Death before dishonour

[Darth Wong]

Why is it that so many Trekkies actually believe in this "death before dishonour" bullshit? Do you realize how FEW people throughout history have chosen this option when confronted with it? Oh sure, lots of people TALK. But when push comes to shove, people (REAL people, not two-dimensional cartoon people) usually choose dishonour before death.

In Star Wars vs Star Trek, I'm constantly amazed at the number of tactics drudged up by Trekkies that, if they don't work (and possibly even if they do), result in Imperial fury the likes of which you have never seen, and 150 radioactive slag-worlds that were once called the Federation. Who would risk such stupidity?

When people see a hopeless situation, they usually surrender. They do not bet their lives, the lives of their families, and the lives of every man, woman and child in their home nation on a nickel, a prayer, and a half-baked idea, particularly when they would probably be well-treated after surrendering (life under the Empire is not like life under, say, the Borg).

[The Yosemite Bear]

So true

[Enlightenment]

IMO any trekkie that made that argument with regard to fighting the Federation must be dumber than a cardboard box; for all the reasons Wong specified.

Now, if the Empire was fighting Klingons or the Interstellar Alliance, on the other hand, that would be different....

[Patrick Degan]

When people see a hopeless situation, they usually surrender. They do not bet their lives, the lives of their families, and the lives of every man, woman and child in their home nation on a nickel, a prayer, and a half-baked idea, particularly when they would probably be well-treated after surrendering (life under the Empire is not like life under, say, the Borg).

What's worse is that any government determined to stupidly throw away the lives of its citizens is likely going to be overthrown in a revolution and wind up on the wrong end of a firing squad. And there's the inevitable faction in the government or military who'd rather turn Vichy and have some measure of power in the New Order than wind up among the heroic dead.

Brutal reality.

[Sea Skimmer]

Ignore my above post, I put it on the wrong damn board.
Deleted~Mr Bean

[Darth Yoshi]

Besides, "he who runs away shall live to fight another day." Surrender, and you might live long enough to pull off an insurrection. Outright resistance will just get you killed, and the dead can't fight.

[Stormtrooper THX-1138]

Personally, I don't think that anyone who says that the Federation would fight to the last man has a very firm grip on reality.Human nature just doesn't work that way.

I think its interesting to wonder, though : just exactly how stiff would the Klingon resistance be? Is their talk of valuing an honorable death in battle above all things just talk?

[Darth Wong]

Personally, I don't think that anyone who says that the Federation would fight to the last man has a very firm grip on reality.Human nature just doesn't work that way.

I think its interesting to wonder, though : just exactly how stiff would the Klingon resistance be? Is their talk of valuing an honorable death in battle above all things just talk?

It's just talk. They negotiated peace with the Federation in ST6. No, check that: they came crawling on their hands and knees to the Federation to ask for mercy while they rebuilt their homeworld economy.

Dishonour before economic ruin: the secret Klingon creed.

[tharkûn]

Why would you fight on in the place of inevitable odds?

Religion, brainwashing, revenge, misinformation, stupidity, etc.

The big thing with most of these long shot odds is that you can *deny* them. Send the troops out with cyanide capsules hope for the best and be about the 4th person to call them barbarous savages when it fails.

The question I don't get is why so many people stay in the empire. You have gangsters running whole planets. An emporer who churns out yet another devastating superweapon of the weak which kills by the billion. I'd long ago have made tracks out of the galaxy (at hyperspace speeds I'd be in yet another galaxy in several years). When the going gets untenable ... the smart ones get their asses running.

[Darth Wong]

Why would you fight on in the place of inevitable odds?

Religion, brainwashing, revenge, misinformation, stupidity, etc.

The big thing with most of these long shot odds is that you can *deny* them. Send the troops out with cyanide capsules hope for the best and be about the 4th person to call them barbarous savages when it fails.

Easier said than done. Even Osama had to hide the true nature of the mission from some of his terrorists. More Japanese kamikaze pilots died trying to ditch their planes in the ocean or turn around and land than ramming into American ships (that's why they didn't teach them how to land). Taliban surrendered in droves when the Americans started kicking their asses. The vast majority of people will simply NOT do what you suggest. Look beneath the surface, beneath the stereotypes and propaganda. Humans are still humans.

The question I don't get is why so many people stay in the empire. You have gangsters running whole planets. An emporer who churns out yet another devastating superweapon of the weak which kills by the billion. I'd long ago have made tracks out of the galaxy (at hyperspace speeds I'd be in yet another galaxy in several years). When the going gets untenable ... the smart ones get their asses running.

Planets loyal to the Empire were well-treated. Why run, just because the Emperor is smashing rebel forces? Since you're not part of the rebellion, it's not your concern, is it? People tend to think in terms of local, provincial interests. Are all of your social thoughts this superficial?

[The Yosemite Bear]

Personally, I don't think that anyone who says that the Federation would fight to the last man has a very firm grip on reality.Human nature just doesn't work that way.

I think its interesting to wonder, though : just exactly how stiff would the Klingon resistance be? Is their talk of valuing an honorable death in battle above all things just talk?

Not unless you are a handful of Spartans just TRYING to slow down an ARMY of Persains. Even then it was the walls of wood and the massacare at the plains that won the day afte that bit. Besides there is no way that the feds could do anything like that, unless the had a known choack point, and even then as we have seen with DS9 and wolf 359 the last stand would more resemble Little Big Horn then it would "The Gates of Fire"

[Ender]

The question I don't get is why so many people stay in the empire. You have gangsters running whole planets.

Who have been ruling for millenia. It's just how things are done in that part of space and the locals are used to it by now.

An emporer who churns out yet another devastating superweapon of the weak which kills by the billion.

And when those atrocities and weapons came to light, people threw their support behind the rebellion, some supported it, and some cowered in fear like Wong said.

I'd long ago have made tracks out of the galaxy (at hyperspace speeds I'd be in yet another galaxy in several years). When the going gets untenable ... the smart ones get their asses running.

1) Suppossedly you cannot leave the SW galaxy. However it appears you might be able to circumvent that by traveling in RS instead of Hyperspace to exit and then high tailing it. That is just a theory though, so far only the Vong have crossed the galactic threshold.
2) Most peopke cannot buy a ship, much less a ship capable of supporting life that long to cross between galaxies, map the new galaxy, find a habitable world, and then rebuild a society there with all the things you are used to from scratch.
3) Some people did flee, but they went to small colonies in the OR where the Empire had no real reach yet, not other galaxies.

[Master of Ossus]

Some Trekkies I've talked to on the board actually think that human nature has changed substantially during the years between now and the times depicted in ST. I have always laughed at how incredibly stupid their arguments were, but they seemed to damn adamant about the whole thing. Some of them are willing to twist absolutely anything, so long as it gives ST a slight edge (not that it would help, but they try anyway).

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

In real life, I think the motive for people to fight to the death instead of surrender is really desperation instead of honour.

Besides, what is the definition of 'honour', anyway? A glorious death in glorious battle? I think the Klingons have a sick, twisted version of 'honour'.

[Wicked Pilot]

If your commanding officer is of the death before dishonor category, you had better ask for a transfer quick.

[Enlightenment]

They negotiated peace with the Federation in ST6. No, check that: they came crawling on their hands and knees to the Federation to ask for mercy while they rebuilt their homeworld economy.

Dishonour before economic ruin: the secret Klingon creed.

Aye. But that was before the Klingon Empire suffered a tragic infestation of the brain eating pestis bermanis parasite ('brain bug') and were reduced from a proud empire to a mere tribe of space vikings.

[neoolong]

Naw, space vikings would have been cool. Vikings actually had a pretty complex culture. It wasn't just raping and pillaging all the time. Not like the insane, suicidal, and one-dimensional Klingons we all know today. Also, you would think that if they were that dumb about throwing their lives away, they would have become extinct because of their stupidity. By the way, why the heck do Klingons have the bumpy foreheads in Enterprise when they didn't have them in TOS, and then they have them in later series? I mean c'mon even B&B should have caught that one. Unless I'm underestimating the power of their ignorance.

[Vympel]

I think everyone remembers the infamous DS9 copout on that issue

[CmdrWilkens]

Why is it that so many Trekkies actually believe in this "death before dishonour" bullshit? Do you realize how FEW people throughout history have chosen this option when confronted with it? Oh sure, lots of people TALK. But when push comes to shove, people (REAL people, not two-dimensional cartoon people) usually choose dishonour before death.

In Star Wars vs Star Trek, I'm constantly amazed at the number of tactics drudged up by Trekkies that, if they don't work (and possibly even if they do), result in Imperial fury the likes of which you have never seen, and 150 radioactive slag-worlds that were once called the Federation. Who would risk such stupidity?

When people see a hopeless situation, they usually surrender. They do not bet their lives, the lives of their families, and the lives of every man, woman and child in their home nation on a nickel, a prayer, and a half-baked idea, particularly when they would probably be well-treated after surrendering (life under the Empire is not like life under, say, the Borg).

Part of it, I think, is the distance most peopel even today retain from the way war really works. I've been pretty far away by almost any standard but I've still been closer than probably half of the population of this globe and I can tell you that little bit closer is enough to scare you.

That's the big difference, sitting in our houses and internet cafes or even halls of legislature it can often be very hard to imagine what war is really about. certainly we can sit here and reason about how many lives would be lost and families destroyed by such actions but here we don't see the dead bodies. Here, just talking, yyou can actually claim things like principals are worth the shedding of blood and not have second thoughts about it. yes principals and ideals and many things are worth dying for but people often fail to comprehend just how disastrous that dying is and without realizing it they don't include themselves into the equation. people who think they will never see combat delude themselves into thinking war is only about destroying factories and enemy troops, that computer programmers and retail store workers don't get killed. People remove some of the human elemnt from all their considerations and then weigh numbers against ideals.

Actually being able to understand the aspect of human nature that makes us stop fighting for those ideals requires people understand the horrors of losing a war. Americans espcially ahve never really felt this, certainly not in the last hundred years. We have become, as a nation, complacently unaware of what happens when you fight for ideals and we've forgotten that there is always a snapping point at which ideals no longer are worth the deaths. Basically peole don't know war so they can only judge it by their own limitations and self-denial.

[Patrick Degan]

Everything you mention is little different from the Days of Empire, in which young men were gulled into seeking the grand adventure of war and people to cheer them on as they march forth from the village of their birth to the battlefield. Every culture in every time has found some way to end up ignoring the messy realities of war and instead celebrating it with grand festival, pomp and circumstance. Whether it's the mythology of the heroic soldier or the writings of Hemmingway or listening to some Klingon idiot on TV rant about the Glorious Honour of Death in Noble Battle blah blah blahblahblah... Invariably, it all depends upon people not really knowing what a messy, horrible, bloody business war truly is.

[Shadow]

The empire is ruled by a dictator, and highly racist. Citizens of a democratic government might wish to be killed, rather than be abused by an oppresive government.

[Patrick Degan]

The empire is ruled by a dictator, and highly racist. Citizens of a democratic government might wish to be killed, rather than be abused by an oppresive government.

I would remind you that the citizens of democratic Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Holland, and France largely chose to surrender when the Nazis rolled over them. They certainly chose dishonour and abuse by an oppressive government over death for a principle. The brutal reality is that the willingness to fight and die for the Sacred Cause is proportional to its chances to actually prevail on the battlefield.

[Shadow]

I would remind you that the citizens of democratic Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Holland, and France largely chose to surrender when the Nazis rolled over them. They certainly chose dishonour and abuse by an oppressive government over death for a principle. The brutal reality is that the willingness to fight and die for the Sacred Cause is proportional to its chances to actually prevail on the battlefield.

The Federation is more willing to fight oppresors than these nations. An example wouold be the Maquis. They fought until there were almost none left. This would be likely to happen throughout the Federation if the the empire invaded.

[Patrick Degan]

The Federation is more willing to fight oppresors than these nations.

Those nations surrendered because they had no fucking chance to win and their people knew it. The first rule of survival is pragmatism.

An example wouold be the Maquis. They fought until there were almost none left.

The Maquis were fanatics and eventually crushed out of existence —by the Federation and the Dominion. Most of the colonists in the DMZ acquiesced themselves to the Treaty, however, or surrendered when the Dominion overran their spaces.

This would be likely to happen throughout the Federation if the the empire invaded.

Ah, just like the Betazeds did during the Dominion War, I suppose. Oh, that's right, they surrendered to the Dominion when they overran their planet.

Bang goes that theory...

[Shadow]

Those nations surrendered because they had no fucking chance to win and their people knew it. The first rule of survival is pragmatism.

Some species in Star Trek would fight to the last man. These include the Dominion, and the Borg.

The Maquis were fanatics and eventually crushed out of existence —by the Federation and the Dominion. Most of the colonists in the DMZ acquiesced themselves to the Treaty, however, or surrendered when the Dominion overran their spaces.

The Maquis were widely sympathized with througought Starfleet and the Federation. It was never said what happened in the DMZ.

Ah, just like the Betazeds did during the Dominion War, I suppose. Oh, that's right, they surrendered to the Dominion when they overran their planet.

The betazoids are a peaceful telepathic people. A planet of another more aggresive people would have fought to the ast man as thye maquis did.