Last Blog

I’m just going to talk about my overall impression of the class. I thought it was a great class (with the exception of blogging twice a week and that huge paper I have yet to write). Honestly, I have never been able to read such enjoyable books for class (with the exception of the other Jackson class I took because we got to read The Tipping Point and how statistics lie). But, having a class where I could read Ender’s Game…it doesn’t get any better than that! So I will admit that before I took this class I was merely a dabbler in scifi (I still cannot compare my knowledge to the majority of the people in our class…I actually went to see The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy the other day in the movie theater and was one of three of a group of about fifteen people that did not bring a towel, so apparently I have not been fully converted to nerd-dom yet). The point is, now I have moved beyond a superficial understanding of science fiction to a much deeper understanding and appreciation of it (though I still don’t understand what’s so great about Dune).

In terms of the books we read, Orson Scott Card’s books still remain my favorite. I did, however, become acquainted with some other excellent scifi authors, Isaac Asimov, for one. After reading his Foundation trilogy (which I think should be part of the curriculum by the way, at least the first book) and The Gods Themselves, I can truly claim to be an Asimov fan. Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was amazing (apparently because it is pre-Heinlein’s turning every book into a giant sex triangle). The Professor’s blueprint for structuring a revolution was interesting, especially in how it involved Mike (I think I will have to keep it in mind for when I plan to start a revolution of my own to take over the world). I really liked the character of Mike (I even named a computer in our office “Mike” because it was petulant, but then it started causing serious problems…), especially as the issue of superhuman computers and artificial intelligence is prevalent in scifi, including other books we read such as He, She, and It. Speaking of He, She, and It, that was a fantastic book. I had to appreciate the fact that the protagonist was female, especially after our previous discussions on the lack of females in scifi. Finally, I have to point out my look of Todorov. I truly enjoyed his perspective on the American conquest, maybe because I like to sympathize with the oppressed and not the conquerors, or maybe because of its incredible similarity to Speaker for the Dead. I actually think we should read Pastwatch, as well, to compliment Speaker and Todorov.

One last point…the discussions. Having a class with uncensored discussions where anything goes was amazing for two reasons. One, because we could engage in unrestricted speculation and hypothesizing about different political situations without worrying about whether our thoughts were too extreme or outlandish to be considered, and even discussed. And two, because I got to engage in endless rants about Bush and other things that I disagree with or that just plain piss me off (and taking this point in light of the fact that most of my school career I have been the nerd who raises my hand to answer questions with academic references to the textbook or some reading instead of my own personal opinions, I enjoyed being dissenting and a big radical for once). All in all, I thought the class was fantastic and I really enjoyed it.

Last Blog....

Because my head is currently swarming with my capstone and other finals, I don't believe I can form a coherent blog. However, it won't stop me from trying. What I found most interesting in our discussion in our last class was the argument about when a culture can impose itself on a foreign civilization. Far too often, people simply criticize the intervention in one area, but fight for intervention in another. The prime example of this is the large numbers of people who advocate for intervention in areas like the Middle East and Tibet but simultaneously criticize US involvement in Iraq or Afghanistan. Now, this could simply be a debate of means. Many people legitimately encourage nonviolent interference but oppose military intervention. But this distinction is still not sufficient. I firmly belief that boycotting South Africa was the proper course of action, however, this was certainly a form of economic violence.

I do not know where I stand in the use of violence, and I gladly list myself under the ambiguous position of "depends upon the circumstances." I also don't know how I feel about intervention in other states, filling myself under the same principle. I find it hard to believe that anybody can legitimately claim to stand totally opposed to all intervention. Is it not a challenge to our own national identity when the United States stands idly by and witnesses genocide? Is there a line that must be crossed before we can intervene? And if so, how many lives must be lost or destroyed for it to be relevant enough for US involvement? Who makes that decision?

Obviously these questions do not have simple answers. It seems that it all "depends upon the circumstances." Then again, philosophers have been debating this stuff for centuries. I guess we can't feel too defeated at failing to find an answer in one semester.

Just wanted to let my blog group know that I enjoyed our discussions. I have a feeling that I won't be able to indulge in such free thinking in law school....

Take Care All,
Q

More Terminator

Perhaps I was the only one who felt like a large potion of my childhood was developed by the Terminator series, despite this possibility I think more discussion of Terminator is necessary (yes, in addition to my rambling presentation). Specifically, we should discuss the threat of machines as explained by the Terminator series.

Sarah Connor seems to despise the idea that the Terminator has a switch to learn that is turned to the off position at the beginning of his mission. She and John Connor switch this to the on position so we can watch the terminate learn to awkwardly smile and engage in other hilarious hijinks. Despite the plot ambiguity of this scene (doesn't the Terminator learn in the first movie? He learns vocabulary and uses it effectively to make the hotel owner leave him alone), it raises an interesting point. Is the Terminator evil because he cannot learn and act independently of the greater threat that is Skynet?

However, independence is not as highly valued as it may seem. John Connor is elated when he discovers that the Terminator must do whatever he says. Sarah connor waxes philosophically about how the Terminator is a perfect father, because he will always do whatever John wants or needs. His lack of independence makes him superior to a human father.

In the end, it is not independent thinking that makes the Terminator valued. It is the realization that he is firmly under the control of the Connor family. Any deviation from this existence, either by acting independently and abandoning the family or rejoining skynet, would make the Terminator no longer valued. It is not the essence of the machine that is important. All that matters is that the machine is totally subservient to the owner.

El Fin

Wow. Aside from the paper its all over. Sad to think I have already taken my most enjoyable class in my college career. Before this semester I was a passive fan of SciFi; I had read some Asimov, some Bradbury, Dune, Ender's Game, and Wells, I had seen Star Trek and Star Wars. Now though, I feel like I'm an active participant in the scifi community. After sitting around and discussing science fiction for the past three months, as well as reading a bonanza of it, I feel like I know more about the field and can use this knowledge to explore areas of other fields that other people would never imagine. It was funny, on the final day of my International Development class, our professor recommended that we all start reading a lot of scifi. He said he passes these words of wisdom onto us because scifi gets you thinking out of the box, and most of the solutions in ID come from out-of-the-box thinking. Well, I felt like I had a leg up on the class. Of course, I already had a chip on my shoulder when the professor asked if anyone had read Kuhn and I was the only one who knew about him. Ah, the parallels between scifi and international development.

I digress though, even though this entire blog is a digression ( but from what I'm not sure). Anyway, I wish this could be a required course for all IR majors, as well as philosophy, psychology, sociology, political science, and probably a few others. The texts we have read have provoked more meaningful discussions than the works from any other class. And not only were the discussions meaningful, but they were diverse. It was never a single issue that we took on, it was always multiple issues at once. That does not make for light conversation and I think if any outsider came into our class, they would have been surprised and hopefully intrigued and stimulated by the discussion we were engaged in. I look forward to reading more scifi in the future and finding more people with whom to discuss it.

May the Force be with you.

Some Random Thoughts

I wanted to respond to a comment http://www.haloscan.com/comments/qballqsp/111336203012528255/) James made on my April 12^th blog post (http://scifiblogs05.blogspot.com/2005/04/cultural-differences-and-raman.html). He asked whether I agreed with the point that “there exists such a thing as morality which has the power to be applied universally and to determine the right course of action.” I do agree with this point. I mentioned the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in my blog post and I do support this document because I am of the belief that there is a universal code of morality that all people should follow. I think this code is the creation of humankind as a whole. Its values reflect those common morals and principles that all people share, such as the golden rule. As to the example of Muslim women and their right to education, preventing women from being education or granting them fewer rights than men is not a value of Muslim culture. That is a perversion of Muslim culture. If you look at any religion or belief system, including Islam, I believe that you will find the same values at their core. Notice, however, that I used the term humankind earlier. I do not know if the human universal code of universality should apply to other species. The piggies, for example, may have a universal piggie code of conduct that applies across different tribes. As to Lennea’s comments (same url) on that same post, I agree. She said that there are two sides of the argument, “allowing people to follow their own traditional cultural practices” and “an undeniable desire to impose one's own beliefs on others. I think that it is difficult to determine when one standard should be applied, and when the other.” It is indeed difficult to make that distinction though I disagree with the use of the word impose. As I said, there might be a different belief system for piggies. But the universal moral code of human codes is not imposed on anyone because it is deciding by consensus, by humankind as a whole.

As to Terminator 2, it was my first time seeing it, and despite the fact that it had the laughable Governor of California in it, it was very cool. I thought one point was interesting was when the kid asks Arnold is he can learn to behave like a human “so he doesn’t act like a dork and stuff.” Arnold replies that he has a program that allows him to go through a learning process. Yet, he still does not act like a normal human being, instead sounding like a machine. This could be Arnold’s horrible acting or it could be a result of his programming. Is it possible for machines designed only for killing to behave like normal human beings? Is it possible for machines designed only for killing to behave like normal human beings? Arnold says that he feels no emotion because he “has to stay functional to fulfill his programming? Thinking back to He, She, and It, the only cyborg that acted like a believable human being was Yod, and in that case, the dose of compassion and empathy that allows Yod to pass as human limits his effectiveness as a killing machine.

Pershonhood

Well, first let me recommend you all go read Excession now, or some other Culture novel. I can guarentee you that Excession has just as intricate a plotline and just as interesting characters, if not more so, than Look to Windward.

Anyway, extolling the skill of Banks is not the point of this blog. I am writing to question Banks' treatment of the definition of person. When I first read Excession I can across the idea of transferring someone's mindstate into a substrate and then into another body. I reencounter this concept in Look To Windward. Still I wonder: does that make you stay the same person? Its the same question as when someone is transported in Star Trek. Since your entire body is broken down and read at the molecular level and then the information is transferred to the desired spot where the molecules are reassembled, do you remain the same?

Well in Banks' novel, to assume someone's personhood is in fact their mind state seems to imply that personhood is really just the way a brain is wired. Presuming this, one needs only to recreate the wiring of one's brain to recreate one's person. What then is Huyler? Quilen's brain cannot be wired two different ways at once. So perhaps Huyler is a program embedded in Quilen's brain that has the same information as would be found in the wiring of Huyler's brain. In which case, our personhood is reducible to a computer program. Granting this is possible, a deeper presuppostion needs to be unearthed.

By transferring your mind state from your body to another body, you in fact transferring 'you' from one body to another. What is this 'you', or the self (as it is yourself) though? Try and think of the self. It is impossible. 'The self one seeks is the self that seeks.' You can never really know what your self is. Given this, how can we transfer it from one body to another. As for the idea that it is simply the wiring of the brain, I reject this. It implies that I am not the same person as I was when I was six, since my brain certainly has more connections between its neurons now.

Banks has presented us with quite an interesting topic of discussion. I hope we take it up in class or at least in the blogs.

The Heathens

Was there something unique about European Catholicism that enabled them to carry out what we now consider to be atrocities upon the peoples of Mexico? I believe so. The Europeans believed that all who are not baptized are sub-human; they are heathens, barbarians, demon-worshipers. Put yourself in the shoes of a conquistador. Is it not right to abolish such abominations from the planet? It was even thought that to kill 1,000 unbaptized people was not as bad as the death of one baptized person. This should give a significant insight into the way the Europeans thought of the Americans.

Is this right? Can we agree with such a viewpoint? Perhaps these questions are misleading. They presuposse that the Europeans are not an Other to us but are in fact the same as us. This is not the case though. The time and idealogies with which they lived are wholly different than those which we know today. Certainly from our viewpoint we can condemn the Europeans, but if we are to understand them, then condemnation should not be considered.

To suppose the we can condemn the Europeans is to suppose that there is a universal moral code which is subsumed under a universal way of life that is followed by all peoples of any time. This universal way of life would produce the universal moral code which is then applicable to all. However, humanity is not monotone. In fact, perhaps there are many different species of human if we understand the word 'human' in the philsophical-psychological-sociological-moral sense of the word.

Of course this is not to say that one 'species' of human should interfere with another. Instead, communication between the two could present one with a different way of thinking that may be judged to be better than the current way. It is just unfortunate for many, and fortunate for another many, that we cannot communicate with the Europeans of old to present them with an alternative viewpoint.

ps This was not an easy post for me to write, as I rewrote it twice. I realize the sticky moral position that these ideas present. However, it is just the seed of a thought that needs much discussion in order to come to bloom. I alone could make about three counter arguments to what I posted above. Some were so obvious that I had to do rewrites. I welcome any criticism though and will be happy to respond to comments.

What Does Constitute a Standard for Morality?

I was struck by the excuses offered for the conquest of the Americas offered in class on Tuesday. They came in several forms. The first was to offer a contextual justification of "that is how things were done" or "if you were there, you would probably act the same way." The next justification was to blame it on some natural failure of human nature confronted with alien beings. The last justification was that the end result wasn't so bad for all of us living now in the United States. All of these claims offer explanation for the conquest, but none justify the mass slaughter of tens of millions of people. If the conquest was not morally reprehensible, what is?

The contextual justification is flawed for two distinct reasons. First of all, the existence of racism embedded in a culture does not excuse individual or group actions. Just because most if not all Spaniards and Europeans would look at the Native Americans as barbarians does not excuse their actions. Just as the slave master is not excused for his treatment of slaves because it was technically legal, or the killing of voting rights activists in Mississippi is not excused because the South was pretty racist, Cortez and his cronies cannot be excused for their brutality and infliction of mass human suffering on a population. Secondly, to think that I would act in the same way being put in the same position is a stretch at best. If I were placed in that situation right now, I would not act in that way. If I was a member of the society with no hindsight of life in the 21st century I wouldn't be the same person and any conclusion on how I would have acted is impossible and not worthy of further discussion.

Probably the most supportable claim is that the Spaniards were acting as humans always do when faced with the incomprehensible other. However, it was not so much a human reaction as it was the reaction of a people who thought of themselves as so morally superior that they could not accept any other culture that did not walk, talk, and act like them. This is not a justification. Extreme arrogance and contempt of all that does not look like a reflection in the mirror is no justification for genocide.

As for the end result of the genocide, how great was it for the current Americas? Most of South and Central America continues to suffer under the pressure of the United States. The Native Americans in the US are a destroyed people. Sure some Europeans were able to experience Manifest Destiny and create the project that is the United States, but is it really worth the price?

Explanations for horrific actions are far different than justifications, and I believe this was the confusion in class. How can we justify the slaughter of millions? How is this a good thing? If this is not bad, what is? And if nothing can be considered bad because of cultural relativism, than why even use the word at all?

Todorov and Schmitt

In class we discussed Speaker for the Dead and The Conquest of America. I found the discussion concerning whether the Conquest was good or bad interesting. I found comparisons between that topic and Schmitt.

I think that as a whole, the Conquest was a bad thing. Jessie mentioned three points that should be considered in deciding whether it was good or bad. First, the world we live in now, the technology, the civilization, is the result of the Conquest. Second, the conquistadors did not know the magnitude of their impact on American culture. For example, they could not control the decimation of the Indians by disease. Finally, deciding whether or not it was morally reprehensible (I’ll get back to this point later). I think a fourth point should be added to this discussion, the overall impact of the Conquest on the people of the Americas, the Indians. Todorov discusses the so-called “ten plagues” that affected the Indians. Even though the conquistadors did not know the impact of their actions, they did more than just kill the Indians indirectly through contact with them. They enjoyed persecuting and torturing the Indians. Therefore, because of the conquistadors’ impact on the Indian population, I think the conquest was a bad thing.

Getting back to the point of moral reprehensibility, another question is whether the conquistadors themselves were good or bad. Though Martin said that having been in that situation, the conquistadors could not be blamed, I disagree. I believe that just because the views during that time period differed, it did not give them an excuse to ignore questions of morality. In Speaker, Ender says that you can’t judge people until you know their story, but at the same time as he explains Marcaos actions I don’t think he excuses him from all moral reprehensibility. This made me think of Schmitt and his discussion of choosing the enemy. The way the state chooses the enemy is arbitrary, it cannot be justified; it simply is. But, the individual on the other hand, has different decisions to make from that of the state.

“The individual may voluntarily die for whatever cause he may wish. That is…thoroughly private matter – decided upon freely. The economically functioning society possesses sufficient means to neutralize nonviolently, in a “peaceful” fashion, those economic competitors who are inferior, unsuccessful or mere “perturbers.” Concretely speaking, this implies that the competitor will be left to starve if he does not voluntarily accommodate himself” (Schmitt, 48).

Essentially this says that judgment of the morality of the state – or in this case we can say the Conquest as a whole – must differ from judgment of the morality of individuals. And though this statement also says that if members of the state do not conform to the state they will be forced to, because the Conquest in itself was bad, this still does not excuse the conquistadors from the fact that their actions were wrong.

So Little Time...

Not much time to write, so I will only mention a few points about the Conquest of America. First of all, the different interpretations on how to treat the other were of particular interest. The first was to simply conquer the other as they were inferior in action and appearance and unacceptable of Christian doctrine. The second was to allow their culture to exist and then convert them to Christianity later. While both interpretations led to the destruction of the other's culture eventually, the means employed would be somewhat different. This same dynamic exists today, but we generally favor subtly or not so subtly reforming other's cultures after conquest rather than committing outright genocide.

Secondly, the treatment of the Mexicans posed more questions that simply the question of the other. Would they have been treated so poorly had their power been strong enough to destroy Cortez with relative ease? If they fought the invading armies to a standstill, how would the concept of the other change? Would they be more equal or less equal as they posed more of a threat and were more of an other?

Just some thoughts, wish I could elaborate more...

Todorov and Orson Scott Card

In reading Tzvetan Todorov’s The Conquest of America, I could not help but be shocked by the similarities between it and Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead. Since I can’t come up with a brilliant thesis to tie these all together, I’m just going to go through Todorov’s book and point out its similarities with Ender’s Game and Speaker.

“Columbus’s behavior implies that he does not grant the Indians the right to have their own will, that he judges them, in short, as living objects” (Todorov, 48). Todorov also notes Columbus’s “failure to recognize the Indians, and the refusal to admit them as a subject having the same rights as oneself, but different” (Todorov, 49). In comparing these descriptions to Card, the first one corresponds to varelse and the second one is remarkably similar to the definition of otherlander. Columbus judges the Indians as living objects, grouping them with animals which Demosthenes groups under varelse. What Columbus refuses to do is recognize the Indians as otherlander, defined as “the stranger that we recognize as being a human of our world, but of another city or country” (Card, 34). Instead, he believes them to be equivalent to animals, or varelse.

Todorov, in discussing the Indians’ style of communication (communication with the world), talks of “the collectivity” in which “society as a whole…decides the fate of the individual” (Todorov, 67). He says that “death is a catastrophe only from the narrowly individual perspective, whereas, from the social point of view, the benefit derived from submission to group rule counts for more than the loss of an individual” (68). His discussions of human sacrifice and the collectivity deciding the fate of the individual strongly reminds me of the Buggers’ society. Because the Buggers have one mind, the mind of the Hive Queen, they act as one unit, or a collectivity. As Ender comes to realize, individual lives are meaningless as compared to the good of society as a whole. Furthermore, just as the Spaniards only practice interhuman communication, the humans in Ender’s Game communication solely among themselves. They too, like the Spaniards, are unable to comprehend the concept of communication with the world.

Todorov says that the Aztec warriors derogatively referred to the Spaniards as women in order to criticize their fighting abilities. He states that “the “women” would win this war, if only figuratively” (Todorov, 92) because what was needed was “the feminine side of culture: improvisation rather than ritual, words rather than weapons” (Todorov, 92). In Ender’s Game, Ender is compared to his two siblings, his sister Valentine and his brother Peter.

Card constructs his character as a combination of his siblings’ personalities. Not only does he have the ruthlessness of Peter, but he also has the compassion and empathy of his sister. The Aztecs believe that the use of weapons is relegated to men and the use of words is relegated to women. Men destroy, while women communication. Ender has both of these qualities, which makes him an ideal commander of the human invasion. Note also that Ender, unlike any of the other commanders at Battle School, recognizes the need for improvisation. He organizes his army into five toons, allowing for each commander and sub-commander, actually every soldier, to be able to respond to changing circumstances. It is the army’s proficiency at improvisation that allows them to defeat all other armies.

Another instance of a similarity with the Buggers’ style of communication is Todorov’s statement “Where the language is above all a means of designating the group speaking it and expressing the coherence proper to that group, it is not necessary to impose it on the other” (Todorov, 123). The Buggers, during the three wars, do not communicate with the humans. It is not necessary for them to do so because their communication acts simply to express their coherence. Though it has use for them and their ability to operate, there is no need to use it to communicate with the humans, until the very end where they communicate with Ender. Until that point, however (which at any rate occurs after the war is over), there is no need to impose the Buggers form of communication on the humans.

Finally, Todorov, in speaking of Cortés ability to understand the Indians, says “destruction becomes possible precisely because of this understanding” (Todorov, 127). His notion of “understanding-that-kills” (Todorov, 127) is remarkably similar to that of Card’s in Ender’s Game. Because of his understanding of the Buggers, Ender is able to destroy them. It is his empathy, his ability to understand the other, that allows him to effectively exterminate them.

The Necessity of the Mayan Woman

First of all, I knew this book was going to be sweet after I read the dedication. The power of those lines grips the reader right from the start. Now obviously most of us, I say most because perhaps there are a few people out there who will not cringe, are disgusted by this statement and wish to never see such atrocities performed upon another human ever again. Yet, it seems to me that Todorov may be hinting that its repetition may be inevitable.

On page 182 he writes "Nonviolent communication exists, and we can defend it as a value. It is what may permit us to act so that the triad: enslavement/colonialism/communication is not merely an instrument of conceptual analysis, but also turns out to correspond to a succession within time." It is this last bit, about it being a succession in time, that troubles me. It seems to imply that this triad is the natural course of events which will occur when one entity runs into another entity which is the Other. This then leads to the conclusion that enslavement could be the first act forced upon the Other, which would mean the Mayan woman would find her place in the future.

Now anyone that says we do not have to worry about encountering the Other because no meeting will ever be as exceptional as the one between Europeans and Americans at the end of the 15th century would be ignoring two such possible encounters. The first, being most obvious in our class, is between us, as a collective of humanity, and extraterrestrials. The other, not so obvious, is between two cultures which do not yet exist but may have their roots in the present. Cultures are not static and so when one culture reaches the stage of communication with another culture, neither will remain the same. Instead, the changes of one could be so opposite to the changes of the other, that once again one culture entitles the other as an Other. Hence, the cycle could repeat itself. Of course in order for such a realignment to happen, communication would have to break down, but that is not unimaginable.

Oh ramen, you tricky word you. What I thought was interesting about it was its Swedish translation, which Jesse read to us; it included the word 'limit.' Does anyone else find it a bit troubling that the word 'limit' is applied to being recognized as being human. One interpretation of this is that humanity is the limit of sentient beings. In other words, in order to be sentient, to have moral agency, to be socially and self-conscious, one must fit within the framework of what it means to be a human. Here I use the term human not in its biological sense but in its social, psychological, philosophical, and moral sense. If such a limit is the implication, then calling something ramen is a disguise for de-otherizing, just as we dehumanize, the other. Once de-otherized but still considered sentient, we would then humanize the other. Hence, the other is human and so should come under human power. This then leads to imposing human ways of life on the other and seeing contradictory acts of the other's way of life as sub-human. This is just one possible implication of the term ramen. Anyone care to take another shot at it?

Children as Ramen?

While reading some of the posts regarding animals as human and aliens as human, I was struck by the internal contradictions within our own category of human. Specifically, are children human? One of the foundations of humanity as defined in our class discussion and the books we have read was being responsible for one's actions. We do not treat children this way. Recently the supreme court outlawed the death penalty when the crime is committed by a minor. I fully agree with this decision, but it beings up an interesting point. We can not simply define what is human as being a conscious decision maker as it would exclude ourselves in our youth. Instead a more detailed definition is needed.

Although it may be simple, it seems that defining something as human or ramen simply means treating it as a member of your community. This does not mean living with it, but treating it as you would your own neighbors.