How would you portray people who had grown up decades after some crazy and/or scum bag guys eliminated certain groups of people without sounding like you endorsed the behavior? Not just tried to like we have seen in real life, but really killed them all/virtually all of them. I am leaning towards most people won't think about it much, but a few feel it was evil/confused why it happen.
I can't believe I never knew how much I needed that GIF in my life until right now.
The question begs lots of other questions which would help to answer it.
There are a lot of ways to go with it. First, are you the survivor? The endangered species that was once populated but now few are left? If so, I imagine you'd have a certain resentment, and a certain sense of luck and/or suvivor's guilt. But then, that might also be mixed with a kind of self loathing. The entire world that exists has rejected your kind, so you seek to be like those who exist, as opposed to those who were exterminated, and hate yourself for not being more like the winners whose ways you find so inviting, even if also somehow foreign.
If you're on the other side, maybe you feel guilty about it, even if you weren't a part of it, or maybe (more interestingly) you don't. Most likely you'd have mixed feelings about it. Perhaps you are content to turn a blind eye to the past, because the conveniences afforded to you by the extermination of (whoever) are something you wouldn't want to give up, even though you wouldn't have exterminated the people themselves to get said conveniences. After all, what's done is done anyway, right? Might as well find a way to justify it to yourself, and in polite conversation, if necessary, rather than confront it head on, even though it nags at a small, not very loud part of your mind that is uneasy about the whole situation.
I think your lean is good, not thinking about it much, because why dwell on something so bothersome? But that's the thing- it's still there...
Yeah, it does beg questions, but I've sort of wanted to think about it by itself a bit, as much as possible, since I'm not really sure about the idea. That is why I asked you guys, but after the questions I'm leaning less towards a concentrated campaign of evil to some bureaucratic idiot worried about getting sued; genetic engineering gone overly cautious. "We don't need liability issues. Left handed people have more accidents? Make all the babies right handed. Gays have higher rates of suicide? Straight children it is. Whites have more skin cancer? Blacks have more sickle cell? Mild evidence of mixed race kids being healthier? All kids are interracial, simple enough." It doesn't matter if any of those things are true, some people think they are true which might be enough to get the ball rolling on something like this. I don't envision folks going along with it out of hate, although that would happen too I'm sure, but in a desperate attempt to keep with the Jones since the Jones kids would be smarter/healthier/live longer/physically better with the upgrades.
Which brings me back to the other thing I'm wondering about, how to avoid sounding like a Nazi without being all cheesy "diversity is awesome, sucks our world ain't got none!"
Well the simple conclusion would be that people would still get sick, still commit suicide, still have accidents. So the cleansing only resulted in a homogenous society that still has all the same problems as a diverse one without any of the benefits.
I'm leaning less towards a concentrated campaign of evil to some bureaucratic idiot worried about getting sued; genetic engineering gone overly cautious.
I think that's a good way to avoid some cliches "right off the bat." Could be interesting. Maybe even darkly funny. Just don't make him a computer/AI.
If I ever write about AI they will mostly be built to do a job and not care too much about humans as a group. Sort of like real people.
Not only does avoiding the hate-driven genocide thing avoid a lot of cliches, I'd say it's more accurate to the way we do things today. Everything is subtle, you hardly realize it's going on, and anything in the future that devestating will have to be that way. Western civilization learned its lesson with Hitler on the blatant hate thing (maybe too well), but the future Orwell and company dreamed up happens incrimentally, infinitely harder to stop.
Maybe all you have to do is model it step by step of what the Nazis did in Germany in the 30s, or the Soviets did a little before that... but make everything softer. Concentration camps? Reeducation camps? No, propoganda, maybe flouride in the water makes them more docile and complicit, bombardment of TV programs that subtle influence the culture into agreeing with the powers that be, and if you want to go the John Holdren (presiden'ts science czar) route, you can sterilize people through their water supply.
Hey! There's an idea. You read all these books where a third child is outlawed or whatever... Maybe a similar theme only its a kid of a people who weren't supposed to have kids (water supply), but one little straggling sperm cell made it through...
It's late, I'm spitballing, but there you go.
You know, this idea keeps growing in my head. I like it. Now I'm comparing being a survivor of an almost extinct race to being an outcast kid in high school. Part of you likes the cool crowd, especially the beautiful girls you yearn for... but you also hate them for not accepting you, because you're not one of them.
Well, if I'm going to do anything with it I want to keep it realistic, and nations with modern technology have a falling birth rate with a lesser effect for the religious so I don't see those laws limiting births as a long term kind of thing.
The more I think about it, the less I think there was much/any attempt to annihilate a group. It has more in common with early European contact killing huge numbers of Indians from disease. From a mix of indifference and not understanding what they are doing some idiot saying, "I hope lots of X babies get born, but not from a product that costs me money!" And if the product really does make healthy super babies it won't take long for everyone/virtually everyone to use it or be descended from those who did.
As an aside, people have to have a certain amount of interaction with a group to hate them. If there are only a few dozen spread out over the world you'll be an exile, maybe even a freak, but it won't be a common deep down hate.
Not entirely sure if this was already mentioned since I only skimmed the posts, but I think you might be able to make a case for some sort of genetic non-compatability issue when you start genetically engineering people. The time frame of the story could take place long enough after gen-eng people have become commonplace, so much so that they held a majority role in population. If they couldn't procreate with the nat-gen (natural gene pool), but had a higher birth rate than the nat-gens, you'd see a resource squeeze until most likely the gen-eng crowd's numbers just tipped the teeter totter of life. Then the nat-gens would dwindle away over time.
Just a thought.
@Strange - That is another story idea I'm working on, but I went the other way with it.
http://litreactor.com/workshop/sub/species-war-outline
There was no single industry standard 'upgrade' because people are clicky. There were 18 versions of elves as the perfect people, 10 versions of Vulcans, some idiots who made Wookies, 14 flavors of Nietzschean ubermensch, and so on. Because of that the standard humans and the upgrades that can breed with them are always squeezing out what are, on paper, more survivable creatures.
I may fold this no X stuff into that.
You know, I've said for over ten years that interaction breeds racism...
Anyway, maybe the declining birth rate is the extinct person, then? Between interracial breeding and the birth control pill, maybe in a few hundred years there are almost no white people left in the world? If you're half white, half whatever, they round it off, and you'll never get a blonde in a mixed race, so that makes them really, really rare and sought after.
Then there's the turmoil in the hot blonde chic's head for wanting to not let her race die, but wanting to get with a brown guy at the same time or something. And the brown guy both loves the blonde and resents his love for her because he's so hooked on blondes that he wants her to have more blondes and keep them going, who is he to rob the world of this rare treasure?
Hai, guys.
Hate is a weird beast. Some people only speak and understand hate. If one target group would disappear, those hater people would find another group to hate, because they need to hate whatever or else they would have to start questioning themselves and their motives, they would see that they live in some kind of void of affection and reason, and they'd have to start understanding life all over again like from whimper no.1.
But they will not want to understand life, so they'll kill themselves as soon as their target group disappears or stops responding to fire, because the cognitive dissonance will be too disruptive. So much people can't let go of blaming each other.
Moreover, discrimination quickly gets out of hand when it reaches the weaker souls, even if it starts just like some sort of business-driven indifference. As a matter of fact, it always starts with someone in power saying 'x is more advantageous than y', quickly all fools will want to be in the winner side unless it is visibly undeniable that they belong to y. They just don't understand it's all so arbitrary, they could fall in the visibly undeniable group themselves anytime 24/7.
@Thuggish -
If you're half white, half whatever, they round it off, and you'll never get a blonde in a mixed race, so that makes them really, really rare and sought after.
Well seldom, not never but yeah could be. Could also be the way there aren't many albino models.
@FF -
Hate is a weird beast.
True.
If one target group would disappear, those hater people would find another group to hate
Pretty much, yeah. I think if I put this all in a pot it will come out more as hate toward the obvious not 'human' groups.
But they will not want to understand life, so they'll kill themselves as soon as their target group disappears or stops responding to fire, because the cognitive dissonance will be too disruptive.
I think this might be wishful thinking.
I think this might be wishful thinking.
lol yeah it is, but not so fast: there was this one homophobic old dude who recently shot himself inside a French church because he just didn't get it anymore..
One. And you used the plural. In a statistical sense he doesn't count.
He does count in an evolutionary perspective, though.
He was 78, so he'd lived long enough to have kids and add in them being raised, so not really.
yeah, but his example was all over the internet!
And it doesn't seem anyone is following it.
I'm no homophobe in the least, but I understand the urge to end the confusion of modern life. Though, when I give in to that urge, I hope to take a few with me. I don't see what the issue is with gays, or minorities, or whatever demographic you care to mention. We're all walking piles of shit, and no one stinks any less than anyone else. So, yeah, I don't get any of this humanity stuff anymore, either, but not because of some delusional bigoted bullshit - I just don't get any of it.
Anyway, I digress.
And it doesn't seem anyone is following it.
In fact, I hope nobody does. It would just be cute if we all could accept others' different lifestyles without feeling threatened by them just because we don't get it.
EDIT: added Dwayne's quote
Amen to that, Flaminia. It's the sheer number of people who can't accept things as they are instead of trying to make things match a big fictional fairy tale book, that I don't 'get' at all.
They just can't accept that all people are walking piles of shit with equal stink?
Nope. They wrap themselves in delusions of exceptionalism and refuse to admit that the stench of mankind is their stench too.
Total depravity? Original sin?
No, no, I'm not saying the religious whackamoles think they are faultless in theory, but they sure as hell see themselves as apart from and/or above the 'heathen masses'.
We're really going off on a tangent, sorry, Dwayne.
No, if nothing else it would be in the history books of the sci fi I want too start next year.
I don't think that it is really fair to blame religion into all this though. Hate groups (and scum bags in general) exist all across the religious spectrum, so you know whatever. I mean come on, the Westboro Baptist Church is religious the same way that NAMBLA are supporters of gay rights.
@ Strange Photon
To give you a challenge- you say we're all walking pieces of shit, fair enough. But we all have the same level of shitty stinkiness? I assume you don't mean individuals, so let's go with groups.
Either you talk about it in terms of our potentials- i.e. what we're born with, and then I'd have to agree with you.
But, if you talk about the state of, let's say adults to make it easy, then maybe not. Certain places with certain peoples you will find a lot more rape, murder, forced marriage, torture, etc. Other places you will find less. Call it a product of your environment, I'd say my and my neighbors' shit smells not nearly as bad as those from... well, you fill in the blank.
