Earlier today, I was telling a colleague--I'm going to just call him R from now on--about my ongoing Battlestar Galactica (BSG) binge (for more details, see previous post). As he was unfamiliar with the basic premise of BSG (he's a middle-aged Canadian gentleman who is not that into sci-fi... speaking of which, Happy Canada Day, if you are reading this from Canada), I had to quickly explain the general story arc of BSG to him (we're talking about the 2003 remake here; the story is slightly different in the 1978 version): Once upon a time, somewhere in deep space, a bunch of humans who make up the Twelve Colonies of Kobol lived more or less happily on a bunch of planets. According to the holy scriptures of these humans, there is a thirteenth colony of humans who live on a planet called Earth, but nobody knows where Earth is, or whether it even exists. Anyway, the humans lived more or less happily in these twelve colonies until one day, the Cylons--a cybernetic race originally created by these humans to be their servants but who later rebelled and went off to form their own civilization--launched a surprise attack on the twelve colonies, which resulted in the near-extinction of the human race. The surviving humans (about 50,000 people) fled the Cylons in a bunch of rather shoddy spaceships (shoddy compared to the Cylon ships, that is). Led by the battleship Battlestar Galactica, they set off on a long journey across the universe to find Earth. Will they succeed? I don't know, I'm still watching to find out :-)
All this must be rather boring if you are already familiar with BSG. My apologies. Anyway, immediately after hearing my synopsis, R, who is well-known for his irony-laced sense of humor, remarked, "So, I take it that the Cylons are the good guys, right?" I was taken aback by this remark for about a quarter of a second, but then quickly saw where he was going with this. This is roughy how the conversation proceeded from this point:
Nobel: Ah yes, I see what you're saying. The humans basically created a slave-race of cybernetic robots to serve their rather trivial interests. All the robots did was rebel and fight back. Which is something any self-respecting race would do.
R [smiles and nods enthusiastically]: So you are on the side of the Cylons?
Nobel [smiles sheepishly]: Well, rationally speaking, I probably should be on the Cylons' side. After all, if we are willing to put aside the fact that they kill humans (like humans don't kill humans, anyway...), they do have a few strong arguments going for them. For instance, many Cylons are deeply religious: They believe that since humans are so fracked-up and corrupt, it is God's will that Cylons should be brought into this universe (by humans, no less: Which shows that God has a very interesting sense of poetic justice) to destroy humans, so that the universe will become a better place. A sort of moral Darwinism, if you will. To be sure, this argument is probably compelling only if you believe that there is a God or some kind of universal agency that is responsible for meting out justice in the universe. But it may still be a great argument if you replace "God" with either your favorite universal-justice-meting-mechanism, or with some notion of the survival of the morally and physically fittest.
Oh, and actually, there is also one more thing going for the Cylons. Since Cylons are basically a bunch of robots, they are, by default, in possession of perfect health and perfect cognitive abilities. Which means that Cylon society does not suffer from the kinds of problems associated with the allocation and distribution of scarce social goods (health care, for instance) that plague human society. After all, who needs insurance or a public health-care system in Cylon society? So, to be a Cylon is to be morally perfect, and also be in possession of perfect health and mental ability. What's not to love about that?
R: Okay, very nice... so why aren't you on the side of the Cylons?
Nobel: Because I'm human! I hate to have to admit this, but I'm basically what Peter Singer would call a speciesist: I am somebody who favors the interests of my own species over that of another, just because they are a different species, just because they, well, look different from me... Well, actually, that's not even really true in the case of the Cylons. The latest Cylon models actually look and feel human (and rather attractively so, if I may add...):
Contrast these with the earlier robot model, a.k.a. the Centurion:
we recommend you to buy some goods below for comfort, safety and ease of your yoga activities
