Are the aliens really "wrong"?

[saw93]

So in the beginning i thought they were absolutly and uterly WRONG for takeing earth. Expecially after reading about how they caught Melony. Of coarse I felt that way, im human. But then as i read and understood wanda and how nice the souls were in nature it made me think. Do the humans really disearve this planet? We are full of violence and we are killing this planet that gives us life. But by the end of the book i was just as conflicted as wonderer i wanted a way to make both sides happy because both were wrong and right in thier own way.

[Seeker-Mar]

This scene made my stomach hurt. Not only did the Souls force the humans they were occuping to have sex with each other (rape) they then kidnapped their biological child, who will never know it's real parents.

How could Aliens who do this kind of thing be right?

Well, the humans aren't exactly "there" anymore. Only their bodies remain, so it's not actually rape. And seeing as the bodies now belong to the souls, they are the biological parents. The "real" parents (ie the humans) don't exist anymore. You are looking at this in a very warped sense of light.

i agree with that, you really are looking this in a twisted way.....i LOVED that scene it was sooooooooo sweet.

I'm not trying to start an argument so please don't take it that way but I think you are both the ones taking this in a sick and twisted way. How is what the aliens are doing any different than if someone were to attack a man and woman and put them both in a coma. While they were in the coma they wouldn't be "there" correct? Then this person uses the man's sperm to inseminate the unconsciousness woman then takes the baby after nine months.

If a human did this it would be considered a heinous crime. So how can you justify the aliens doing the exact same thing except the alien's crimes are worse since the humans have almost no hope of waking up once the aliens have taken their bodies. Now you can add murder to the aliens crimes of rape and kidnapping.

The aliens stole these peoples bodies. Anything they do in them is a violation. Raising their human child as the alien's own is one of the sickest things the aliens could do and I lost any respect I had for Wanda after reading that scene.

[Twilight<3]

Well, the aliens have no choice. If a man were to do this out of his own free will, it would be sick and wrong. However, the aliens are on a whole new playing field. They don’t abide by the same laws we do, and their morals are completely different considering their circumstances. They cannot survive outside of the body so, like any parasite, they find a home. When parasites infest our bodies, we don’t think they are breaking some “moral law.” It’s how they survive and it’s survival of the fittest. The aliens were clearly just more “fit” than the humans.

Morals are so subjective, and with the aliens in the picture, it’s hard to really see what’s right and what’s wrong. From a human’s point of view, it may be “wrong” and from an alien, “right.” But looking at it as a bigger picture, it’s just how the world works in this book and what they did was not “wrong.” Plus, the aliens are giving the humans a second chance. Human’s had a tendency to be extremely violent, but rose under aliens, they could be different. So, in my opinion, it’s nice that they are giving humans a second chance.

Oh, and the aliens are not committing murder. It is the only way they can survive. They don’t have a choice. True, they could simply cease to exist and kill themselves all off but that would be absurd. You can’t ask a species to do that. Not to mention, they don’t think it is wrong because it’s all they know. It's what they are supposed to do, and they truly are creating a more peaceful society and world.

[alphanubilus]

In many ways the "Souls" of Host remind me of Carl Marx's Communist Manifesto. The Souls create a utopian society, that is "beneficial" for everyone (for them really), but in the end human freedom is sacrificed. Like the communists they subplant religion for their own ideologies, they limit the flow of information to that which is only considered viable for the growth of society, this is apparent in their newspapers, their tv programming ect. ect... and they do what they can to mask even the slightest threat. The problem is, it comes at a terrible cost... as I said, freedom. The Soul's found though that humanity weren't just benine beasts, but sentient beings who's own personal wills could alter the very fabric of their own beings. We see this with the Seeker, of whom was literally being tortured into a murderous shrew by Lacey. Wanderer herself had feelings of murderous desire (while tempered) through Melonie. The longer the Souls inhabited older humans, the more human like they became... We saw that Souls were capable of violence (the Seeker)... They were capable of deception... through Wanderer... they could feel grief, pain, loneliness... In short their Utopian Society is already destined to fall apart, just as any Communist society, because it doesn't factor in human nature.

Are the Souls right or wrong? The question and the answer is subjective, however we have to take into consideration a few things. Unlike most parasites we have on earth, such as bacteria, mosquitos, flat worms... ect... ect.. The Souls are quite sentient and already have an understanding of what is right or wrong. When you look at their previous worlds, they inhabited creatures, like plants (the Sea Weeds) and other sublevel animals. Most weren't sentient. The Spiders actually welcomed their existence. We aren't told about the feelings of the Bears and such, but by Wanderer's own admission, Earth was the first world, where they inhabited creatures with such strong emotions.

The Souls, when they came to Earth, didn't come to find coexistence, nor did they try. They sought to wipe out the entire human race, by making us... them. Yes it was for survival, but in truth it isn't any different than we bringing wolves to the bring of extinction for our own good. Wolves and men are competitors in many ways. We have the same needs, but does that give us a right to kill every last one? Obviously no...

When the Souls became aware that these human hosts were just as sentient as they were. They should have stopped and sought peaceful means of coexistence. Wanderer realized this at the end.

[Ina EssBe]

Twilight<3 wrote:

Morals are so subjective, and with the aliens in the picture, it’s hard to really see what’s right and what’s wrong. From a human’s point of view, it may be “wrong” and from an alien, “right.”

...I agree here: human morals cannot be applied to aliens just like it's impossible to apply our morals to lions, sharks, etc. They don't work on the same principals - the souls trully believed that humans were lower inteligence creatures, just like we believe the animals are. So to souls, people were violent and cruel, undeserving of this planet, therefore by invading the Earth souls were making it better.

Besides, humanity has committed so many horrible acts in the name of good, that I don't think we're in a position to condemn souls.

alphanubilus wrote:

When the Souls became aware that these human hosts were just as sentient as they were. They should have stopped and sought peaceful means of coexistence. Wanderer realized this at the end.

...I don't believe humans would have allowed a pieceful co-existance with the aliens: we can hardly manage that amongst ourselves...

Has anybody considered a notion that maybe souls were affected by human hosts more than any one of them knew; esp. those of resistant humans? Humans are so complicated, so I wonder, if the properties of the hosts altered the way the souls reacted to events/circumstances, making their behaviour increasingly resemble human - thus such a cold and calculating determination to eliminate every single uninvaded person remaining... being driven by a goal is a very human characteristic. This sort of simbiosis cannot be just one sided, i.e. souls having total control of the body and the body having no control in reverse. Melanie and Wanderer were a perfect example... Maybe souls' minds had become 'invaded' by humans even without them realising it, i.e. they had become more cruel, selfish, emotional and attached to things they saw important?

Ina

[VolturiGirl]

I think the souls are oblivious to the fact that in creating a better world they destroyed one. A little hypocritical.

You hit the nail on the head. That is excactly the right answer. The souls had concored how ever many planets they did, took over the minds of their hosts and tried to make that world a better place. Was it right for them to take over Earth? No! Think about it: if you were an alien and lets say you watchd earth news and read earth newspapers. You would see a lot of violance (the war going on now, the trade center, evil papparazzi...)you would think that this world is bad. Wanda saw that you cannot judge everyone for all the violance that's happening. A person might be bad but most people are good.

[Oh-Marvelous-Things]

Has anybody considered a notion that maybe souls were affected by human hosts more than any one of them knew; esp. those of resistant humans? Humans are so complicated, so I wonder, if the properties of the hosts altered the way the souls reacted to events/circumstances, making their behaviour increasingly resemble human - thus such a cold and calculating determination to eliminate every single uninvaded person remaining... being driven by a goal is a very human characteristic. This sort of simbiosis cannot be just one sided, i.e. souls having total control of the body and the body having no control in reverse. Melanie and Wanderer were a perfect example... Maybe souls' minds had become 'invaded' by humans even without them realising it, i.e. they had become more cruel, selfish, emotional and attached to things they saw important?

Ina

That is such a cool idea! I had never thought about it like that before. Being implanted into a resistant human really influenced the 'personality' of the soul, and that soul's viewpoint about the invasion. For example, after Wanderer had been re-implanted into Pet's body, she still retained the emotional ties that she had created while in Mel's body (like her maternal attachment to Jamie, and her romantic love towards Ian.) They stayed with her because they had become part of who she was. On the other end of the spectrum, the Seeker's host, Lacey, was really irritating, impatient, and selfish. Having that constant negative 'voice' in her head really made the Seeker act in ways that Wanderer felt were very strange for souls to behave (being pushy, annoying, bossy, etc.). I wonder if the Seeker will still have those traits when she wakes up on the planet of the Flowers?

[corona]

I know I'm coming to this thread very late in the game, but I'm going to make a few comments anyway, seeing as how the movie is supposed to start production next year.

First, my general sentiments echo those of alphanubilus. Utopian societies wipe out free will. Where free will exists there will always be evil, but also much good. Wiping out billions of human souls may have made things "better" in some ways, but it only made it better for the Souls. Unfortunately, most humans are no longer around to appreciate how much "better" things got.

Questions of "right" and "wrong" and trying to discern what the true intentions of these aliens are just don't have the same impact when you are literally talking about the survival of our species. I thought the initial reaction to Wanderer by Jeb's group was spot on. I even sympathized with Kyle and his murderous intentions towards her. It would be extraordinarily difficult trying to empathize with a Soul as an individual when their species has nearly wiped yours out and the responsibility for saving all of human civilization is pressing down on you. I didn't appreciate what Kyle did at all, but I can sympathize with what I see as an underlying fear that everyone is being duped by this alien and that the consequences for making the wrong call on her are far too high to take any risk at all.

So, from our perspective, of course they were wrong. From their perspective, no they weren't. The whole trick is to get them to see things as we see them, to recognize that we already have souls of our own. As kind of a Soul as Wanda is, she had to be forced to see this by Mel. Some of the Souls will begin to recognize this naturally once they become parents and have purely human children of their own.


And, by the way:

life stops, no, it changes, the underlying element of life, is life itself, which flows eternal, into water, and new forms. that is life, that is creation, it is how creation is progressive, because without it it would be created(life), which is also. creation continues because of the nature of death of change. the perception of destruction, is a term that is a tool, used to better our lives to allow the values of creation to be superimposed over elements we wish to evolve. therfor destruction is creation's evolution, the choice is individual placement. letting go of past negative values, harmful values, the 'harmful' itself, is the true use of destruction. i dont want to get biblical here. - - + .. competition, betterment, doubt.

why the harsh tones today? because i tire of lies. lies lies lies. self imposed lies. responsiblity. i enjoy jokes, humour and such, but tire of lies, and yet reality is a lie, im waiting for my paradox backlash. or quiet.

That was beautiful, it made everything suddenly so clear. Thank you.