- anton1792
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- Noble Legendary Member
"Find where the liar hides, so that I may place my boot between his gums!" - Rtas 'Vadum
Posted by: ROBERTO jh
Or are being forced to by an all consuming intergalactic super parasite that will otherwise consume them.
I don't see how that makes the genocide of 50 worlds any more conceivable for pre-Humanity to do, unless it already lacked a moral centre. You wouldn't expect the inhabitants of some devastated nation on Earth in this day to exterminate the populace of a neighboring country just to get their lands and escape whatever catastrophe hit them. They would co-exist, which is something that pre-Humanity never considered. They were described as "purist"; xenophobic, and so exterminated them. It's about as cynical about Human development as you can ever get.
Posted by: ROBERTO jh
You're implying that there will be some sort of higher cultural integrity in 2552, and on paper you might be right, but in reality we're still the same animals from 200,000 years ago. Instinct and genetics advances much slower than technology. The UNSC might color themselves up as superior to the civilizations of the past, but in truth they're still human, and that includes all of our collective tendancies, such as control, competition, and who has the biggest stick? You know who is not human? Everyone else, and for a race that you know is as arrogant and controlling as humanity tends to be, alien civilizations--what with their four lipped mouths, methane breathing, ape-like appearances--would not be very high on our "give a -blam!- about list." You thought that persecution of the Blacks was bad way back when? Wait until the victims aren't even the same species.
That doesn't actually have anything to do with the point I was making. The point was that it appeared that the writers were trying to make a parallel about our current tendencies for consumption. (Deforestation, Fossil Fuels in; Pollution out, at an increasing rate all to keep up ever increasing electrical demands, etc) With technology the way it is in 2552, this whole entire "over-colonization" issue should actually be a non-issue. (Nuclear Fusion, megaengineering, the ability to mine asteroids and gas giants, etc) That's without taking into consideration the sheer vastness of space...
As for your post thing, well, on the one hand we have the issue of feeling instinctual urges and cognitive bias' , and on the other hand we have the issue of acting upon those feelings and bias'. They are NOT the same. True, we will probably never be rid of the urge to think or act in certain ways but we are sapient, and part of that quality is being able to act independently from our instincts. Social changes occur because people are brought to awareness of these feelings and their root causes. Not everyone who understands and supports the motivations of the LGBT movement, for instance, necessarily likes the idea of these people's lifestyle choices. They may still feel repelled by it personally, by instinctual feelings, but they recognize that this is merely instinctual and not factual or objective, and they keep their feelings to themselves and do not act as if they are the ones who are right whilst people with alternative lifestyles are the ones who are "out-of-whack".
When it comes to racism, it's about recognizing our tendency to alienate and be suspicious of those who are different, probably due to our tribal evolution. That, and our tendency to refer to groups of diverse people as a "They", which makes it easier to dehumanize them, can probably be overcome in much the same way as sexism was overcome. Social conditioning, like referring to law enforcement as "Police Officers" rather than "Policemen" and other things like that, slowly altered people's way of thinking and drummed it into their psyche to be aware of the tendency to view woman as subservient, as that was the way we functioned as a primitive society. I think the Civil Rights Movement, after millennia of slavery and racial injustice, was proof of concept that we can overcome racial barriers, and I don't think that it's got much to do with changing our nature as it is in merely recognizing that this is our nature and so not acting upon it. Honestly, I think much of what you say would be like 500 years ago saying that Slavery is a manifestation of our wish to dominate others, and as that is a part of Human Nature, will never go away from our society. Racism is still prevalent in the world, but it has become a non-issue in many parts where it was once rife, and I don't particularly see why our current society should be considered the epitome of Human social evolution. We've still got a long road ahead of us, and Halo has now basically said "This is the end of the road".
And for the record, I think District 9 had a pretty terrible premise, for much of the reasons here. But then again that is a movie set in our world, not the far future, so I'm not as harsh towards it as I am with this.
Posted by: ROBERTO jh
Consider the possibility that the Precursors' tests are to see if we have evolved. The Primordial only ever says that mankind will rise in arrogance (bear in mind that we were deevolved to stone age understanding) but says nothing about always being arrogant. His willingness to replace Forerunners with humans as the Inheritors suggests that he believes we can learn where the Forerunners failed. If mankind was just straight out the door not-arrogant and good people, there'd be no character devolopment. With no development, we have no story.
Well, we ostensibly haven't changed by 2552 anyway, and if we continue along our current path after the war then we will surely be one of the worst caretakers to ever hold the Mantle, and I don't see things changing with all of the declarative statements that have been made all over the place concerning Humanity.
Posted by: ROBERTO jh
I'm afraid you have missed the past decade of lore pertaining to the alien races. The Grunt rebellions? The Covenant Civil War? Bitterness between the Elites and Brutes? The Heretic uprising? Taming of the Hunters? Hell, just through the numberings alone we know that there were 23 ages of doubt and 39 ages of conflict. In fact, since 343i took over, they work less.
I said Alien races, not inter-racial alliances. All I got from that was that Halo's story comes down to saying that it is in the nature of intelligent life forms to despise and annihilate each other and how they can't really co-operate. I could live with that, if these individual races were not internally idealistic. The only one which 343i has put any effort into breaking up a little is the Elites, but it's only a small faction of religious nuts opposing the Arbiter. Hardly worth pointing out. All the places where it would mean something are homogenous. I'm more or less thinking of the need for space and resources which no other race has issues with nor needs to acquire for some reason whilst Humanity is the "big bad Flood synonym". (Did they forget about the Grunts? How has Humanity taken over their reputation now?) Or how other alien races are so honorable and reliable whilst Humans are backstabbers who you need to keep pointing a gun at to keep in check? Or how Humanity appears to be internally divided over so many things whilst the other alien races appear almost wholly internally homogenous? (And if you are going to count one Religious cult like the Servant's, I'm pretty sure that Humanity's list of cults and factions will blow it out the water) It is displayed like this: In chapter 1 of GL, Osman said that Humans fight other Humans, and 'Telcam's response is "How twisted your lives are" or something like that. So am I supposed to believe that Sangheili society has no disorder now? How cute. How idealistic. How BORING.
Posted by: ROBERTO jh
The more I read your posts, the more and more you just have me convinced that you're trying to justify hating 343i.
I used to defend everything they did, because I didn't realise that I was actually defending the idea that Halo could and should continue, and not actually defending 343i themselves. I never really have cared for them, and their recent releases, with flagrant disregard for consistency in setting, tone and character of the fiction, have utterly soured my opinion on them.