--- In PotaDG@yahoogroups.com
, Haristas@a... wrote:
> In a message dated 11/28/04 11:47:31 AM Eastern Standard Time,
> LordTZer0@A... writes:
> > >> What happens everyday?
> >
> > Primates abused by science.
>
> I could argue with the word "abused," but I know what you mean.
>
> But it's a real leap in plausibility, and I now think a
highly "implausible" one, to think that we could move from that to
turning apes into a slave class.
>
> It's plausibility that I'm arguing here. When I was young I could
suspend disbelief to accept that apes could be made into slaves and
evolve into talking creatures in a mere two or three hundred years,
but I can't anymore. The concepts of Boulle and Dehn don't work for
me anymore, but I have an idea. I'll tell it as soon as we hear from
Patrick again.
>
> -- Rory
*** Well, here I am, dudes (and dudettes), so cough up your idea,
Rory.
And, hey, let me just say that I'll be the first to admit freely that
the entire POTA saga -- as given either in Boulle's stand-alone novel
or in the 1st movie (either on its own, or even taking into account
all its sequels) -- is inherently implausible. Absurdity is the very
essence of satire. Satire is when an absurd idea is taken to its
extreme and worked for all it's worth, so as to point out the
underlying absurdity of the human condition.
But, having said that, it behooves guys like me to try to concoct a
scenario -- working within the 'canon' of the 5 movies and 14
episodes -- which is the least implausible. It's a stretch, and the
grains of salt have to be very very very BIG, but it's doable.
For my own scenario, I have the talking apes we see in "BATTLE"
(other than Caesar) having acquired that ability NOT through any
genetic tinkering or selective breeding on the part of humanity, but
rather due to the transgenic intervention of nonhuman intelligent
beings circa 1947. Mandemus, who is portrayed as older-than-Caesar,
cannot have been the result of anything that Man did to the Apes.
Just as the extraterrestrial Monolith-makers of Clarke's "2001" were
the ultimate 'creators' of Man (by "uplifting" -- to use a term from
David Brin's book series -- a pre-human hominid at "THE DAWN OF MAN"
by instilling urges towards murder and carnivorism), so too will the
three species of talking apes (in my POTA scenario) be the result of
a "divine intervention" -- the Apes, prior to being enslaved and
brought to America and elsewhere, will have come to worship those
beings as their "God" and His "angels". "He" will not have created
them out of dust, or nothingness, but will merely have spliced into
the genomes of simian embryos certain "amended" bits of DNA, which
cause those embryos to form ALTERED physiological forms, such as a
larynx and palate capable of forming human-sounding vocalizations,
and a somewhat smaller body -- to give a larger brain-to-body mass
ratio. In current circles, such genetically "created" creatures are
called CHIMAERAS. I posted about an article in "MOTHER JONES" (I
think it was) some time ago, probably on my "PHENOMENON" site, which
dealt with this currently viable bit of genetic engineering.
Rory, you told me to "get real" regarding the implausibility of
humans enslaving apes, keeping apes in the home, etc. We're not
talking about the real world, though; we're talking about a fictional
parallel-universe situation -- a world which has diverged from
our "real" universe the same way as Hasslein and Virgil described,
using the "old motorways" analogy. In the real world, yes -- mankind
is on a trend towards the eradication of slavery and the
enfranchisement of animals concerning their "rights" -- as it SHOULD
be, I agree. Of course, we have to pretend we haven't heard about the
enslavement (and genocide) of Sudanese tribes by Muslim warlords...
and the sexual slavery of children as young as 7 in places like
Thailand and Bombay... and the poaching of gorilla meat in Africa...
and--
But in the "POTA universe" the human race has found out that talking
apes from the Future had been forced to admit that Mankind had been
reduced to the status of a lowly beast -- hunted for sport,
and "dissected" in cruel scientific experiments, what the head of the
Presidential Commission of Inquiry referred to as "atrocities".
And all the DOGS and CATS have been killed by a plague that ravaged
the Earth... in a single horrific month! Think of the change-of-mind
and change-of-heart that 9/11 instilled in Americans (especially),
and then think of the psychological double-whammy that Pet Plague
would have had on ALL mankind, especially Americans, where some
celebrities pamper their pets -- even to the point of having "pet
restaurants" and gaudy cemeteries for their deceased little dears.
Oh, some cultures wouldn't be affected as much, I'll grant you that.
In Muslim circles, dogs especially are considered "unclean" animals,
which is why the psychological torture of Abu Ghraib prisoners
involved teeth-baring, barking German Shepherd dogs -- there's a
picture I've seen of a detainee with a look on his face like he's
shitting his pants in fear. Dogs might not be beloved by such
cultures, but OUR culture would be changed in many ways by the loss
of these taken-for-granted animals. Man domesticated the Dog... and
the Dog returned the favor, in my opinion.
I imagine that the time period, in the POTA universe, from around
1983 (when the plague hit) until around 1988, mostly smaller monkeys
were brought into more American homes as pets; Armando, when he tells
Caesar the history, first mentions monkeys. And THEN -- probably
because there just weren't enough to go around -- certain apes were
taken into people's homes as pets, and most probably NOT adult, fully-
grown apes, but simian infants. I can imagine irate people demanding
that the apes currently languishing in test-laboratories be released,
so as to provide pet-less people with new pets. Or, if the apes in
question are already adults, then put into breeding centers where ape
babies can be produced, so that those babies can be sold as pets.
Thus, it's only towards the END of the period leading up to Caesar's
appearance in "CONQUEST" where things have gotten to the point where
even ADULT apes are brought into the picture as 'pets' -- pets
requiring so much disciplinary "conditioning" (especially the "No"-
command, to mitigate against their more violent tendencies) that the
OTHER advantages of Pavlovian behavioral modification can be gained:
the training of a servant class.
It might be that the "APE MANAGEMENT" centers have been "managing"
apes -- i.e. adult apes -- for only a year or so, from 1990-ish.
Breck mentions his "Achilles List", which lists every instance of an
overt act of disobedience of an ape over the "last year". Perhaps the
harsh tactics at "APE MANAGEMENT" have only been in play for that one
year.
Then again, I've mentioned before my scenario regarding the use of
the word "centuries" by first Cornelius and then Zira when they tell
Hasslein about the Fall of Man recorded in the "history scrolls that
were kept hidden from the masses", the "Secret Scrolls". Cornelius
mentions a period of "two centuries" during which Apes were
transformed from PETS into SLAVES... and Zira refers to a period
of "three more centuries" after which those enslaved Apes "turned the
tables on their masters". I've pointed out that Cornelius (and Zira)
are contradicting themselves with this supposed timeline: they came
from the year 3955, and with the Pet Plague happening in 1983, that
means that after 5 centuries of Apes being first pets and then
slaves, the appearance of the talking ape named Aldo -- who did not
grunt, but spoke the word "No" (presumably for the first time) --
must have happened roughly 1,500 years before 3955, or about 500
years after 1983, circa the late 25th Century...
... but earlier, in his testimony before the Commission, Cornelius
told them that the language we call English is the language that his
people have spoken "for two thousand years, roughly" -- which means
that his LATER use of the word "centuries" cannot be true. If his
LATER information to Hasslein is ENTIRELY true (and not just MOSTLY
true), then he should've said that the language he speaks has been
spoken by his people "for fifteen hundred years, roughly" instead.
But 2,000 years ("roughly") prior to 3955 gets you back to the mid-
20th Century -- and NOT to the late-24th Century, dammit!
But, if he purposely used the word "centuries" rather than "years",
in order to give Hasslein and his goons a false sense of security
regarding the near-future -- so that they falsely believe their
civilization has at least 500 years of superiority to look forward
to -- then Cornelius (and Zira) MAY have known the TRUE timeline of
Apes-as-Pets and then Apes-as-Slaves to have been a total of 5 years,
rather than 5 centuries. IF that's the case, then monkeys may have
been made pets as early as late-1983, with ape-babies made into pets
around 5 years prior to "CONQUEST", circa 1986. Three years later --
translating Zira's "three more centuries" into "three more years" --
would be the time when Apes are first turned into Slaves, which
should put the beginning of Ape Slavery in the year 1988, a mere
three years prior to the "conquest" of Breck's city by Caesar's army.
Maybe Breck thought he was being reasonable with his Achilles List
only going back a single year, rather than the entire three years
during which Apes have been given "conditioning".
Thus, perhaps we're only looking at a very short time -- some three
years at most -- where fully-grown Apes are being treated as slaves,
forced to endure the behavioral conditioning tortures in "APE
MANAGEMENT" facilities in the newer cities where the Affluent class
has gated off themselves from the Middle-and-Lower classes.
Is it implausible and absurd that mankind should enslave apes, either
in our own "real" universe or in the fictional POTA universe -- or
ANY universe? Sure, to a certain degree. But no more absurd than the
underlying beliefs of the Nazis -- which led to their horrible
behaviors -- about the Jewish "untermenschen" and the
Aryan "ubermenschen", the "subhuman" and the "superman". Nazi beliefs
and ideals were inherently absurd... yet they acted on them all the
same. One might say, Rory, that it is imminently HUMAN for groups of
people in power -- especially cruel and corrupt people -- to advance
an unequivocally absurd ideology through the use of coercive
violence. And THAT is exactly what happens in the "CONQUEST"
scenario. Dehn has merely given this absurd-yet-probably tendency of
our species a new (though fictional) and extreme exemplification.
Boulle saw the world -- or, the human race, at any rate -- as
inherently absurd. Even one of his books has that as its
title: "BECAUSE IT IS ABSURD". I would argue that the absurd
behaviors of people depicted in Dehn's scenario are NO MORE ABSURD,
really, than the behaviors of people down through the ages, including
today.
Look at the American electorate today, Rory! Dubya was chosen over
Kerry by a slim majority of people who still believe that Saddam
Hussein's regime was somehow as culpable for 9/11 as Osama bin
Laden's al-Qaeda group. This, despite a wealth of PUBLIC information
that has long disproved the contention. Those few percent of eligible
voters who swung Dubya's way bought the lie that he is "better for
our defense and the war on terror" than Kerry -- and HAS BEEN better
against Terrorism than Gore would've been -- despite the fact that it
was on Dubya's watch that 9/11 happened in the first place, when all
his foreign policy experts were fixated on the supposed peril
of "state-sponsored terrorism" (i.e. Iraq), as well as the fact that
the ORIGINAL draft of the Homeland Security Act was co-sponsored by
Gore's VP nominee Joe Lieberman, based on a terrorism threat
assessment conducted by former senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman,
which PREDICTED an event like 9/11 well over a year before it
happened.
If Gore & Lieberman had gotten into the White House in 2001, their
administration would NOT have sidetracked the Homeland Security Bill,
as Bush II's regime did FOR EIGHT GODDAMNED MONTHS. Then, after we
got hit when we were vulnerable -- KEPT vulnerable by a do-nothing
Bush administration -- the Bush team grabbed that Homeland Security
thing by the short-hairs and crammed a bunch of unconstitutional
garbage into it, knowing that nobody would DARE oppose it, for fear
of being labelled unpatriotic in the wake of the WTC attacks... and
they passed it as the so-called "Patriot Act". And then, after the
debacle of the last 3 years, after the b.s. of the current fools
running the show had been exposed in many media venues (including the
at-times insightful "FAHRENHEIT 9/11"), that slim majority of voters
went to the polls on November 2nd and (re-)elected this team of
incompetents!
How'd they do it? They got a bunch of a-holes who never served with
Kerry in 'Nam to allege that he didn't deserve his medals -- which
calls into question ALL the medals awarded during the Vietnam War,
doesn't it? -- so that a war-evading jerk born to privilege and his
draft-dodging partner in incompetency could pretend that they were
somehow less tainted by their formative 'Nam-era years than a man who
COULD have avoided service over there yet VOLUNTEERED.
I noticed, during the 2nd debate, after Kerry criticized BUSH for
HIS "wrong choices" during the war on terror, Bush PRETENDED that
Kerry had criticized the TROOPS over there in harm's way, rather than
their Commander in Chief who put them there. I'm so ticked off at
Kerry for not shouting at the top of his lungs right then-and-there
at Bush for misrepresenting his criticisms! He should've
said, "LISTEN, you stupid jerk, I was NOT slamming our brave soldiers
over in Iraq, I was slamming YOU for diverting the war against Al-
Qaeda -- the bastards who attacked our country when you were
reciting "My Pet Goat" to a room full of schoolchildren -- and
shipping our forces over to Iraq under the false pretense that Saddam
was somehow involved. I'm criticizing YOU, you twit! NOT our
soldiers, and NOT the generals trying to fight this war!"
Why Kerry didn't vehemently call Bush to account for his lies, when
it would've shown him at his most deceitful and slanderous, is beyond
me. He should've known Bush would attempt it, since it was a tactic
he and his cronies have used all through his first term.
Egad, Rory, 51% of our fellow idiot American voters bought into
Dubya's b.s.! It's ABSURD, I tell ya! AbSUUUUURRRRDDD!
Dehn's scenario, absurd and improbable as it is, is hardly MORE
absurd as far as I can see.
Ahhh, I got on a rant, folks. Sorry, 'bout that, but I had to get it
off my chest. And it was (kinda) relevant, so there it is.
I'll rest my typin' hands now...
Patrick
P.S. Okay now, Rory, cough up your "idea" -- Mike's chompin' at the
bit.
