Zuka999 wrote...
bloodstalker1973 wrote...
Zuka999 wrote...
ROTTOK Crapgame wrote...
A great civilisation can be strong militarily and great scientist, philosophers and academics, take the Greeks, at their height they made the Romans look like an angry mob at pub chucking out time, Peter the Great, Alexander the Great both led the largest armies ever to have taken to the battlefield up to that point, but Aristotle, Plato and Socrates, their philosophy still taught in universities today.
And Javik says that he had known nothing but war, the Reaper invasion was already underway when he was born, no wonder hes view is a little jaded.
The era when the Greeks were driving advancements in philosophy and science is not the same as the era of Alexander the Great. The Wars of the Diadochi were essentially a dark age for Greece from which they never recovered. By the time of the Roman invasions of Greece, the Greeks were just holding on to ancient teachings. All of which were destroyed in the Library of Alexandria.
Sorry, brutal governments always quell scientific advancement. if you can't see that, you're blind. Science drives change. Change is bad for governments built on subjugating people. Ergo, brutal governments always suppress science. How much does this have to be hammered into our skulls during primary school for it to be obvious?
The Golden Age of Athens was not just philosophy and science. Athens became the lead state of what was basically an Athenian Empire in all but name. They expanded democrocy to other city-states, even when said city-state wanted no part of democracy. Athens pretty much exploited a lot of their allied states for wealth to fund their building projects, and military resources (mostly naval warships), and were often very willing to move to brutally crush any ally who wanted to break from the alliance.
Athens dictated to it's allies in everything from demanding tribute from them to ordering cities to tear down their local defenses to dictating what type of government a city could have. They also demanded and kept hostages from various cituies as a means of making sure those cities fell in line. They attempted to bring Melos into their alliance against its will, and when that city resisted, Athenians executed all the adult men and enslaved the women and children. That was not out of character for Athenians. Socrates, and most other Athenian philosophers, were also veterans of the military with Socrates having fought at the battle of Potidea, another city that Athens would not allow to leave the alliance without a long, drawn out siege.
The Athenians became so intent on their own power that Sparta was able to lead a group of Greek States against them and, in the end when they conquored Athens, the Greek world roundly proclaimed it a victory for freedom against Athenian tyranny. So while Athens was a great flower of philosophy and science, it was funded by it's exploitation of it's allies after the Perisan Wars on up through the outbreak and eventual defeat during the Peloponessian Wars.
Athens was also a democracy. And one city. Which existed in the form you've mention 2,500 years ago in the bronze age. And their contributions barely added up to anything until a much more enlightened society rediscovered them.
Are we to believe the galaxy-spanning Prothean Empire, built on the subjugation and assimilation of entire species, is somehow comparable to a city-state in Greece in the bronze age? I don't even know if these arguments are jokes anymore.
My response was not intended to reflect on the protheans. It was instead in reposne to your statement that brutal governments always suppress science. A government can be democratic as well as brutal. By the same token, a non democratic government can be capable of great scientific and philosophical advancement. I assumed that because you argued the difference between Athenian Greece and Alexanders time, that you were stating that Athenian Greece was a much better comparison and were indicating that because Athens wasn't "brutal" it was a valid comparison where Alexanders Greece wasn't.
I am not sure what you are arguing here unless it's that the Athenian example is invalid because it is ancient and not advanced enough to make a difference when you project it out as a model for the Protheans. That is completely fair,but to be honest, going by that argument, then there are no societies in existance anywhere that can be comparable to the Protheans because of scale. In terms of scale, one city in Greece is pretty much equivilant to one planet in an entire galaxy. It's not the extent of the area, or the level of technology that matters. It's how much influence and what level of technology is a government capable of supporting in it's own time and with the tools and materials at hand that matters.
Nowhere is it stated that Protheans systematically cracked down on their own people. They were expantionists, and compelled other cultures to join their empire. Nothing is said about what happened once those other races had progressed to the point that they identified themselves as Prothean. We only have the viewpoint of a single Prothean, who it must be remembered was born into the war with the Reapers without ever having experienced any of the high points of prothean civilization, to go by. The experiences of Javik can be compared to the experiences of an Athenian who had been born into the Peloponessian War and only knew the tales of whatever hieghts his civilization had reached through distant tales.
For all we know, internally the Protheans may well have been much more lenient than they were externally. Nowhere is it stated outright that there was anything in Prothean government resembling a King or Emperor. It is just as possible Proethean government could have been as democratic as Athenian givernment. Democracy can be an arm for empirical military expantion just as much as dictatorships can. The Prothean Empire may have been modeled along the same lines as the Athenian Empire was for all we know. Democracy at home (be it Athens or the Prothean homeworld) dictating to the rest of the Empire, which then had little choice except to fall in line. Just as Athens was able, admittedly on a much smaller scale, operate a government that was both military, expantionist, and culturally and scinetifically advanced for it's time, so to could the Protheans. We can safely guess that the Prothean empire was never as all powerful as to have controlled every corner of the Galaxy. Javik comments on several wars which indicate that there were races not under Prothean control. At the same time, Javik comments that the Protheans actively engaged in uplifting other races like the Asari. He also comments about how the Protheans saw a great deal of potential in the Asari. That may indicate that the Protheans were more open to bringing in species with high potential than we might first believe an oppressive government would be willing to do. I think we're trying to view the Protheans as an either/or culture. They were either military based, or scientific. The United States, Great Britain, Soviet Russia, all have been expansionist empire builders at some point while still remaining at the forefront of science, technology and medicine. The Cold War is what drove the competition between the U.S, and Soviet Union to make the first steps in the space race, mostly because they were trying to outdo each other. Even the Renaissance era, which rediscovered the Greeks ideas and produced great levels of art and so forth, was a smoldering cesspool of rival factions competing against each other for power over their own cities and was in a near constant state of warfare between the Italian cities.
We do advance at a much greater rate than we did before. That much is valid, but I think it has more to do with the tools we have available now than it does with government. Computers have made a lot of the practicalities of math and science a lot faster. The internet allows for people to reach a much broader range of information than ever before. Instead of being limited to what is in your local library, you can research practically anything you want at the click of a mouse. Transportation advances means materials can be transported in greater volume over large distances than they ever could before. Telephone, radio, and again, the internet, means researchers and scientists can now communicate in an instant whereas before it communication was at a snails place. Technology is driving scientific advances because its taking all the down time out of the equation. It's not so much that governments nowadays allow their people to do these things so much as it is the technology makes it all happen at light speed. Given the methods and tools the ancient Greeks had at their disposal, they accomplished amazing things. That they fell, and it was only later societies that made any real use of them is like saying that because the Protheans died out, and only this cycle really did anything with what they left, Prothean technology and advances are worthless because they didn;t survive.
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I thought they'd be really unique and interesting looking that way.
