Cylons=people?

[beccaelizabeth]

Been thinking more about BSG


what *are* Cylons?

Buffybots with a better interface?
or Data, or Lore, or Andromeda?

Is being flesh and blood enough to make them people?

Does it matter?


from Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
Demosthenes's Hierarchy of Exclusion
"recognizes four orders of foreignness. The first is the otherlander, or utlanning, the stranger that we recognize as being a human of our world, but of another city or country. The second is the framling [...] This is the stranger that we recognize as human, but of another world. The third is the ramen, the stranger that we recognize as human, but of another species. The fourth is the true alien, the varelse, which includes all the animals, for with them no conversation is possible. They live, but we cannot guess what purposes or causes make them act. They might be intelligent, they might be self-aware, but we cannot know it."
Last there is "djur, the dire beast, that comes in the night with slavering jaws."


which are the Cylons?

by the way they're being treated, beasts
but as far as the viewer can see?


conclusion from Speaker:
"The difference between raman and varelse is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging."


Some characters on BSG are treating the 'toasters' different because Cylons are not people.
Should be treating them right because they are.


(the people doing the treating should be doing it right because they are people. there's probably a snappy, memorable, yet not so ambiguous way to phrase that. but I can barely keep my eyes open right now I'm that tired, so I'll just say sod it and post.)

Comments

[yorick28.livejournal.com]

This is a really interesting question becca--you should also post it on the S3 board. Maybe after S'cubiefest, though, when everyone's back home and starting to catch up on their sleep. ;)

Myself, I'd categorize Cylons as ramen--human but, because of their mechanical components, of another species. However, I suspect most of the people in the BSG 'verse either think of Cylons as djur or are trying to convince themselves of as much. After all, a defining characteristic of the varelse is that "we cannot guess what purposes or causes make them act. They might be intelligent, they might be self-aware, but we cannot know it"--I don't think there's much question that the BSG folk know the Cylons are intelligent and self-aware, and many have suspicions as to their purpose and/or causes. But it does seem to me that the humans refer to the Cylons with the same mix of disdain (thinking of them as "just" machines) and dread that many of us might use in discussing a shark or a grizzly--on the one hand they're "just" an animal or fish, but on the other they're a powerful predator with a deadliness that demands a certain respect and can inspire a very visceral type of fear. Plus if you think of the Cylons as nothing more than the bogeymen who come in the night, then it's a lot easier to treat them like things.

Oh yeah--you definitely need to give this idea a spin on the board.