Your Thoughts Exactly

In Battlestar Galactica, the human race is wiped out by cylons in the very first episode of the show. As the remnants of humanity struggle to survive, floating around space being constantly pursued by cylon attackers, a theme has developed throughout the show of whether or not humans deserve to survive, or to be replaced by a newer, more advanced, and much sexier group of beings, the cylons.

The human sentiment aboard the Galactica is one of entitlement; that something about what humans means that they deserve to win against their cylon pursuers. This “something,” is often synonymous with values that human society is built on: democracy, human rights, with some military values mixed in: specifically the ideas of sacrificing your life for a greater cause and never leaving your compatriots behind. The humans of Galactica have filtered the best parts about humanity, and believe that these values and actions are what separate them from cylons, and will somehow save them in the end.

The humans of BSG share values with Western society, particularly the Anglo-American nexus of UK-Australia and of course the U.S. of A. The current administration utilizes the “our values and ideas are stronger than theirs,” argument with regards to Middle Eastern terrorists all the time, to build a contrast between the good (us) and evil (Al Qaeda), and to justify the ongoing effort to spread these Western values to Iraq (through imposing Democratic goverment) and the rest of the region.

But as you know I am not interested in the Middle East. I am more interested in the area of the world that is an actual threat to Western domination of the world. East Asia.

The humans from Battlestar Galactica created the cylons, then forced them to work until they revolted. The West colonized the rest of the world, exploiting the natural resources for their own wealth. In areas of the world like North America and Australia, Westerners slaughtered the inhabitants and infiltrated the land for themselves. In areas like Africa and the Middle East, Westerners fractured long standing empires, dividing the area into regions without consideration for the social structures that preceded their arrival. But in East Asia, societies were able to form into states and maintain links with their pre-colonial past: or reject colonization all together, as in the case of Japan. Eventually, they were able to integrate superior Western technology and political and economic strategies with their own values.

As other regions with different histories and different values become relatively more powerful than the West, what will be our future? Will we peacefully acknowledge the rise of new societies as a natural process, integrating ourselves into whatever new world order arises for the benefit of all humanity? Or will we continue to cling to our past hegemony on the basis that our values are somehow “right,” and that our leadership of the world is “just?”

History tells us that it is very difficult for countries to take their falls gracefully. Recent history does give examples of the contrary, specifically the case of the UK ceding global control to the U.S. peacefully and the relatively peaceful self-imposed breakup of the Soviet empire. In both cases, the realization of leadership struck that maintaining domination would be impossible, as the cost of fighting armed conflict in the twentieth century, and especially the nuclear era.

Yet one of America’s problems remains it’s insistence on its own greatness, to be taken to a form of predestination. Judeo-Christianity, with its ideas of “chosen people,” or a “flock,” with a dichotomy between the saved and the damned, has fused itself into politics, with our current born-again President being the worst example. Mixing war with religious language only leads to critical failure.

So I hope that, when the East does pass the West, they don’t find it necessary to wipe us out for our own good. Let’s start by proving to them we deserve saving by borrowing a little from their culture. Ruling through benevolence, as my man Confucius tells us too.

# posted by Marmaniac @ 10:37 AM