This week on Kado, ZaShunina looks to be throwing in another gift before mankind has time to process his last one. This time a device which when observed, allows one to comprehend the anisotropic. This would also tie into Wam as the thing which prevented the explosion of energy devices is people’s inability to understand the anisotropic. I don’t quite like ZaShunina’s approach this time as he really does seem to be going over the heads of the government and using the media to push what is a pretty devastating change on the world. With Wam he at least acknowledged the government and presented his case to them. Here he didn’t even bother to have a talk with the prime minister about it. Though I am concerned over this series only show a small picture of the effect of ZaShunina’s changes as here we get some actually discussion on tv about the consequences of Wam only to have a character shut the TV off and discuss other matters.
Then there’s the conversation with Saraka where she takes a day to show Shindo her way of life in a bid to justify her reasoning for wanting ZaShunina to return to where he came. Basic summary boils down to undermining the achievements humans have made so far by advancing with the help of ZaShunina. Saraka wants humans to move at there own pace and advance without ZaShunina’s help. And I am sorry Saraka, but this reasoning is asinine. Civilization has always advanced through trade and what is ZaShunina but a trader? His gifts are akin to introducing new technologies of native tribes. Pushing him away out of fear of change is really just prideful nonsense as she is making the assumption that humanity can advance on its own. Case in point, the Sakoku period of Japan was a period where for 200 years Japan isolated themselves from the rest of the world. Guess what happened? The world advanced without them and they became hopelessly outclassed by the advancements of other countries. Saraka uses the modern landscape as an example of humanity’s progress but girl that progress is the result of Japan playing catch up with the rest of the world. I agree with the president that ZaShunina is pushing advancement far too fast but it’s just foolhardy to push him away out of some misplaced sentimentality over humanity’s achievements. Girl, humanity came close to killing ourselves off on more than one occasion. The achievements you speak off where built on the blood and struggles of decades of screwing around with no idea and even then our current society is far from a perfect system. ZaShunina offers to bypass thousands of years of meandering and reach the next level of humanity. You want to push that aside so you can keep playing in the mud till you make something meaningful? Good luck.
But this is worrisome as the tone of ZaShunina looks to be gearing towards a villainous angle. I hope that this is merely an uncanny valley effect of ZaShunina becoming more human and therefore his reactions become more suspicious. One of the biggest mistakes this anime could make would be to turn the alien evil and prove Saraka’s philosophy right. The message of the series would take on a rather misguided message and this becomes yet another alien invasion story with a us vs them conclusion. My hope is that it dodges that particular landmine and ZaShunina is someone who may have an agenda but not a evil one. Even having his changes be a matter of good intentions gone horribly awry would do well to characterise ZaShunina’s general nativity over the nature of mankind.
Now now, there ARE good arguments for being against cultural contamination, though I guess Japan isn’t one to speak about it due to reasons you provided.
Just simplifying god like being descending on earth to give free gifts for sake of advancing the species to being like “trading” is really gross over simplification. Like, Star Trek’s prime directive is pretty horsecrap, but the concept does have good rationale. Basically, can you really call going around “lesser species” giving them technology an ethical thing? I mean, that sort of stuff involves destroying native culture, putting species on same path you had and otherwise undermining their achievements. Though, seems to be pretty subjective how much you think culture is worth.
That being said, pretty sure show doesn’t demonstrate arguments for that point of view in detail, Sanaka sounds rather much like strawman from what I’ve heard. Interested to hear whether its going to be “silly strawman for being wrong” or strawman is right even though their arguments weren’t done well :p
i would argee with that sentiment if ZaShunina’s gifts were removing or effecting the culture of the planet to mirrior his own. However of the ones given so far only really remove limitations on the human race. Energy and Sleep. While the changes are enormous this doesn’t really change how humanity would develop. More give them the abilty to develop faster. They are also solutions which humanity might never reach as plently of things are getting in the way of developing reneable energy and to remove sleep would likely require stepping into monsterous levels of human expermentation and gene manipulation. Humanities trumpths up till this point are not getting undermined by these gifts as it’s not exactly the first time Huamanity has benefited from handouts from god.
Sanaka’s arguement was a bit more rebust than I made it sound here and I could very well be missing out on important details by simplifing it. I don’t like the idea of her being proven right however as it feels more like a heavy adversion to change than concern over trampling over history.
Huh, sorry about timing since I asked my old post to be deleted because I used wrong name, but seems like ye had time to reply before it got deleted. So to anyone reading this afterwards and being like “Huh? What is Aidan replying to”, I made a post about cultural contamination and stuff.
Anyhoo, in that case though, removing sleep from human goes beyond just cultural contamination. Like, human psychology isn’t really made for it so what would happen when nobody suddenly needs to sleep is really unpredictable.
Another thing about cultural contamination is what you just said about “things humans might never reach”. Basically, kind of what certain evil genocidal cyborg scuttlefish in that one video game do, they provide technology for new races to find so that they develop on certain technological path and aren’t able to figure out unpredictable new technology that would make killing them more unpredictable. If someone just gives you the solution, you miss things you might have found in process of trying to find that solution.
Like, I do agree that from what I heard, it doesn’t really sound like case of imperialism, but there are dangers and stuff you would lose in sharing technology and stuff. I myself wouldn’t mind aliens giving us ethical clean energy source considering at at our rate we are probably going to ruin planet permanently before we reach that point, but the whole “advancing species” stuff is always bit questionable.
Aaand apparently someone added that comment back and changed name so it doesn’t look silly anymore, but I apparently commented bit too early :’D Oops