Arise, humanity!, Is the Humanis Policlub all that bad? Options

[Kyoto Kid]

...when you grow up on the "other side", for example, a human in Salem, TT (pre-crash 2.0), you usually end up with a very low opinion of your persecutors. However would this make such a person a racist because, based on their experiences, they have developed a strong distrust of, and dislike for elves?

[FriendoftheDork]

Ah, this is a nice topic. I want to quote 3-4 posts and make my comments and corrections, but that will take ages so instead I'll just post to everyone and noone.

First of all, Mr. Nasser's take on HP is excelent, well written and very realistic. Not only does it show HP can be persuasive, come with arguments that almost sound plausible, but also how normal people not really wanting to beat up orks for fun can still join and support an organization that is essentially racist.

I can think of interesting characters involved with HP without necessarily being "bad", or actually playing racist, assholes, facists etc. without having to see a shrink. After all, we do quite often play bad guys, and this setting lends especially well to it as Shadowrunners are indeed criminals who at times murder innocents for money. And if you go around shooting unaware security guards or even unarmed employees just because they're in the way to get the 1000k nuyen mcguffin, are you any better than people influenced by fear of the unknown to turn to hate and racism?

Communism is IMHO a much better ideology on paper than Facism though. Communism has the values of community, racial tolerance, gender equality, financial equality. The goal is to create a communist state run by the people for the people, where everyone are free, get what they need and give what they can. Now does that sound so bad?

Problem is, no state has ever reached this utopian communist state, and even Soviet didn't dare call themselves that (United Soviet SOCIALIST Republics). According the the bolcehviks they were in a temporary state of the despotism of the majority. It is probably true that the numbers of people dying from purges, starvation and reappropriation in communist states worldwide (or perhaps just USSR) is greater than the death toll of the Facist states.

Facism however is IMHO wrong even on paper. The idea here is that the strong has a right to oppress the weak, and that social darwinism is nature's way of making the human race strong. This ideology does not care about people's rights, but expects individuals to sacrifice themselves to further the people or even the State. The only sympathetic values here could be comraderie among soldiers, nationalistic pride, and elitism.

I liked Starship Troopers, and found it funny that the heroes were members of a facist worlwide superpower - sorta ironic.

[Ryu]

[Buster]

[kzt]

[BishopMcQ]

With luck I will get a much longer post up in a few hours when I get home...but here is my PoV in a nutshell.

Leave racism at the door. The Humanis Policlub can serve as a foil against Orks, Trolls, and the like but that's too easy.

Take the Transhumanist angle and show how Humanis is effectively trying to save Humanity from itself--with the integral argument of humanity and its failure to compete with technological advancement in the cyberpunk genre, a group which tries to distinguish Humans vs Elves can gain a lot more depth with Cyborgs.

Which person has betrayed their humanity more, the elf-poser or the street-sam with .1 essence remaining?

Instead of playing HP as a bunch of ignorant bigots, they can be a foil against the "humans" in your PC group who get implants. Implantation and Cybernetic enhancement can be just as bad as UGE.

[Ranneko]

[Zhan Shi]

From my personal reading of Humanis dogma, most of the HP would be comfortable with cyber/bio implants, at least to a certain degree. What they'd be against would be cyberzombies/cyborgs (for all intents and purposes they are no longer human), "poser" implants (making yourself look like an elf, orc, changeling, etc., except maybe for espionage), transgenic alterations/bioware, and probably symbiotes. Sure, a street sam looking more like a T-800 than a human being would freak out a Humanis member, but it would also make almost everyone else uncomfortable as well.

[FriendoftheDork]

[Kyoto Kid]

[Jack Kain]

Remember groups never refer to themselves as anti- that just to negative.
Pro-White, Pro-Black, Pro-Family Values, Pro-Human, Pro-Christian values
Its a little trick to hide the real meaning, saying your an anti-group just makes you sound negative right from the start but being pro is positive and positive is good.
Its a funny mask

The Humanis group is no different then the KKK its ripped right from history with no attempt to mask it. They mask there anti-metahuman views in the name of protecting humanity. Just as the KKK hides its racism in the idea of protecting whites.

On a similar note to this, look at X-Men?
The entire comic was conceived during the 1960's on the idea of racism, bigotry and prejudice
Humans started evolving and getting superpowers. (which can easily be compared to the awakening in shadowrun)..
So you have groups such as the Friends of Humanity which is EXACTLY like Humanis.

So are the Humanis bad, YES they hate metahumans for no other reason then they are metahumans.


The cyber angle is a bit different and interesting but a key difference is while Humanis would hate metahumans by and large. Many Transhumanist would pity the guy with .1 essence remaining and want to find ways to remove cyberware and restore lost essence. (which is impossible to restore but that doesn't stop anyone from trying to find away).

Some religious groups may reject certain medical procedures even when they are life saving.
Pig heart valves, appendix removal,
A key doctrine of the Jehovah's Witnesses religion forbids blood transfusions. A case happened in Canada in 2005 where a Judge ordered that a 14 year old recovering from cancer undergo the Transfusion.
(she likely would have died after under going all those surgeries and chemo treatments without getting a transfusion).

In this end I'd see them trying to perhaps sabotage cyberware facilities.
hijack a shipment of parts attack cyberdocs and cyberclinics. But runners aren't as likely to run into these types. I don't really see them sending a goon squad to beat up heavily cybered individuals in that type of group.

A group of three or more Humanis goons and easily overwhelm the typical Orc, Elf or Dwarf.
Though the typical Troll may cause them to attack armed or with a couple more guys then normal.

[Zhan Shi]

Some time ago, I was reading a book by a certain historian, but for the life of me I can't remember his name or the title. Anyway, he made an interesting point. Hitler convinced many people that blond, blue eyed aryans were the master race. These people accepted that view, despite the fact that the messenger was niether blond, nor blue eyed, nor (technicaly) even German. The SS was even more incredible. They were suposed to be the purest of the pure, but i've seen pictures of Heydrich. The man looked damn near mongoloid, and he was also part jewish.

[Kingmaker]

Never discount the ability of hopeless people to swallow bullshit if it gives them an opportunity to look on the bright side again.

[Glyph]

I have a hard time seeing Humanis as anti-cyber (although an anti-cyber group would be interesting). They are already anti-meta and anti-magical; I imagine a lot of them would embrace cyberware as a major "equalizer" against enemies that include huge hulking trolls and those evil spellslingers.


Humanis are definitely the bad guys (along with the Tir and the Sons of Sauron), but that doesn't mean they have to be the stock cardboard cutout bad guys. Bad guys have reasons for being bad, and usually have a lot of reasons and justifications they can offer up for their behavior. Not valid ones, of course, but still understandable ones.

And you can introduce ambivalence by having someone who is "good" in other ways, but still racist. Like maybe a razorgirl saves the group by shooting the ork gangers who were about to ambush them. As they are about to thank her, she kicks one of the bodies contemptuously and says something about "dirty trogs". And maybe they learn later that she was brutally attacked, and her younger sister killed, by the Sons of Sauron when she was a child. Which doesn't excuse her attitude in any way, but does give her some depth beyond a generic villain.

[hyzmarca]

The end of skin color racism was very silly, particularly accompanied by the rise of Fantasy Race racism, given that practically every metahuman would have extended relatives of a different race. I must say that it makes sense that in some parts of the world white humans would treat a white troll than they would treat black human.

More importantly, the proximity of the NAN to the UCAS along with tensions from the War, the GGD, and everything, should make Seattle and other boarder areas very inhospitable to the a man with a redish hue, not to mention those places which were directly hit by the GGD. With the ethnic conflicts and ethnic nationalist movements that accompany the extreme balkanization experienced by the Sixth World, the simple dismissal of conventional racism is ludicrous.


Also remember that one of the original big leaders of the violent human supremacy movement was, in fact, a troll. Many saw UGE as a disease, including many of those who goblinized. Humanis may be distrustful of metahumans, but they aren't going to exclude metahumans who hate what they are enough to join them.

[Riley37]

Yes, humans hold a smaller piece of the power pie than they did in 2010, *if* you divide the pie along metatype lines. But that's only one way to draw "us" and "them", and not the best way. That's my main beef with the concept of Humanis: they jump to the conclusion that nonhumans are necessarily unfriendly rivals of humans. Cf. OMFWOG, and by the way, hats off to Knasser for writing that, one of my favorite bits of SR fluff.

If I'm a major stockholder of Ares, my interests align to large extent with any other stockholder of Ares, regardless of their race. When MCT and Renraku back the campaigns of JIS politicians who favor invasion of Silicon Valley, so that they can raid Ares facilities, well, that's a whole bunch of humans whose interests now oppose mine. I'm better off defending Ares turf with allies of all metatypes, than with only fellow human allies.

Take the parable of the Good Samaritan. Cast yourself as the traveller who gets ambushed and left for dead. Who is truly your neighbor: the fellow human who walks past you, or the dwarf who gives you water and carries you to shelter? Oh noes, she's short and not like you! Get over the surface differences, and be glad that *she* doesn't limit her compassion to her own metatype.

Which has the better talent pool options: the Urban Brawl team which only recruits humans, or the one that can also choose the agile elf, the big strong troll/ork, or the indomitable dwarf? Which is the stronger nation: the one that only taps the talents of its blue-eyed blonde citizens, or the polycultural multiracial meritocracy? There's a strong theory that Black civil rights and feminism emerged in the decades after WWII, because America started letting blacks and women out of their narrowly-defined roles in order to tap their efforts in the war effort, and then had a hard time putting all the blacks back into Colored Only zones and putting all the women back into the kitchen, because so many blacks and women had tasted responsibility and accomplishment, and so many of them liked the taste. Maybe someday we'll even have a military that would accept Alexander the Great as a soldier if he were born again in our generation. (He would not pass the heterosexual-only test. Athlete, tactical genius, natural leader, but the Army cares more about the gender of his lover(s) than whether he can lead a successful mission with minimal losses. Feh. If I were a soldier, I'd rather serve in a unit led by an Alexander type, than by a heterosexual who tends to lead the unit into ambushes. But I digress.)

There are a lot of different things that have been called "communist", so usage of the term can become unclear without context. But one saying I like is that communist nations have committed atrocities in betrayal of their stated ideals... while facist nations have committed atrocities in realization of their stated ideals.

As for "Starship Troopers": can anyone cite any line anywhere in Heinlein's book indicating that the narrator's nation has single-party government, oppression of minorities by race or religion, oppression of political dissenters, or any other defining quality of facism? One of the core ideas is making darn sure that voters care about their franchise, and will fight to defend it; as a consequence, I imagine that they don't have the contemporary American dynamic of lots of voters who don't much care and just vote according to whose ads get more air time. I'd imagine that multiparty issues-based democracy is a lot stronger in that setting, than it is in contemporary America.

Finally... I'm with hyzmarca about skin color racism. It's so strong in so many people's minds, that it would not vanish in 2011, especially with the NAN *defining* their ruling caste along racial lines. SR4 BBB also says that sexuality discrimination ends in the Fourth World, and I find that implausible. I personally favor treating sexuality between consenting adults as part of one's personal life and not the business of the State, but still, a) some people disagree really strongly and that doesn't change overnight, and b) there's a difference between couples who have children easily, vs. those who need to adopt or use high tech.

[Fuchs]

A core element of the novel "Starship troopers" that was left out of the movie was that only people who served in the army could vote, but everyone, no matter their abilities, could serve - you had a right to serve in the army, and the army was obligated to find a post for you. The actual example used in the book was (paraphrasing from memory) "if you're blind, deaf and paralysed, and can only move your left hand, then we still have to find a job for you - maybe as a sponge tester".

As far as racism goes, people who shoot others for money or kicks (and how many sociopathic runners do we know?) complaining about racism sounds hypocritical to me.

[Cthulhudreams]

[Mercer]

[Cardul]

[Ranneko]

[Kremlin KOA]

Unsurprising, seriously down here, today if an ork appeared and was born in Oz and spoke the slang. We would have no probs with the cobber
But the Seppo human walking down with the high and mighty vibe? nah his blood aint worth bottlin'

[Yoan]

[kindalas]

[TheOneRonin]