Weskerr wrote...
You're right that the Japanese had an advantage over humanity in the Mass Effect story in that they had the chance to learn more about the technology from the people who created it while humanity could not learn more about the technology they discovered on Mars from the people (Protheans) who left it there. So what? Does this somehow preclude them (humanity) from understanding how it works and so how to build it themselves? Apparently not, because they were able to replicate the mass effect technology without sending anyone to Prothean engineering schools to learn more about it first. A real-world equivalent is Einstein discovering the photoeletric effect or that gravity isn't about magically pulling on objects but pushing them due to their warping the fabric of spacetime with their mass. The only thing that led him to these discoveries was his own reasoning with the knowledge he had available to him.
My point is that many of the factors that lead to the impressive progress of the Japanese weren’t directly related to pure R&D. Without a number of benefits lacking from the Alliance the Japanese would have been a non-starter in a war against the Western powers in the Pacific.
Not the least of which was their long military campaign which was carving a bloody swathe through Asia for years before the outbreak of violence in Europe. The war gave them accurate and reliable information to refine their technology and just as importantly their supply lines, their strategic doctrines and specific tactics, the organisational structure of their military and the support structure within the society needed to maintain it. Without those that experience the Japanese wouldn’t have had half the success they had once they pre-emptively attacked the Western powers.
Everything that the Alliance had to work with was guesswork.
Fair point. Still, developing a capable millitary in such a short amount of time is nothing less than remarkable, especially for a people who hadn't been in control of their own country for over 2000 years.
Jews had served in the militaries of many European countries for generations prior the advent of Zionism. When jewish migration to Palestine began they inevitably brought military veterans along with the doctors, teachers, bakers, seamstresses, farmers and every other profession.
Before the outbreak of hostilities in Europe the jewish population of the Palestinian mandate had already begun arming and was maintaining multiple terror organisations fighting against the British forces and arab population. This at a time that the British had already disarmed the Palestinian arabs.
By the time they fought openly against the arab forces in 1948 they already had a hardened core of fighters, and had laid down the organisational and logistic infrastructures that they used to defeat a numerically larger though disorganised and unprepared force. Following the war the terror organisations formed the basis of the Israeli military force.
The Jews gaining statehood was hardly as easy as you make it seem. The primary reason that the UN recognized Israel as an independent Jewish state was because of the Holocaust - after the National Socialist German Worker's
Party in Germany nearly wiped out all of Euorpean jewery in WWII (6 million of the total 9 million were exterminated) they believed that the best way from preventing genocide on such a massive scale from happening again was for the victims to be in control of their own government and country. Also, the Jews had to fight for every inch of ground they now possess even after they were "gifted with nationhood" because the surrounding Arab states (many of them themselves just becoming independent nations from European imperial rule) refused to acknowledge the UN's acknowledgement of the independent state of Israel. This was demonstrated in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. I hardly believe that being surrounded and outnumbered by people who want to kill you is an advantage.
By no means do I imply that the creation of Israel was an easy or painless affair. Nationhood was gifted because the jewish migrants had no legal claim to a separate state in Palestine. As horrific as the holocaust was, and as much as it did impact on the decisions of the UN committee who decided to partition the country it was an invalid and inappropriate measure; the Palestinians were not responsible for the actions of the Europeans and there was no reason that they should be punished in their place. The UN decision was made against the vocalised opposition of the arab populations that would be affected and is as clear a case of imperialistic indifference as any.
The idea that the best way to prevent further antagonism against jews was to dispossess hundreds of thousands of people and make them subject to the will of people whose families had, for the most part, only arrived within the last two or three generations is laughable. It was always going to encourage the kind of hostility that has come to dominate Israel’s relations with its neighbours.
As hard as the Israelis have fought for what they have, it was to a large degree only possible because they were opposed by groups that the European colonial powers had intentionally fragmented and undermined for their own objectives.
I still think Israel is a valid example of people being able to adapt very quickly to anything that's thrown their way. This is what makes humanity in Mass Effect special. Their adaptability. I'd actually say that this is also a trait of the Salarians.
If Israel can be used as an analogy for humanities rise against the backdrop of the ME universe, then it surely is related to the continued power of official mythologies and special interventions by great powers.
Modifié par Goneaviking, 10 août 2011 - 09:58 .
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