December Talking Meme, 12/7
So....it looks like this may morph into the December-January Talking Meme, because I'm taking way too many interesting prompts to want to turn any of them down. If yours is late, it hasn't been forgotten
( Read more... )
I do forget some of the backstory of how badly the first Cylon War went, and so forth? And I haven't watched Caprica (except for the pilot, which I enjoyed) so I don't know much there. I forget what the full justification for the Cylons' victim complex is -- and how possible it was for them to coexist with the Colonies pre-genocide.
This is all a little ridiculous, probably -- I think that I'm sort of too unable to get out of certain logic loops sometimes, and that makes it hard? But anyway, I think that this is sort of the root of BSG's position. Anger leads to hate, hate leads to the dark side; believing that the Cylons having human-like status grants them status because of agency and thus ability to make good and evil decisions may be a slight category error, because it seems to be their consciousness and ability to feel pain which makes them special, which is maybe the same as humans. In that case, it's still...ultimately important and necessary to defend against them, and to operate under some kind of assumption that fairness is at least somewhat achievable in order to balance their "right" to survive with the fact that they fail to recognize human rights to survive. You have to be even further into relativism than I am to really balk against that, and the show fails to recognize that it's not racism but an accurate appraisal of Cylons that they are, to an individual, dangerous, volatile war criminals. However, I'm not sure that this is actually that useful as a moral judgment, because I'm not sure how much Cylons are able to make actual choices outside the moral frameworks of the society that they have built in their little echo chamber.
I mean, I was going to say that I think torturing and airlocking Leoben in s1 is wrong -- at least, airlocking him is wrong before it's clear to the Colonials that Cylons get resurrected. But I also get that a) the ticking time bomb scenario may not be real, but if it were it would literally destroy the whole human race, and b) there are extremely limited resources to feed and shelter people, way beyond almost any conception of Hard Times imaginable to pampered modern humans like me (and probably RDM, though at least he was in the Navy Reserves, which is, uh, still pretty different!).
I think this is sort of what you are getting at with the comparisons to the Angels. I think that the Cylons' growing ability to make choices outside the framework laid out by the community which is also largely manipulated by Cavil and fueled by religious fervor is, well, handled inconsistently but is interesting and does get at these themes? And so, you know, I don't really know that they can make "good choices" anymore than a three-year-old can, because that seems to be the approximate level of their moral development when we first encounter them. Do three year olds' lives have worth because they eventually will be adults capable of making decisions, or because they have consciousness? And obviously, the situation changes when it's 1) not even your species, and 2) the three-year-old has an army and nukes and is super-strong and super-intelligent.
Reply
See, I guess...this is where I am a consequentialist, or maybe a jus en bello formalist, or whatever. Because I don't so much think that executing Leoben was out of bounds. Faulty machine or immoral person-equivalent entity, the goal of what he was doing was to cost a lot of civilian lives. But I think that death by airlocking was intended to be particularly cruel. I don't mind Starbuck having been meeeeeen at some points during the interrogation, because they really did need to find out about the hypothetical bomb - but torture is significantly less effective than mind games, and so doing it was about being able to exert power rather than prevent damage, and I think that was wrong.
And I don't have any sort of problem making that distinction? I didn't when I watched the miniseries, and I didn't by the time I got to the finale. But rolling it all together, as I think the show falls into often, means that the question becomes how you FEEEEEEEL about Leoben, and not how the president and military are attempting (or not) to be moral actors.
I don't really know that they can make "good choices" anymore than a three-year-old can, because that seems to be the approximate level of their moral development when we first encounter them. Do three year olds' lives have worth because they eventually will be adults capable of making decisions, or because they have consciousness? And obviously, the situation changes when it's 1) not even your species, and 2) the three-year-old has an army and nukes and is super-strong and super-intelligent.
See, this is an interesting framework, and I really don't know how I would weigh those last two points underneath it. I just don't think it ever gets a chance to breathe in the show, at least, not during an episode where a Serious Moral Statement was to be made by some character at some point. Also, you're getting at the comparison with the angels without even knowing the show: as this current arc has developed there's a motif of angels appearing as or conversing with children, and gravitating toward playgrounds as meeting places.
Reply
I find Baltar fascinating as a character. It's no secret that Laura is my "favorite" (FOREVER AND EVER), but he's definitely in that second tier of favorite characters? Building on those aspects of Baltar that really breaks the moral framework on the show (about humans being "worthy of survival" - which, of note, I always found deeply flawed thematically) described by Pea in her own reply - that draws me to him as someone who IS, by definition, deeply compassionate, but I felt like that empathy is built EXACTLY off of his own understanding of his own needs and desire to live? He "loves" life, and, so he believes the preciousness of that to all other living beings, and respects it insofar as he can while maintaining his OWN survival. He's open to and completely embraces the life of others - human and Cylons. I, at times, feel that Baltar is less so incapable of hate so much as his starting position on the show, situationally, prevented him from ever allowing him to indulge in the sentiment. So much of his journey on the show from Six's confession to him onwards was a constant cycle of guilt, denial, self-hatred, and denial and so on and so forth that allowing himself to feel hatred in any circumstance would almost have been untenable to him, because of that essential core of his nature being empathy - he needs to not judge others in order to not judge himself and in order to live with his mistakes - as monumental as they were - without losing his mind. And fundamentally, I actually think that THAT is something that ties and links him so intricately to Laura - not only as a character but also in a narrative sense?
Laura as a character, or as I read her as a character, is someone who is very dedicated to preserving and growing life (which is why her last words on the show will always mean so much for me), but she's necessarily more critical and judging of others and the situations the show places them in than others because she feels that it is her responsibility to do so as president and leader and citizen (by some mathematical absurdity, but her "self-conscious" or head!Elosha-friend is the one who draws back onto that in "The Hub"), so the way the narrative frames their ideas about the precious value of life is really interesting to me?
Reply
With regards to your analogy of the Cylons and their developing morality as 3-years-old - I found that really fascinating because I've actually read a few fanfics where this was explored a bit more, and that really worked for me in terms of establishing why they made the choices they did due to stunted moral development at that point, but I also think that intellectually and narratively - they don't quite fit into that mold if only because of their absolute destructive capability? And from a perspective standpoint, the Colonial humans were hardly at a narrative place where they would be capable of comprehending or accepting of this analytical knowledge even if they were informed of it. I believe there are understandable limits to human tolerance (or the tolerance of any living beings), and if a three-year old were to ever kill his neighbor's family because he didn't know better, while I imagine that neighbor could possibly be completely cognizant of the child's moral potential and personhood - and certainly, the child would hardly meet the threshold, legally (the age of reasoning accepted generally as 7 years old I believe?), I can't imagine that it would have any impact on the neighbor's feelings or understanding of the situation enough for him to not want to react as if the child is a grown adult who should have "known better" and react to future meetings in such a way. I would imagine the neighbor would like to move far FAR away in order to avoid any future meetings.
Except the colonials hardly had the chance for that, so I can't really blame for not tolerating or accepting the Cylons' as they are and not being horrified of the Cylons' growing self-awareness of themselves as moral beings capable of making choices. (I mean the show already attempted its grand experiment in that arena on New Caprica, and that was just traumatizing for EVERYONE involved.)
(Then again, I may just be rambling again. If not already obvious - I am ALSO a person who's further on the F than T on the scale.) :D
Part of the reason why the Angels fascinate me so much on Supernatural is not only because they never try to push a moral agenda of "acceptance is good" on the protagonists but also because I feel like they are much clearer in vocalizing and delineating the different moral frameworks at play. (At least, in the seasons I've watched so far...) I did laugh out loud though when I realized the parallels in the "apocalypse" storylines in both shows - that basically, both the Angels and Cylons were throwing the MOTHER OF ALL parental temper tantrums in orchestrating it. (Though I would like to eventually finish watching Caprica in order to get a better idea of the history of the non-humanoid Cylons and their original rebellion as well actually - but also because the political drama. :))
Reply
It's after midnight and I'm going to bed soon, and so I will only say a little bit. I am actually maybe much further to the Thinking end of the Feeling-Thinking spectrum than I may have given the impression of being; I almost always score more T than F on MBTI things, though once I tied. The problem I have with "reasoning out" morality is that no one can agree exactly on which fundamental bases for moral reasoning should be used, including some of the most obvious things. I remember hearing/reading recently that people who had damage to the part of their brain that controlled and communicated emotion found it extremely difficult to make decisions of any sort, because to some extent there is some degree of feelings underlying some of the most basic sets of beliefs about reality, coming down to "what is good." That's maybe not so revolutionary a statement, but what I'm getting at is that I never feel that I've gotten a strong handle on what the proper set of axioms or initial assumptions "should be" for which to build up an even semi-consistent moral code, which lands me in pretty frequent emotional/intellectual trouble because I have very little resources to state definitely why certain ideas are "better" than others, unless the basic set of principles are present.
I think the contrast between Laura and Bill is pretty instructive. Laura takes it basically as a given that humans need to continue existing. Bill constantly fiddles about and questions it. And...well, yeah, I mostly find Laura's position to be the much more admirable, sensible, compassionate, etc., and I admire her much more as an individual. However, I'm not sure I think it's a flaw in BSG to present the position via Adama that humans have to justify their right to exist, to some degree. I don't think the show itself is advocating that Adama is right, and to the extent that it does settle on something, it does settle on the side of life being worth existing. But on some level, it's really hard to talk about the universal, axiomatic right of all humans to exist without acknowledging that it's hard to know where those limits draw. Even if humans weren't constantly in intractable conflicts that look an awful lot to the participants like zero-sum games where it's not possible for both to survive, we are also basically responsible for wiping out whole swaths of species, with more going extinct by the day. It's "obvious" that a human is worth more than a fish, but most of the arguments why this is kind of...fall down on some level. Is it that humans can think? Well animals seem to be able to think more than we give them credit for. Is it our potential for goodness? Well, what of evil humans, then, and our vast potential for evil. Is it our capacity to create art or science? Well, then are dullards within human society who seem to be producing little somehow less worthy? A lot of this comes from me being a big animal person, which may skew and warp my perspective, but I think it's mostly that I find it hard to fully accept any argument for humans' obvious, SUPERIOR right to exist over other nonhuman life forms.
...
Reply
And actually, I don't really know you well enough, so this may sound horrible, but I had actually assumed you fell much further on the T than the F. (Possibly because I've grown-up and lived with people and have interacted with lots of people who lie on a different end of that spectrum from me.) When I said ALSO F, I was referencing your reference to Six. LOL - sorry if that wasn't very clear. (The character I'm probably closest in personality to is probably Billy actually.) But your response is really interesting as well, because I find that - for me - I have a lot of trouble making any sweeping moral decisions - and certainly not without a lot of time and struggle as well. There may be instances where it may seem obvious that something is wrong, but I always need more context for it to properly be framed in my mind., so for me, the difficulty is not always that there's no consistent code - it's that even if there is one, I'd find it difficult to stick to one within the array of all the complex and complicated situations that can occur in life, and part of it is knowing that I am someone who struggles, some times, to think farther down the line.
I think my issue with the show was that they brought it in as a central theme of the show (or what plenty of people in the audience assume it as a central theme of the show) without really giving it a fair airing? That's partially the reason why I find it is necessary to go back to Caprica (eventually) in that I feel like some of the proper context for the theme is actually there rather than on BSG proper, because genocide and war seems hardly the best place to have a species prove their worth as a species (not that I feel like anyone should have to most of the time - it sort of boggles my mind at least)? Instead, the people living in the moral middle-ground (most of the people who were civilians and not featured on the show and even some of the military who were never featured) of actually needing to make proper day-to-day right-wrong choices in the extreme conditions they are forced to live in - would fall to the wayside for the benefit of having the extremes of "bad" and "good" actions presented (it's like trying to explore morality of a species only in the grand, sweeping gestures), which is what makes Baltar [and Boomer - actually] such as an interesting character to me - he is one of the featured characters on the show who we see constantly straddling that line. He is not "heroic", but he's hardly the "villain" either.
The way you've presented it here, however, is much more tolerable to me as a framing of the question than how they actually, I feel, handled it on the show? I mean, if we are meant to question the assumption of the human moral superiority complex, then I wholeheartedly agree. One of our first sections in Bioethics involved drawing the "moral standing" line delineating the base-line for something or someone to have moral value attached, and it was simply - this is an extreme word for it, really - abhorrent to me, and you've drawn on a few examples above of why exactly, but as previously stated, I have a lot of difficulty maneuvering within rigid frameworks?
Reply
Actually, I think animal rights may have been the topic that I wrote one of my last short papers on for that Bioethics class, and it ended up being my best paper? I think - possibly - exactly because of my actually having some sort of established moral baseline regarding it, so I can at least work with some of the ehtical questions and argument presented. :)
Reply
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, except that I think that the axiomatic, "all humans have a right to live" is something I both a) strongly agree with, and b) also have big problems with when it comes to the corollary that we have a right to wipe out any "lesser" beings in the process. I'm not even a vegetarian; I'm not walking the walk on this, trust me, which I have some shame about but I have enough dietary problems as is, etc. The Cylons' position that humans are lesser life forms, and Adama's own questioning whether humans' destructive and evil impulses undermine the moral imperative of our survival, have some merit I think in an artistic/philosophical discussion of The Human Problem. Which is why it's so funny that Daybreak has the humans and Cylons joining together to wipe out whatever primate life was developing on Earth lolol.
Reply
That said, if it's of any comfort to you, I also have big problems with that corollary as well while strongly agreeing with the general sentiment. :) (Not in the least because I hardly define animals as lesser beings, only that they are separate beings while humans may or may not generally have a greater moral attachment to their own species [or otherwise wider genetic "family"] than not, which does NOT justify elimination or destruction of those separate beings.) And yeah, "Daybreak" is just a spectacular... LOL. *headdesk*
And don't worry, I'm hardly the person to judge. I don't think, necessarily, that someone has to be vegetarian o "walk the walk" on this - as there are usually plenty of reasons and circumstances as to why someone may not be. I think it's more important to lessen cruelty than to remove them as an option from the human food-chain (though that is just may own take on it).
Also, disclaimer, I am also not a vegetarian - though I've considered it, and I mostly only eat fish - with some chicken and pork - anyway, but as an omnivore who otherwise has current outstanding health issues to worry about, I think I'm sticking to my restrictive non-vegetarian diet and aim towards trying to support advocacy for improvements in the related industries with regards to their treatment of animals in the future... Also, part of this is cultural as well. Asian vegetarian cuisine is some of my favorite cuisine EVER, but it's also rare to find and very expensive at times. :3
Reply
Leave a comment