Something That Occurred To Me...
Dec. 29th, 2005 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magicaddict...as I sat and watched Signs for the second time in as many weeks. Warning - this is a diatribe on philosophy, if you're going to get bored, don't bother.
I was once again rejoicing in the fact that I was watching an alien movie where the majority of people didn't think it was a hoax, where the paranoid military were in fact right, and I didn't have to spend half the film screaming at the world that they're ignorant fucks with narrow minds. It was also a rarity to find one (in this day and age, since we've become "enlightened" from the times of the B-movie) in which the alien race is overtly hostile. Independence Day did it, but IC it had everyone guessing - which meant that those crying wolf were ignored because people wanted to believe they were peaceful. This annoys me - not sure why. Maybe that if they were peaceful, they would have popped the hatch and said hi, rather than blown up the Empire State Building. Maybe it's that.
This then got me on to the question of why and how the aliens in Signs (and indeed, alien landings in general) caused responses in the way they did. People claim "we hate what we do not understand", and on the surface, such a statement would claim to explain what was being asked. However, I'm not sure I agree wholeheartedly with it. It is possible that it is true, but I feel there is more to it than that. Where does the fear come into it? Is it even included at all?
I think the statement can be broken down into two, with fear in the middle of them. First, however, the statement itself must be addressed before I can suggest amendments to it.
It is true that there instances of loathing that which is beyond us - first-year particle theoretics springs to my mind - but surely if the human race did so on a general basis, there would be no discoveries, no innovation, and no-one would ever ask "why?" It is not a case of hating, more of being wary, unsure, and unable to show the arrogance that is inherent in us as humans whether we like it or not. Perhaps some people - the more outwardly arrogant - would claim to hate it for that, but there aren't enough of those people to speak for rest of the world, and neither would or should it let them.
The question then turns to whether or not we hate what we fear, of which there are far more examples. The persecution of the Jews under Hitler could be given in example, where the populace was taught to fear the "dirty", "money grabbing", "child molesting" Jew and an atmosphere of hate spontaneously erupted around them (history buffs, I make no claim of knowing hard facts - I'm going on what I've learned. If it's wrong, please tell me so I don't do it again). This was not a result of misunderstanding, but of fear.
It could be said to function as a defence mechanism to the human psyche - in order to conquer the fear, the mind belittles its source until it is a joke, an object of ridicule. It is not to be laughed at, however - it is to be defeated, and such things that had caused fear must involve an element of dislike on the part of the conqueror to achieve. This is not some honourable contest with handshakes before commencing, this is scratching an itch. No-one likes a scary itch.
If we do not automatically hate what we do not understand, but we may well hate what we fear, the final question to tie things up is whether or not we fear what we do not understand - which would cause the original statement to be true, though only via amendments. This I think is far more reasonable, and it provides the means by which some people would accept an alien landing where others would not.
In the same way that we may feel unease, or wariness, at being unable to comprehend something, if the something is big enough it would probably be perfectly reasonable to feel scared. Small occurrences are not enough to cause fear, and may instead go towards causing hate (scratch that scary itch), but the encroachment of another race of beings from above, and the automatic realisation that in order to have mastered casual spaceflight, the race they are dealing with must be far in advance of our own, is such a huge occurrence that it may well cause an element of fear. It is, again, this may well factor that filters things around nicely.
The filter functions as "Many people fear what they do not understand, and many people hate what they fear". You therefore have three types of people that spontaneously group up when the aliens arrive, working on the assumption that no-one fully understands what is going on.
1. People who do not understand, and who do not fear. These are the ones who stand underneath the ships with placards saying hello. They could be viewed either as ignorant, stupid, or innocent. They are also the ones who feel that "something is wrong with what is going on". Always a minority, them.
2. People who fear what they do not understand, but do not hate it. These are the ones who hide in the basement until everything blows over, or simply claim it to be a hoax and go about their lives as normal, then blame the government for not keeping them informed.
3. People who fear what they do not understand, and hate it. These are the military and the slightly eXtreme people who want to blast it out of the sky before it even turns up.
I would claim that the original statement, while not exactly wrong, is too general to explain the reactions of people during an alien landing. Adding the element of fear in there splits things up into demographics you normally see in films, and that I would expect to see if it were ever to happen for real.
Which would you fit into?
I was once again rejoicing in the fact that I was watching an alien movie where the majority of people didn't think it was a hoax, where the paranoid military were in fact right, and I didn't have to spend half the film screaming at the world that they're ignorant fucks with narrow minds. It was also a rarity to find one (in this day and age, since we've become "enlightened" from the times of the B-movie) in which the alien race is overtly hostile. Independence Day did it, but IC it had everyone guessing - which meant that those crying wolf were ignored because people wanted to believe they were peaceful. This annoys me - not sure why. Maybe that if they were peaceful, they would have popped the hatch and said hi, rather than blown up the Empire State Building. Maybe it's that.
This then got me on to the question of why and how the aliens in Signs (and indeed, alien landings in general) caused responses in the way they did. People claim "we hate what we do not understand", and on the surface, such a statement would claim to explain what was being asked. However, I'm not sure I agree wholeheartedly with it. It is possible that it is true, but I feel there is more to it than that. Where does the fear come into it? Is it even included at all?
I think the statement can be broken down into two, with fear in the middle of them. First, however, the statement itself must be addressed before I can suggest amendments to it.
It is true that there instances of loathing that which is beyond us - first-year particle theoretics springs to my mind - but surely if the human race did so on a general basis, there would be no discoveries, no innovation, and no-one would ever ask "why?" It is not a case of hating, more of being wary, unsure, and unable to show the arrogance that is inherent in us as humans whether we like it or not. Perhaps some people - the more outwardly arrogant - would claim to hate it for that, but there aren't enough of those people to speak for rest of the world, and neither would or should it let them.
The question then turns to whether or not we hate what we fear, of which there are far more examples. The persecution of the Jews under Hitler could be given in example, where the populace was taught to fear the "dirty", "money grabbing", "child molesting" Jew and an atmosphere of hate spontaneously erupted around them (history buffs, I make no claim of knowing hard facts - I'm going on what I've learned. If it's wrong, please tell me so I don't do it again). This was not a result of misunderstanding, but of fear.
It could be said to function as a defence mechanism to the human psyche - in order to conquer the fear, the mind belittles its source until it is a joke, an object of ridicule. It is not to be laughed at, however - it is to be defeated, and such things that had caused fear must involve an element of dislike on the part of the conqueror to achieve. This is not some honourable contest with handshakes before commencing, this is scratching an itch. No-one likes a scary itch.
If we do not automatically hate what we do not understand, but we may well hate what we fear, the final question to tie things up is whether or not we fear what we do not understand - which would cause the original statement to be true, though only via amendments. This I think is far more reasonable, and it provides the means by which some people would accept an alien landing where others would not.
In the same way that we may feel unease, or wariness, at being unable to comprehend something, if the something is big enough it would probably be perfectly reasonable to feel scared. Small occurrences are not enough to cause fear, and may instead go towards causing hate (scratch that scary itch), but the encroachment of another race of beings from above, and the automatic realisation that in order to have mastered casual spaceflight, the race they are dealing with must be far in advance of our own, is such a huge occurrence that it may well cause an element of fear. It is, again, this may well factor that filters things around nicely.
The filter functions as "Many people fear what they do not understand, and many people hate what they fear". You therefore have three types of people that spontaneously group up when the aliens arrive, working on the assumption that no-one fully understands what is going on.
1. People who do not understand, and who do not fear. These are the ones who stand underneath the ships with placards saying hello. They could be viewed either as ignorant, stupid, or innocent. They are also the ones who feel that "something is wrong with what is going on". Always a minority, them.
2. People who fear what they do not understand, but do not hate it. These are the ones who hide in the basement until everything blows over, or simply claim it to be a hoax and go about their lives as normal, then blame the government for not keeping them informed.
3. People who fear what they do not understand, and hate it. These are the military and the slightly eXtreme people who want to blast it out of the sky before it even turns up.
I would claim that the original statement, while not exactly wrong, is too general to explain the reactions of people during an alien landing. Adding the element of fear in there splits things up into demographics you normally see in films, and that I would expect to see if it were ever to happen for real.
Which would you fit into?
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-29 03:55 pm (UTC)Though it does suggest that unless we encounter a race who have undergone evolution in a fundamentally different manner to ourselves, that they will never be entirely interested in mere communication. It would be on some of their minds to eliminate the competitors for these new supplies.