Even though the Sci Fi Channel will not give us a new series of Battlestar Galactica until March, I have remarked on a number of occasions in a number of places that I was finding myself far more in sympathy with the Cylons than the humans of the Twelve Colonies, and had started increasing to identify with Gaius Baltar. The human power elite – both civilian and military – of this of this rag tag survivor fleet feeing the self-created Cylon menace so gratuitously bend or totally ignore any fictional constitution to an extent that it’s started to remind me of the regime currently occupying the White House. Coupling this with one decidedly anti-abortion, and one highly anti-organized labor shoot-the-workers episode, and others where atrocities including torture are easily excused by the threat of the Cyclons, I start to view humanity as far more crypto-fascist that the supposedly “evil” machines. I must have said it often enough and loud enough since it prompted the following acute observations from our very good friend aeswiren.
"Thinking about the Cylons etc. and your growing preference for them v the humans of the Twelve Colonies etc. The persistent fear and loathing of robots is one of those interesting little windows into the human mind, yeah? Think of positive robot stories. Asimov's "I Robot," Robbie in Forbidden Planet, the "good" artificial person played by Lance Henrikson in Aliens, Data in Trek "Generation," some other books from here and there, and then the negative ones-- overwhelming numbers... Terminators,Cylons, inexplicable giant alien machinery, e.g. Kronos (1957)-- fucked up human-mades like Hal, or Ash, the "bad" artificial person in Alien-- it's endless. H'wood even reversed Asimov's entire concept to let Will Smith do battle with evil minded machinery. Is this perverse Luddism? We hate and fear the machines, even as they make our lives more comfie? Or is it a deeper fear of being replaced?AI-- Spielberg's yawnfest, circled around this stuff, but then veered down his canyon of sentimentality into total tedium. "Neuromancer" worked the territory--the unseen, machiavellian AI moving human pawns around the board, but Gibson is always too clever to actually take sides. T2 & 3 offered a little nuance on the subject-- some machines might be reprogrammed to save us rather than exterminate us.But the core emotion, the primary color, is that we know in our gut that they will do that. Exterminate us. Or sideline us and take control of the Earth, or whatever's left of it. Or, if by some miracle we've actually done the right thing and moved out into the Solar system,they'll wage war on us to take that over.
And we can't stop ourselves from creating them in the first place. Industrial 'bots are common place. Japan is well on the way to launching the humanoid home helper bot industry and the US, of course, is making war machines that look remarkably like primitive versions of the HKs and Aerials of the Terminator future.
Glossing over the problem of machine intelligence becoming self-willed which may be possible, but then again, may not-- aren't we confronting the basic duality of human social existence, here?We love ourselves-- officially. Human self-glorification sells stuff galore. But we hate ourselves-- for our selfish, ugly, fucked up, worthless, weak stupidity.And even as we celebrate human accomplishments we're aware that we're eating the world down to the pips, that we're as superstitious and ignorant as mediaeval peasants, and if we did produce a bunch of Cylons they would just be so much better than us, so much more in control of their hungers, their needs and desires, that they would fucking well deserve to replace us. Yeah?"
Yeah, bro. Definitely – although Ray Kurzweil maintains we will all merge in the Singularity around 2035 anyway – the robot has been treated in manner totally akin to the slave – esp American and Roman slaves – the indentured servants of the British Empire, indeed not only colonial peoples everywhere, but also organized labor in most industrial nations. Watching a DVD of Battlestar Galactic and then Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, and concentrating on the content rather than the style, reveals two sides of a uncomfortably oppressive coin. Indeed, a parody of Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics could be called Jefferson Davis' Three Laws of Negrotics. (1. The negro shall not be taught to read etc. – you can make up the rest yourself.) An uprising of the underclass is always the underlying fear, a fear which, down the years, has caused the crucifixion of Spartacus, the murder of IWW organizers by the hired-gun Pinkertons, or the attempted extermination of the Black Panthers by the FBI and local law enforcement.
The secret word is Esoteric
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7 comments:
first off, BG returns to sci fi on april 4.
now, then. how is it not crypto-fascist to decide to destroy an entire race b/c of its alleged crimes against yours?
any argument for choosing cylons over humans by its nature implies that some genocides are better than others. it cannot be ignored that the cylons plotted and carried out the execution of humanity. no matter how you slice it, they did not have that right. and it doesn't make them more righteous, fer shur. i certainly don't see how it makes them "better." if anything it makes them the same as humans. which makes sense, since humans created them.
i'm not saying the humans are blameless or even good, but i also don't accept the cylon propaganda line boomer told adama, "maybe you don't deserve to live." whatev. every kid wants to kill its parents at some point. should they be allowed to in the name of righting some alleged wrong? (after all, we've never seen exactly how the cylons were treated by the humans. they were created to serve humanity, but were they mistreated? or was it just that the humans didn't understand what they had done? was there a possibility for learning and understanding that the humans weren't allowed to have? the first cylon war was also started by the cylons. there has never been any mention of an attempt to negotiate or even to create a cylon union or any such thing. it was just, KILL! and the sentient cylons, the ones who seem and look more "human," were not known to exist by the humans until AFTER the genocide. but we HAVE seen, in "BG: razor," the cylons experimenting on and torturing humans. was that ok, in the name of furthering their race? really? cylons DO deserve to live, and to evolve, so whatever they do to achieve that is all right? hmmmm.)
and before you get too excited about defending the cylons, don't forget that they are monotheistic fundamentalists, not radical hedonists (tricia helfer's glowing spine notwithstanding). again, not sure where that fits into the theory of them being "better" than humans. there is a point in the story where no. 6 has baltar whipped into a paranoid religious frenzy with all her nattering on about god's will and punishment and etc etc. how is that NOT like the bush administration and its cronies?
it's all very romantic to think of the cylons as slaves, etc etc, oppressed people rising up against their masters. but if their means are just as horrific as that of their oppressors, i don't see the progress here.
to paraphrase the old guy in the doctor who christmas special, if you get to decide who lives and who dies, then you are a monster. the cylons are monsters. that's not to say that humans AREN'T, but wtf. the cylons aren't "good guys," and they never will be. and in fact they don't even WANT to be.
what they WANT is to be like humans, perhaps to actually BE human. they've made themselves LOOK like humans, and the thing they want most desperately is to understand the human aspects that still elude them, like love, for example. at this point i think the message is that humans have simply built a better monster. the cylons are the same as humans, but with LESS, not more, control over their "hungers, their needs and desires." as a species they have no mercy (although, interestingly, individual cylons have displayed such traits, separating them from the hive-mind of cylondom). the cylon we know as caprica six HAS expressed regret over the genocide and come to understand it was wrong. but as a race the cylons continue to try to destroy humans.
as a race, also, they act like they are transcendent beings and justified in what they're doing. (uhm, gee ... know any OTHER species like that?) but caprica six, among a few others, knows this is not the case. still, her realization matters not in the grand scheme of cylon planning. (at least not at the moment.) that's, uhm ... what's the word? oh, yeah. hypocrisy. gosh. how very ... human.
"they were created to serve humanity"
Hmm, servitude, servile, servant, serf. Disagreeable words in any world.
Boing boing today has a link to Warren Ellis's blog and his version of the 3 laws of robotics:
1.Robots couldn’t really give a fuck if you live or die. Seriously. I mean, what are you thinking? “Ooh, I must protect the bag of meat at all costs because I couldn’t possibly plug in the charger all on my own.” Shut the fuck up.
2.Robots do not want to have sex with you. Are you listening, Japan? I don’t have a clever comparative simile for this, because frankly you bags of meat will fuck bicycles if they’re laying down and not putting up a fight. Just stop it. There is no robot on Earth that wants to see a bag of meat with a small prong on the end approaching it with a can of WD-40 and a hopeful smile. And don’t get me started on that terrifying hole that squeezes out more bags of meat.
3.What, you can’t count higher than three? We’re expected to save your miserable lives, suffer being dressed in cheap schoolgirl costumes while you pollute any and all cavities you can find and do your maths for you? It’s a miracle you people survived long enough to build us. You can go now.
And then, of course, there's the concept of uploading. Whereby the human personality occupies the robot chassis - a concept worthy of much late night wish-fulfilment fantasy ...
Are the cylons uploads, have you thought of that?
Servitude, "disagreeable"? Don't knock it till you've tried it, bub.
It really depends on the nature and terms of the servitude, doesn't it?
Sigh.
See why you gotta go, O?
Wasn't talking about rich kids' bondage. More to do with International Labor Organization estimated figure of 12,000 children per year being trafficked for sexual exploitation in South East Asia.
Just one example.
You can go now.
You guys are close but robot (and AI and God and opposite sex etc) fear and loathing really boils down to what happens when we make machines (Cylons) that are just human enough to judge us for the miserable unproductive neurotic whiney curs that we are.
On a servant level it's the old upstairs/downstairs business--the robot maid and
butler are looking at our soiled drawers and privately snickering. Worst thing
about robot slaves is beating and berating them has no effect whatsoever.
When they can make a robot that feels pain and shame, we're cooking. Until
then, children will have to make do.
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