Pragmatism must win for 'humans' to survive

Television, Movies Games and Books BSG-2003
#1

First, OT: I have been absent the last week, and trying to catch up all at once this Sunday evening.

Melbourne has had a week of extreme temperatures. Four days above 43 C. (That’s 109 F for you US Luddites). All week mid 30’s or higher. Luckily my house is part-aircon, but power load-shedding and failures have interrupted internet traffic. A tough week: heat, no internet or cable, and too much work… sigh…

Anyway, enough Baltar-esque ‘woe is me’ stuff.

Naturally, we can all understand the thirst for revenge which most of the colonials must be feeling. As OT keeps reminding us: 50 billion casualties. That’s not a skirmish, or even a war. That’s genocide on an epic scale.

So… just about everyone has a right to feel somewhat aggrieved, at the very minimum, and pretty much jolly well pissed off, at the extreme.

That said, the events were four long years ago now. The survivors have created a new society, a new world order (for what it’s worth, for better or worse), and something else has changed: the Cylons.

They are no longer the faceless, metal automatons and hidden-agenda sleeper agents of the miniseries. We have seen their path, their progression, their desire to understand themselves, their origins, their ‘humanity’ better. At the same time they have recognised the need to understand humans better (eg Caprica, New Caprica, Baltar, current and past temporary alliances).

The Cylons who committed the atrocities are no longer with us. The Cylons now are much more, have grown and learned so much, have shown themselves capable of completely human emotions and feelings (Sharon, various Six’s, even D’Anna). They have respected and acknowledged the importance and sanctity of sentience, even splitting with their brethren over the issue.

Every day the distinction between Cylon and human is further blurred and less obvious.

Now, it appears the Cylons offer and represent an opportunity for the remaining humans. They are offering an alliance and technology. Without either of these the remaining humans are doomed. They may not find an alternate suitable planet to settle, and they will be sitting ducks for Cavill’s forces.

The Colonials must make the pragmatic decision, they must form a lasting and meaningful alliance with the rebel Cylons. They must get over their past, their hatreds, they must understand that the Cylons themselves have changed, and that the Sharons, Six’s, Leobens of today are not the same as the ones who killed 50 billion humans. And that they would not repeat that, even if given the opportunity.

Gaeta’s mutiny must be squashed, utterly. Much as I personally oppose capital punishment, the ringleaders need to be spaced; the very survival of Colonial humans is at stake. The Roslin/Adama dictatorship must either be reinstituted forthwith, or another similar power clique put in place. Times like this cannot be left to mob rule.

This feels odd, coming from an old lefty-liberal like me, but extreme situations call for extreme measures…

#2

You’re absolutely right, what must be done for the good of all is work together, but pragmatism is invisible to those who are irrational, and right now everyone involved is irrational.

#3

Especially Luddites.

#4

Well, yeah, but what do you mean?

#5

I am entirely on your side, and can sympathize with your last sentence. I love democracy and free will, but there are rare cases where that just won’t work; and we’ve been shown over and over again that one case is right now. The show isn’t against democracy, that’s clear, just that this is a different case. Which is scary, considering how some people in the real world justify things, but this is a more horrific situation than anything we face in the real world and so it deserves a different judgment.

#6

I don’t think you can expect, people who’s had there family’s nuked by cylons and to have repeatedly been attacked by cylons to just let it go and be detached about this.

#7

Correct. I went down this road in a less succinct fashion on some other long lost thread.

The 50,000,000,000 dead is merely a mechanism to put the contrary view into perspective. Those who hold it are wrong, but not nuts (although the show tends to paint many of them as “heavies” - as in “I’ll be back to rape you later” types).

Having written that (and as I have proposed before), if the writers really wanted to throw us a curve ball, they would give us such an alliance and then the realization that it is doomed to failure (a la Kobol - again, that cycle thing). The types of humanoids cannot co-exist. Too much history that eventually will resurface, to many religious differences, innate prejudices, etc. “They” need to go their separate ways.

Not gonna happen, but what a conclusion it would be in the hands of the BSG creative types. It might even qualify as “dark”.

#8

I agree entirely.

#9

here’s the one problem i see in your assessment, you’re basing this on a lot of information that we as omniscient viewers have but the common man in the fleet does not have.

we have seen the journey of self discovery the rebellious cylons have been on, and we’ve been privy to their existential musings but the people in the fleet just know that all of a sudden the Cylons who killed 50 billion people and enslaved them on New Caprica are now supposedly best buds.

Why would anyone go along with that?? Adama and Roslin have not been forthcoming with the information that would be necessary to sell this idea to the common man or even to secondary command people.

and you are correct that pragmatism is essential to the survival of the fleet. But to everyone but the highest people, NOT following along with this agenda is the most pragmatic thing to do.

strip away the knowledge we have and imagine how you’d react. i don’t think you’d be blindly following along with Adama and Roslin just because they said “because I said so”.

I think the mutiny really occurred because people pinned all their hope to Earth and blindly followed along with questionable decisions because it was the only option. When that failed the masses were not only crushed, but they were now open to questioning the leadership that failed them.

#10

Excellently put.

#11

behold the destroyer!: I think you are correct regarding the loss of faith in the leadership. Adama knew that the Fleet needed something to live for right from the beginning. Earth was to be that motivator; and now it’s gone. That great sucking sound is the vacuum left behind.

Just popping off on a tangent here, I know this is kind of goofy, but every time I see the “democracy must be pursued at all costs” arguments, I think of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I have no idea why this idea keeps popping into my head, but there it is. You might recall that Maslow set out a list of needs which motivate an individual. The needs were, from lowest to highest: physiological, safety, social, self-esteem, self actualization. The lower needs (listed first) must be met before a person will pursue the higher needs. So, for example, a person who does not have air, food, or sleep is not going to be motivated by esoteric ideas like truth or justice. Expanding the idea to a society is crisis, it makes more sense to pursue the baser needs before considering the higher needs.

Well, its just one of my weird ideas.

OTOH, while Zarek talks a good line regarding democracy, Gaeta appears to be motivated by a need for safety, which also motivates Adama – though the same motivation has lead them to different conclusions on how to get there.

#12

First off, RS, I don’t think I have ever agreed with you more. Nicely put.

I also agree with this.

My view, and be warned that articulating it might cause this to get a bit long, is that in the beginning, right as they began to set up official government structures like the Quorum, Adama and Roslin had the right instinct but totally frakked up the execution. They were right that neither direct democracy nor the type of representative democracy that they had before would work in their new situation. They had lost the war but not escaped the threat; they had no security; they didn’t have enough resources to live freely. All that meant that the military needed a greater voice in policy and decision-making than it had before, so Adama should have taken on more authoritarian power in the political realm (and as the supreme commander, of course he had that power within the armed forces).

On the civilian side, Roslin needed to be able to act quickly and she needed to know 100% of the intelligence than on a dime, t they were able to put together. On the other hand, having identified only three of the twelve Cylon models at that point in time, they didn’t know who they could trust. Given that, as few civilian political leaders as possible should have real power, because it slows decision-making and decreases security.

What they ought to have done is convince the fleet of that, offer to resurrect the Quorum, and do so with a well-defined, limited set of powers (management and administration, more of an executive branch than a legislature). They should have published a series of declarations establishing the principles of the regime as first to ensure survival and second to ensure that a democratic government could reform itself once certain security goals had been met. They should have set a series of requirements and said that an election would take place xx days after they had all been met. They should also have built in a way for them to officially listen to the Quorum and the rest of the people. Finally, the really, really ought to have built in a way for their regime to be challenged. That would have insulated them much better from the kinds of hijinks that did ensue- from Baltar’s candidacy to Roslin herself stooping to election fraud to the Quorum being able to bar Cylons from boarding ships without captains’ permissions. It would also have probably prevented a coup, because Zarek and others could have challenged them, but they were strong enough to have withstood it. If Zarek hadn’t won so many small battles I do not think it would have slowly cost A and R so much political capital.

They did not do any of that. I hate to say that they deserve what they are getting now, but dissent and dissatisfaction have been brewing, bubbling, and beginning to boil over for a long time. They were stupid to assume they could ignore it.

I have concrete ideas about how to get them (as in all of them, the whole fleet) out of this mess, too. I’m going to post it in the I Just Can’t Back Zarek Anymore thread, and will link once I do so.