The Newbie and Short Questions thread

[Zinjo]

On 5/29/2020 at 11:21 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

Past tense... the Supervision Army was controlled by the Protodeviln.

After the Protodeviln were sealed away by the anima spiritia, the brainwashed members of the Supervision Army lost the highest level of their chain of command.  With neither side having anyone left who could call a halt to the conflict, the Zentradi forces and Supervision Army have continued to follow the last orders they were given and have waged 500,000 years of war against each other with no sign of stopping.

Exsedol was afraid of the Protodeviln because they were essentially terrifying, utterly unstoppable monsters by the Zentradi's standards.  It took anima spiritia, Protoculture who had special spirita like Basara's, to contain the Protodeviln and seal them away in the laboratory where they had been created.

Initially, the Zentradi were unable to effectively oppose the Supervision Army because they had standing orders to not "interfere with" the Protoculture... and the Supervision Army's troops included vast numbers of brainwashed Protoculture.  It wasn't until the order to not interfere with the Protoculture was rescinded that the Zentradi forces could properly fight against the Supervision Army.

That may be official lore, however I like to believe the SA (IF) "woke up" and the remnants are simply fighting for survival against superior Zentradi numbers when they encounter them.  In such a scenario, the Zentradi would be at a disadvantage having to use their existing equipment, whereas a force of "freed" PC and Zentradi could continue to develop defensive armaments that could punch above their weight class.  Thus increasing the SA (IF) survivability during engagements.

[JB0]

2 hours ago, Zinjo said:

Actually, ADV/HG did get the Animeigo's restored video footage, they couldn't get the restored "audio" as that was licensed directly from BW in Japan.  When the license with HG ran out they sent the restored audio masters to BW in Japan.  I like to think of it as Animeigo flipping the bird to HG who essentially "stole" the remaining stock of their DVDs as part of the closing of the license.  Animeigo had a fire sale of sorts (how I got my set) but couldn't move all of their inventory before the hand over.

Ah. Thanks for the correction.

Yeah, it always seemed to me like HG did Animeigo very wrong.

[Zinjo]

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Thus far, humanity has not encountered any other sub-Protoculture species that had reached a level of technological development rivaling pre-Overtechnology Earth at the time they were discovered.

Zola seems to have been the farthest along, with the native Zolans having an acknowledged tech level rivaling early 20th century Earth at the time the New UN Government discovered their homeworld.  Windermere IV was still a medieval civilization when the SDF-05 Megaroad-04 discovered it after being damaged by the fold faults surrounding the system, and its neighbors Voldor and Ragna are implied to have been at roughly similar levels of development when they were contacted by humanity.  

It seems likely that most of the Protoculture's engineered species were either destroyed alongside their ancient creators at the outset of the Stellar Republic's war with the Supervision Army or were caught up in it in the intervening millennia.  The ones who've slipped the net, like humanity, were still hundreds if not thousands of years from independently developing faster-than-light travel.  The most advanced were only just starting to explore space inside their own solar systems.  Humanity got lucky/unlucky when someone dropped a mostly-intact Supervision Army gunship on their doorstep and were just advanced enough to start figuring out how it worked by investing almost the entire planetary economy into studying it after the mass "oh crap" that came with the realization that it was a warship of breathtaking size and power.  If there were other sub-Protoculture species that were farther along, they may have either been destroyed by one side or the other in the Protoculture's civil war, been "drafted" by some part of the Supervision Army, or simply been destroyed in the crossfire at some point in the last 500,000 years of war between the Zentradi and Supervision Army.  (There is an outside possibility that they took one look at the state of the rest of the galaxy and went "Nope! Nope! Nope!" and decided to isolate themselves from the greater galaxy, which would account for them having not been discovered.)

Also keep in mind that the core worlds of the Republic would have been much closer together compared to the areas of the Galaxy where Windermere and the Earth are located.  Both worlds had legacy PC tech found on them, however it seems Windermere was more aware of theirs compared to Earth. 

This makes me wonder if Windermere somehow played a part in the initial SR civil war that prompted the development of the PD in the first place.  Did one side engineer the Star Singer to subjugate the SR citizenry, while the other was developing Super Zentradi weapons of Mass Destruction against the former?

Was it the research into the Star Singer that enabled the PC to identify and deploy the Anima Spiritia soldiers who ultimately imprisoned the PD?

Edited September 25, 2020 by Zinjo

[Seto Kaiba]

8 hours ago, Zinjo said:

Also keep in mind that the core worlds of the Republic would have been much closer together compared to the areas of the Galaxy where Windermere and the Earth are located.  Both worlds had legacy PC tech found on them, however it seems Windermere was more aware of theirs compared to Earth. 

Well, the prevailing in-universe hypothesis is that the Brisingr globular cluster was the last place the Protoculture fled to in order to escape the ongoing conflict between the Zentradi and Supervision Army before going extinct.

The fact that the Star Singer they created figures prominently in the mythology of the sub-Protoculture native Windermereans suggests they stuck it out on Windermere IV long enough for the undeveloped natives they genetically re-engineered to become aware of their existence and incorporate them into their religion.  Their religion seems to border on being a cargo cult, inspired by the abilities the Protoculture engineered them with and myth-preserved memories of the Protoculture's sufficiently advanced technology.

 

8 hours ago, Zinjo said:

This makes me wonder if Windermere somehow played a part in the initial SR civil war that prompted the development of the PD in the first place.  Did one side engineer the Star Singer to subjugate the SR citizenry, while the other was developing Super Zentradi weapons of Mass Destruction against the former?

Was it the research into the Star Singer that enabled the PC to identify and deploy the Anima Spiritia soldiers who ultimately imprisoned the PD?

Probably not, given that the people researching the Brisingr globular cluster's relation to the Protoculture believe it was the very last place the ancient Protoculture fled to before going extinct.

The Star Singer, Sigur Berrentzs, and the whole delta wave system they constructed seem to have been one last attempt at unifying the galaxy, ending the war between the Zentradi and Supervision Army while also achieving their societal ambition of becoming a unified species in a manner similar to the Vajra.  Whether they died out before they could test it or had the same fear the NUNS did that it'd cause a mass "your head a'splode" is unclear, but they never activated it.  One point that argues strongly for it being one of their last creations is that it requires a Windermerean to activate it.

[pengbuzz]

On 9/26/2020 at 3:19 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

Well, the prevailing in-universe hypothesis is that the Brisingr globular cluster was the last place the Protoculture fled to in order to escape the ongoing conflict between the Zentradi and Supervision Army before going extinct.

The fact that the Star Singer they created figures prominently in the mythology of the sub-Protoculture native Windermereans suggests they stuck it out on Windermere IV long enough for the undeveloped natives they genetically re-engineered to become aware of their existence and incorporate them into their religion.  Their religion seems to border on being a cargo cult, inspired by the abilities the Protoculture engineered them with and myth-preserved memories of the Protoculture's sufficiently advanced technology.

 

Probably not, given that the people researching the Brisingr globular cluster's relation to the Protoculture believe it was the very last place the ancient Protoculture fled to before going extinct.

The Star Singer, Sigur Berrentzs, and the whole delta wave system they constructed seem to have been one last attempt at unifying the galaxy, ending the war between the Zentradi and Supervision Army while also achieving their societal ambition of becoming a unified species in a manner similar to the Vajra.  Whether they died out before they could test it or had the same fear the NUNS did that it'd cause a mass "your head a'splode" is unclear, but they never activated it.  One point that argues strongly for it being one of their last creations is that it requires a Windermerean to activate it.

Hmm..I wonder if all Protoculture is extinct, of if perhaps a small pocket is still alive somewhere in the galaxy/ universe/ stored in heavy heavy layers of plot armor?

[Seto Kaiba]

22 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Hmm..I wonder if all Protoculture is extinct, of if perhaps a small pocket is still alive somewhere in the galaxy/ universe/ stored in heavy heavy layers of plot armor?

Eh... that'd be up to the writers of future Macross works.

Defining "extinct" kind of changes the answer a bit when it comes to the Protoculture.  Super Dimension Fortress Macross presented the Protoculture only in vague terms, as the Zentradi's long-vanished creators who had probably also created humanity.  Macross: Do You Remember Love? put a different spin on things by revealing that the Zentradi (and Meltrandi) were Protoculture clones who had been genetically modified for use as a giant clone army.  That would technically mean the Protoculture are arguably the most populous species in the galaxy in purely genetic terms, though their culture and society's long-since extinct since that stuff was all forbidden to the Zentradi.  (Macross Chronicle's Protoculture worldguide sheet broadly supports the Zentradi's genetic template as being derived from the Protoculture's.)  Macross 7 kind of drew a line under the idea that the Protoculture were largely wiped out in their civil war, and slowly went extinct hundreds of thousands of years before humanity emerged on the interstellar stage.  Macross Frontier and Macross Delta have both generally supported that line, with the Brisingr globular cluster supposedly being the Protoculture's last enclave before they died out in the distant past.  The Supervision Army is also still around, though it is not clear if that force still contains brainwashed Protoculture or is now made up exclusively of brainwashed Zentradi.

Macross II: Lovers Again was the only story that toyed with the idea they might still be around in some fashion.  The Mardook were strongly implied, but never explicitly stated, to be the descendants of a group of Protoculture who fled the collapse of their civilization like the ones who'd settled on Earth in the Macross: Do You Remember Love? movie.  Unlike the Protoculture in the main Macross timeline who seem to have generally regretted their actions in destroying galactic civilization and turning loose two unstoppable clone armies and being content to hide out in increasingly remote places to avoid the wrath of their creations, the Mardook decided to be a bit more proactive about protecting their culture by destroying anything that would threaten it... including other cultures that might contaminate it (hence their war on Earth).

[slide]

Isn't there a Protoculture [post conversion to a vajra-like form, likely not it's original body] at the end of Macross Zero?

It takes off with Sara to somewhere...

 

 

Or was it some kind of autonomous drone?

Edited October 5, 2020 by slide

[Seto Kaiba]

3 minutes ago, slide said:

Isn't there a Protoculture [post conversion to a vajra-like form, likely not it's original body] at the end of Macross Zero?

Nope... that's a bio-technological construct the ancient Protoculture left behind on Earth to monitor humanity's development in their absence, and destroy them in the event that they developed into a warlike race and acquired the technology for space travel.  It's been said that the Protoculture based its design on the Vajra Queen's form.  It had an onboard AI, but was dependent on the engineered fold song abilities of the Mayan islander priestesses for maintenance and needed a pilot in order to operate.

That and the Fold Evil in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy seem to be further developments of the same organic technology that went into the Evil-series bioweapons that became the Protodeviln.  (One of the lessons learned seems to have been "make sure that thing requires a pilot to operate".)

[pengbuzz]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Nope... that's a bio-technological construct the ancient Protoculture left behind on Earth to monitor humanity's development in their absence, and destroy them in the event that they developed into a warlike race and acquired the technology for space travel.  It's been said that the Protoculture based its design on the Vajra Queen's form.  It had an onboard AI, but was dependent on the engineered fold song abilities of the Mayan islander priestesses for maintenance and needed a pilot in order to operate.

That and the Fold Evil in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy seem to be further developments of the same organic technology that went into the Evil-series bioweapons that became the Protodeviln.  (One of the lessons learned seems to have been "make sure that thing requires a pilot to operate".)

With the pilot being a "fail-safe" intended to ensure the weapon could not become autonomous on it's own and potentially turn on its' creators. Correct?

[Seto Kaiba]

8 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

With the pilot being a "fail-safe" intended to ensure the weapon could not become autonomous on it's own and potentially turn on its' creators. Correct?

More like a fundamental necessity of having been designed to be non-autonomous.

One can only assume the ancient Protoculture were smarting a bit after their previous two brilliant ideas for fully autonomous living weapons ended up running out of control and left what little remained of their civilization fleeing for its collective life.  Of course, it was only that one specific thing they seem to have learned from and they kept building stupidly dangerous sh*t and having to build increasingly complex containment structures to safeguard the brainchildren of their reckless idiocy from anyone who'd stumble on their handiwork after they were gone.

Even with the Birdhuman requiring a flesh and blood pilot whom its onboard AI could interrogate about the current state of affairs on Earth, it still nearly destroyed the planet due to a premature activation that was only halted by it decapitating itself at some point in ancient history and again when Sara Nome woke it up in 2008.

[pengbuzz]

14 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

More like a fundamental necessity of having been designed to be non-autonomous.

One can only assume the ancient Protoculture were smarting a bit after their previous two brilliant ideas for fully autonomous living weapons ended up running out of control and left what little remained of their civilization fleeing for its collective life.  Of course, it was only that one specific thing they seem to have learned from and they kept building stupidly dangerous sh*t and having to build increasingly complex containment structures to safeguard the brainchildren of their reckless idiocy from anyone who'd stumble on their handiwork after they were gone.

Even with the Birdhuman requiring a flesh and blood pilot whom its onboard AI could interrogate about the current state of affairs on Earth, it still nearly destroyed the planet due to a premature activation that was only halted by it decapitating itself at some point in ancient history and again when Sara Nome woke it up in 2008.

Thanks for the clarification; sometimes I don't perceive things correctly.

At this point, the Protoculture strongly remind me of John Hammond from Jurassic Park; too bad Ian Malcom wasn't there to tell them:

"If I may... Um, I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here, it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox.."

" Don't you see the danger, John, inherent in what you're doing here? Genetic power is the most awesome force the planet's ever seen, but you wield it like a kid that's found his dad's gun."

"Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn't stop to think if they should."

Maybe the part about "not earning it for themselves" might not be accurate, but I feel the rest is.

Edited October 5, 2020 by pengbuzz

[Bolt]

Good one

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

"Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn't stop to think if they should."

All told, the ancient Protoculture's story was about a rather different kind of hubris.

The Protoculture were absolutely the masters of what they created.  It feels more like a Cold War allegory, since the two rival Protoculture factions/governments were so invested in the differences in their ideologies that they achieved mutually-assured destruction rather than accept that they were more alike than different and resolve their differences through mutual understanding and communication.

To an engineer, though, the Protoculture's story reads a lot more like "we, as a civilization, never invented the FMEA".

[pengbuzz]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

All told, the ancient Protoculture's story was about a rather different kind of hubris.

The Protoculture were absolutely the masters of what they created.  It feels more like a Cold War allegory, since the two rival Protoculture factions/governments were so invested in the differences in their ideologies that they achieved mutually-assured destruction rather than accept that they were more alike than different and resolve their differences through mutual understanding and communication.

To an engineer, though, the Protoculture's story reads a lot more like "we, as a civilization, never invented the FMEA".

At least up until they lost control of the Evil-series bioweapons.

[darkranger12]

 Saw this in a screenshot on facebook.  Is this a poorly rendered Macross model...?  It looks odd to be one. Like why doesn't it have the port and starboard armd docking stations.

[Seto Kaiba]

9 minutes ago, darkranger12 said:

 Saw this in a screenshot on facebook.  Is this a poorly rendered Macross model...?  It looks odd to be one. Like why doesn't it have the port and starboard armd docking stations.

Yes, it's a very poorly rendered model of the SDF-1 Macross (TV version).

Because it was a bit of background decoration, they didn't fully model it... they just drew a vaguely rectilinear shape and then left most of the details in the texture they applied to the model.  You can see the docking stations absolutely are present in the texture, they just weren't modeled.  You can also clearly see the shape of the Prometheus textured onto the side of it complete with the red lower hull.

http://www.macross2.net/m3/sdfmacross/macross/macross-side.gif

Edited October 18, 2020 by Seto Kaiba

[darkranger12]

4 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yes, it's a very poorly rendered model of the SDF-1 Macross (TV version).

Because it was a bit of background decoration, they didn't fully model it... they just drew a vaguely rectilinear shape and then left most of the details in the texture they applied to the model.  You can see the docking stations absolutely are present in the texture, they just weren't modeled.  You can also clearly see the shape of the Prometheus textured onto the side of it complete with the red lower hull.

http://www.macross2.net/m3/sdfmacross/macross/macross-side.gif

Wow I see the Prometheus now.   Well that's a bummer. I was thinking oooh new ship modeled after the sdf clas.

[Bolt]

That thing looks horrible. Lol

[Brofessor]

Is it fair to say Macross toys with the "Ancient Astronaut" theory? The Protoculture had seeded Earth but then later rediscovered humanity? So the Protoculture were ancient astronauts to their own creation in a sense?

Is the "Ancient Astronaut" theory somewhat corrosive to the spirit of out-of-universe viewers as it implies humans needed help to accomplish feats like the pyramids? Or does the "Ancient Astronaut" theory flatter humanity as it implies we possess almost supernatural abilities?

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, Brofessor said:

Is it fair to say Macross toys with the "Ancient Astronaut" theory? The Protoculture had seeded Earth but then later rediscovered humanity? So the Protoculture were ancient astronauts to their own creation in a sense?

Only in the vaguest possible sense...

Macross has never really given any evidence that the ancient Protoculture directly interacted with - or influenced the social, cultural, or scientific development of - humanity at any point.  One of the core tenets of the pseudoscientific ancient [alien/astronaut] theory is that extraterrestrials stuck around or made many visits over a long period of time to guide humanity by interbreeding with us to accelerate our evolution or teaching humans stuff like architecture, astronomy, and medicine, and being revered as gods.  The Protoculture's influence on humanity was purely genetic.  They genetically modified pre-modern humans to ensure the rise of modern humanity, left "insurance" to prevent us from escaping into space if we became a violent species, and left the rest to fate.

The religion of the native islanders on Mayan and that of the Windermereans seems to be more on the order of a cargo cult.  They didn't mythologize the Protoculture themselves, they formed systems of religious belief centered on their encounters with the Protoculture's "sufficiently advanced" technology.  The Mayan islander culture's foundation myth is a recounting of the accidental activation of the Birdhuman tens of thousands of years ago, and their interpretation of events may have been shaped by the artificial intelligence that the Birdhuman used to interrogate humans about the status of human society.  The Windermereans revered the Star Singer and turned the Sigur Berrentzs into a shrine (that may have been influenced by the still-operable tech that was able to communicate as it did with Roid Brehm in 2067.

 

6 hours ago, Brofessor said:

Is the "Ancient Astronaut" theory somewhat corrosive to the spirit of out-of-universe viewers as it implies humans needed help to accomplish feats like the pyramids? Or does the "Ancient Astronaut" theory flatter humanity as it implies we possess almost supernatural abilities?

No, that'd be mainly because almost all of the various incarnations of the ancient [alien/astronaut] pseudoscientific theory are a tissue paper-thin disguise for fairly overt racism.

You virtually never hear the ancient [alien/astronaut] hypothesis voiced in connection with developments made by white people.  It's almost invariably put forward by the unsubtly crazy white armchair pundits as a way to diminish or dismiss the achievements of non-white cultures, particularly where those cultures produced something more advanced or at least greater in scale than their contemporary caucasian counterparts.  The argument usually takes the form of "well, yeah it's impressive but they had outside help", albeit with a good deal of flowery language in an attempt to disguise the intent.

[Bolt]

On 10/23/2020 at 3:25 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

The argument usually takes the form of "well, yeah it's impressive but they had outside help", albeit with a good deal of flowery language in an attempt to disguise the intent.

So it can't be argued that all of the human race (red, white , brown, yellow, purple..) had help. Within this context?

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Bolt said:

So it can't be argued that all of the human race (red, white , brown, yellow, purple..) had help. Within this context?

Not in Macross, anyway.

In Macross, the ancient Protoculture had no real involvement in humanity's development outside of having used their genetic engineering technology to instigate the evolution of anatomically modern humans.  Their records of Earth and the local species that they'd reengineered there were lost when the survey ship that'd discovered Earth was destroyed while en route back to its home port.  The Protoculture never came back to interfere in the natural development of human cultures, religions, societies, science, or technology the way that the various incarnations of the ancient aliens/astronauts hypothesis posit.  Everything humanity achieved (or didn't) was entirely on its own merits (or failings) for the next half-million years until the Supervision Army accidentally gave modern humanity a thousand year-plus technological jumpstart when one of their abandoned gun destroyers crashed on Earth.

The pseudoscientific ancient aliens/astronauts hypothesis involves more direct interference in the course of human affairs like:

• Anatomically modern humans supposedly being a hybrid species created by interbreeding between aliens and late pre-human homonids
• Various religions and myths being mythologizations of historical contact between humans and extraterrestrials
• "Primitive" societies with comparatively advanced scientific knowledge (e.g. Mayan or Celtic astronomy) being knowledge acquired from extraterrestrials instead of from centuries or millennia of observation and recordkeeping.

[Brofessor]

3 hours ago, Bolt said:

So it can't be argued that all of the human race (red, white , brown, yellow, purple..) had help. Within this context?

The Ancient Astronaut theory can depend on your perspective. If you see yourself as a member of humanity with a direct lineage to a common ancestor then you did directly benefit from alien help as you have shared in these alien gifts. If you see yourself as a special creation and you feel no brotherhood with other races or cultures, then you might be more likely to suspect societies other than your own had outside alien help which your society never required. 

[pengbuzz]

2 hours ago, Brofessor said:

The Ancient Astronaut theory can depend on your perspective. If you see yourself as a member of humanity with a direct lineage to a common ancestor then you did directly benefit from alien help as you have shared in these alien gifts. If you see yourself as a special creation and you feel no brotherhood with other races or cultures, then you might be more likely to suspect societies other than your own had outside alien help which your society never required. 

[Einherjar]

Brofessor, actually watching the Macross shows might be helpful for whatever you are trying to do or say.

[Seto Kaiba]

9 hours ago, Brofessor said:

The Ancient Astronaut theory can depend on your perspective.

Not really, no.

 

9 hours ago, Brofessor said:

If you see yourself as a member of humanity with a direct lineage to a common ancestor then you did directly benefit from alien help as you have shared in these alien gifts. If you see yourself as a special creation and you feel no brotherhood with other races or cultures, then you might be more likely to suspect societies other than your own had outside alien help which your society never required. 

Your first sentence is complete nonsense.  Your second is dead-on how the ancient [alien/astronaut] hypothesis is actually applied in the faux-scholarly works of those who push that particular pile of preposterous pseudoscientific piffle.

The usual presentation of the ancient [alien/astronaut] hypothesis is in the form that "primitive" culture X must have received extraterrestrial assistance to accomplish their <great cultural achievement> as the alternative would be that they actually knew more about <subject matter> than their white contemporaries of European descent.  The whole theory is rooted in racism and cultural imperialism, as it functions to reinforce the idea that western European culture is inherently superior by diminishing or dismissing the achievements made by nonwhite, non-European cultures as a product of external assistance from a more advanced alien society.

That's one reason among many to be glad Macross doesn't truly entertain any aspect of the ancient [alien/astronaut] hypothesis.  Instead, it goes in for something that could be better described as a laser-guided take on directed panspermia broadly similar to what was referenced in the Star Trek: the Next Generation episode "The Chase" or the 1930 Olaf Stapledon science fiction novel Last and First Men.

 

6 hours ago, Einherjar said:

Brofessor, actually watching the Macross shows might be helpful for whatever you are trying to do or say.

It'd be helpful if he knew anything about any of the subjects he insists on discussing, really.

 

[JB0]

 

That is all I have to contribute.

[Brofessor]

I agree with everyone here. I cannot speak for username Bolt but I think he may have been implying if aliens helped humanity than we all benefited.

Did I just take the bait? 

[Einherjar]

3 hours ago, Brofessor said:

I agree with everyone here. I cannot speak for username Bolt but I think he may have been implying if aliens helped humanity than we all benefited.

Did I just take the bait? 

Pretty smug for a guy who has tried multiple times to get people to read his “academic” garbage.

Edited October 27, 2020 by Einherjar

[Seto Kaiba]

9 hours ago, JB0 said:

 

That is all I have to contribute.

[pengbuzz]

13 hours ago, Brofessor said:

I agree with everyone here. I cannot speak for username Bolt but I think he may have been implying if aliens helped humanity than we all benefited.

Did I just take the bait? 

So you agree with my eye roll at you then?

No, you don't "agree with everyone here". If you did, you wouldn't keep trying to push intellectually dishonest garbage. I mean, seriously: what is it you're hoping to gain with all of this nonsense, especially when it's clear that it's all just the thoughts of others mashed into a pastiche that is pure gibberish.

  

15 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Your first sentence is complete nonsense.  Your second is dead-on how the ancient [alien/astronaut] hypothesis is actually applied in the faux-scholarly works of those who push that particular pile of preposterous pseudoscientific piffle.

The usual presentation of the ancient [alien/astronaut] hypothesis is in the form that "primitive" culture X must have received extraterrestrial assistance to accomplish their <great cultural achievement> as the alternative would be that they actually knew more about <subject matter> than their white contemporaries of European descent.  The whole theory is rooted in racism and cultural imperialism, as it functions to reinforce the idea that western European culture is inherently superior by diminishing or dismissing the achievements made by nonwhite, non-European cultures as a product of external assistance from a more advanced alien society.

That's one reason among many to be glad Macross doesn't truly entertain any aspect of the ancient [alien/astronaut] hypothesis.  Instead, it goes in for something that could be better described as a laser-guided take on directed panspermia broadly similar to what was referenced in the Star Trek: the Next Generation episode "The Chase" or the 1930 Olaf Stapledon science fiction novel Last and First Men.

Your thoughts mirror my own on this topic: humans are capable of figuring things out and didn't "need extraterrestrial help". The idea that "only Western culture was capable of (insert feat here)" is pretty insulting to humanity as a whole, and ends up painting them in a negative light that is undeserved. If I may also add: it tries to negate the efforts and accomplishments of individuals who innovated ideas and inventions, instead crediting them to "another race" (though I may be saying the same thing in simply a different way).

My attraction to Macross as a story stems in part ti the fact that although an alien vessel crashed on Earth, the answers weren't "given" to mankind, but instead, they had to work for it via research and effort. And that was a united effort with minds from across the globe that resulted in the Destroids, Valkyries and ultimately, the rebuilt ASS-1/SDF-1. Man made mistakes along the way and didn't get everything 100 percent right, but he didn't rely on "aliens" to do it for him.

 

 

Edited October 27, 2020 by pengbuzz

[Bolt]

Not much into insulting people, even if I disagree with them. Can we get back to some questions and answers?

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

And that was a united effort with minds from across the globe that resulted in the Destroids, Valkyries and ultimately, the rebuilt ASS-1/SDF-1.

Eh... it wasn't that united.

The fledgling Earth Unification Government was, at least on paper, sharing all advances made through overtechnology equally with the assistance of the international overtechnology research institute OTEC.  It did lean rather heavily into exploiting the natural highly competitive nature of capitalist industry to produce innovative solutions from OTEC's findings and theories.  That led to some unconventional expressions of that competitiveness like developers selling advanced weapons to the Anti-Unification Alliance forces in order to gather more data on practical performance in real combat conditions, out of genuine support for their cause, or because the UN Forces passed on their product in favor of a different solution.

[Bolt]

It's too bad Destroids aren't so relevant in the later macross series..

[pengbuzz]

21 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Eh... it wasn't that united.

The fledgling Earth Unification Government was, at least on paper, sharing all advances made through overtechnology equally with the assistance of the international overtechnology research institute OTEC.  It did lean rather heavily into exploiting the natural highly competitive nature of capitalist industry to produce innovative solutions from OTEC's findings and theories.  That led to some unconventional expressions of that competitiveness like developers selling advanced weapons to the Anti-Unification Alliance forces in order to gather more data on practical performance in real combat conditions, out of genuine support for their cause, or because the UN Forces passed on their product in favor of a different solution.

Well, it was more united that they had previously been, to be certain. That said, the fact that Anti-UN got their hands on the tech demonstrates the human propensity to get into trouble without any assistance as well.