Carnagath said:
Therumancer said:
In theory any race that actually advanced to the point of being able to unify their planet, and build a civilization advanced enough to engage in space travel, probably developed morally as well in order to keep it's own civilization functional.
Morality is a human concept that shouldn't necessarily be extended to aliens. The only truly certain constant among all living things in the universe would have to be evolution through natural selection. I really can't conceive advanced intelligence without it, regardless of its origins. Natural selection is not a peaceful process. It's a constant arms race between different species and between them and their environment that lasts eternally. I can very easily imagine alien intelligence that has no concept of morality or peace, because actually such things are unnatural the way life works. To me, an approach that sees war as a "challenge", an opportunity to check for chinks in your evolutionary armor, is more in line with natural selection than "peace, love and understanding". I'd completely understand an alien species annihilating us just because "that's what they do".
I'll leave the rest of your post alone, because you are Therumancer, so of course it devolves into facepalm-worthy justifications of the genocide of native Americans, calling other nations "theocracies" when you live in a country that has elected officials that believe the Earth is a few thousand years old, and calling for unification, of course, under the American culture, because everyone else is clearly inferior.
In such cases just leave it alone instead of throwing out an insulting rant.
That said, I'm not sure where you got "Genocide Of Native Americans" from, I did mention Social Darwinism, and mentioned some parts of internal Native American politicking and compared it to "Deep Space 9". I worked for two different tribes over the years. One of the big divides when they get together in tribal organizations largely comes down between the Americanized Indians, and those who resist Americanization. A divide which also in many cases leads to arguments between the rich tribes against the poor ones, although that's not exclusively how the lines are drawn. It comes down to thinks like embracing education, and business opportunities, and doing things like say opening Casinos, building science/farming complexs for things like shrimping and the like, and otherwise working with society, as opposed to trying to draw a clear line between "Indian Land" and "American Land" and resisting any kind of development or official cooperation. While they ran into some hard times, at one point Foxwoods was the world's largest Casino (in general, not just among Indian Casinos) and Mohegan Sun was #3. The economy kind of hurt them, but to put it bluntly during they heydays (when I worked there) they were making unprecedented amounts of bank, and acted as hosts for a lot of meetings between tribes and such where they set policies for festivals and such. It's not something you see publically, but yeah, there are a lot of Indians who will argue that being conquered was probably the best possible thing that could have happened to them, they having come further in the little over two centuries the US has been around than they did for thousands of years beforehand. Of course your also talking about guys saying this to shut down other arguments, and who could probably roll cigarettes with $100 bills if they wanted to. I've listened to some of the bickering, and read a number of periodicals/tribal newsletters over the years. Besides your taking that out of context, the point was that let's say earth is conquered and we're decimated, but those who assimilate into an alien civilization now have space ships, magical-seeming medical technology, and all kinds of other things, and what's more are able to spread all over the galaxy so in a couple of centuries in this situation there will probably be more humans in absolute terms than died during the conquest, it's not an EXACT analogy mind you.
I also didn't focus on it, but I wanted to point out that if you've actually read my rants, you'd know that when it comes to the basic idea of world unity, a lot of cultures could in theory do it. American principles however are the ones that are likely to lead to the least internal conflict and give everyone a chance to succeed. The systems inherent in China and Russia for example could both also unify the planet and keep things functioning but would also create highly oppressive regimes, not to mention bring intristic racism along with them. Even if the US doesn't live up to it's ideals all the time, in principle it would allow all kinds of people to co-exist to some extent. At the end of the day though it's about principles, in a true global unity the US would itself also dissolve along with other nations, as opposed to everyone becoming an American. That however went beyond the point of this argument. When it came to theocracies the point was that guys like The Ayatollah and his government are so far gone as to not even properly acknowledge those they do not like. The US has it's religious people in power, but we're not a religious state, nor do they have the influence or authority to rally people towards holy wars, and those who actually wind up in authority tend to be fairly rational. The point here was more or less that if you were an Alien diplomat and your here to discuss intergrating earth into some equivalent of The Federation, having some dude with millions upon millions of followers declaring holy war on you and refusing to acknowledge you as anything but some supernatural spirit of evil isn't exactly going to fill you with confidence. Ideally for such relations (again within the context of this discussion) Earth would need to have one government, and the ability to appoint a representative to be able to quickly and easily speak for Earth as a whole. Someone who can make agreements for trade, diplomacy, or even potentially war if we're asked to send
a fleet, or conversely need to ask for military aid. You can't have hundreds of bickering voices all with their own territories, tying up anything earth does in a UN type deadlock. It's bad enough to have one government bureaucracy to deal with (and there would be one) not hundreds of them plus another one on top of that. Seriously, if Aliens arrived tomorrow and wanted to uplift humanity, who would get to make that decision? If it went before the UN we'd still be debating it decades from now, and inevitably some countries could come down hardcore on either side of the question and that would lead to conflict no matter which way the vote went officially.
Ahh well, the point here is that it's fine you don't want to discuss some of this stuff, but don't drop a slam on me for no reason. At any rate for anyone who might be paying attention (other than you) there is a bit more clarification.
