The Ethics of Being Prey
I wasn't at first actually particularly interested in the whole Wraith-prison-camp moral dilemma thing, to be honest. It struck me as a no-good-solution situation, and those usually annoy me. I don't mind moral ambiguity, but I want to believe there could be a moral solution, generally, at least in my fluff, and I just wasn't seeing one here. I mean, it is clearly catastrophically bad to allow a bunch of Wraith with the knowledge these Wraith had to rejoin the rest of the Wraith--like, wipe out human civilization bad (yes, I think the writers have produced a contrived situation that puts the choice in rather extreme terms, but those are the rules we're playing by, contrived or no). On the other hand, it's clearly morally wrong to torch a bunch of other people to save your own skin. On the third hand, the Altaneans don't have the wherewithal to do the only... I can't really call it the only *good* option, because it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but the only not-awful option, which is keep the Wraith/people contained.
So to be honest, my main thought was that it was crappy planning for the writers to write out the option of keeping the Wraith/people in stasis, because to me, that's a more interesting problem because it's a small enough issue (hey, we have these Wraith/people in stasis we're going to have to figure out what to do with) to have a plausibly morally satisfying ending; it fits what I see as the scale of the show.
That said, the more I read other people's thoughts, the more I find it interesting after all. I've kind of come to two places on this one.
First, we have no evidence that the Wraith/people are actually "good" in the basic sense that they wouldn't, if given full knowledge of the situation, want to revert back into creatures that torture and kill us. Yes, the ones with no memory seem reasonably non-threatening and confused and dependent, but that's because they have no memory. In some important senses they're not... I'm struggling with the right way to put this, because "they're not people yet" isn't right, but it's what Michael said: when they lose their memory, in a sense the Wraith dies and is replaced by something else. But before that something else has a chance to understand its situation and choose an identity and a goal, we have no way of making a moral judgement on what to do with it, because there's nothing yet to judge. Ethics rebels against killing them because these new people are not Wraith and thus aren't an inherent threat. Practicality rebels against informing them or letting them go or what have you because practicality predicts based on previous evidence that they will choose to revert and become killers; practicality says, they're probably Wraith to that extent at least; thus killers in intent, thus real threats. After all, there are such things as bad humans; and whether you think the Wraith/people are basically Wraith or basically people, wanting to turn back into creatures that kill humans is a pretty decent definition of *either* "threatening alien" or "bad human". Ethics won't fall in line, though, because even if they will make it, they're still humans who haven't made that choice yet. And fandom is full of the sort of people that absolutely don't think it's okay to judge people for they choice you *think* they'll make until they've made it. I tend to be one of those people. The ethical problem really isn't rooted in the killing or not killing (we accept that our action heroes kill) or in human or not human (we accept that our action heroes kill humans); it's in lack of knowledge and choice.
This actually suggests to me that there is a reasonably moral way out: convert the Wraith into humans, fully inform them of what has been done to them, explain the predator/prey issue, and ask them whether they'd like to remain human or return to being Wraith. Shoot them if they choose door 2. Sure, it has real issues of workability (it kind of depends upon Carson coming up with a permanent change to administer if they choose to stay human, if nothing else), but I think it's basically ethical, or at least, as good as you're going to get.
So, the predator/prey issue. My second point of interest here is the predator/prey issue. I think half the reason the issue is so thorny is that humans don't *have* a relevant subset of ethics to draw on. I'm not sure we've ever really *asked* what the ethical stance of prey should be toward the predator. We're used to thinking of ourselves as the top of the food chain. In an abstract sense, leaving aside individual human-to-human interactions, we have only equals and inferiors, and only the equals are sentient. So, further, we have virtually *no* experience to draw on with regards to sentient-sentient predator/prey relationships. We've never had to work out the ethics of it in the way we as individuals and as societies have worked out ethical systems regarding real-world situations.
(I say virtually because I guess you could make an argument for human-chimp or human-whale. In those situations I think we have, as predators, done okay at least in terms of where we've ended up, if not in terms of how we got there. We've generally come to an actionable consensus that we as sentient predators should treat other potentially sentient beings with some level of ethical concern. But we've got a lot of choices; we could make that choice easily. What would the ethical responsibilities of the whales or the chimps be to us if all that humans could eat were whale or chimp meat?)
I'm struggling to think of fiction in which the ethical considerations of a sentient-sentient predator/prey relationship, particularly one in which the humans are prey, have even been seriously addressed. All I can think of is stuff like Alien and, uh, Predator--but those are really, *obviously*, not about ethics. "Monsters" that eat humans and want to keep on doing it just aren't presented as something we could ever communicate with or come to terms with; indeed, there's no reason they necessarily should be unless you introduce the humanization option. Or let me rephrase; I'm sure someone's dealt with it, but not that I can remember in any very large-scale, well-known or much-discussed way. The Matrix, maybe? But again, ethics weren't really a big issue there (I think it would have been a better movie if they were. I actually thought the machines' solution was much more ethical than it was presented as.) Usually when a situation begins with a whiff of predator/prey to it, it ends with it turning out to be a mistake (they didn't think we were sentient) or a resolvable situation that can be brought to a close once we've gained enough understanding of each other. The Atlantis writers have written themselves out of that option, really, in making humans the sole Wraith food-source. Which suggests that they have actually done something interesting and moderately unique, though it does not necessarily suggest they're going to handle it well.
Come to think of it, that would suggest that Carson's time would be much better spent genetically engineering viruses that could turn chipmunks into viable Wraith food sources or something. Bad Carson. This is why every ship needs an Ethics Officer.
So to be honest, my main thought was that it was crappy planning for the writers to write out the option of keeping the Wraith/people in stasis, because to me, that's a more interesting problem because it's a small enough issue (hey, we have these Wraith/people in stasis we're going to have to figure out what to do with) to have a plausibly morally satisfying ending; it fits what I see as the scale of the show.
That said, the more I read other people's thoughts, the more I find it interesting after all. I've kind of come to two places on this one.
First, we have no evidence that the Wraith/people are actually "good" in the basic sense that they wouldn't, if given full knowledge of the situation, want to revert back into creatures that torture and kill us. Yes, the ones with no memory seem reasonably non-threatening and confused and dependent, but that's because they have no memory. In some important senses they're not... I'm struggling with the right way to put this, because "they're not people yet" isn't right, but it's what Michael said: when they lose their memory, in a sense the Wraith dies and is replaced by something else. But before that something else has a chance to understand its situation and choose an identity and a goal, we have no way of making a moral judgement on what to do with it, because there's nothing yet to judge. Ethics rebels against killing them because these new people are not Wraith and thus aren't an inherent threat. Practicality rebels against informing them or letting them go or what have you because practicality predicts based on previous evidence that they will choose to revert and become killers; practicality says, they're probably Wraith to that extent at least; thus killers in intent, thus real threats. After all, there are such things as bad humans; and whether you think the Wraith/people are basically Wraith or basically people, wanting to turn back into creatures that kill humans is a pretty decent definition of *either* "threatening alien" or "bad human". Ethics won't fall in line, though, because even if they will make it, they're still humans who haven't made that choice yet. And fandom is full of the sort of people that absolutely don't think it's okay to judge people for they choice you *think* they'll make until they've made it. I tend to be one of those people. The ethical problem really isn't rooted in the killing or not killing (we accept that our action heroes kill) or in human or not human (we accept that our action heroes kill humans); it's in lack of knowledge and choice.
This actually suggests to me that there is a reasonably moral way out: convert the Wraith into humans, fully inform them of what has been done to them, explain the predator/prey issue, and ask them whether they'd like to remain human or return to being Wraith. Shoot them if they choose door 2. Sure, it has real issues of workability (it kind of depends upon Carson coming up with a permanent change to administer if they choose to stay human, if nothing else), but I think it's basically ethical, or at least, as good as you're going to get.
So, the predator/prey issue. My second point of interest here is the predator/prey issue. I think half the reason the issue is so thorny is that humans don't *have* a relevant subset of ethics to draw on. I'm not sure we've ever really *asked* what the ethical stance of prey should be toward the predator. We're used to thinking of ourselves as the top of the food chain. In an abstract sense, leaving aside individual human-to-human interactions, we have only equals and inferiors, and only the equals are sentient. So, further, we have virtually *no* experience to draw on with regards to sentient-sentient predator/prey relationships. We've never had to work out the ethics of it in the way we as individuals and as societies have worked out ethical systems regarding real-world situations.
(I say virtually because I guess you could make an argument for human-chimp or human-whale. In those situations I think we have, as predators, done okay at least in terms of where we've ended up, if not in terms of how we got there. We've generally come to an actionable consensus that we as sentient predators should treat other potentially sentient beings with some level of ethical concern. But we've got a lot of choices; we could make that choice easily. What would the ethical responsibilities of the whales or the chimps be to us if all that humans could eat were whale or chimp meat?)
I'm struggling to think of fiction in which the ethical considerations of a sentient-sentient predator/prey relationship, particularly one in which the humans are prey, have even been seriously addressed. All I can think of is stuff like Alien and, uh, Predator--but those are really, *obviously*, not about ethics. "Monsters" that eat humans and want to keep on doing it just aren't presented as something we could ever communicate with or come to terms with; indeed, there's no reason they necessarily should be unless you introduce the humanization option. Or let me rephrase; I'm sure someone's dealt with it, but not that I can remember in any very large-scale, well-known or much-discussed way. The Matrix, maybe? But again, ethics weren't really a big issue there (I think it would have been a better movie if they were. I actually thought the machines' solution was much more ethical than it was presented as.) Usually when a situation begins with a whiff of predator/prey to it, it ends with it turning out to be a mistake (they didn't think we were sentient) or a resolvable situation that can be brought to a close once we've gained enough understanding of each other. The Atlantis writers have written themselves out of that option, really, in making humans the sole Wraith food-source. Which suggests that they have actually done something interesting and moderately unique, though it does not necessarily suggest they're going to handle it well.
Come to think of it, that would suggest that Carson's time would be much better spent genetically engineering viruses that could turn chipmunks into viable Wraith food sources or something. Bad Carson. This is why every ship needs an Ethics Officer.