Disowning the Children of God

In class on Thursday I questioned the idea of a mission "to know and love God's other children." What, I asked, happens if we simply can't love them? Do we turn around in failure, content with the fact that we gave it our all? Or, do we change them so that we can love them. A lot of our discussion centered around this notion, the morality of changing society on Rakhat into something that jives with our conceptions of right and wrong. This conversation usually heads down the road of a cultural reletavism debate, and I get enough of that in Cross-Cultural Communication. After class, I thought about a third option that makes sense in light of some of our other readings. The easiest solution is to accept that the aliens on Rakhat are not God's children.

As I have said a few times, Manifest Destiny is a constant re-characterization of our interests and motives. If we wanted to expand our territory, then we just rationalized our way right through the native Americans or other colonial powers. The indigenous people were hardly people at all, and therefor had no right to their land, or even their way of life. It is conceivable, then, that this could happen on Rakhat. If we failed to love them, it is not our fault; they are not God's Children. This paves the way for all kinds of injustices. I probably don't need to remind you what Carl Schmitt had to say about fighting for "humanity."

A tricky thing about Rakhat, however, is that there are at least two other species that one could safely call inhuman. It's hard to think of them as such, but the Jana'ata and the Runa are not genetically related. They are literally different beasts. There is a clear gradation of intelligences on the planet, putting outsiders face-to-face with realities of nature (as in vs. nurture) that make comparing the social structure on Rakhat awkward to compare to any historical human societies. Drawing a parallel to antebellum South feels wrong, because although there are some similarities, we can't forget that the Runa are, as a race, not capable of the same intellectual capacity as the Jana'ata.

I am looking forward to reading Children of God to find out what humans decide to do with this planet. I have become used to authors forcing readers to speculate at what happens next, and I would not have been surprised to see Russell do the same. Children of God is exciting because we the readers get a chance to sit back after reading The Sparrow, think hard about our predictions, and then see what actually happens. I know it'll probably be depressing, but I can't wait for more.