Planets have human rights (in the Imperium)?

[Dave Chase]

Please, not to much RL life politics.

I just wanted to see if people thought that in a galaxy wide, multiply alien and empire setting if some group might actually declare and stand behind a planet having or equaling the same rights as given a human/alien citizen.

Dave Chase

To answer this question: No, only tree-hugging post flooding (read:up on a soapbox) liberals maintain this viewpoint.

The intelligent sentient PEOPLE of the galaxy have been kind enough to make sanitariums to hold all of the tree-huggers away from society for everyone's safety *grin*

So, liberals are aliens. :lol:

Anyway, interesting twist of an answer.

But what about some alien culture, not werid human idealism one but a true alien culture/race?

Dave Chase

 

[rust]

But what about some alien culture, not werid human idealism one but a true alien culture/race?

The native culture from Ursula LeGuin's novel "The Word for World is Forest"
would be an excellent example of such an alien culture.

 

[GamerDude]

To answer this question: No, only tree-hugging post flooding (read:up on a soapbox) liberals maintain this viewpoint.

The intelligent sentient PEOPLE of the galaxy have been kind enough to make sanitariums to hold all of the tree-huggers away from society for everyone's safety *grin*

So, liberals are aliens. :lol:

Anyway, interesting twist of an answer.

But what about some alien culture, not werid human idealism one but a true alien culture/race?

Dave Chase

Nice twist of my answer.. actually I didn't say or even imply 'liberals are aliens' especially since you don't define what you define 'an alien' as? Someone from Topeka Kansas? Someone from Guam? Someone from TerrrySolvent 3? An Aslan who grew up next door to YOU? *wink*.

Let's say for this discussion "Alien" means "Not from Earth, the third planet orbiting the star called 'Sol' at least by us Solomani Humans" Yes I can see cultures seeing things that way, heck look at the movie 'Avatar', great example of it.

Personally, I believe we all individually and every corporation and gov't has a duty to do everything reasonably possible to keep and maintain Earth as we harvest and utilize it's natural resources. I mean, we hear all about "sustanable" this and "renewable" that, yet we're willing to just clear cut an area and plant baby trees that won't grow to a significant size for decades or longer, we strip mine area and have to be forced to do something about restoring it when we're done. In all my travels I have yet to see a community or area where a nice stand of trees or unpaved grass didn't scream out to companies & the gov't anything but "bulldoze me, rape me, build on me, pave me, make me the 87th place to shop that won't be filled with business'."

*sighs*

(NOTE: Sometimes my humor misses the mark... this was intended as satire in the spirit of David's post. It put a nice smile on my face. Thanks David!)

 

[Vile]

Didn't the aliens of Downbelow Station (C. J. Cherryh) also have a sort of "living planet" philosophy? It's been a while since I read that.

BTW, I suspect that headline contains more than a little hyperbole. Reading the actual article, which always helps even if it's most likely still nothing like what's really happening, it looks like the main innovation is to establish the planet as an entity with certain rights (right to freedom from pollution, etc.), not to give the Earth "human" rights.

I can certainly see some civilisations enshrining those kinds of rights for a planet. Especially as those kinds of rights are routinely ignored with no consequences.

 

[rust]

I can certainly see some civilisations enshrining those kinds of rights for a planet.

An example would be David Brin's Uplift universe, where all civilizations
treat the protection of planetary environments as a kind of "prime direc-
tive", which forces the humans to hide what they did to Earth from the
aliens and to repair the worst damage before the aliens find out and pu-
nish them.

In the novel "Uplift War" the humans win the conflict mainly because their
militarily far superior opponents would have to damage the environment
of the planet to defeat the human colonists, and such a war crime would
not be tolerated by the other civilizations.

 

[GamerDude]

Basically it's "Gaia" we're talking about. Asimov played with it in his later Foundation sequels.

It's basically a very new-age, tree-huggy, off out in slightly disoriented liberal viewpoint that, as much as I believe in protecting the environment makes me a bit ill when I see it pushed forward in what is supposed to be "fiction" but end up sounding like a "parable for their viewpoint".

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

 

[DFW]

Basically it's "Gaia" we're talking about. Asimov played with it in his later Foundation sequels.

Yes, it is fantasy and/or stone age superstition material.

 

[Dave Chase]

Basically it's "Gaia" we're talking about. Asimov played with it in his later Foundation sequels.

Yes, it is fantasy and/or stone age superstition material.

Really?

I'd say give the Death Star an AI to run it and leave it to its own for several eons and see if you don't get an Intelligent Planet (moon).

Dave Chase

 

[far-trader]

I could make a strong argument for the case of the Earth being sentient and alive. Based on some past definitions of sentience and life. Possibly even current ones. Certainly more so than for some people

As for not going there if "things" are accorded equal status to "people", we crossed that bridge long ago.

...but on topic

Yes, there are almost certainly such worlds in The Imperium or it's neighborhood. Some 11,000 worlds and not one such culture beggers the imagination.

And as noted, this is sci-fi, so who's to say one of those worlds (recognized or not) is not in fact sentient. Our own Earth could be sentient and we're just too egocentric and stupid to realize it.

 

[GamerDude]

And that's my point.. OUR planet is not sentient etc... An ecosystem (or megaecosystem ifyou will) yes.. but that's it.

Some other planet? meh who knows. We have to actually prove they exist instead of accepting some interpretation of some small fuzzy indistinct picture of something 20+ light years away.

 

[rust]

And that's my point.. OUR planet is not sentient etc... An ecosystem (or megaecosystem ifyou will) yes.. but that's it.

Hmm ... I always thought that humans are a part of our planet's ecosys-
tem, and there are at least occasional rumours that some of those hu-
mans show weak signs of intelligence ... :shock:

 

[DFW]

Really?

Really.

 

[Dave Chase]

Really?

Really.

And here I thought you were a SciFi fan.

Proved me wrong.

:lol:

Dave Chase

 

[GamerDude]

Hmm ... I always thought that humans are a part of our planet's ecosys-tem, and there are at least occasional rumours that some of those hu-
mans show weak signs of intelligence ... :shock:

Misspellings aside, that's not what I said, or implied, or inferred, or even hinted at.

**pulls the RUSTbucket up from animal intelligence to join us of 'weak signs' of intelligence... the Human Race** *grin*

 

[rust]

**pulls the RUSTbucket up from animal intelligence to join us of 'weak signs' of intelligence... the Human Race** *grin*

No, thank you, I really prefer to remain a tool using animal, all the other
chimpanzees would get angry at me if I would pretend to be something
else than a clever great ape, and I feel much better as a part of our pla-
net's ecosystem than I would do in an elevated position above it. :lol: