Comic Genesis Forums

Let's pretend that you're a human living in our world, and somehow you happen to get your hands on a teleportation gate that beams you to Aerith, Quentyn's world. (The gate would be similar to the one on Stargate, except that the transfer would be instantaneous, not to mention much, much easier on your stomach!) Since this is an optimistic story, let's say that we don't have to worry about any wars or ravaging diseases breaking out among the two worlds. So, you introduce yourself to the Rac Cona Daimh and you learn their language.

You want to use this gate to make lots and lots of money (so you can give it to orphans and old ladies, of course ) by trading with the Rac Cona Daimh. What sort of things would be especially valuable to the Racconans? What sort of things would be especially valuable to us?

The first two obvious answers are:
* Each others

I'm sorry about this, Astral, but I couldn't resist!



Sanctuary City's first Wal-Mart Supercenter.

*Gasp!* Oh no! ITS SPREADING *go's into ferrit shock*

I woulda thought a Stuckey's would have made it there.

Well, we might be able to upgrade their boomslangs ...

and in return, they could make a bunch of sticks glow colours at one end and market them as toy lightsabers

Two words....

Ozzy Osbourne.


"SHARON! The f*ing talking racoons are back!"

Seriously? The big trade items would be iron, steel and aluminum. They're cheap here, and the Raccona are metal-starved. They wouldn't have any uses for gold that would make it worthwhile to shlep it across, I don't think.

Now, trade in the reverse direction... lux-powered gadgets, perhaps flashlights and toys to start, but .... think about a surgeon armed with one of those lux-blade scalpels. Nothing to sterilize, no chance of contamination. Their biomancers might be helpful, too; in some ways, they might have better docs than we do, just from being able to sense the lux flow inside the body. I think a very profitable trade to both sides could be established quickly.

Astral wrote:*Gasp!* Oh no! ITS SPREADING *go's into ferrit shock*

Good, praise be Wally World.

Captain, I think the Prime Directive would suffice here. No interference with
their culture would be the best approach. Any way we try to help them now
may have an opposite long term effect we do not see today. I think we
should leave before they see us. Scotty, two to beam up.

I think any such cooperation would probably have to be initially established through the respective Churches -- given that having a similar faith is the sole thing that humans and Rac'Cona have in common culturally. In light of that, initial efforts would probably have a large humanitarian (Rac'Conatarian?) slant (comparing notes on medicine, etc), and would gradually branch out into the commercial once citizens from both sides got comfortable with the other species.

Ensign, the Prime Directive was written by a bunch of racist, elitist, corn-fed hollywood limousine liberal catamites who had less comprehension of ethics than a lawyer 3 days past his last coke fix and fewer brains than Paris Hilton after a lobotomy. It was this same sort of skullfried hippy dippy crapadoodle substitute for thinking that led intellectuals to suggest keeping the Native Americans quarantined in Yellowstone so as to keep them from being "polluted" by Western Civilization with things like modern medicine, plentiful food, and sleeping on something besides dirt.

It requires a level of putrescent bigotry breathtaking in the scope of its arrogance to advocate a "prime directive"--- to insist that we should not share the benefits of our knowledge, experience and prosperity with poorer, less advanced or less fortunate peoples, solely because they ARE poorer and less fortunate than ourselves. It requires that you effectively decree <I>that they are an inferior race,</i> one too benighted to stand as equals with YOUR godlike selves.

A person that advocates "nonintervention/noninterference" is proclaiming that the people in question are nothing more than animals, and deserve nothing better than to be left in their squalor and poverty for the sake of the intellectual stimulation of the average anthropologist.

If we see a fellow human being wander the streets in rags and sleep in a cardboard box in an alley, we call it a horrible human tragedy. But dress that same human being up in a loincloth and replace his cardboard box with a bug-infested mud hut and we call it multiculturalism.

On another point, the Rac Conan civilization might not have all the shiny toys our civilization does, but it'd be one hell of a mistake to assume it was inferior or backwards. Rule of law, trial by jury, representative governance, a functional bill of rights, a thriving scientific community.... in many regards they would be on par or even arguably surpassing us.

(Whereas, what was the official marker, the rite of passage that marked you as a Real Human Being in Picard's Federation?--- Oh yes. Any culture that could break the warp barrier. Your society could be a barbaric oppressive pit, but so long as you could hit Warp 1, hey, you were in the club!-- I despised Star Trek TNG for many reasons, but the sheer idiocy of welcoming a culture into the intergalactic community solely based on their ability to perform a high-tech parlor trick took the cake.)

Yes, interaction with another culture will cause upheaval and conflict. <I>But it is the only moral course of action to take, because to refuse to interact with them is to treat them as inferiors, and to deny them whatever benefits they might glean from our society...</i>not to mention what benefits WE might glean from THEM. If we truly wish to claim that we regard another race as equals, then we have to give them the respect equality demands and assume that they can handle whatever curveballs our interaction might throw their way.

Really captain, to show such highly emotional outbursts is not logical.

I think that our technology and the Rac Cona Daimh's technology (and/or magic) are quite similar.

I'ved noticed that they can do many things that we do, but much more efficiently. Take their glowing neon signs, for instance. Both technologies deliver the same results, but they do it without a funny-shaped glass bulb or copper wires to power them with. The Luxfont building may be big, but comparatively I think it's pretty small for something that would power a large city and surrounding towns. I think that their "magic" saves them from the overhead cost that we have, and thus prevents waste.

On the other hand, we're already able to do most of the "magical" things that the Rac Cona Daimh do, albeit only in high-powered laboratory settings in some cases. For example, I went on a tour of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, and there was lots of stuff there to make you go, "Oooooooh! Aaaaaaaah!" Our doctors are able to "kenn" a person using an ultrasound or an MRI machine, and they can use a machine to focus ultrasonic waves to break up kidney stones, for instance.

So, what does this all mean? Well, in a word... nothing. As Mr. Ralph pointed out, I think that high-tech toys are cool, but they aren't the most important thing for a society or for life in general. ("If I have faith that can move mountains, but have not love, then I am nothing.") I think it just means that people are people, whether they drive cars and use computers, whether they ride in horse-drawn carts and use abacuses, or whether they ride around in Luftships and are covered in fuzzy fur.

I think any such cooperation would probably have to be initially established through the respective Churches -- given that having a similar faith is the sole thing that humans and Rac'Cona have in common culturally. In light of that, initial efforts would probably have a large humanitarian (Rac'Conatarian?) slant (comparing notes on medicine, etc), and would gradually branch out into the commercial once citizens from both sides got comfortable with the other species.

I think so too. When I daydream about visiting the Rac Cona Daimh (especially in a scenerio when I'm not already familiar with them and with Lux), I find myself drawn to a local church and to someone like Brother Linnaeus.

Here's a question: What human products would be useless to the Rac Cona Daimh?

I'll start off with one: Nair hair-removing lotion!

Useless to the Rac'Cona? A 747, a helicopter, radar, radio, outboard motors etc.

Hmmm,

Suntan lotion, Eyeliner, mascara, ... webcomics

*flees with all possible haste before all the ordinance hits!*

flashlight, Hand gun, Hair Gel!

shaving cream and razors ^^

Hair Gel!

Who knows? Maybe a fad will emerge where they "spike" their fur and dye it all sorts of rainbow colors.


Here's another one: bubble gum (the stickier, better )

body paint and tattoos!