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from the un-reaffirming-faith-in-humanity dept.
The Economist is carrying a free story (free except for the annoying subscribe pop-up) about a French slave trading ship that crashed into a reef and sunk just off of the tiny island named "Île de Sable" on July 31st 1761.
The Island is a tiny mountain top of sand 500 miles east of Madagascar. The island was subsequently re-named Tromelin Island (google map link) for reasons explained in the article. Zoom in and out again to see just how desolate a place this still is.
The shipwrecked French crew, built a boat out of the wreckage of their ship, with the help of some of the slaves. The boat they built, for lack of materials, could accommodate only about half of the people stranded. So all 123 Frenchmen climbed into the boat, left the 88 remaining slaves (out of an original 160 or more), and sailed off toward Madagascar, with a promise to return.
The article is the story of how that promise was not kept, not entirely the fault of the French First Officer, who pleaded for a ship to rescue the slaves, but was rebuffed at every turn. Too busy worrying about the British fleet was the excuse.
Finally in November 1776, 15 years after the shipwreck, with the British Fleet otherwise distracted, a French ship arrived and rescued the last seven remaining survivors (all women except a 8 month old baby boy) from the island.
The story is an interesting read, and documents how easy it was to be callously abandoned in that day and age. (Not nearly as callous as being sold into slavery by your own disaffected relatives, mind you!).
(Score: 5, Insightful) by BrockDockdale on Thursday December 17 2015, @08:23PM
...this was going to be an inspiring and heartwarming story of how separate groups would learn to work together, shunning the norms of a society thousands of miles away, disregarding the opinions of a public they might never see again... how boundaries of race and class would dissolve when people's mutual interests are joined in a common struggle against a shared adversary... how the surviving castaways learned a valuable lesson and reveled in their shared humanity.
That would've been news.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @08:48PM
Muh humanist ideals! We're all the same, go against your natural instincts! It's all Western society's fault, goy!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @08:54PM
That would've been a movie.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday December 17 2015, @09:12PM
Something along those lines sounds like a great Star Trek: TNG episode. There's a reason I like that show so much: the crewpeople depicted on it are not human, not like us.
The real story about Star Trek is that the "Mirror Universe" you see in some episodes, where the humans are basically evil bastards, is about our universe. Star Trek is showing us what life is like in an alternate universe where humans are basically good.
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Thursday December 17 2015, @09:55PM
I really like your summary, it explains the 'out of touch with reality: How humans REALLY act' reaction I frequently felt while watching. Thanks for the POV.
Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of things/concepts of the Star Trek Universe I really like! (disclaimer: I am a big fan of the whole Star Trek works, even Enterprise, and Voyager; from A to Z, basically)
But frequently I found myself thinking a lot of it was wishful thinking of how reality should work in real life.
On a side note, I wonder what 'Wrath of Khan' would have been like from Khan's POV(as protagonist). Whole different story, I'd expect! (one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter'-read "Freehold" by Michael Z. Williamson-available for free(gratis) at http://www.baenebooks.com/p-162-freehold.aspx [baenebooks.com][I'm a big fan of Baenbooks, and their free library, BTW])
In the end, reality has Demon Murphy(of Murphy's Law fame) to contend with, and Bender was correct-kill all humans is the only way to a 'perfect world'.
Take any 'perfect plan' for ANYTHING, and it looks good on paper, but throw one live human anywhere NEAR the plan, and unexpected circumstances WILL negate the 'perfection' of the 'plan'. Most politicians would do well to remember this.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @10:43PM
> one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter
Maybe you don't know this, but that quote is from the 1975 novel Harry's Game about the troubles in northern ireland.
Much more palatable when the freedom fighters are white christians fighting white christians.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Thursday December 17 2015, @10:48PM
First off, Khan was a genetically modified psychopath. That was the problem, and why they outlawed the science. All the 'super men', for some strange reason, kept concluding the best idea was to kill everyone in the Federation and then bring their obviously superior genetics to the rest of the galaxy by force. Khan was as crazy as all of his people. His POV? Talk to Charlie Manson.
Star Trek didn't start out perfect like that. What you see in TNG, is the world after a couple hundred years of hard work to change. The major cause of the change? World War III that greatly reduced populations and provided a rather sincere impetus for the survivors to start to change. Additionally, do not underestimate the impact of the Vulcans. They acted as mentors and guides, wholly unaffected by irrational emotions through their long and ancient practice of Kolinahr.
Moreover, the Federation wasn't perfect. We saw many things during the show that indicated crime was still an issue, mental health still provided the odd nutjob intent on destroying the galaxy, and that even the government suffered from corruption vis-à-vis Section 31.
The vast majority (probably 99%) of all Federation citizens are the types of people that are incredibly rare in our world today, but that still means they had their own issues to contend with. The odds of you ever running into the 1% were obviously fairly low, when the odds of being captured for rehabilitation, help, or imprisonment were very high (Star Fleet Security).
Incremental progress was truly the message of the show ultimately, not a people who simply didn't suffer from our flaws and hubris.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday December 18 2015, @02:20PM
For a somewhat similar setup, check out the Nietzcheans on Andromeda. The show never went too far out of its way to make them sympathetic but at least they were pretty consistent.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday December 18 2015, @02:15PM
Except for the Xindi season of Enterprise, yeah. It was a 180 degree turn from "exploring the galaxy and making friends" to "we need to put aside our morals until we snuff this race before they snuff us" that I practically lost a filling :P
But then again I haven't seen much of DS9 which sounded a bit that way, too.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday December 18 2015, @02:17PM
Ugh. *so jarring a turn [...] that I practically lost a filling.
Way to totally blow the joke, tango.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday December 18 2015, @03:46PM
Yeah, I didn't like that story arc much either. And I mostly avoided DS9. To me, the Roddenberry-approved TOS and TNG were the definitive Star Trek (though the episodes where he had the least involvement were also the best; he was just like George Lucas that way; Wesley was Roddenberry's dumb idea like Lucas's Jar-Jar, and season 3 onwards of TNG was where it got really good, which is also when Rick Berman took over and sidelined Wesley).
(Score: 2) by NoMaster on Thursday December 17 2015, @10:06PM
And it might've been if it'd been called Gilligan's Island, not 'Sand Island'...
Live free or fuck off and take your naïve Libertarian fantasies with you...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @10:12PM
Careful not step in bawana.
(Score: 1) by BrockDockdale on Friday December 18 2015, @08:33PM
Well, I didn't get a happy ending, but at least I can take comfort in the fact that a significant portion of the replies to this are discussing Star Trek.