QM Prompt #57
QM Prompt #57: "If science teaches us anything, it teaches us to accept our failures, as well as our successes, with quiet dignity and grace." - Young Frankenstein
In my galaxy, science is just another way for politicians to excuse their failures. So you'll pardon my disbelief that this quotation holds true.
I don't mean their personal failures; rather, I am referring to diplomatic failures. I'm convinced we could have kept up with political negotiations insofar as the Separatists are concerned, but beings will always attempt to pursue violent solutions when they are threatened. Everyone was so frightened when the assassination attempts, and ironically, many Senators were more upset about the attempt on my life than I was. Perhaps I'm simply too blasé about threats to my person, but quite frankly I'm used to it. I survived the Trade Federation invasion and I have lived through several other political situations, so there is no reason why I couldn't reasonably have gotten through this. But no: others had to intercede supposedly on my behalf, and what they ended up doing was completely against my wishes.
Science was responsible for the clone soldiers the Republic is using to fight the war against the Confederacy. A Jedi commissioned the clones, but their actual creation fell to the Kaminoans and their model, the bounty hunter Jango Fett. Each clone is a sentient being whose genetic structure has been modified to make it less independent than the original host. They are matured at twice the natural rate, so that a clone who has been alive for ten years looks twenty and is ready for duty. None of these facts were available to the Senate when they voted to give Chancellor Palpatine emergency powers; I have only discovered them through careful, clandestine research. Nor should it surprise anyone that the politicians were not in full cognizance of the truth. Palpatine had them whipped into such a frenzy that I doubt they would have listened to reason anyway.
There are many things wrong with our political system, not least of which is that things like this can happen in the first place. But I think one of the things we need to fix is that we can so easily manipulate the universe, through science, so that it serves our own ends. We jet from system to system in ships with hyperdrives and we exploit planets for their resources, taking them for all they own and leaving them barren balls of dust floating in space. And then, of course, there are these clones. I don't even want to get into the ethical implications surrounding the creation of an army - a sentient army - purely for one's personal use.
So, if I were to reword the quote, I might do it thusly: "If science teaches us anything, it teaches us that the self is the only thing that matters, over and above the natural and necessary constraints of the universe."
Padmé Amidala
Star Wars
464 words
In my galaxy, science is just another way for politicians to excuse their failures. So you'll pardon my disbelief that this quotation holds true.
I don't mean their personal failures; rather, I am referring to diplomatic failures. I'm convinced we could have kept up with political negotiations insofar as the Separatists are concerned, but beings will always attempt to pursue violent solutions when they are threatened. Everyone was so frightened when the assassination attempts, and ironically, many Senators were more upset about the attempt on my life than I was. Perhaps I'm simply too blasé about threats to my person, but quite frankly I'm used to it. I survived the Trade Federation invasion and I have lived through several other political situations, so there is no reason why I couldn't reasonably have gotten through this. But no: others had to intercede supposedly on my behalf, and what they ended up doing was completely against my wishes.
Science was responsible for the clone soldiers the Republic is using to fight the war against the Confederacy. A Jedi commissioned the clones, but their actual creation fell to the Kaminoans and their model, the bounty hunter Jango Fett. Each clone is a sentient being whose genetic structure has been modified to make it less independent than the original host. They are matured at twice the natural rate, so that a clone who has been alive for ten years looks twenty and is ready for duty. None of these facts were available to the Senate when they voted to give Chancellor Palpatine emergency powers; I have only discovered them through careful, clandestine research. Nor should it surprise anyone that the politicians were not in full cognizance of the truth. Palpatine had them whipped into such a frenzy that I doubt they would have listened to reason anyway.
There are many things wrong with our political system, not least of which is that things like this can happen in the first place. But I think one of the things we need to fix is that we can so easily manipulate the universe, through science, so that it serves our own ends. We jet from system to system in ships with hyperdrives and we exploit planets for their resources, taking them for all they own and leaving them barren balls of dust floating in space. And then, of course, there are these clones. I don't even want to get into the ethical implications surrounding the creation of an army - a sentient army - purely for one's personal use.
So, if I were to reword the quote, I might do it thusly: "If science teaches us anything, it teaches us that the self is the only thing that matters, over and above the natural and necessary constraints of the universe."
Padmé Amidala
Star Wars
464 words