Ambrosia Software Web Board: Why do people always divide alien governments by their race? - Ambrosia Software Web Board

Why is it that in 90% of all scifi storyies, governments are divided up very neatly by races. Personally, I couldn't ever see humanity uniting together as one, regardless of the size of the threat that was attacking. Humans will always be ready to break apart and start killing eachother at the drop of a hat. In fact, I think it'll only get worse if we encounter aliens.

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NEW NAME FOR THE DREADNOUGHT
The Hard-Boiled Egg
Why?
Because she cant be beaten!

True, true, true.... In fact I think it would be much more interesting if there were multiple human factions.

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--Joolzman5, that guy with the red spikey hair whose presence never fails to suddenly kill Mag Steelglass

I really don't know.

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"One Ring to rule them all one Ring to find them, one Ring to bring them all into the darkness and bind them, in the land of mordor where the shadows lie."
Check out the upcomming Lord of the Rings Movies at [url="http://"http://www.lordoftherings.net/home.html"]http://www.lordofthe...s.net/home.html[/url]

OK, 2 things:
1) OTHER RACES ARE NOT HUMANS!!!! We have to generalize about other inteligent life based on our own, but it's important to realize we are making huge assumptions.

2) Another thing: the US isn't the most united country (witness the past election), but we have no problems existing as a unit (since the Civil War) and fighting our enemies.

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William Darkk, head of the Darkklight Entrepenurial Federation
"Strategic warfare" is code for "killing civilians", and it's my calling. Yeah, it's barbaric. War's supposed to be.

Actually in the Voyager storyline, there are 8 factions. Two alien, six human.

And if aliens didn't fight with their own race, how would you have the Boodan Civil War? (Although maybe there were other races)

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-Pallas Athene of Dysian Beta, Obish Consensus Representative
-Nieru Dast, {M}ilitia Aeriane
-Danae Vernius
"Cheaters don't really win, and winners don't really cheat. Unless you're talking politics." -Durandal

I think humans would be almost totally united if an alien race made the extinction of humanity its goal (some diehard tribalists/fanatics (Somolia and Palistine/Isreal) would stay out, but almost everyone would be in), as that would bring powerful evolutionary forces into play. Humanity hasn't had a serious threat of extinction from outside itself (we aren't evolutionarily prepaired to deal with the ability to make ourselves extinct) in recorded history.

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William Darkk, head of the Darkklight Entrepenurial Federation
"Strategic warfare" is code for "killing civilians", and it's my calling. Yeah, it's barbaric. War's supposed to be.

I personally think that "mixed" Nations would work, but the trouble is that unlike in our RPG, not all aliens could live in Earth's Atmosphere.

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NEW NAME FOR THE DREADNOUGHT
The Hard-Boiled Egg
Why?
Because she cant be beaten!

Well he DID say 90%. Ares isn't totally like that. There's 3 gaitori branches in the story (the isolationists, the normal guys and the pirates,) there's the boodan civil war a somebody mentioned, ect. I started working on a plug today that has "human factions".

Saying that the US can function as a unit despite some disagreement over who should be prez doesn't mean that hummanity as a whole could do that if it's regionally scattered regardless of how low the population got. The ideas people value in the US are pretty similar relative to the things people value in China or Europe. If you take hummanity and scatter it across space, it doesn't matter if it's down to 100 people. The people in one region will come up with a different set of values than the ones in another. People on a cold planet might learn to value hard work necessary to survive, while those on a tropical one with some leasure time might learn to value intellectual pursuits. "Earth" does not suddenly become a region because we have access to so many others. People in different enviroments will always be different. Aliens are different but there's probably not a significant "ishiman nature" just as there really isn't a significant human one.

Some cross race factions would also be cool.

As for why this is a trend in sci-fi? It's easy. No one wants their storyline bogged down by the "UNS Republicans" and the "UNS Democrats".

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So I don't feel alone, or the weight of the stone,
Now that I've found somewhere safe To bury my bones.
And any fool knows a dog needs a home,
A shelter from pigs on the wing.

Actually, it seems to be human nature to crush kill and destroy everything that stands in our way, then exploit it for all its worth until there's nothing left, but whatever.

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NEW NAME FOR THE DREADNOUGHT
The Hard-Boiled Egg
Why?
Because she cant be beaten!

Yes it is. Also, as I might point out to Mr Orwell and Slug, disobediance and rebellion are in there too.

As to the "regions" bit, the US has just about every form of environ on Earth. It's still the best example.

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William Darkk, head of the Darkklight Entrepenurial Federation
"Strategic warfare" is code for "killing civilians", and it's my calling. Yeah, it's barbaric. War's supposed to be.

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I don't think you'd ever have heard anyone call him "Mr. Orwell." Mr. Blair would have been more likely since that was his real name. Sorry to be so anal but the guy is my hero. I don't think human nature is to exploit or destroy or rebel or anything. If that were human nature, why would we have enviromentalists, middle class communists and conformists?

The US may have all sorts of different climates in it, but it's still geographically fairly small and confined. The population isn't scattered to any significant extent, and the population that set everything up came from Europe. It's always been a fairly tight knit group. The people who founded it didn't do so by accident, they all had similar values and decided to get a society based on those values set up. The climate wasn't an issue because they all came from the same place. Now things are slightly different because of immigration, but the people who immigrate do so because they subscribe to the values system of the united states. Climate plays a part in establishing values, not really maintaining them. Once they're established they can be applied anywhere that permits.


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So I don't feel alone, or the weight of the stone,
Now that I've found somewhere safe To bury my bones.
And any fool knows a dog needs a home,
A shelter from pigs on the wing.

[This message has been edited by Newt (edited 01-15-2001).]

Well, they are a part of human nature, Newt. Otherwise, Britain would still be the world's largest country. After all, colonialism wasn't THAT bad, it's not like the British hunted them for sport or took masses of them as slaves (well, they did early on in Africa, but that was all over by the time revolutions got started), and quite possibly improved their standard of living. Also, the rebellions were run by people of European, South American, African, and Asian descent.

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William Darkk, head of the Darkklight Entrepenurial Federation
"Strategic warfare" is code for "killing civilians", and it's my calling. Yeah, it's barbaric. War's supposed to be.

Darkk, they rebelled because they were pissed at the British for their huge amounts of taxes, being used to wage a war on the other side of the planet. Rebellions form because of:
A. Some people got pissed off at some other people.
B. Some people developed their own value system (think Civil War).

It's possible to have a mix of both.

As far as other countries' revolutions, they had very good reasons. The British were fulfilling my signature to it's utmost extent. The people in the colonies were treated like dirt, unless they were British. They were exploited, beaten, and forced to abide by whatever Britain said. They may have gotten more industrialized, but that's because the British wanted the industrialization for themselves. Furthermore, they had their own culture, formed by their climate. They were different, and couldn't be ruled under values that differed from their own.

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"I think I have discovered the problem with humans. It is not entirely stupidity, as I once thought. It is their pigheaded and baseless philosophy: "If it isn't me, then it's opinions, feelings, and life do not matter, and it was meant to serve me." They also have this ability for creating excuses that are pointless, but they get others to believe it. A few examples: "It's only some savages. It's only five acres of rain forest. It's only one semi-truck. It's only fifty gallons of toxic waste..." After this realization, I marvelled at how humans, and the rest of the planet, have survived for so very long."
- Me

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Human nature is just a convenient thing to blame the problems of our society on instead of fixing them. "People are being exploited? Well people are greedy anyways, can't fix it." If I accepted human nature as an idea, I wouldn't say that rebellion is a part of it just because people get angry when people try to force them to do things, that would be covered under self preservation or greed or whatever.

Colonialism was not pleasant. It improved the standard of living for the country doing the colonizing, beyond a doubt. But the people on the recieving end were not so lucky. Even as late as the 20th century. If you read some of Orwell's stuff about his life as a police officer in British India, you will see what I mean. Lower-upper-middle class (bottom of the upper-middle class) British people frequently moved there because it was easier to "act rich", IE own slaves. The Indians were kept in line through pretty much constant police brutality, and had pretty crummy lives compared to their British "masters". And we're talking about THIS CENTURY. The amound of total crap that's gone on in other colonial situations is phenomenal. Britain forced China into legalizing opium for trade reasons. People weren't just killed for sport in Africa, but in North America too. In other words, colonialism was indeed that bad.

[Slug Talking yet again]

In Ares, stuff is very mixed up. The warlike factions are always the ones to have a little infighting (*cough*Klingons*cough*). In Ares the Warlike factions are:
-The Cantharans
-The Gaitori
-The Obiards

Let's see.... The Cantharans had a huge civil war (The Boodan Civil War) when one of their colonies (Bood) went a little too far with genetic engineering, creating a "better" Cantharan (called the Boodan). The Cantharans, naturally being multiconscious and aggressive, didn't like this at all. They annihilated the colony, but it's leader managed to create an artificial virus that would reassemble him. He saturated asteroids with it and sent them out to space. He was eventually caught and killed.

This, from the mouth of Nathan Lamont during one of our talks

The Gaitori have always had some instruggling. They were divided into two sides: the loyalists (who are loyal to Cantharis and make up around 99% of the Gaitori) and the isolationists (who were the Gaitori Rebels who wanted rid of the Cantharans the same way the Americans wanted rid of the British in 1776.

Anyways, the Gaitori Isolationists were eventually hunted down and crushed in Make Way when they were caught between the Cantharans and the Ishiman.
[/Slug]

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So I don't feel alone, or the weight of the stone,
Now that I've found somewhere safe To bury my bones.
And any fool knows a dog needs a home,
A shelter from pigs on the wing.

[This message has been edited by Slug (edited 01-22-2001).]