Whoa, McToad gets deep. I think anyone wanting to ask heavy questions like that should have to think of a ridiculous handle, like McToad or Cammoblammo. It's not healthy to take oneself too seriously.
McToad wrote:
1) No one has commented on the moral issue. Just what would/should you personally or we as a society be willing to give up to join a larger pan-galactic society?
- Would we stop eating meat?
- Would we, should we give up nuclear weapons if asked to?
- What about giving up all weapons? Should we take that chance and disarm if asked to? Would the power that be even entertain the idea?
2) Flip the previous question to reality...what should indigenous cultures here on Earth be willing to give up to join modern society? Is it fair or even moral to expect them to change things like cannibalism, genital mutilation, oppressed women, untouchable castes and the like?
2a) Is it a good idea to leave isolated cultures alone (such as those in the Amazon who have had not contact with the outside world), or is this denying them basic human rights?
3) To AynSavoy’s point--is it cannibalism to eat another sentient creature, even if it’s not human? Is there any moral reason not to, or is this just a tribal taboo? If not, should we condone eating humans? Why or why not?
None of these questions can have concrete answers because we don't know what the aliens we're dealing with are like. Are they good aliens or bad aliens? They might be good yet ask us to do things that seem outrageous for reasons that we are too ignorant to understand. Conversely, they might be evil and make requests that seem perfectly reasonable in order to sucker us into their scheme. So, we really need more information for our scenario than just what the aliens' demands are.
That said, some speculation:
1.) Meat eating: While it would be perfectly reasonable to refrain from eating meat in the presence of beings who find it distasteful, if ET told me to quit eating meat altogether because it's
wrong, I'd tell him to take a hike. My morality is not based on group-think or consensus, and introducing aliens to the equation doesn't change. I'll be glad to respect ET's customs when ET is around, but if he starts handing out stone tablets, I'm going to take that with a big grain of salt. "ET said so" is not a good enough reason for me to modify my moral code.
Weapons: If the aliens demand that we give up nuclear weapons, that's a BIG warning signal, and it means they're going to invade us. Any space-faring race would have the capability to destroy planets just by lobbing rocks at them. If you can accelerate a ship to near light speed to take it from star to star, you can accelerate asteroids to make them into missiles. Same goes for wormholes or whatever other method of travel ET uses: If it's powerful enough to get him from star A to star B, it's powerful enough to be a serious weapon. Galactic disarmament would simply not be an option because whatever technology is used to unite the galaxy could also be used to destroy big pieces of it. So asking us to give up our nukes could only have one motive: They plan to invade Earth and they want us to be defenseless.
The whole Day the Earth Stood Still give-up-violence thing always struck me as very silly. Anything can be used as a weapon. People without guns kill each other with pointy sticks. I recall an excerpt from "Ringworld" in which an alien invader was confounded because their reconnaissance reports had said that their human victims had no weapons, but then the humans just turned their fusion-powered ships around and used their exhaust to slice the aliens up. Fact was, every human ship was, in itself, a weapon, even though none of them were designed as warships.
So if the aliens say "give up your weapons," you can be 99% that their intentions are not kind. The request makes sense only if they're planning to attack us.
2.) This is essentially a question of human rights: Are they objective and immutable or subjective and cultural? If rights are objective, then culture can be wrong and it is both moral and reasonable to expect cultures to change (to improve) to ensure that its members have their rights. If rights are subjective, well, then what's the point of even talking about rights at all? Might makes right.
3.) On the point of cannibalism, I'd have to say that eating any sentient creature is cannibalism. I confess that my thinking comes almost entirely from reading Lewis. In The Silver Chair, there's a scene where the protagonists have been served venison and are happily eating it, when they suddenly overhear that the meat came from a
talking stag, at which point they are nauseated and can eat no more. The idea of the importance of sentience is very important in the Space Trilogy, in which all sentient creatures are referred to as
hnau and distinguished sharply from non-sentient, regardless of the physical form or planet of origin. This is a Christian idea, that all sentient beings are, as it says in Genesis, created in the image of God.
Hmm... I wrote a lot. Fun times, though.
