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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: 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?"