Send Someone Else?

Could the harm done by the Jesuit parties have been stopped if another group had been sent instead? This is the question we found ourselves asking after finishing Children of God. Although the sequel ended much better than The Sparrow, the fact remains that the entire Jana'ata species was almost wiped out by the Runa and their society has been drastically and irrevocably changed. So the question remains, could anyone else have done things differently? I voiced my opinion in class and it has not changed. I believe that any interaction with another species will cause changes in both societies because of the simple nature of discovering something completely new. We saw clearly in Todorov's book the effects of the Europeans' interactions with Native Americans. Even two human cultures cannot meet for the first time without effecting some long-term consequences--whether good or bad.

Furthermore, even if the Rakhat party had not been exceedingly religious, basic human morality goes beyond religion. I say this because I think that the turning point of the whole expedition is when Sophia attempts to save the Runa children from being killed and eaten by the Jana'ata. Her reaction is not thought-out, it is her instinct to try to protect the children of a group that they have lived with and come to love. Even if Sophia was replaced by a scientist who thinks rationally and impartially, I believe it would have been very difficult for this person to simply watch children they know get killed. The only I can see things going any differently is if the party had not lived with the Runa for such a period of time and had tried harder to separate themselves from the Rakhati cultures. Even then, some change would have been inevitable, but maybe it would not have been as extreme.

And extreme is certainly what it was. Sophia took something that could have been a simple rebellion for freedom and made it into a genocide. This is because she projected all of her own experiences of oppression onto the Runa and the Jana'ata. As someone pointed out in class, she made the Runa into Jews and the Jana'ata into Nazis. Although Aaron makes a good point in his post about whether intervention is right or not, this is not exceedingly relevant in Sophia's case. She turns moral intervention into a war that is meant to make up for all the wrongs made against herself and her people. It goes past when it is acceptable to intervene into the territory of how far can one wronged woman go?