Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => The Theory of Everything => Topic started by: bvanevery on November 10, 2018, 06:06:57 pm

Title: burying Chinese Legalists alive
Post by: bvanevery on November 10, 2018, 06:06:57 pm

I've started a purge on Wikipedia of the Chinese Legalists (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier%27s_Alpha_Centauri#Characters).  Quite simply, they got Chairman Yang's motives and themes completely wrong.  I deleted a claim that Yang is a Chinese Legalist as original research.  And a claim that this is one of the major ideological themes of the game.  It isn't, the correct understanding of the Chairman's thought is Collectivism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivism).  That is why the Hive is a hive.  That's why the Hive's version of a Recreation Commons is a "feeding bay".  Yang's opening quote for the game itself, the very thing by which you pick a faction, should completely, utterly, and definitively put the matter to bed:

Quote

Learn to overcome the crass demands of flesh and bone, for they
warp the matrix through which we perceive the world. Extend your
awareness outward, beyond the self of body, to embrace the self
of group and the self of humanity. The goals of the group and the
greater race are transcendent, and to embrace them is to achieve
enlightenment.

If you've studied any 20th century Chinese history, you'd know exactly who the Chairman is modeled after.  Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, of course.  That guy, actually experimented with numbering peasants instead of naming them.  Why anyone would try to look farther back in Chinese history, to find the character archetype of Yang, is completely beyond me.  Yang is straightforwardly Mao Tse-Tung meets William Gibson's Neuromancer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer).  That's where the "Hive" comes from.  If you have any confusion about Yang exhibiting "scholarly" behavior, or what that means in the context of Chinese history - Mao was a scholar.  Quite bookish.  He had a bed specially built and sloped to hold all his books, so that they would not topple over.

So, if there are any Legalists still alive and breathing at this point, the Hive will be disposing of you in the traditional manner of our great emperor Ch'in.  Feel glad that your bodies will nourish our crops; you will become one with all the peoples!

Title: Re: burying Chinese Legalists alive
Post by: Geo on November 10, 2018, 07:01:19 pm

 ;lol