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Would you want to start over?

Epic Beard Man

Epic Beard Man

Bearded Philosopher
Taking a page from the movie “The Earth Stood Still” suppose an advance alien race came to the planet considering our dangerous nature offer us to start over. With advanced technology this species with our acceptance has the ability to demarerialize historical landmarks everywhere which will not draw out nostalgia from our minds or inquiry.

In addition to this uses an electromagnetic pulse that knocks out all the power in the world, forcing us to revert back to survival instincts. They will also dematerialize all pollutants and anything clogging our oceans which creates a massive global clean up. The world becomes much colder but cleaner. This consequentially forces us to band together to survive would you want to start over? Why? Why not?
 
Valjean

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Best exterminate us. We're a planetary infection of a virulence never before seen in the planet's history.
 
Revoltingest

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Polymath257 said:
No, I would not. I'd much rather figure out how to get ourselves out of the mess we are in on our own.

For one thing, with my asthma, I would almost certainly die if we went back to basics.
Click to expand...
People would make all the same mistakes all over again.
How do I know this?
History teaches us that history teaches us nothing.
 
Polymath257

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
Revoltingest said:
People would make all the same mistakes all over again.
How do I know this?
History teaches us that history teaches us nothing.
Click to expand...

Another variant:
We learn nothing from history except
that we learn nothing from history

But:
History doesn't repeat itself
Historians repeat each other.
 
Shadow Wolf

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
Nah. We'd just inevitably end up back where we started (or, rather, ended in this case?) because we would have learned nothing from our failures. Knocking out all electronics would also be a death sentence for many due to medical need, with many more following from the mere fact that few of us have ever been exposed to such a primitive setting. Starvation, unknowingly eating poisonous foods, not knowing how to hunt, not knowing how to start a fire, I wouldn't be surprised if we lost at least a couple billion in the first year (people can band together, but once the store food is gone and store clothing in tatters there isn't much to go around as we had in our earlier hunter-gatherer days).
Better we just learn how to handle this ourselves, including learning how to deal with science deniers who would damn us all.
 
Valjean

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
How about altering the human psyche? We're not wired to live in large, specialized, multicultural groups, or to think long-term. We're aggressive, impulsive, tribal apes.

Maybe the best startover strategy would be to rewire out brains.
 
Shadow Wolf

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
Polymath257 said:
Another variant:
We learn nothing from history except
that we learn nothing from history

But:
History doesn't repeat itself
Historians repeat each other.
Click to expand...
One very consistently repeated facet of history is no matter what we find deadlier and more effective ways of killing things. From our early days of spears and crude stone-flake "axes," to the modern poisons and bombs that turn the very Earth toxic, the very earliest of Chinese firearms to today's long-distance sniper rifles and guns that can shoot more bullets in a minute than what everyone combined fired in wars of the past, I don't see the trend of "we are better at killing today than we were yesterday and tomorrow we'll be even better" coming to an end anytime soon.
 
youknowme

youknowme

Whatever you want me to be.
I am ready, I never really fit into modern civilization anyways and I think with some practice I can become ruthless.
 
sayak83

sayak83

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Epic Beard Man said:
Taking a page from the movie “The Earth Stood Still” suppose an advance alien race came to the planet considering our dangerous nature offer us to start over. With advanced technology this species with our acceptance has the ability to demarerialize historical landmarks everywhere which will not draw out nostalgia from our minds or inquiry.

In addition to this uses an electromagnetic pulse that knocks out all the power in the world, forcing us to revert back to survival instincts. They will also dematerialize all pollutants and anything clogging our oceans which creates a massive global clean up. The world becomes much colder but cleaner. This consequentially forces us to band together to survive would you want to start over? Why? Why not?
Click to expand...
No. If they have advanced tech, they could instead help us build tech that do not pollute, and thus resolve the problem.
This would be akin to the rapid modernization of Japan in the 19th century via technology transfer from US?
 
MJ Bailey

MJ Bailey

Member
In consideration with the OP, the end solution would be gratifying to say the least (not Neolithic survival, but clean earth). Without History there isn't Knowledge. To me this sounds like ones on whom would like slaves and nothing more than that. Every ending has beginning with a beginning having an end, with the ending having a beginning; yet without consistency (such as people working together harmoniously) would you want a restart (per-say)?
 
ADigitalArtist

ADigitalArtist

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
This is a tried and true sci-fi trope. It usually goes one of two ways:

Sci-Fi 1, a return to Ludditism happens at the end of the story, but fails to describe massive, catastrophic damage to survivors who by in large don't know how to function in a pre-industrial world, no matter how much they think they do. There's a reason life expectancy is so dramatically poor in pre-industrialized nations. It's not because they're stupid, it's because manufacturing the tools needed for living off the land by hand with only regional materials is hard and dangerous work, one most people didn't survive long. Instead of a realistic outlook, it just fades to black after the decision to abandon technology. (Battlestar Galactica comes to mind)

Sci-Fi 2, the story is about being forcibly displaced into a pre-industrial world (aftermath of a disaster story). The protagonist calls for cooperation towards making a better world, only to find that a scared, lost and struggling humanity on survival instincts turns even more sharply towards tribalism. The civil framework which kept tyranny of the masses at bay is gone, replaced by the biases of whatever group manages to seize power. The rest of the story ends up being about how humanity ends up being worse than their attackers since they turn on each other with more cruelty than the initial threat ever was. (Pretty much every zombie story, a good deal of Stephen King stories, post-apocolyptic genre writing)

The best case scenario is where said aliens use their technology to save humanity, not by taking away human technology, but advancing it in a sustainable direction. (Re: Star Trek)

Edit: Also, had a thought.
Sci-Fi 3, Modest Proposal story. Where someone brings about or agrees with a disaster scenario and accepts staggering losses for the 'greater good,' even though it's never made expressly clear that the results of the sacrifice of others will actually lead to a 'greater good' instead of more of the same. (The Thanos Gambit.)
 
Thief

Thief

Rogue Theologian
Epic Beard Man said:
Taking a page from the movie “The Earth Stood Still” suppose an advance alien race came to the planet considering our dangerous nature offer us to start over. With advanced technology this species with our acceptance has the ability to demarerialize historical landmarks everywhere which will not draw out nostalgia from our minds or inquiry.

In addition to this uses an electromagnetic pulse that knocks out all the power in the world, forcing us to revert back to survival instincts. They will also dematerialize all pollutants and anything clogging our oceans which creates a massive global clean up. The world becomes much colder but cleaner. This consequentially forces us to band together to survive would you want to start over? Why? Why not?
Click to expand...
sounds like the Second Coming of Christ
 
Ellen Brown

Ellen Brown

Well-Known Member
Humanity is "an infestation of carbon based life forms", and we keep getting started over and keep messing up. Given the choice, I would not want to start over if an adult is not in the house. Failing that, I'd rather die and go down a black hole.
 
Shadow Wolf

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
ADigitalArtist said:
This is a tried and true sci-fi trope. It usually goes one of two ways:

Sci-Fi 1, a return to Ludditism happens at the end of the story, but fails to describe massive, catastrophic damage to survivors who by in large don't know how to function in a pre-industrial world, no matter how much they think they do. There's a reason life expectancy is so dramatically poor in pre-industrialized nations. It's not because they're stupid, it's because manufacturing the tools needed for living off the land by hand with only regional materials is hard and dangerous work, one most people didn't survive long. Instead of a realistic outlook, it just fades to black after the decision to abandon technology. (Battlestar Galactica comes to mind)

Sci-Fi 2, the story is about being forcibly displaced into a pre-industrial world (aftermath of a disaster story). The protagonist calls for cooperation towards making a better world, only to find that a scared, lost and struggling humanity on survival instincts turns even more sharply towards tribalism. The civil framework which kept tyranny of the masses at bay is gone, replaced by the biases of whatever group manages to seize power. The rest of the story ends up being about how humanity ends up being worse than their attackers since they turn on each other with more cruelty than the initial threat ever was. (Pretty much every zombie story, a good deal of Stephen King stories, post-apocolyptic genre writing)

The best case scenario is where said aliens use their technology to save humanity, not by taking away human technology, but advancing it in a sustainable direction. (Re: Star Trek)

Edit: Also, had a thought.
Sci-Fi 3, Modest Proposal story. Where someone brings about or agrees with a disaster scenario and accepts staggering losses for the 'greater good,' even though it's never made expressly clear that the results of the sacrifice of others will actually lead to a 'greater good' instead of more of the same. (The Thanos Gambit.)
Click to expand...
Exactly. Regardless of one's thoughts of industrialism and massive-scale manufacturing, they went a very long way in reducing and eliminating what much of the world used to know as poverty. The fits may not be perfect, but more people have things like shoes and clothes. Advances in transportation, refrigeration, and food preservation allows us to eat better than any king of ages past. Our medicine has advanced tremendously.
Really, it's foolish to want to give all that up. Our entire evolution has depended upon us using our tools and technology for survival and enhancing our natural abilities. And now we are into a second generation that has known nothing but computers, cell phones, and global connectedness since their earliest memories. We don't need to give it up. We need to learn to use it responsibly. And, unfortunately, we don't--as a species--have a very good track record of addressing things that develop rapidly in a responsible manner.
 
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