Totally agree. The notion that you have more in common with your neighbour than with a guy from the other side of the world, just because you speak the same language/dialect and share other stupid/irrelevant cultural idiosyncracies is not just wrong but also the first step towards jingoism.
United Earth? New Horizons & Nationalism
- Thread starter Horizons96
- Start date
If you have multiple countries and some of them are run by crooks, then yes the people in these countries are in bad shape. If you have a single huge country that's run by crooks, everyone is screwed.
With multiple countries, the good countries (an assumption there are any) can apply various kinds of pressure (diplomatic, financial, etc) for the bad ones to change, South Africa being encouraged to abandon apartheid would be an example of this.
If individual countries screw up their freedoms, economies, political direction, the impact will vary in the other countries, in some cases the impact will be nonexistent.
On the other hand, if those in authority of the sole government decides to radically change the entire planet, well who here wants to live on planet North Korea?
I look forward to seeing T'Girl's vision of Star Trek, in which the Alabama Star Ship Enterprise is launched, but finds that it cannot find a repair port because only the Massachusetts Starfleet has reached so far into outer space, yet the Massachusetts Starfleet Spacedock won't accept an Alabama starship because of a dispute between their governors over payments of sales taxes on Internet purchases between these fully sovereign states, leading to both the Alabama Starfleet and Massachusetts Starfleet getting stymied by the Bavarian Starfleet in their attempts to work dilithium mining deals with the fully sovereign Grextal nation on Tellar -- and then their attempts to race to steal the Bavarians' dilithium when the Bavarian dilithium ships crash into the territory of the Grextals' bitter rivals, the fully sovereign nation of Grem'tok....
Yeah, this would totally be practical. :Romulan:
Yeah, this would totally be practical. :Romulan:
Here's a question: why is every story about a new technology nearly always a dystopian Frankenstein rehash?
"No, Prometheus, keep your evil 'fire' technology. Men were meant to wait for Zeus alone to decide when fire visits them, not other men!"
Genetic-engineering is going to happen. And it very well should. The issue is not that it changes the world as we've known it - don't we often wish the world would change - but that it changes fairly for all people. I think part of the reason we fear new technologies so much is that we're trapped trying to succeed in the world we know, let alone in a new one we don't.
Here's a question: why is every story about a new technology nearly always a dystopian Frankenstein rehash?
"No, Prometheus, keep your evil 'fire' technology. Men were meant to wait for Zeus alone to decide when fire visits them, not other men!"
Genetic-engineering is going to happen. And it very well should. The issue is not that it changes the world as we've known it - don't we often wish the world would change - but that it changes fairly for all people. I think part of the reason we fear new technologies so much is that we're trapped trying to succeed in the world we know, let alone in a new one we don't.
I mean, realistically-speaking, the reason the producers of Star Trek established a strong Human/Federation taboo against genetic engineering in the shows was that Star Trek largely grew out of the tropes and conventions of 1930s pulp space opera, a genre that predated knowledge of the existence of DNA, and therefore had not kept up with the development of transhumanism in literary science fiction which occurred after Star Trek's 30s-era tropes had been firmly established onscreen. So they had to justify the lack of transhumanism in a series whose tropes really didn't allow for it.
Trek was more interesting when it didn't use the lazy trope. Genesis worked in Wrath of Khan, spectacularly, creating a planet out of a nebula. And Khan was a better film for it. Then they got lazy in Search for Spock and, well, odd-numbered-film syndrome. "No, lowly mortal, 'the human adventure is not just beginning;' your efforts toward paradise must ever be nothing but stillborn hellscapes!"
TNG's "Unnatural Selection" was a step toward the right direction. As in the real world, the genetic research continued. Even The Motion Picture, well before it, suggested the Arcturians procreated mainly by cloning technologies. Good for them.
By DS9's "Dr. Bashir, I Presume," lazy TV writers, long-since unhappy with Trek's "better future" nonsense making their jobs harder, again plucked the low-hanging fruit and retconned the Federation to having genetic-engineering be illegal for centuries. Not just Earth mind you, but every Federation world... So if the Zakdorn want in, and they've been very successful and benign at genetic-engineering for centuries, they need to dismantle half their healthcare system because Humans went nuts with it back in 1996.
Trek is better when it's better. Genetic-engineering will likely happen in one form or another in the real world. Let's discuss, figure things out, and explore. I say, so long as it's available to all, the Social Contract between all [relatively equal] human beings continues.
EDIT: And of course Trek's shown widespread genetic-engineering from TOS's "The Cage" to Star Trek: Into Darkness...how else do you explain how pretty everyone is???
TNG's "Unnatural Selection" was a step toward the right direction. As in the real world, the genetic research continued. Even The Motion Picture, well before it, suggested the Arcturians procreated mainly by cloning technologies. Good for them.
By DS9's "Dr. Bashir, I Presume," lazy TV writers, long-since unhappy with Trek's "better future" nonsense making their jobs harder, again plucked the low-hanging fruit and retconned the Federation to having genetic-engineering be illegal for centuries. Not just Earth mind you, but every Federation world... So if the Zakdorn want in, and they've been very successful and benign at genetic-engineering for centuries, they need to dismantle half their healthcare system because Humans went nuts with it back in 1996.
Trek is better when it's better. Genetic-engineering will likely happen in one form or another in the real world. Let's discuss, figure things out, and explore. I say, so long as it's available to all, the Social Contract between all [relatively equal] human beings continues.
EDIT: And of course Trek's shown widespread genetic-engineering from TOS's "The Cage" to Star Trek: Into Darkness...how else do you explain how pretty everyone is???
Last edited:
Here's a question: why is every story about a new technology nearly always a dystopian Frankenstein rehash?
"No, Prometheus, keep your evil 'fire' technology. Men were meant to wait for Zeus alone to decide when fire visits them, not other men!"
Genetic-engineering is going to happen. And it very well should. The issue is not that it changes the world as we've known it - don't we often wish the world would change - but that it changes fairly for all people. I think part of the reason we fear new technologies so much is that we're trapped trying to succeed in the world we know, let alone in a new one we don't.
But where do you draw the line with regards to genetic engineering is it a free for all? or to we impose some limits?
I am totally opposed to genetic engineering as well. There has been no actual progress, otherwise GMO producing companies would not be massively politically engaged in preventing the labeling of their products (if you produce good stuff you want the very opposite, you direly want your stuff to stand out).
And about genetically enhanced humans, we all read our Huxley so Khan was just one potential path. Besides the "do it too extremly" path there is also the socially selective path.: rich folks will get kids with modified brains so you get a reduction of equality of opportunities.
What Trek has done with its Eugentic Wars stories is to illustrate the SOCIAL problems and risks of a technology with far-reaching repercussions. We have a lot of powerful technologies but none that changes our biological fundamentals. It also showed how social Darwinism can easily emerge with such technologies in existance.
Khan is so much the main villain here, he is evil by design, but trather guys like Colonel Green.
And about genetically enhanced humans, we all read our Huxley so Khan was just one potential path. Besides the "do it too extremly" path there is also the socially selective path.: rich folks will get kids with modified brains so you get a reduction of equality of opportunities.
What Trek has done with its Eugentic Wars stories is to illustrate the SOCIAL problems and risks of a technology with far-reaching repercussions. We have a lot of powerful technologies but none that changes our biological fundamentals. It also showed how social Darwinism can easily emerge with such technologies in existance.
Khan is so much the main villain here, he is evil by design, but trather guys like Colonel Green.
MacLeod, T'Girl, horatio83, again, Frankenstein story. It isn't an all or nothing.
And what's more, although you're apprehensive about it, others are gung-ho. They'll go for it, and give reasons from the loftiest to the basest for it. ...If they choose to give reasons; after all, this is America, and we don't really answer to others for much.
...And perhaps it should be so - with some vehemently for one thing, others the opposite, and all of us reaping the benefits of the brokered peace in between.
T'Girl, it's funny you're afraid of government telling people what color eyes they must have. For the betterment of the state? We've had American presidents saying the Land of the Free is an oligarchy. I'm not nearly as afraid of Big Brother as I am Weyland-Yutani. The government isn't going to tell you to change your eye color, but if you don't demand your democratic government properly check and balance your private industry, you may find your boss's kid outlive yours by a century.
Horatio83, Khan's problem wasn't that he was smarter, but that he was a megalomaniac. Engineer others to be just as smart, and his megalomania makes him not a world leader, but an asshole whose peers had to incarcerate.
MacLeod, we have limits today on nuclear proliferation, supersonic flight, we're discussing limits on machine autonomous machines... If we take the time to set proper limits for genetic-engineering as well, can we agree to some of it?
And what's more, although you're apprehensive about it, others are gung-ho. They'll go for it, and give reasons from the loftiest to the basest for it. ...If they choose to give reasons; after all, this is America, and we don't really answer to others for much.
...And perhaps it should be so - with some vehemently for one thing, others the opposite, and all of us reaping the benefits of the brokered peace in between.
T'Girl, it's funny you're afraid of government telling people what color eyes they must have. For the betterment of the state? We've had American presidents saying the Land of the Free is an oligarchy. I'm not nearly as afraid of Big Brother as I am Weyland-Yutani. The government isn't going to tell you to change your eye color, but if you don't demand your democratic government properly check and balance your private industry, you may find your boss's kid outlive yours by a century.
Horatio83, Khan's problem wasn't that he was smarter, but that he was a megalomaniac. Engineer others to be just as smart, and his megalomania makes him not a world leader, but an asshole whose peers had to incarcerate.
MacLeod, we have limits today on nuclear proliferation, supersonic flight, we're discussing limits on machine autonomous machines... If we take the time to set proper limits for genetic-engineering as well, can we agree to some of it?
Last edited:
Yes but how can we agree on something if some countries have the opinion, to quote you.
This is America, and we don't really answer to others for much.
Not a great starting point for any discussions, and what limits on supersonic flight do we have? If you can design and build it you can have it from military to civilian aircraft.
The issue of genetic manipulation or designer babies to give it another name is that different countries might have different ideas about what is the ideal human. Look back at history to the Nazi's they had an idea about what is the "ideal human" and we know how that work out.
But that's not really a limitation of the technology itself at least not in the vein of Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as far as I am aware there is no International treaty in regards to supersonic aircraft.
And really the only issue with supersonic flight and where it can be used is down to noise, Concorde worked just fine on the Transatlantic run once it was over the ocean.
Because they'll be forced to. As in the cases previously mentioned and in others looming on the horizon - e.g. nanotech, AI's. I imagine many future technologies will be too powerful to wield in the kind of world we live in today, and so the world will need to adapt again.
Maybe reasons like these encourage change toward a United Earth devoid rogue nations - whether they be Iran, North Korea, China, or the Great Satan itself.
Forced to, by whom?
Or we could adapt the technology to suit the world we want to leave to our decendants.
I suspect many of the people in those nations you mention do not like the actions of their government yet can do little to change it. I doubt that unless their is a regime change or cultural change in some places that any new tech will benefit the people rather a select group of people will use it to further cement/enhance their positions of power.
Or we could adapt the technology to suit the world we want to leave to our decendants.
I suspect many of the people in those nations you mention do not like the actions of their government yet can do little to change it. I doubt that unless their is a regime change or cultural change in some places that any new tech will benefit the people rather a select group of people will use it to further cement/enhance their positions of power.
I'd have to re-read the entire thread to be sure, but while Khan and his ilk are certainly one result of a Eugenics arms-race, no one's yet mentioned the more likely one, although a couple of posts on the last page came close;
the film was called Gattaca. In it the nation, and the world, had stratified around the ideal of the so-called designer babies. The end result was a society of modifieds called "Valids" and unmodifieds called "In-Valids", with the 'Valids' being granted exclusive access to all the perks of high society, and the 'In-Valids' being forced to scrape by as the worst of the worker class. All menial labor jobs no one has cared to make a robot for are the only jobs available to those unfortunate enough to have parents who couldn't afford to make them the new average, that is, everyone is special, so no one is. But don't tell anyone this, or an 'In-Valid' might just slip in and take over, pretending to be one of us.
the film was called Gattaca. In it the nation, and the world, had stratified around the ideal of the so-called designer babies. The end result was a society of modifieds called "Valids" and unmodifieds called "In-Valids", with the 'Valids' being granted exclusive access to all the perks of high society, and the 'In-Valids' being forced to scrape by as the worst of the worker class. All menial labor jobs no one has cared to make a robot for are the only jobs available to those unfortunate enough to have parents who couldn't afford to make them the new average, that is, everyone is special, so no one is. But don't tell anyone this, or an 'In-Valid' might just slip in and take over, pretending to be one of us.
Gattaca is a very good movie, that showed one possible result of genetic engineering is that we create two classes of people. Haven't we just spend centuries trying to get to the point were everyone regardless of gender/sexuality/skin colour etc..... are treated equally. If the type of genetic enhancment seen in Gattaca were to come true would those that had been enhanced view themselves as better than those that hadn't? Just as throughout history people of certain skin colours believe themselves to be better than those of certain skin colours?
There might be support for eliminating genetic diseases that are passed from one or more parents but once we move beyond that their might be less support for actually enhancing our species and of course we don't know what if any long term consequences might be done to our genome by gentically manipulating it.
Even eliminating genetic diseases is a double edge sword as we don't know who that person would grow up to be, i.e would Prof. Hawking be alive or the person he is today if parents had the choice? Of course I can fully understand a parents choice to ensure their child will grow up free from genetic diseases wouldn't many of us given the choice choose the healthy child?
There might be support for eliminating genetic diseases that are passed from one or more parents but once we move beyond that their might be less support for actually enhancing our species and of course we don't know what if any long term consequences might be done to our genome by gentically manipulating it.
Even eliminating genetic diseases is a double edge sword as we don't know who that person would grow up to be, i.e would Prof. Hawking be alive or the person he is today if parents had the choice? Of course I can fully understand a parents choice to ensure their child will grow up free from genetic diseases wouldn't many of us given the choice choose the healthy child?
I'm sure they would.
Similar threads
