Frank Baxter: Student Choice 1 (Entry 7)

Frank Baxter: Student Choice 1 (Entry 7)

The future relations of humanity and alien spices

This reflection was sparked from a conversation with my infamous friend that is a physics major. At the end of out of the silent earth there was a conversation between Random and Weston about how humans interactions with the universe.

This sparked a fierce debate between me and my friend about the outcome of the universe when humans began to expand and colonize. We started off with the dichotomy between Star wars and Startrek. Where in Star wars humans (though not earthlings) are highly integrated into other species and most planets are as varied. Though some forms of racism appears, such as princess Leia calling Chewbacca a walking carpet or Han Solo calling him a fuzz ball. This is seen vary uncommon, especially between races that are not friends, furthermore the Jedi are highly integrated of races, while the empire are uniformed humans and are evil. Star trek on the other hand is divided on mostly on races, each species has its own empire and are highly loyal to it. While some races are friendly to each other and have alliances they still prefer their own kind.  Interesting the ultimate evil, the Borg are highly integrated, not making distinctions other than inorganic and organic, all organic races are their enemies, but are all inclusive to their own ranks.

While I felt Star wars would represent humans more in the future (after a few decades after initial contact), I did not feel that it captured the essence of what would be real (because their not earthlings). My friend thought that Star Trek was more representative of the future, but still felt the kindness between races was false.

We went to a sub genera of science fiction (video games) to find the true nature of the future as we perceived. I selected the game of Mass Effect, in this universe each alien species home world is still highly uniformed, but each send a delegate to a council which governs all races and all abide to them as law. New founded colonies and space stations are highly integrated, wars are fought more on factions (composed of various species) rather than races. While racism does exist and is much more prevalent than in star wars, races work well together.

My friend rejected the high integration and instead favored the universe as described by the game Dawn of War. Where each race is highly secluded from one another and each are xenophobic of each other. Wars are fought frequently and are almost entirely divided upon races each race vying for territory.

This debate was ultimately on human nature, I have a Rawlsian approach that any one could be any race and therefore would discriminate based on it. My friend argues that group prefers their own group, as seen when settlers came to America and it was them vs. Indians who were seen as savage.