Eve Of The War
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Martians Innately Cruel?
http://www.focusgaming.co.uk/eveofthewar/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1363
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Author:  Alland [ Thu Jul 20, 2006 7:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Martians Innately Cruel?

Everyone says that the Martians didn't HAVE to be cruel in order to invade Earth because of grim necessity, and that's true enough. But were they cruel anyway?

I got the idea for this thread after watching the last part of the BBC series "Blue Planet" on DVD (great series, by the way). The thing that stuck in my mind from the last part was when the killer whale played with the seal it caught for a long time before killing it. (Sea World visitors beware; Shamu DOES come from vicious stock!) It occurred to me that whales and dolphins are among the most intelligent creatures on Earth at the moment, and then I also remembered that one of those "Swim with the dolphins" programs ran into trouble years ago when the male dolphins started getting aggressive towards women.

You Brits have a well-established tradition of members of royal families killing each other off en route to the throne. When a new lion takes over the pride, he immediately kills all the cubs so that only HIS young will be raised to maturity. Lions are cats, which are also noted for being intelligent, and the cruelty of cats playing with their prey is legendary. Hyenas are also intelligent, and their packs don't actually kill prey before a meal; they hold it down and eat it alive, secure in the knowledge that it will eventually die when enough bites are taken out of it.

Primatologists have recorded plenty of incidents of bullying behavior by monkeys and apes toward others of their own kind, and these animals are second only to us in brainpower. So here's the point of this thread: Can it be that cruelty is a built-in talent or natural consequence of high intelligence? The cruellest creatures on this planet, at least, are all the intelligent ones, from a variety of unrelated species. And if it's so here, then what about everywhere else in the universe? Sound off.

Author:  Loz [ Thu Jul 20, 2006 10:28 pm ]
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Good points. But Wells's Martians had no stomachs and lacked hormones. They as a result were without the chemical inbalances that make up life on Earth. They lack emotion and therefor cannot be cruel.
I like the idea that the Martians are incapable of being cruel, angry, sad, boredom etc.
However if they had similar physiologies to us then I don't doubt they would be capable of cruelty and indeed exercise it.

Author:  Lonesome Crow [ Fri Jul 21, 2006 9:35 pm ]
Post subject: 

Quote:
Everyone says that the Martians didn't HAVE to be cruel in order to invade Earth because of grim necessity, and that's true enough. But were they cruel anyway?
No I don't think the Martians were cruel, they were just doing what any well organised military force does, cause panic and confusion, overwhelm the enemy before they can get organised and destroy the communication network (not difficult in Victorian England) I don't remember reading of the Martians playing with Humans like a cat plays with a mouse :-k

As Loz says, "They lack emotion" to enjoy cruelty you need to have emotions yourself, to know what emotional pain you are inflicting , otherwise what's the point?

Author:  Alland [ Sun Jul 23, 2006 10:37 pm ]
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Good points. I suppose the main reason I started this thread was that infernal cruelty/intelligence link getting stuck in my head. People hoping for contact with aliens from space have always said that said aliens would be kinder than us due to being more advanced, but if my point holds, then it would be just the opposite. In that case, assuming physiologies that allow emotions in the first place, if any aliens are more intelligent than us, then they would also be crueller than us BY DEFINITION! You might also read "more advanced" in place of "more intelligent"; killer whale descendants who somehow evolved grasping hands could probably create their own Holocaust with a few more million years of evolution behind them. And aliens WITHOUT emotions would at least be nonsympathetic to us, if not actually hateful, treating us like lessor animals. It may be a ghastly universe out there.

Author:  Lonesome Crow [ Mon Jul 24, 2006 1:47 am ]
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A good point about a species not being more intelligent just because they are more advanced, It's true that cultures advance faster during periods of conflict, they have to, to keep ahead of the enemy and wars are usually started because of hatred, which is an emotion, but the Martian invasion was an act of desperate necessity not hate.

Author:  Alland [ Sat Jul 29, 2006 11:35 pm ]
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You'd be surprised how many wars are due to need, or at least perceived need. For starters, just look at all the barbarian invasions that have come out of wastelands like the Central Asian steppes. Even today's Islamic aggressors have the background of desert nomads behind them. They even had a saying, "If you are forbidden to raid your brother, then how will you survive when there is no one to raid BUT your brother?" And Islam's great periods of expansion were due to campaigns by desert- and steppes-dwelling nomads (the Arabs, several flavors of Turks, etc.).

Even in modern times, Hitler wanted Poland and Russia to provide Lebensraum (living space) for the Germans, and Japan attacked the US and Allied possessions in the Pacific for the sake of gaining control of enough raw materials to keep her war machine and economy going. And how much attention do you think the major powers would give today's various conflicts in the Middle East and Persian Gulf if it weren't for all that oil?

Lack of raw materials can KILL a country or empire. Ever wonder why ancient Egypt lost her position as an empire? It's because she couldn't find any native deposits of iron for replacing her copper and bronze weaponry, leading to first a blocking of expansion and then conquest by the iron-equipped powers of the Hittite Empire and Assyria respectively.

Author:  Lonesome Crow [ Sun Jul 30, 2006 2:39 pm ]
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Well there you go, you have just answered your first Question, The Martians weren't being cruel, what they were doing was out of necessity.
Also a Nations leaders will always disguise hatred under a thin veneer of propaganda and tell it's people "This is necessary, We're not really attacking these weaker countries because we want their oil, We're doing it because they've been very, very naughty [-X " and it works every time :wink:

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