to spin into a positive. Lucas is either criticising Bush or the biblical passage Bush was quoting.
And don't even get me started on the midichlorians.
I don't even want to get Lucas started on them, but it's too late for that.
So you've got like, what, two implacable foes now?
Good points, but not enough to constitute a serious countertrend. Perhaps a few more?
Two in Star wars. Plus Star Trek Nemesis = three. ( And one of the few episodes where humans get in a violent conflict. )
The Borg queen was implacable till killed. She wasn't persuaded. It was the the individual borg who were capable of redemption (possibly). That seems to fit your criteria, since you accept that Hitler had to be opposed and fought, even if some Germans were redeemable.
That's four, over just two serieses.
Chain of command has Picard Captured by Cardassians and tortured. Picard's release is coerced when Riker manages to lay mines on the hulls of the Cardassian ships Chain of Command
If you'll accept another 'great man theory' style episode with an evil leader there's Descent. Lore is one Star Trek Character who is depicted across several episodes as some kind of irreformable psychopath.
I'm familiar with the STTGN series and there are good online resources for that so I can troll through it later if you want more references. Or would you find citations from more than one series more convincing? I'm not familiar with a lot of sci fi outside of STTGN but I'll see what I can manage. I'd start with 1984, if you'll count that.
Anakin had a coming of age story when he was about 8, so maybe Lucas has as poor a grasp of adolescent development as he does at writing dialoge.
I'm tellin' ya man: that's my whole thesis right there, in a nutshell.
I'll buy that. After the last three episodes, I think Lucas belongs in a nutshell.
And I think we're rapidly approaching all these upper limits, or even have gone over the cusp. (I can support this assertion further, if neccessary.)
Interesting. You don't need to support it, but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this when you have time.
Today "evolution" usually implies a purely naturalistic progression. So would it be right to apply the word "evolution" to something claimed to be a result of theistic intervention?
I see your point. I'm not sure. I think the phrase used in Star Trek for the prime directive was "natural development." If Christians are comfortable with the phrase "Natural Law" (which I don't claim to be familiar with) as having to do with God then "natural development" seems like it would be a fair phrase to include even theistic development, no?
Really? Then why do "progressive" candidates always run on a platform of increased governmental control and coercion?
Well, first I probably shouldn't have used the word 'progressive.' Not because it doesn't fit, but because it's one of those hopelessly vague words that allows people to project a great deal into them. You seem to be far more politically involved with individual candidates than myself, but my thoughts were directed more at the voting base. But to give some explanation of what I meant;
1. While some polititians are certainly socialist, when excessive concentration of power is justified to some of the 'progressive' voting base it's sometimes done by playing up other forms of power such as corporate power which the government would then 'protect' us from. Though folks like Chomsky, who at times explicitly claim to be anarchist, claim that government is 'the shadow cast by industry on society' or somthing to that effect.
2. Political parties, as far as I understand them, tend to be power coalitions. Democrats used to enjoy union support, however globalization has seriously undermined the power of unions to strike, which seems to be the one tool they knew how to use. (I'd like to see unions revert to more of a classic 'guild' system myself. I suppose you have somthing close to that for professionals with Microsoft certification and college degrees.) The "Blue Dog" Democrats supposedly sought to regroup and find supporters among big business. Leftists anarchists on the other hand tend to despise power and avoid organization. The anti-government left seems to me to be pretty poorly organized and command little monetary or lobbying power of any kind. Their value system makes running for office rather anethma.
While I agree that many present day "progressive" policies may not actually be good for the poor or acomplish their intended aims, I do believe that large tracts of the liberal voting base really do see themselves as 'rooting for the underdog' and are willing to sacrifice towards that end, with no thought of materialistic return.
I was going to spend some time here contrasting 'rooting for the underdog' with following the law, but your most recent post seems to have beaten me to it.
including (in Zen) attachment to 'reason'.
Hm. Didn't know that. Interesting.
Let me give you another example: voting ages. There's a push among Democrats to lower the voting age. Conservatives don't support this. So, again, this clearly indicates Democrats have a higher view of teenagers' decision-making abilities and political wisdom than conservatives do.
It might be beneficial to differentiate between a political party and their voting base, since there are often crucial differences between the two. People who are older tend to be more conservative. People who are younger tend to be less invested in the status quo. Perhaps the Democratic party just wants to enfranchise more people who support their views?
Though I'm still not sure that granting equality, even equality among unequals, nessicarily counts as 'worship.'
Update: Heh! It's hilarious that I thought Pohl's depiction show positive effects from capitalism. Because I just found out he's, in fact, a communist:
In 1936 Pohl joined the Communist Party. However, Party elders expelled him, in the belief that the escapist nature of science fiction risked corrupting the minds of youth. Like Asimov, he was a member of the New York based Futurians fan group.... [he also wrote] "The Merchants of Venus", [a] 1972 novella where the Heechee were first introduced and which also includes biting satire on runaway free market capitalism...
I'd only read Gateway (I tried, but got bogged down in Man Plus), so I didn't really know much about the rest of his works or views.
So again, we have an author who writes a book which, according to others, apparently also -- gives a different impression than his own beliefs would lead one to expect.
It's a bit surprising, two years before Alien, and especially given Pohl's own political activities, that the politics of the relationship between prospectors and Corporation is barely explored (there is one small ad for a "mass meeting" to demand "prospector representation" but we hear no more of it and presume that nothing happened).
To clarify, the Borg had to be fought to the last man in some episodes. Their nature of their threat changes over the course of the series and with the movies. Their leader seemed immune to conversion and had to be destroyed.
My impression was that in the original Star Wars series Lucas based the Empire on the Third Reich.
I've heard that Lucas once said based it on Vietnam -- where the 'good guys' were from the North.
The Borg queen was implacable till killed. She wasn't persuaded. It was the the individual borg who were capable of redemption (possibly). That seems to fit your criteria, since you accept that Hitler had to be opposed and fought, even if some Germans were redeemable.
True. I'm more concerned with the impression that everyone is merely "misunderstood" (and thus negotiations will always eventually prevail), not a finely-detailed argument about the exact degree, timing, and strategy of force used in cases where we prevail using force.
Perhaps I shouldn't have tossed in Lord Vader at all, since his is a somewhat messy case. His change does save his son's life (I realize what I wrote just above was wrong in that regard -- some tensions were resolved by it), but it doesn't justify a totally pacifistic stance. Or does it? After all, Obi Wan disappears (seemingly) rather than kill Vader. No? Or was he really just losing? And the Jedi don't really win by 'force' -- but neither do they eschew it.
I enjoyed Star Wars (the first three), but I'm not a fanatic.
Oh, by the way, I'm not going for minor individual ordinary foes. I'm not referring to one or another bad character who tries to do some wrong thing of minor import and can't be dissauded. (If that was true, there'd be no stories.) I'm talking about aliens at first contact, or world-destroying/ruling entities.
It's interesting that you mention the Cardassians a possible implacable foe. Once again, you seem to have hit on another SciFi parody of conservatives like myself, as portrayed from the liberal point of view:
Cardassians generally believe the state is more important than the individual and thus have been described as fascist. Certainly their Orwellian government is powerful and the intelligence service, the Obsidian Order, excels in ruthless efficiency. Cardassians seen on Deep Space Nine are generally proud and patriotic, and reference is occasionally made to their xenophobic tendencies, although they are often seen co-operating with other races with no apparent friction. In many ways Cardassian society loosely mirrors that of Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy, including the exhalted position of bureaucrats, the deeply imbedded ethnocentrism and supremacy of the state, and the ruthless character of the justice system. When representatives of the science ministry visited DS9 in "Destiny", they were noticeably less patriotic and more liberal than most Cardassians seen previously.... Cardassians are also very concerned about their families... [1]
The Cardassians nearly destroyed Bajor's ecosystem, strip mining almost every valuable mineral on the world. [2]
Patriotism (bad) versus liberalism (good). Cardassians: pro-family, large families, patriotic, racist, xenophobic, Nazi-like anti-environmental empire builders. Oh, yeah, I've heard those accusations somewhere before... hmmmm... can't remember where.
So yes, you've dredged up yet another implacable foe: and they are conservatives -- or rather a liberal's parody of us. Us and the hive minds. I'm detecting a trend.
After the last three episodes, I think Lucas belongs in a nutshell.
LOL! Yes, you and millions of fans.
Tim: And I think we're rapidly approaching all these upper limits...
Ryan: Interesting. You don't need to support it, but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this when you have time.
Maybe I'll do a post. After we sort out the exact precise meaning of 'implacable'. ;-)
Regarding "theistic development", I'm not sure I understand the point. Christians are generally extremely comfortable with "Natural Law", in my experience. I think it has theistic origins, in fact.
Well, first I probably shouldn't have used the word 'progressive.' Not because it doesn't fit, but because it's one of those hopelessly vague words that allows people to project a great deal into them.
I use it because although I feel it is false, it is what they're calling it, so I use the term for clarify, but qualifying it with quotes, since most of the policies are in fact outmoded, old, and have generally been roundly shown to be ineffective or harmful to humans.
Though folks like Chomsky, who at times explicitly claim to be anarchist, claim that government is 'the shadow cast by industry on society' or somthing to that effect.
Fascinating turn of phrase. If Chomsy were really what he said he was, we'd probably be allies. "Objectively", to use the Marxist meaning of the word, his analysis generally supports the most coercive and strong governments, not the least.
I do believe that large tracts of the liberal voting base really do see themselves as 'rooting for the underdog' and are willing to sacrifice towards that end, with no thought of materialistic return.
I do agree completely with the first part -- you were right when you said we (I) should be careful of accusing people of deliberate malice: I think most liberals, at least at the surface, think they mean well.
Are they willing to 'sacrifice' for it? I don't mean to be blunt, but no. (I'm not saying I'm any better overall, but at the moment, I'm just answering this one question.)
As evidence, consider the previous case I mentioned: materialism versus free trade. Our high standard of living is a shame -- until someone sets up a phone answering service in Bangledesh! Or consider gasoline: We hear that we need to stop depending on foreign oil, or oil in general. The best way to do that is make gas more expensive. (And many admit this!) Yet gas becomes scarce and expensive, and who raises the loudest fuss? Not us conservatives.
You see, the beauty of taxes is that it is NOT really a sacrifice. People think they're getting something for nothing.
(1) Wealthy libs: In the case of a rich person, it's hardly a sacrifice to lose 1 of their 2 billion dollars. So a wealthy liberal can offer to pay higher personal taxes and not see, really, a cut.
(The crucial damage is done to entreprenuers, who don't yet have cash, but must maximize the return on their investment -- a small change in rate of return can be a life/death difference to them.)
In Jesus' time, he described a rich man who gave with trumpets sounding. His point was that some people give publicly to impress others. (Ever notice that the major foundations all have rich men's names on them, rather than being anonymous, as Jesus suggests?) So it's no real damage for a rich liberal to suggest higher taxes: (a) they may not get it anyway, (b) it sounds impressive (among liberal peers), (c) it signals that they shouldn't be picked on*, and (d) even if they do get higher taxes, they've already got their reserve and won't be significantly hurt.
[* Walmart and CostCo are very, very similar. About equally evil/good, except that Walmart takes less profit and actually gives more to their employees and charity. (I've researched this.) One gets picked on and one doesn't. Why? Examine their political donations: CostCo gives about 90% of their money to Democrats, where Walmart mostly funds Republicans. So there's the "cost" of giving to the wrong party.]
(2) Many liberal leaders don't believe they'll be affected. Al Gore sends his kids to private schools while talking about how we need to avoid giving people vouchers so as to not hurt public schools. Many UK leaders who agitate for socialized medicine are found to exclusively use private doctors. Rosie O'Donnell demands gun contorl but has private bodyguards. Arianna Huffington rails against SUVs but flies around in a private Gulf Stream. Etc.
(3) Non-rich liberals are not "sacrificing" by asking for taxes, becuase with it comes the rhetoric that those taxes must come primarily from other (richer) people.
(4) EVERYONE -- including us "conservatives" -- is tempted to think the government can create things from no-where. So if the government takes care of the homeless 'we' don't have to do it. Trust me, I'm sure most people would think of it as more of a sacrific to have to adopt their own homeless person and try to help them get back on their feet.
(5) Big businesses don't pay taxes (if they're applied evenly to all competitors). They simply pass them along to consumers. Fact. So many kinds of business could care less if we tax them. (In fact, some prefer it, as a barrier to entry -- to keep the smaller ones from coming up.)
It might be beneficial to differentiate between a political party and their voting base, since there are often crucial differences between the two.
It is: I know many Democratic voters who are more conservative than I am. Seriously. They simply -- for some reason I cannot comprehend -- loyally vote for a party which currently supports almost none of their core values. And they sometimes admit this.
(But to them, Republicans are evil, social outcasts, and that value trumps all the rest.)
But when I talk about "Democrats", I mean the values that their voters support in the booth -- the general stance offered by the party -- not each individuals personal thoughts or feelings.
If we had to limit ourselves to that, we could never draw any generalizations, and say: "Muslims believe X" "Christians believe Y" "New Agers focus on Z" -- because of course there are always exceptions.
Or does it? After all, Obi Wan disappears (seemingly) rather than kill Vader. No? Or was he really just losing? And the Jedi don't really win by 'force' -- but neither do they eschew it.
The explanation for Vader killing Obi-Wan floating around in cyberspace is that Obi Wan sacrificed himself as a distraction so his friends could escape. And possibly because he'd be of more use as a spirit than corporeal. I'm not sure where the notion originates, but it makes sense that Vader might have caught them otherwise.
The Jedi don't win by force? They seem to, no?
Cardassians: pro-family, large families, patriotic, racist, xenophobic, Nazi-like anti-environmental empire builders. Oh, yeah, I've heard those accusations somewhere before... hmmmm... can't remember where.
It doesn't say specifically that they're racists. It said they're ethnocentric but seem to cooperate well with other races.
Granted, Cardassians do seem like parodies of conservatives.
One more thing which certainly describes Cardassians is the degree of power distance acceptable in their culture, which seems also to be part of the liberal/conservative divide and goes back to the whole "children treated as adults" theme.
Part of the accusation against the Cardassians re: Bajor is specifically that it was colonial. I.E. it wasn't their own planet they forcibly strip mined. This is still keeping with your thesis, though.
Are they willing to 'sacrifice' for it? I don't mean to be blunt, but no. (I'm not saying I'm any better overall, but at the moment, I'm just answering this one question.) You see, the beauty of taxes is that it is NOT really a sacrifice. People think they're getting something for nothing.
First, when I say 'sacrifice for what they believe in' I'm not talking about taxation rates, though I understand why you assume that. I'm thinking more in terms of sacrificed opportunity costs.
I can't say that people with leftist leanings are willing to sacrifice more or less than people on other parts of the political grid. I'm fully open to the possibility that they sacrifice less considering that the millitary is conservative leaning. But in terms of sacrificed opportunity costs, I think many people do sacrifice for their beliefs. In my mind is one friend, C.J. Shane, a self described "leftover hippy dippy leftist" who devotes an enormous amount of her time sending people to China to work as teachers with no significant remuniration on her part ( I was one of those sent ). She said she only started accepting pay (somthing like $50 a person, which is nothing compared to the time she puts in) because people got suspicious otherwise. The whole TANSTAAFL belief. She has a Masters degree and lives in a trailer. Her goal in all of this is that she believes essentially in your sci-fi thesis; that greater communication between American and Chinese cultures will help prevent a war since the two civilizations are destined to clash.
Yet gas becomes scarce and expensive, and who raises the loudest fuss?
I've met some folks with leftist leanings who were very supportive of the increase in gas prices. Granted, most relied on bus service already so they weren't really feeling much pain. However I agreee that the Democratic party has worked night and day to spin the rise in prices into Bush's fault. And didn't some Democratic party members protest when they wanted to put up windmills near Martha's Vinyard? I guess what I'm trying to say is that just as an "objectivist" is not a "conservative Christian" there are different groups within the political left voting base, some considerably more powerful or vocal (or, for that matter, politically involved) than others. And some who are very much disenchanted with the Democratic party and don't vote for it, for whatever reasons, but still identify with the 'left.'
(The crucial damage is done to entreprenuers, who don't yet have cash, but must maximize the return on their investment -- a small change in rate of return can be a life/death difference to them.)
Okay. So someone takes out a loan to start a business and needs to hit a certain rate of return because of payments on the loan? Is that the problem?
(5) Big businesses don't pay taxes (if they're applied evenly to all competitors). They simply pass them along to consumers. Fact. So many kinds of business could care less if we tax them. (In fact, some prefer it, as a barrier to entry -- to keep the smaller ones from coming up.)
I'd assume that taxing merchandise instead of income would make labor cheaper by comparison in cases where the two competed (should I repair or purchse new?) Of course, that's assuming you'd even want to do that. I'm no economist.
CostCo gives about 90% of their money to Democrats, where Walmart mostly funds Republicans.
Interesting. I never knew about that.
So if the government takes care of the homeless 'we' don't have to do it.
I'll buy that. Many people would rather care for the homeless through taxes because they don't want to do it personally.
But when I talk about "Democrats", I mean the values that their voters support in the booth
Okay.
BTW, regarding Vader vs. Obi Wan; I would assume that Vader is much stronger than Obi Wan. Anakin goes on and on about being the strongest Jedi. Vader seems to think he could overthrow the Emperor and does kill him, even while wounded. In Episode 3, Obi Wan manages to defeat Anakin only because Anakin arrogantly attacks when Obi Wan is said to have a decisive terrain advantage. Obi Wan was trying to end the battle and avoid killing Anakin in that battle too, it seems.
It seems to me that classic sci-fi with its optimistic view that the future is going to be better than the past, and even if pessimistic about humanity or part of it, than that the future is coming and we must look to it, would naturally be “progressive” in leaning. By the same logic you could say that historical fiction is “conservative” leaning because it looks to the past, in its original meaning of wanting to hold pack change or be careful about how you do it. Whether this is right or left depends on your definitions. There are people on all sides of politics who justify their morality and their actions using religion, there are people on all sides who use secular scientistic rationales as well. All the dictatorships of the twentieth century up to Iran were secular and managed to kill the same number of people as the religiously justified dictatorships (called monarchies) of the last thousand years.
The worship of Children is something that comes from Christian logic as easily as the so-called left’s logic. In fact I think the lefts idea is a reinterpretation of the Christian Idea in a positive way. If world is evil and the source of sin, then the closer you are to the beginning, to your sin-free pre-birth from the spiritual, from God, the freer you could be of its influences. That makes as much sense as baptising kids who make no choice, have no wisdom, have done nothing that could be termed sinful (because literal they have done nothing other than feed at their mother’s breast) to protect them from an inherited sin that is the curse of humanity brought by a God who gave us free choice and wants to punish us for using it. According to the story of the return of the adventurous and therefore sinful son, God loves us more if we go out and play, the come home repentant and shameful.
It seems to me that SF and other fiction that can be interpreted politically operates on the principle that if you’re talking then there is hope, if people are shooting then you do what you must to try to get back the hope and the talking. It sounds like any sensible practical politician and diplomat, versus the cowboys and bullies who get to power because the conditions are right for them or because the conditions give change in a way that gives them the opportunity to let that side of themselves to come forward. You’ve forgotten all those wonderful SF of the thirties thru to the sixties – eg Flash Gordon, Barbarella (sp?) is a hippy spoof of this, the Thing. Those in the early part of the century who saw SF as a propaganda tool had plenty of “implacable enemies” they were usually dictators which can be pointed to as being either conservative or socialist/communist types.
It depends on what you mean by “conservative” in Star Trek – Original Kirk is always arguing for the humanity’s uniqueness, their special place in the universe, our humility but also how we learn to live together with our differences, for our capacity to step beyond the limitation of reason to intuition and emotion (in fact it is a running theme the limitations of reason – Mr Spock is a butt of jokes though brilliantly useful he is always seen as shallow, then Data in NextGen, first the Doctor, and Seven of Nine in Voyager wants to be human) for the rights of the individual, of freedom of choice, for the possibility of redemption, and tolerance and turning the other cheek until someone actually hits then defend yourself all values of good Modern conservative Christians and conservatives. These modern Christians who define themselves as conservatives forget the pacifism that was central to why the Roman’s persecuted them and was lost except in monasteries and some radical true believers after they took power in the 4th and 5th centuries having to face the Real Politick of Roman as a world conqueror when St August came up with the principles of a justifiable war to placate Christian conscience.
I think you need to wake up you irony and metaphor muscles because most of the Heinlein stuff and I think an enormous amount of other SF writing (most obviously 1984 and Brave New World) is being very critical of the present problem with our society and then explore other possibilities. The good ones generally explore how our flawed humanity collide with the utopia or with the possibility of meeting greater beings. many of the Biblical stories, especially in the old testament aren’t really that different. A hell of a lot of stories are about how we’ll deal with apocalypse where the true evil is in the past which seems very Christian since we are all living with an evil that took place back in Eden and rather than having a loving forgiving God limit the sin to the individual who did it we are all still living with it. This is the same logic that Israel uses to keep a good supply of enemies to help justify its battle mentality by attacking the families of the terrorists who make the ultimate individual statement by taking their own life.
Another aspect you seem to miss is that Liberal used to mean belief in the individual which was the core of conservative ideology when they had to face the communists before 1989. There is a basic power in people feeling their choice to participate in a situation. This is where the Borg fails it forces compliance and so does not have theit own creativity, it has to conquer to learn, to evolve if you like. If individualism is one of the central ideas of conservatism then ST versus Borg is a presentation the ideal American view of itself as it metaphorically faces down totalitarianism in what ever form it takes. It seems at the moment that the conservatives have forgotten this because they have seem to think totalitarian tactics let unfair use of power outside the rule of law is acceptable way to fight terrorism thus becoming terrorists themselves. Self determination and autonomy also seems central to conservative individualism yet when it is something that threatens their current power base then it not for them. Your comment about so-called liberal education is strange because guiding kids through paths of discovery so they know things from their own experience seem in line with the psychological realities of individualism. Again your comment about the vote is also strange again we don’t learn about power and how to exercise it by being told about it is experiencing it through apprenticeship voting helps people feel part of the process of politics.
Are conservatives in the US those who believe democracy is a nice idea as long as the right people a voting.
It seems to me that these posts have a lot political stereotyping not just of the opposition but of the speaker. I think it is the way people believe that causes the problem not what they believe people identifying on the left or the right can be dictatorial or liberal (supportive of individual rights as mentioned above). As an Australian who lived in the States for 5 year through the end of Reagan and the first Bush years including the gulf war I don’t get the way you use liberal as an insult and misuse it in political speech. It was originally used to battle the monarchs of England. The American Revolution was a Liberal Revolution supported by British liberals at the time. The republicans were liberal when they fight against slavery (though the reasons were more complicated and I know Lincoln wasn’t the pure hero or pure evil as some would wish). I read all the posts because I’m interested in Scifi and politics and it was interesting. I’m not sure why anyone categorises themselves as on one side or the other when there are so many sides and it pays into a superficial view of politics and a battleground sport scoring approach.
I don’t what kind of Christian Tim is but the ones I like understand that to take the Bible literally is the drain it of its deepest power, it limits God in a way the seems blasphemous to me, and I think to look at any story in terms of its surfaces is to miss great opportunities. It seems this is truer of Sci-fi than any genre because they seek to talk about the consequences of streams of thought we are current living with. Tim why don’t you write the kind of sci-fi you’d like, that represent your values? Politics is a wonderful and real game. Its central problem is the most complex of problems to seek to feed as many people as possible in away that empowers them to feed themselves, all else follows. Western European inspired democratic systems, of which my own country, the USA and Japan are examples along with its home countries, have succeeded at this better than anyone in history but they all have their weaknesses. One of the mistakes of political types is to think there is an end to the journey but like the result of natural law and evolution there isn't one unless you're waiting for the Apocalypse
Christopher,
Thank you for your long and thoughtful comment! I will try to honor it with an equally long and thoughful response.
It seems to me that classic sci-fi with its optimistic view that the future is going to be better than the past, and even if pessimistic about humanity or part of it, than that the future is coming and we must look to it, would naturally be “progressive” in leaning.
One tactic that I loathe in modern discourse is the tactic of saying you are in favor of some idea and thus falsly implying your opponents must be against it.
This is especially prevalent on the left, who now demand we call them "Progressives" -- as though their opponents opposed progress. They also constantly say things like "We care if children starve" (meaning: "We favor putting the government in charge of poverty", but implying: "Conservarives don't care!"). It also sometimes happens on the right, and I'd especially point to Jerry Falwell's group "The Moral Majority" who used the exact same naming strategy.
Conservatives are NOT opposed to real progress, nor do we at all believe the long-term future is bleak. We simply dispute that what "liberals" offer is, in fact, progress.
We also point to other solutions: where a "liberal" would want to feed the poor by socialism, a certain breed of conservative would want to improve the lot of the poor by improving their economic circumstances, and by using private charities.
Regarding the future: It is the left who gives us dire scenarios of the world ending due to global warming, not the right. The right points to more of a danger of "bad morals", and views the increase in global trade, technology, and wealth as generally good and helpful.
My point is that there is optimism and pessimism in both camps, just on different topics, and by different means.
The worship of Children is something that comes from Christian logic as easily as the so-called left’s logic. In fact I think the lefts idea is a reinterpretation of the Christian Idea in a positive way.
By "re-interpreting" you seem to mean "inverting." For example, in your use of the word, I could "re-interpret" "This pizza is good!" as meaning "This pizza is bad!" Or vise-versa.
If world is evil and the source of sin...
Christians believe the world can be "evil" (it is made up of humans, after all), but not "the source of sin". As Jesus put it: "Nothing outside a man can make him 'unclean' by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him 'unclean.'" We are not "sinful" because society or "the world" makes us be that way. Rather, society or the world is flawed because of the sin that comes from each of our hearts, and eventually translates into action.
... then the closer you are to the beginning, to your sin-free pre-birth from the spiritual, from God, the freer you could be of its influences.
Here's you're simply repeating what I stated in the article you're responding to.
That makes as much sense as baptising kids who make no choice...
This is where I get the chance to tell you that many Christians, like myself, are opposed to infant baptism -- for the exact reason you state here. (That, and it seems to violate the model shown in the bible.) Baptism is a sign of having made a choice: but an infant cannot yet communicate with others enough to express any choice of this nature.
... [children] have done nothing that could be termed sinful...
This is where you and I differ: I believe children are people. I believe people, including children, are capable of making moral choices. Thus I believe children "sin", just like every other human being.
In fact, when I watch children at play, I notice even the "good" ones can be rather cruel little brutes at times. Perhaps you've had a different experience?
According to the story of the return of the adventurous and therefore sinful son, God loves us more if we go out and play, the come home repentant and shameful.
Sorry, I beg to differ: God doesn't LOVE the person more -- rather he is more relieved by that person's return, since they were in jeopardy, unlike the one who did not go.
The son's "sin" was not that he was adventurous. His sin was that he basicly told his father "I wish you were dead", and would have nothing more to do with him. His ensuing behavior was just more of the same rebellion.
And do you think the Father in that story "loved" (as you put it) that his son was having sex with prostitutes, frequently getting falling-down drunk, and ended up in poverty, sleeping with pigs, as a result of his "play", as you call it?
Think: A mother appreciates her daughter so much more after she is released by a school gunman. (And vise-versa) So is that an argument, as you seem to imply, for having crazed killers in school? Likewise, the son shouldn't have behaved that way: he's simply lucky nothing worse happened to him, and that he came to his senses and stopped, and returned to the father he once had such contempt for.
... if people are shooting then you do what you must to try to get back the hope and the talking. It sounds like any sensible practical politician and diplomat...
It sounds like Neville Chamberlain, who announced he had negotiated peace "in our time" with Hitler, and thus gave the Nazis permission to invade Czechoslovakia. It sounds like Jimmy Carter, who believed that because North Korea signed a document, and because we gave him money and nuclear materials, they would never develop nuclear missles. It sounds like the UN attempting to "negotiate" with Sudan while they continue support the merciless slaughter of men, women, and children in Darfur.
Christopher, countless people die while these things happen. Telling democratic nations to stand by and ONLY talk, while you still allow the killers to go on with their business, is, in my view, deeply immoral. As someone remarked about the Holocaust: "All it takes for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing."
You seem to have bought into the argument that some actions, like killing, are inherantly evil. I don't: I think there's a time and purpose for everything. Actions, like objects, are in and of themselves morally neutral. An act which is good in one circumstance is bad in another and vise-versa. For example, it's great to have sex with your wife -- but it's not so good to have sex with your neighbor's wife.
Likewise, I think it's wrong to kill someone who has committed no crime. But if I saw a gunman shoot two people, and knew he would kill twenty more if I didn't stop him, I would hope I'd do the right thing. You could accuse me of "having become like him" (and I'd gladly live with that, for the trade), but the other twenty people whose lives were saved would undoubtedly not see it that way.
Love others as yourself.
You’ve forgotten all those wonderful SF of the thirties thru to the sixties – eg Flash Gordon, Barbarella...
Most the fiction I'm thinking about was written in the 40s through sixties. Certainly, there are counter-examples, and you're more than welcomed to cite some, and then explain why they are are counterexamples. I'm only arguing for a trend here, Christopher.
(Yet I think it's odd that you specificly chose "Barbarella" as an example of conservative "propaganda"!)
It depends on what you mean by “conservative”...
No, actually, it doesn't, since I've never used the term anywhere in the article.
Mr Spock is a butt of jokes though brilliantly useful he is always seen as shallow, then Data in NextGen... and Seven of Nine in Voyager wants to be human...
Right: the distinction is that they're logic-only entities. The issue is not that they aren't of the human species: Waxana, Warf, and Odo aren't human either, but are treated roughly like anyone else. Data is simply Pinnochio, wanting to be flesh and bone. This is not a right/left divide, Christopher.
I think you need to wake up you irony and metaphor muscles because most of the Heinlein stuff and I think an enormous amount of other SF writing (most obviously 1984 and Brave New World) is being very critical of the present problem with our society and then explore other possibilities.
Ummm, like Alanis Morrisette, you seem to be confused about what "ironic" means. I'm well aware some stories have elements of irony, but I'm not sure we're referring to the same thing.
I find it ironic, for example that one of the most scathing criticisms of Communismwas wr |
We seem to have had similar childhood reading lists. Though personally I prefered Asimov's non-fiction essays, since I could get his ideas directly there without the impediment of a plot.
Of course, there are a few implacable foes, too: The Borg, Bruce Sterling's Swarm. Most seem to be hive-minds, so perhaps that's something even SF writers find scary: complete loss of individuality. (A love of collectivism only goes so far, I guess.) But the truly implacable foe, though certainly helpful for tension, seems to be in the minority.
There were certainly evil characters in TGN and in most sci fi stories. But is a reminder to try your best to convert someone before killing them really that morally repugnant? Granted, Vader deserved a few millenia in the electric chair for all the people he killed, but still...If your dad was doing somthing evil, would you try and convert him or would you try and kill him outright? I'd think that the notion that people can change and be forgiven would be seen as a fundamentally Christian one, no? It seems to take more ability to write a complex villan who has some good and sympathetic qualities. As you seemed to support in your earlier review of Cinderella Man, Hollywood has a tendency to make one character an unsympathetic villan and that often doesn't mesh with reality.
Like Ghengis Khan in China, in time, they are all assimilated.
There are numerous human colonists who live apart from the body and power of the federation, losing contact for generations. Perhaps there's somthing to the notion that separation of people through space can substitute partially for the separation of powers? "The mountains are high and the emperor is far away" was the old Chinese road to freedom. And voting patterns in dense urban areas and sparser rural areas seems to support this.
Star Trek never really did deal with the actual planet earth itself much.
(I don't understand that answer -- if people are good, how can a collection of them be evil?)
One of the post episodic Star Trek TGN movies gave a "sci fi" answer to that which I've passionately hated for years, and it amounts to an adoption of the 'great man' hypothesis. In short, Nazi Germany happened only because of Hitler. The Borg were essentially recast as vampires under control of a queen. When the TGN cast killed the Borg queen, all the people in the borg hive were freed of her evil spell. It's one of the oldest moral copouts in literature, which allows for a perfect, instant happy ending like nothing I know. Kill Saddam Hussein and Iraq will be cleansed. Etc. Granted Saddam was evil, but his removal doesn't automatically create a paradise. I don't claim to know whether the 'great man' historical hypothesis is generally predictive or not. Do people really get the governments that they deserve, or are they pawns of their leaders and larger forces when it comes to things like war? I tend to view people as responsible for their actions.I would have prefered to have seen a culture which was forced to become the "efficient" borg due to a competitive capitalist society. That seems like it could happen, sometimes, if we're not careful. You could get the equivalent of a graduate degree without going to college, after all. I'm sure there would at least be some folks in Japan who would jump at that sort of chance, with the rest of the world having to compete. Imagine If a few Star Trek characters could have gone back in time and seen a world where people were "voluntarily" joining the Borg (just to get a decent job), and they had to consider what to do about it? At least that would have put responsibility for the Borg back on the shoulders of the individuals who composed it. The Animatrix kindof touched on that. But it would have been better, I think, if the Matrix agents were voluntary cyborgs.
The basic idea is that "evolution" must run its course, and who are we to judge or interefere?
Or perhaps that a person has to be ready in order to receive certain truths?
"Give me chastity and continence, but not yet." st. Augustine
Though I think the below TGN episode might speak to the point you're making. I especially like the refernce in the title. who watches the watchers The ending pretty blatantly casts Picard as a type of Christ figure for a rational faith who allows himself to be killed and brought back to life (by Dr. Crusher).
Amusingly, this idea always seems to break down when we're attacked by superior aliens. If "the Borg" is the next evolutionary step, the Federation certainly did all they could to interfere with that culture and its logical 'evolutionary' consequence to ours. (Somehow 'survival of the fittest' breaks down when humanity is clearly the obsolescent model.)
But the Borg lost. Which means the authors don't think we're really inferior. TGN started with Picard admitting that the Borg was beyond the Federation's ability to deal with, but the movies show the Federation adapting and defeating the Borg. Besides, the prime directive only applies to pre-warp capacity socieities. Once you build a ship to make the jump to warp (a societal coming-of-age ritual), you get a little visit from your stellar neighibors.
The Federation is all-powerful, of course, but totally non-coercive.
I've never really seen it explicitly stated what powers the federation does or doesn't have. Maybe I'm missing somthing. Star Trek TGN seemed to be focused mostly on StarFleet (how democratic is the current millitary hierarchy?)
If you believe that people are born basicly good, as many on the left do, then of course, children are the most moral, being closest to that original, pristine state. If you believe people must learn goodness, as we conservatives do, then of course, you don't believe children should lead the way.
True, but doesn't that SF meme also have a messianic element?
"The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them."Isa 11:6
If nothing else, a child with wisdom beyond his years can be used by an author to hint that some other supernatural force is behind things.
(I've never had the time to read Dune, but the Bene Geserit seem to match that last part)
And most annoyingly, George Lucas depicts teenaged "Senators" losing their virginity
Well Anakin and Padme did get married.
Or is this what you're referring to?
PADMÉ: I don't know...
ANAKIN: Sure you do... you just don't want to tell me.
PADMÉ: Are you going to use one of your Jedi mind tricks on me?
ANAKIN: They only work on the weak-minded. You are anything but weak-minded.
PADMÉ: All right... I was twelve. His name was Palo. We were both in the Legislative Youth Program. He was a few years older then I... very cute... dark curly hair... dreamy eyes.
ANAKIN: All right, I get the picture... whatever happened to him?
PADMÉ: I went into public service. He went on to become an artist.
ANAKIN: Maybe he was the smart one.
The fact that she was that young suggests she could have been talking about her first kiss or first boyfriend. She's very conservative with Anakin and they get married in secret instead of just fooling around. Where does it say Padme lost her virginity before she was married? And what harm is it if she loses it afterwards? Or was there some visual depiction that bothered you? I suppose the word 'depiction' implies that, but I don't remember anything terribly explicit.
Of course, Padme and Anakin are both presented as being manipulated by other forces to disasterous results, so it doesn't seem like a... what'd the term for government by
kids? Pedocracy? is truly being advocated. Don't knock yoda, man. He seems small and foolish but he's actually powerful and wise. It's a nice metaphor.
Just my 2c.
Posted by: Ryan on September 9, 2006 04:54 PM