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Hmmm, not quite.
Firstly, The miltary are massively understaffed they have enough on their plate to protect themselves from the cylons - let alone police a state by martial law. That and I've been watching season 1 again (the GF has finally got addicted after all this time) and there is lots of talk about how the BSG only has a few trained troops on board.
Martial Law couldn't be enforced.
Oh and on that last bit, with your Granddad . I think if you replaced ' baynoetting germans' with 'throwing American citizens in prison camps for being of japanese decent' then your proposition looks more shaky.
2009 is a year of Updates - one every Monday. Hopefully. xx
Edit: Don't forget, they got a huge infusion of personnel later on.
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Theres this whole moral quandry about whether or not the fleet deserves to survive...people are comparing their actions to the nazis?
What have the fleet done that was remotely horrible on such a grand scale? Individuals have sinned, sure, but everyone does. As a group, since the exodus from the colonies, what has humanity done that was all that terrible?
In fact, theyve done a lot to redeem themselves for whatever sins they may have committed. People in this thread keep speaking about the colonists as if theyve done some evil shit, but the reality is, they havent. The top "evil" actions by the fleet are as follows:
1) Deciding to wipe out the cylons by killing one of the infected(which they didnt go through with...)
2) Murdering those that cooperated with the cylons on new caprica. Which they then put an end to after a few people were killed.
Thats pretty much the sum of their big evil actions and the end result of their big sins is a grand total of like 10 casualties.
Is this really a fair comparison to Nazi Germany?
Im honestly curious, maybe im forgetting some big, horrible thing humanity has done since the destruction of the colonies. But id say, given the circumstances, theyve done a lot right, and made a lot of sacrifices to keep their morality. (ex: reforming the workers union to allow for people to do more then just survive.)
So what are these sins of humanity that we are debating anyway?
Borderlands 2 PA Xbox Metatag - Bazillion Guns
In no particular order
1) Committed an act of genocide (which only failed because a single cylon sympathiser took it in his own hands)
2) Enslaved a sentient race for a generation. Then attempted to exterminate that race when they fought for their freedom. This is a really, really huge point.
3) Their society treats certain colonies really unfairly - as much as Zarek is a grade one dickbag he exists because of inequalities in their society.
4) They are a massively racist/speciest society who think of the cylons as souless machines. Not unlike the West considered other races to be simply animals. A hang over from when they all exploited the cylons as slaves.
5) When Laura first met Loeben - she offers him a deal - tell her where the bomb is and she'll start peace proceedings. He told her he had no bomb (and so wasn't at, least for the time, trying to kill them) and she threw him out an air lock. So they know the Prez is a liar. And she stole Xena WP too.
That isn't a Good Nation*. At all.
EDIT: * In a pure good evil sense. The point is that they both need to learn to live together - and I hope thats how this ends. Breaking the cycle.
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The fleet is in the middle of the greatest crisis ever faced by anyone in the entire history of doing anything. A man tied to a set of train tracks by a steel chain with 30 seconds till a 300 tonne locomotive hits him is in a far easier state. I mean, the train might be hit by a meteor.
They are lost in space, with nowhere to run to, persued by a vastly superior force, running low on food, fuel and air in ships which are in desperate need of maintenance. They have no idea where to go, and they can afford at most 10000 of them more to die.
You realize that when they land they will quite simply have to have compulsory breeding programs for 3 or 4 generations? No choice in who you marry, no saying no, or 'I don't have time to be pregnant'. The species needs your genetic diversity and you don't get a say. They can't democratically decide their way out of that. It is a simple fact.
All you seem to really want is a benevolent dictatorship, rather than an enforced one, and I agree with you there. Every effort should be made to explain those decisions which have relevance to the people, since it will make them work harder at their tasks. However when it comes down to it if you have to put someones back to a wall with a gun and force them to do their part the needs of the species come first.
Survival is all that counts here. If they were running to another human planet I'd say that there are shades of grey, that perhaps it's not worth sacrificing all that you are to save the species, but there isn't they are fleeing into the infinate void of space and this is no time for us to set up a blue ribbon committee on water rationing policy.
You could enforce martial law with 100 guys, this is not a normal situation. You need one guy at the oxygen controls, and one guy at the water tank on/off switch. There is a word for this sort of empire, which eludes me, however in the history of humanity only external action has ever otherthrown one. China at some points in it's history behaved like this, the emperor could at any point dam the canals leading to a region, and any rebellion would immediately be crushed.
edit - And although we're having a disagreement here, isn't it interesting that the only series to provoke interesting discussions like this on the rationality of government, and what it means to be human, or what you can lay down to survive is a series set on a space ship fleeing from battle robots!
I also think that there are not enough people to support martial law very well. There is no anonymous guards. You can't pull a rome and get one nation to police another to keep them in check.
A society of 40,000 is a flickering flame and if you try and protect it with an iron first you could end up snuffing it out.
I've said it before BSG doesn't have the resources to police the fleet, and is dependent on the fleet for food and water. So the fleet needs to be self governing. To do that - the best solution is democracy.
2009 is a year of Updates - one every Monday. Hopefully. xx
Cavil has no fucking clue where they are. Hell, that's assuming Cavil has managed to keep the Cylons together in any effective form after the Rez Hub bought it, which is a significant assumption. It's also assuming he's willing to risk real death to keep following them.
They have enough food right now for I would guess a couple of months. Probably the same in terms of fuel. The ships are all basically working.
They are not going to die if they leave Earth orbit (or wherever they are right now) three or four days from now instead of immediately.
Not really. There was already a pretty good baby boom going on New Caprica, it seemed to me, and if they find a place to settle the same thing will happen naturally.
If Adama bothered to unite the will of the people behind him it wouldn't be a dictatorship because he would have a proper mandate.
My previous post was written before I saw this one.
Do you know how in tv shows a character will get the chance to leave the place they are and better themselves somewhere else - and it's clearly the right thing for them to do. But yet you find yourself saying they shouldn't purely because they are a main character and you don't want them to leave the show?
Sometime I wonder how biased we are because they are main characters. We all love Adama so he won't become corrupted if he becomes a dictator? Is that just 'cos he's a main character?
In the first season I just watched him burn 60% of their fuel reserves looking for Starbuck - but I didn't mind because she was a main character. In reality thats madness.
2009 is a year of Updates - one every Monday. Hopefully. xx
Eh. We've seen that the BSG was the only ship in the fleet designed for long term, low supply missions. I'd be shocked if the capital space ship didn't originally have some limited capacity to mine ore, generate fuel, synthesis food and recycle water. I'm pretty certain it's been intimated as such a few times.
What the BSG can't do is support anything but it's own crew. Given the length of time that has passed what capacity it has might have been cannibalized in order to help other parts of the fleet.
I think it goes back to Adama being unwilling to pull a Cain, not that he couldn't, simply that we won't.
Borderlands 2 PA Xbox Metatag - Bazillion Guns
It doesnt matter about the number of babies being born, they are on the very edge of having enough genetic stock to carry on. Without controlled breeding everyone will be cousins within a generation or so and soon they will be a bunch of idiots.
To be completely fair, we dont know much of the specifics of the first cylon war. if all of a sudden my computer started asking for money to allow me to type this post, chances are id throw it away and get one that didnt demand my cash to do what it was built to do. If out of fear of destruction my computer brutally murdered my kitties, id probably respond with a hammer of sorts.
Point is, we didnt see the evolution of cylons from object to sentient beings, so we dont exactly know how it went down and whether it would have been remotely easy for the humans the grasp and deal with. And by the time these machines started really closing the gap between what is and isnt human, it didnt matter, because as a species they tried wiping out humanity. So, even if there IS no gap at the point, the humans left had every right to do whatever it took to defeat their enemy.
1) Committed an act of genocide (which only failed because a single cylon sympathiser took it in his own hands)
Again, the cylons were pursuing them through space in an attempt to wipe them out. They gave every reason to believe they wouldnt stop until they were wiped out themselves. Humanity debated this decision for a while, but the fact is, they didnt want to wipe out the cylons in hate or anger, but for their own survival. That was the decision that was made, to destroy the cylon race so humanity could survive. Not to wipe them out in an act of vengence or hate.
3) Their society treats certain colonies really unfairly - as much as Zarek is a grade one dickbag he exists because of inequalities in their society.
Yes, but no society is pefect, and we have seen them attempt to deal with these differences through out the 4 years they have been on the run. The racism and hate in the fleet is no more pronounced then our societies, in fact id say its a lot less. And that we have seen them fight to try and better these stances, shows this is less of a sin and more of a natural progression of mixing 12 different idologies together.
4) They are a massively racist/speciest society who think of the cylons as souless machines. Not unlike the West considered other races to be simply animals. A hang over from when they all exploited the cylons as slaves.
Cylons being considered souless machines came from both their immortality (who WOULDNT kill someone they hated if you knew theyd just wake up somewhere, weve all killed someone in a video game before) and from the fact they wiped out the colonies. Look at terrorists, humanity finds it difficult to humanize them, and they are in fact, human. Cylons were machines that became sentient, wiped out most of humanity, pursued them through space to finish the job, and on top of everything, for most of the show, could not be killed.
The fact anyone, anywhere is able to accept any of them as anything more then pure evil is an outstanding show of morality and forgiveness.
5) When Laura first met Loeben - she offers him a deal - tell her where the bomb is and she'll start peace proceedings. He told her he had no bomb (and so wasn't at, least for the time, trying to kill them) and she threw him out an air lock. So they know the Prez is a liar. And she stole Xena WP too.
The actions of one person does not cast sin on the entire fleet. And also, cylons ressurect, throwing him out the air lock is really undermined as a sin by this fact. Its equal to her punching him in the face, really hard. Sure he couldve died, but chances are he would just wake up a few hours later.
Sure these were mistakes, but they arent exactly grounds for conviction to the sentance of extiction. In fact, most of these are completely understandable. The only one that could potentially be a true sin is how they treated the cylons prior to the first war. But since we dont know, thats not a fair judgement to make.
Yup, BSG has been stated on numerous occasions to be the ship best capable of doing this, it's just got lots of refugees on board straining it's systems.
We know that Zarek is corrupt, and abusing his power, he all but admitted it in the previous episode while he was in prison. He has been buying and selling the office of vice president. Which is another problem with democracy in a system like this, since everyone is absolutely dependant on their leaders for everything they need to survive, they cannot have a meaningful debate and election since every individual ship captain wields the sword of Damocles over their heads. Their freedom only exists at his pleasure, he does not serve at theirs like in a true democracy.
Zarek and the Quorum are the ones abusing the system for their own petty rivalries and gains, the Galactica command staff are the ones who care about the people, and they are also the only ones with the relevant experience.
That's not how genetics works.
A) Everyone is already cousins, in that every single person on Earth is descended from a single individual some millions or billions of years ago. The original human population was no bigger then what the fleet has, and it was able to grow into the billions we have now.
B) At worst, inbreeding would result in a higher incidence of a variety of genetic diseases. However, these would negatively impact the survivability of those born with them. Thus, natural selection would compensate.
But seriously - this is true. We didn't. But the 'they rebelled' tag line implies they were enslaved to some extent. That and I still like the idea that the tinpot cylons are the only true innocents in this.
Thing is though you could turn this around quite easily to apply to the cylons. The Humans had tried to wipe them out when they wanted their freedom. The humans were invading there space to what could be a precursor to wiping them out. They debated it and decided it was only a matter of time before the humans would try and finish the job - so they made the skin jobs (or they already had them) and decided that they needed to wipe out the humans not in hate or anger, but for their own survival. That was the decision that was made, to destroy the human race so cylonity could survive. Not to wipe them out in an act of vengence or hate.
But thats my point. No society is perfect. And unless they join forces they are going to only keep on killing each other. So they need to mix one more.
The irony of course is that most people who believes in fluffy ideas like 'souls' believe they are immortal and believe they will be resurrected in heaven or on earth.
But the terrorist thing is exactly the point. Thats what the third season was about - making you side with the suicide bombers.
I'm hoping the whole point of this show is to explain that we have to forgive and humanise people.
Rather than look at their actions - look at what lead them to them - and try and move past them.
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When it's the prez - it kind of does though. At least to the extent that the cylons know that the figurehead for the race can't be trusted.
But yeah I see your point.
2009 is a year of Updates - one every Monday. Hopefully. xx
This is absolutely how genetics works. With a limited population available you must control breeding in order to maximize diversity in the population. I'm not talking about people being 6th cousins or whatnot, when that is the average distance as it is on earth today you can simply breed with whoever you want, I'm talking that soon everyone will be 1st or 2nd cousins, or uncles and aunts, and if you do not control the breeding absolutely then accumulated genetic diseases make you useless.
edit - further research by me reveals they probably do have enough people to get by, but not by much.
Well this imples we went as low as 2000 people, 70,000 years ago.
2009 is a year of Updates - one every Monday. Hopefully. xx
Yes, I read that too, I realize I am wrong on this issue, although I still think they will need some kind of laws to help promote diversity however they likely wont need to go so far as having computers decide based on genetic tests.
You're exaggerating the danger a bit; the 'minimum number' is something like 500 according to biologists, if you're starting with a reasonably diverse stock. Once you're in the thousands you're good to go.
Bullshit. Everyone deserves to know. Sucks for them, but that's just how it is.