Galactica ending, tree hugging, and...
- From: arromdee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Ken Arromdee)
- Date: Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:26:19 +0000 (UTC)
First of all, Gall Force has done it before. The Adam and Eve plot, of
course, is old, but Gall Force also had the alien-human hybrid being the
start of our human race, and the theme of historical cycles, and the epilogue
set on present-day Earth.
And Mitochondrial Eve does not work that way.
But the tree hugging. Gaaah, my brain.
Early humans didn't live in a state of idyllic harmony. Life as a
hunter-gatherer or early farmer was harsh, brutal, and short. If you decide
to live on a new planet without your technology, you will
-- starve to death since you don't know what to eat or how to get it
-- and you won't know how to make bows and spears or use them either ("I grew
up hunting" doesn't cut it)
-- find yourself plowing the fields by hand ("I grew up on a farm" doesn't
cut it)
-- probably be killed when you try to teach the natives things that some of
them don't like (and even teaching beneficial things disrupt existing power
structures) (and how can you speak their language anyway?)
-- get diseases, especially in Africa, which is where humans evolved so is
full of diseases. And you have no antibiotics.
-- get killed by wild animals (the episode seems to think that wild animals
are there to gawk at and say "how cool it is to observe creatures in their
natural habitat).
-- have lots of women die in childbirth
-- die if you happened to land in a place with bad weather that wasn't
apparent in the 15 seconds it took you to survey the place and decide to land
with only the clothes on your back
-- die from exposure because of lack of shelter (and don't tell me that
you brought along an architect who specializes in grass huts)
-- lose all your culture
-- live, at best, in autocratic societies which have no freedom of religion,
tolerance of opposing views, women's rights, etc.
You are *not* going to be wandering around on picturesque landscapes muttering
about how calm and peaceful a world it is now that you're not at war.
Furthermore, the fact that you just found a planet where humans evolved
independently means that there are independently evolved sentient races out
there. Which means that you have to be ready for them regardless of whether
you're fighting Cylons or not.
Land all your ships, don't send them into the sun. Use the metal as building
material. Use your last remaining paper to copy down information like global
maps, or how to make sulfonamide, or designs for plows, or how to smelt iron,
or how to make gunpowder (you may be tree huggers; the natives aren't) or
something for the future like Maxwell's equations. Write up a Rosetta
stone describing your entire history and put it on the moon where your
descendants can find it. Land near a place full of resources and use your
last remaining weapons to blow away the top of the ground so you can get
those resources without further use of technology. Base your survey on
finding a defensible place to live--I recommend an island (and check to see
if you're vulnerable to hurricanes first); you have time to contact the
natives once you've managed to build a self-sustaining society.
I mean, really.
--
Ken Arromdee / arromdee_AT_rahul.net / http://www.rahul.net/arromdee
"In a superhero story, Superman jumps off buildings and flies. In a realistic
story, Superman doesn't jump off buildings and can't fly. Deconstruction is
writing a story where Superman can't fly but he still jumps off of buildings."
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Prev by Date: Re: Sci-Fi Channel changing name to SyFy
- Next by Date: The Conclusion of Battlestar Galactica
- Previous by thread: Re: Sci-Fi Channel changing name to SyFy
- Next by thread: Re: Galactica ending, tree hugging, and...
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
Loading
