Forgive me for going back to Speaker et al. but it was something that came to mind today. There's an argument in Xenocide and Children of the Mind over whether the descolada is raman or varelse, mainly because of the discovery that it actually possesses some form of communication through molecular transmission. One of the frightening parts of this argument, however, is that if the descolada is a terraforming device (there is evidence of this) and it changed the way piggies lived, what did it do to their intelligence? When the pequeninos fight wars, and build forests, are they doing it for their own reasons or for the descolada's reasons: Lusitania's temperature control? The conclusion, one of the conclusions, rather, is that if we start to view the piggies as merely a product of the control of another species, we have to look the same way at ourselves. Technically speaking, some things like mitochondria were once entirely separate organisms. We're a product of our own biological processes, but if we let those eclipse every other factor in our lives and behaviors we leave no room for choice, and therefore no accountability.
We kept going back and forth about the bons in class. About whether or not they were still human, having been under such control of the Hippae. And while the Hippae seem to be actively controlling them, we do get evidence (for example, with Sylvan) that they're not entirely under their control. There must have been a time before the almost-Pavlovian obsession with the Hunt was deeply ingrained, a time when we as a species could have stepped away from this. But we didn't. We can talk about the bons being Hippae-puppets but they're still making moral choices. And they should be held accountable for them.
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I agree with Morgan that the bons are to some degree responsible for their actions. This is not because they were not under the control of the hippae, but because they let the hippae control them. As adolesecents and young adults the bons knew what was coming and could feel the effects of the hippae starting to control them the firt time they went hunting. Yet rather than fight back they simply go with the flow. The excuse of "I was following orders" cannot be used when you know an action is wrong and you have a chance to impede the one who gives the order. Run, fight back or go for aid, but do something. To let oneself be willingly dominated by an evil power is just as reprehensible as standing by while a violent crime is being commited.
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