K'Kree = Cool...

[EvilDrGanymede]

Originally posted by trader jim:
I get it know!!...cold meat...like cold sandwich meat...right outta the Fridg....yummy...lot of Mayo!!!

To paraphrase Arnie from T3: "Levity is good, it pushes back the fear of death". These poor individuals are so petrified of the K'Kree that all they can do is make wisecracks about eating them. Makes 'em feel less helpless and bigger about it, I guess... that's denial for you

I mean, really. If your character came face-to-face with a pissed-off K'Kree (or better still, a whole bunch of them), he wouldn't be making with the BBQ and Mayo jokes, would he. I wonder where that sappy grin would be when said K'Kree asks you to repeat that wisecrack about the cold meat sandwich before he runs you through. Not that repeating it would change anything, of course, when he's already made up his mind to skewer you like a kebab and trample the remains.

No, I somehow think your character would be very much making with the crapping his pants, fighting for his life, running like hell, begging for mercy (and not getting it) and dying.

And with all this talk of eating K'Kree... I wonder if the Aslan or Vargr think about chowing down on a human... How about a nice big plate of human drumsticks? There's a good deal of flesh on those thighs and calf muscles, after all... What? Don't like it when the table's turned? "But the K'Kree are just big overgrown cows!" I hear you whine. Well, if you fancy eating one sentient species, why not more? I'm sure the more carnivorous races out there probably think the same of us humans too - omnivores can be perfectly good prey animals too.

So think about that next time you want to make a crack about having a K'Kree sandwich.

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Evil Dr Ganymede:
If your character came face-to-face with a pissed-off K'Kree (or better still, a whole bunch of them), he wouldn't be making with the BBQ and Mayo jokes, would he? I wonder where that sappy grin would be when said K'Kree asks you to repeat that wisecrack about the cold meat sandwich before he runs you through. Not that repeating it would change anything, of course, when he's already made up his mind to skewer you like a kebab and trample the remains.

While such a remark would definitely be in poor taste (so to speak), I have a lot more sympathy for someone who will talk about killing but not do it than for anyone who will kill to avenge a bad joke. (Please don't thake this to indicate approval of kill jokes. It's all relative).

And with all this talk of eating K'Kree... I wonder if the Aslan or Vargr think about chowing down on a human... How about a nice big plate of human drumsticks? There's a good deal of flesh on those thighs and calf muscles, after all... What? Don't like it when the table's turned?

So let's apply that Golden Rule, shall we? Instead of eating K'Kree, we'll just force them to change their diet to include meat products (there are ways to include a bit of animal tissue in the diet of herbivores). And if they don't, we'll exterminate them. And they won't have any beef coming (sorry!), because we did give them a chance to mend their ways.

Personally I have a very low tolerance for intolerance. The K'Kree are very far down on my list of favorite people. Right down there with the Brinn.


Hans

 

[EvilDrGanymede]

Well, let's make one thing clear... I'm not standing up for the K'Kree here to defend their behaviour or their attitude - certainly from our perspective, they're a downright nasty bunch. I'd sure as hell be pretty terrified of the K'Kree!

That said, the K'Kree may be violently intolerant of everyone else, but that doesn't particularly justify the mockery some people pour on them, and it doesn't make humans sound any more 'civilised' than them either. Besides which, that sort of attitude sorely underestimates a threat in the game that should be taken a lot more seriously than it is here.

I do think it's dangerous to judge them by human standards though. Killing someone just because of what they are (or what they eat) is generally abhorrent to us humans (there are exceptions, of course), but it's part of what the K'Kree are. The fact that they evolved into a sentient, space-faring species from herbivore grazer stock is amazing. But in doing so, they come laden with herbivore 'memetic baggage' - that anything that COULD see them as a prey is a threat that should be destroyed as quickly and effectively as possible. Is that 'wrong'? To us, it probably is. To them, it makes perfect sense. This is why they're alien.

As for feeding them animal matter... well, we saw what happened when some of the K'Kree were persuaded to eat meat by the Hivers (I still have no idea how they managed to do that. But if they can persuade psychotic herbivores to eat meat, then I'm pretty bloody scared of the Hivers too!) - the rest of the K'Kree turned up and quietly wiped out their own 'tainted people'. I think trying to slip some animal matter into K'Kree food would be the most abhorrent crime that they could conceive of, and their revenge (once they purged themselves of anyone tainted by it) would probably be the most terrifying thing to happen to Charted Space since the Final War.

Don't forget, we humans have a chance, because we're omnivorous. We could change our ways, at least, because we're more flexible in what we can eat. A herbovore can't, and neither can a carnivore. Forcing meat on a K'Kree is just as unreasonable as forcing carnivores to turn vegetarian.


Anyway, I just think the 'haha, they're just dumb cows, fire up the barbeque' attitude originates from mock bravado. Anyone stupid enough to actually say that sort of thing to a K'Kree deserves the gruesome death that's coming to them. It's like strolling up to a wild lion and treating it as if it was a big housecat.

I can imagine the (mostly likely entirely hypothetical) situation of a bunch of humans cracking jokes like this in a bar when a K'Kree walks in. Would they carry on with the wisecracks? They sure as hell wouldn't, if they wanted to live. Though if a K'Kree ever does walks into a human bar, I'd imagine the life expectancy of anyone there would plummet rather drastically since he's probably coming in to kill them all.

That's all in-game at least, or it's how I'd run it. I'm not sure what the hell goes on here on CotI, since some people insist on posting 'in character'. I'm sure people would say I'm taking things too seriously, but when people are posting as if they were characters in the Traveller universe, it gets a bit hard to figure out whether to use an in-game perspective in these arguments or a player perspective...

 

[trader jim]

Reminder.....this is only a game...being only a game we can do most anything with it..good, bad or indifferent. Therefore, if i want to eat a K'Kree sandwich, I shall do so at my leasure...with lots of Mayo.....

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Evil Dr Ganymede:
That said, the K'Kree may be violently intolerant of everyone else, but that doesn't particularly justify the mockery some people pour on them, and it doesn't make humans sound any more 'civilised' than them either.

Actually, in my opinion it does. I believe that it is wrong to unthinkingly assume that your own cultural mores are superior to the mores of other cultures. But I just as firmly believe that it is not automatically wrong to consider some cultural traits superior to others after mature consideration. I don't buy the notion that all cultural traits are equal. Some are definitely better than others. And one good way to examine an idea is to state its reverse and see how you like that one.

I do think it's dangerous to judge them by human standards though. Killing someone just because of what they are (or what they eat) is generally abhorrent to us humans (there are exceptions, of course), but it's part of what the K'Kree are.

Whiuch is why they are abhorent to humans, and, IMO, quite rightly.

The fact that they evolved into a sentient, space-faring species from herbivore grazer stock is amazing. But in doing so, they come laden with herbivore 'memetic baggage' - that anything that COULD see them as a prey is a threat that should be destroyed as quickly and effectively as possible. Is that 'wrong'? To us, it probably is.

Darn right it is. Sentience implies the ability to conciously modify your behaviour. If the K'Kree can't adapt to letting me live peacefully with my meat sandwiches (as long as the meat isn't K'Kree) then they need to be restrained.

To them, it makes perfect sense. This is why they're alien.

Sure. But they're aliens who should be taught to leave their neighbors alone.

Don't forget, we humans have a chance, because we're omnivorous. We could change our ways, at least, because we're more flexible in what we can eat. A herbivore can't, and neither can a carnivore. Forcing meat on a K'Kree is just as unreasonable as forcing carnivores to turn vegetarian.

Which was my point exactly, because the K'Kree do try to force carnivores to turn vegetarian and exterminate them when they won't. The sooner those maniacs are taught the error of their ways, the better.


BTW, the Hivers proved that the K'Kree can change their thinking, so there's no real excuse. Not that an inability to change their ways really would be an excuse to my way of thinking. A mass murderer may be acting under an overwhelming compulsion, but society still has to be protected from him.


Hans

 

[EvilDrGanymede]

Originally posted by trader jim:
Reminder.....this is only a game...being only a game we can do most anything with it..good, bad or indifferent. Therefore, if i want to eat a K'Kree sandwich, I shall do so at my leasure...with lots of Mayo.....

Seriously, eating animal flesh is one thing - I don't mind it myself, I'm pretty carnivorous, but I have several vegetarian friends who find the concept pretty abhorrent and I respect that (even if I don't quite understand it sometimes).

But would you really be so flippant about eating the flesh of a sapient, intelligent species (even if it is technically a prey species)? Heck, this isn't something on the level of monkeys or dolphins (and some people on this planet do eat those), this is a fully sentient race we're talking about here.

I guess this is one reason I'm so 'serious' about these jokes. To me at least, there's something phenomenally disturbing about eating the flesh of fully sapient beings.

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Evil Dr Ganymede:
I guess this is one reason I'm so 'serious' about these jokes. To me at least, there's something phenomenally disturbing about eating the flesh of fully sapient beings.

Oh, I agree. It's wrong. Very wrong. On a scale of 1 to 10 I'd give the following ratings:

Systematically trying to force other species to become vegetarians and exterminating them if they can't or won't: 10.

Eating a sentient being (against its will): 9

Joking about eating a sentient being: 5 or 6.

Roleplaying someone who jokes about eating a sentient being: 0.


Hans

 

[EvilDrGanymede]

Originally posted by rancke:
Actually, in my opinion it does. I believe that it is wrong to unthinkingly assume that your own cultural mores are superior to the mores of other cultures. But I just as firmly believe that it is not automatically wrong to consider some cultural traits superior to others after mature consideration. I don't buy the notion that all cultural traits are equal. Some are definitely better than others. And one good way to examine an idea is to state its reverse and see how you like that one.

I can see this veering into a moral relativism/absolutism argument, and that way lies badness

. I'm a big fan of seeing it from the other side's point of view myself, rather than simply reversing the argument.

Whiuch is why they are abhorent to humans, and, IMO, quite rightly.

Sure, I agree. But some of the things said here aren't much better. Joking about eating the flesh of fully sapient creatures isn't exactly 'civilised', is it.

Darn right it is. Sentience implies the ability to conciously modify your behaviour. If the K'Kree can't adapt to letting me live peacefully with my meat sandwiches (as long as the meat isn't K'Kree) then they need to be restrained.

Weeeell, there's different levels of 'behaviour modification' here. A human deciding that he's not going to eat meat one day is one thing. When you start tinkering with the hardwired stuff, it gets a whole lot more difficult though. The books I've read on memetics suggest that a lot of the things that drive humans stems from how we've physically evolved as a species, and that conscious control of such drives can only go so far. YOu can suppress urges (fight or flight, for example) to an extent, but they're always there in the background.

Perhaps it is possible for the K'Kree to evolve beyond their herbivorous hardwiring, but I suspect that this is much more deeply ingrained in their racial psyche than our hardwiring is. There's always going to be some kind of 'atavism' there I think. Ditto with the Aslan - they might be civilised most of the time, but when they're under extreme stress I bet the civilised veneer would be blown away and their predatory instincts would take over. Short of Transhuman Space like tinkering, that sort of thing is very hard to remove.

Sure. But they're aliens who should be taught to leave their neighbors alone.

True. But then the K'Kree's neighbours should also know that it's better not to antagonise the K'Kree too. It works both ways. A Detente, cold war, or stalemate is fine. If one side does anything to sufficiently annoy the other though, then all hell could break loose.

Which was my point exactly, because the K'Kree do try to force carnivores to turn vegetarian and exterminate them when they won't. The sooner those maniacs are taught the error of their ways, the better.

This is true. The K'Kree are psychotically unreasonable about this, but I'm not sure what it would take to persuade them differently. I don't know how much of it stems from hardwired racial paranoia, or from their belief systems (that can be changed, theoretically).

BTW, the Hivers proved that the K'Kree can change their thinking, so there's no real excuse.

Yes. As I said, I'm rather curious about how they managed to pull that off.

Not that an inability to change their ways really would be an excuse to my way of thinking. A mass murderer may be acting under an overwhelming compulsion, but society still has to be protected from him.

Ideally, I think the K'Kree should be left totally to their own devices. An arrangement of 'don't trouble us, and we won't trouble you' would probably be the most sensible for all sides, even if it's not the most satisfactory for everyone. Any attempts to change them are more than likely to end in disaster all around.

 

[EvilDrGanymede]

Originally posted by rancke:
Roleplaying someone who jokes about eating a sentient being: 0.

This is what I meant about how hard it is to interpret what people say here sometimes. Some people (trader jim, that baron character, etc) seem to post here as Traveller characters. In which case, it changes from being 'someone roleplaying a character who jokes about eating a sentient being' (in which case I'd just say 'yeah right' and move on) to 'someone who jokes about eating a sentient being' (in which case I'm much more disturbed by what they say).

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Evil Dr Ganymede:
Sure, I agree. But some of the things said here aren't much better. Joking about eating the flesh of fully sapient creatures isn't exactly 'civilised', is it.

That depends entirely on the context. If I thought someone was telling canibal jokes because he'd really like to taste roast suckling babe and only the threat of the law kept him from doing something about it, then I'd certainly look at him askance. But if he was just telling a few canibal jokes, like the one about the canibal who got home too late and got a cold shoulder or the canibal who turned vegetatian and only ate bushmen, then it is civilized enough for me.

And when you interpose the added layer of not telling canibal jokes yourself, but roleplaying someone in a fictional universe who told canibal jokes, I have no trouble at all with it.

Weeeell, there's different levels of 'behaviour modification' here. A human deciding that he's not going to eat meat one day is one thing. When you start tinkering with the hardwired stuff, it gets a whole lot more difficult though.

I wonder. The urge to reproduce should be hardwired into humans second only to the urge to survive (and quite possibly not even second). Yet people seem to be able to overcome that.

Perhaps it is possible for the K'Kree to evolve beyond their herbivorous hardwiring, but I suspect that this is much more deeply ingrained in their racial psyche than our hardwiring is. There's always going to be some kind of 'atavism' there I think. Ditto with the Aslan - they might be civilised most of the time, but when they're under extreme stress I bet the civilised veneer would be blown away and their predatory instincts would take over. Short of Transhuman Space like tinkering, that sort of thing is very hard to remove.

You miss my point. I believe that whether the K'Kree can modify their behavior or not is irrelevant. If they can, they should do so. And if they can't, they should be rendered incapable of acting on their unchangable basic nature.

It is not acceptable to kill your neighbors because you don't like their eating habits.

True. But then the K'Kree's neighbours should also know that it's better not to antagonise the K'Kree too. It works both ways.

I disagree. I don't concede anyone's right to tell me what to eat in my own home.

Ideally, I think the K'Kree should be left totally to their own devices. An arrangement of 'don't trouble us, and we won't trouble you' would probably be the most sensible for all sides, even if it's not the most satisfactory for everyone. Any attempts to change them are more than likely to end in disaster all around.

Well, if you think that bombing them back into pre-industry and interdicting their worlds without trying to talk sense into them first is the way to go...


Hans

 

[Elliot]

This is all getting rather heavy: K'kree do not exist, they are a game artifact.

In terms of discussing the game of Traveller which is supposed to be light entertainment for a bunch of dorks (like me) on a boring week day night, I have to say that the K'Kree bbq jokes are pretty funny. That is what a character would say.

As to creating a taboo about discussing this stuff as it involves killing sentient beings: humanity is not so glorious as to be able to make that claim with bloodless hands: humans from Genghis Khan to Saddam Hussain and his sons prove that. Just look at the torture chambers in Iraq and the fact that the US Marines rescued Uday Hussains lions that had been used to hunt humans for sport. A few years back some members of the KKK dragged a man to his death on the back of a truck coz he was black - to them it was sport.

Another example, in England we still go out and ritually hunt foxes by hounds: a species that has no food value whatsoever. Furthermore, hunting with hounds is scientifically proven to be a totally ineffective mechanism for culling vermin as (i) you don't kill enough to make a dent in the population and (ii) you tend to kill fit males, when effective culling should target females.

Of course I abhore of all this but part of being human is to contain our darker side in fiction. You seem to be saying that by thinking it, we want to do it. That is the argument of the three monkey's: see no evil, do no evil, think no evil: it unfortunately it aint the way it is. Humans have always fantasised about killing, it is their nature as predatory animals. Yet the moral amongst us know that our primal instincts are base and must be subverted: hence we invented art and fiction. Traveller contains lots of pictures of guns and has complicated rules on how to simulate killing. On your analysis (or at least my pastiche of your view) that would condemn Traveller as an immoral artifact of murderers.

All i'm saying is: Traveller is fiction, its not serious, it is a great fantasy that has a cathartic effect. Jokes about K'Kree foie gras (yuch) are not made by potential Hannibal Lectors!

In game terms: what about Vargr - they evolved from hounds. Their instinct is to hunt in packs. They are therefore the opposite of K'Kree. It seems to me that the Vargr have a very dark side to them: that is why GDW turned them into a bit of a joke. In a Vargr/K'Kree war i'm not sure the herd would come off too good against properly run Vargr skirmishes. They don't have planets to nuke as they are too nomadic. They don't stand in formation like humans to be killed, they wait for a weak K'Kree to become vulnerable and strike.

If you want to take the K'Kree seriously, lets do the same for the Vargr. The Traveller universe suddenly becomes a deadly place. Humans therefore become the bridge of peace between the conflicting instincts of Vargr (Hunters) and K'Kree (Herd).

 

[EvilDrGanymede]

I think that in general if you make jokes about about taboo behaviour, it implies some degree of desensitisation to that behaviour. I get a similar feeling whenever I hear someone crack a joke about a disaster thats'recently occurred (shuttle explosions spring to mind in this case). Maybe I'm just being over-sensitive about such things. *shrug*

I'm not suggesting any taboo about discussing killing sentient beings though (and I certainly don't think humanity has 'bloodless hands'), I'm suggesting that it's a bit sick to crack jokes about eating sentient beings (even if they are fictional ones).

As for the Vargr... I did originally include them in a previous post when I mentioned the Aslan's 'primal insticts', but deleted it - because the Vargr had been genetically manipulated to an extent by the Ancients. I don't know too much about the Vargr, but I'd imagine that some of their behavioural hardwiring had been significantly altered in the process. I remember reading in 'Of Wolves and Man' that some of the behaviour of pet dogs today arises because they have wolf instincts that they don't really know what to do with. I doubt the Vargr have that sort of trouble (I sure can't imagine a Vargr peeing on a lamp-post anyway ). So I wasn't sure if they'd 'revert' to a more animalistic form, since they're somewhat removed from their original genetics. Aslan, on the other hand, haven't been tinkered with, and so I thought they were a safer bet to use in the discussion.


Hans - I'd say it's generally not acceptable to kill your neighbours for any reason

. Yet humans regularly come up with a lot more trivial reasons to do so than because of eating habits! The trick is to somehow find a way to persuade the K'Kree to 'live and let live' rather than 'live and nuke everyone else from orbit'

. I don't think anyone's ever going to persuade them to be truly comfortable around carnivores though.

Anyway, I don't think they'd wipe out a race just because 'eating habits' alone - I think it's more to do with the fact that the species in question is carnivorous and predatory. It's the entire psyche of the race in question that the K'Kree would find abhorrent, not just their taste in food. It all adds up to make a perceived threat that must be destroyed to appease their racial paranoia.

 

[trader jim]

I can see by reading further, that some folks take this GAME, and i repeate, GAME GAME GAME,
just WAY to seriously!!!, Some folks just gotta LIGHTEN UP!!!, LIGHTEN UP!!!, You CANT take all this stuff seriously!!!! NO NO NO!!!

THE ENTIRE GAME IS FICTION,meaning NOT REAL!!!!

I could go on and on explaining my self but its just NOT worth it....

 

[flykiller]

if every carnivore in an ecosystem is eliminated, what happens to that ecosystem?

 

[Anthony]

Originally posted by flykiller:
if every carnivore in an ecosystem is eliminated, what happens to that ecosystem?

The ecosystem implodes as the population controls on some of the herbivores disappear, and you get a billion rabbits or something.

 

[EvilDrGanymede]

Do the K'Kree go around wiping out every carnivore in an ecosystem though? Or just the ones that are threatening to them specifically?

 

[flykiller]

Originally posted by Anthony:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by flykiller:
if every carnivore in an ecosystem is eliminated, what happens to that ecosystem?

The ecosystem implodes as the population controls on some of the herbivores disappear, and you get a billion rabbits or something. </font>[/QUOTE]is this resulting population explosion what drove the k'kree into space? their implied fertility has unresolved implications.

in addition, can the k'kree campaign of carnivore elimination actually work?

 

[EvilDrGanymede]

Originally posted by trader jim:
THE ENTIRE GAME IS FICTION,meaning NOT REAL!!!!

I know it's fiction, I'm not an idiot thank you very much . However, if you look around the Traveller community you'll find plenty of people that take things to far greater extremes than me. There are people who, for example, have wailed endlessly about how TNE destroyed their precious Traveller game, and who have practically declared a jihad on the designers responsible for it ever since. There are people who have written long rants about how they can't live with themselves if they play in the Rebellion setting because they feel it's a betrayal of all things that were Traveller. THAT'S taking the game too seriously, I think.

All I'm saying is 'take the K'Kree seriously in the game' - that's hardly losing my grip on reality. I may have a sense of humour failure about jokes about eating K'Kree (not to mention that such jokes gets very old after a while), but that's just me.

Besides, what's wrong with discussing some aspects of the game more seriously for a change? Or are you going to tell me that we're not allowed to scratch below the surface of Traveller and explore the implications of various things?

 

[Anthony]

Originally posted by flykiller:

in addition, can the k'kree campaign of carnivore elimination actually work?

If you mean large carnivore, sure. We've pretty well accomplished that in a number of areas, with the result that deer turn into a major pest and need to be controlled by shooting them (predator replacements are certainly possible). For small carnivores, I doubt wiping them out is feasible.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Evil Dr Ganymede:
Do the K'Kree go around wiping out every carnivore in an ecosystem though? Or just the ones that are threatening to them specifically?

If we go by that article from the JTAS, the one couched as an interview between a human vegetarian and a K'kree noble; plus the JTAS article about Religion in the 2000 Worlds; then the answer is yes, for the K'kree "manifest destiny" is to wipe out all sentient carnivores in the universe.