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pappilon wrote:
So... The Detweiller Plan lost its moral compass at the beginning not after generations. That is what I thought I remembered. TY

As far as I can tell, the Detweiler plan never had a moral compass. The morality of genetic engineering is an ongoing and very thorny debate, but I think we can all agree that "take over the universe while forcibly genetically engineering everyone across the board to be (our idea of) a Better Human" doesn't even come close to 'moral'.

roseandheather wrote:

pappilon wrote:
So... The Detweiller Plan lost its moral compass at the beginning not after generations. That is what I thought I remembered. TY

As far as I can tell, the Detweiler plan never had a moral compass. The morality of genetic engineering is an ongoing and very thorny debate, but I think we can all agree that "take over the universe while forcibly genetically engineering everyone across the board to be (our idea of) a Better Human" doesn't even come close to 'moral'.

Of course it had a moral compass. It's the one that points in the direction you want to go anyway.

pappilon wrote:

I apologize f this question has been answered already, or is so obvious from the canon but, When from Leonard to Albrecht was Manpower founded. Because, at least for me, ghe creation od a class of people that were treated as sub-human was when the Master Planwent off the rails.

Eagleeye wrote:
As far as I remember, Leonard itself founded Manpower, Inc., to give the medical establishment of Beowulf a black eye. Textev is either in ToF or in CoG, if I remember correctly.

pappilon wrote:

So... The Detweiller Plan lost its moral compass at the beginning not after generations. That is what I thought I remembered. TY

Not really, although I'll admit ol' Leonard was an interesting shade of gray by the end.

First, Leonard didn't have a thing to do with the creation of the Detweiler Plan. That came out of a later generation of the family, about the time it went officially extinct.

Second, Leonard didn't create genetic slavery. He created genetic indentured servants. The distinction is almost entirely cosmetic, of course, but there is that almost involved, since his position that all indentured servants would eventually "work off" their indentured debt to the people who'd paid to have them created. Moreover, Leonard would never have signed off on deliberately designing slaves for shortened life spans or as pleasure slaves. He was interested in designing workers/colonists tailored to specific types of work and environments (think Lois Bujold's quaddies) or as the (relatively) quick source of a labor force or of colonists. And the real reason he did it wasn't because he had a yen to create a subhuman class. In fact, all of the "genetic indentured servants" with whom he was involved represented what could be legitimately classified as improvements on the original genotypes.

What he was doing was venting his frustration and bitter hatred for the Beowulfan cretins who had rejected the possibility of human improvement, hounded him and those who thought like him off of Beowulf, classified them as some sort of Mengele-style monsters, and pretty much ruined their lives. He was royally pissed, and this represented a way for him to fund the continuation of his work (since he was adding improvements to suit his clients' needs) and to put his thumb squarely into Beowulf's supercilious, moralistic, overbearing, idiotic eye.

Was there all sorts of room for the slide into something a lot worse in that? Hell, yes there was! But he was angry --- soul-deep, sick-at-heart, Old Testament angry --- at the stupidity which was preventing him from making so many trillions of lives so much better. The fact that what he was doing after his emigration to Mesa would almost inevitably lead to exactly the sorts of consequences the Code's supporters had feared might be produced by his much more benign pre-emigration position bounced off the armor of that anger without even scuffing the paint. But it would be untrue to say that he ever had even the faintest suspicion that something like the Detweiler Plan would be named in his "honor" long after his death, and he would have been horrified for it. He passed on the anger and the bitterness that created the Plan; he would never have signed onto it himself, no matter how fervently he might have endorsed its avowed ultimate purpose.

Manpower began its slide into true degeneracy only after his death, when he was no longer there to control the board of directors, and the Detweiler Plan evolved only after Manpower had already become pretty much what it is today. The founders of the plan weren't involved with it at all, and it was left to their successors to take a still further step into expediency and embrace it. Even they didn't create it, of course; they simply incorporated Manpower into their strategy as one more weapon in their arsenal and systematically blocked any internal efforts to "reform" its excesses because of the cover it provided and the access and tools for manipulation it gave them. Which, of course, only makes their moral bankruptcy even more evident in oh so many ways.


(And I think I got the right quotes attributed to the right author. If I didn't, guys, I apologize!)

runsforcelery wrote:

pappilon wrote:

I apologize f this question has been answered already, or is so obvious from the canon but, When from Leonard to Albrecht was Manpower founded. Because, at least for me, ghe creation od a class of people that were treated as sub-human was when the Master Planwent off the rails.

Eagleeye wrote:
As far as I remember, Leonard itself founded Manpower, Inc., to give the medical establishment of Beowulf a black eye. Textev is either in ToF or in CoG, if I remember correctly.

pappilon wrote:

So... The Detweiller Plan lost its moral compass at the beginning not after generations. That is what I thought I remembered. TY

Not really, although I'll admit ol' Leonard was an interesting shade of gray by the end.

First, Leonard didn't have a thing to do with the creation of the Detweiler Plan. That came out of a later generation of the family, about the time it went officially extinct.

Second, Leonard didn't create genetic slavery. He created genetic indentured servants. The distinction is almost entirely cosmetic, of course, but there is that almost involved, since his position that all indentured servants would eventually "work off" their indentured debt to the people who'd paid to have them created. Moreover, Leonard would never have signed off on deliberately designing slaves for shortened life spans or as pleasure slaves. He was interested in designing workers/colonists tailored to specific types of work and environments (think Lois Bujold's quaddies) or as the (relatively) quick source of a labor force or of colonists. And the real reason he did it wasn't because he had a yen to create a subhuman class. In fact, all of the "genetic indentured servants" with whom he was involved represented what could be legitimately classified as improvements on the original genotypes.

What he was doing was venting his frustration and bitter hatred for the Beowulfan cretins who had rejected the possibility of human improvement, hounded him and those who thought like him off of Beowulf, classified them as some sort of Mengele-style monsters, and pretty much ruined their lives. He was royally pissed, and this represented a way for him to fund the continuation of his work (since he was adding improvements to suit his clients' needs) and to put his thumb squarely into Beowulf's supercilious, moralistic, overbearing, idiotic eye.

Was there all sorts of room for the slide into something a lot worse in that? Hell, yes there was! But he was angry --- soul-deep, sick-at-heart, Old Testament angry --- at the stupidity which was preventing him from making so many trillions of lives so much better. The fact that what he was doing after his emigration to Mesa would almost inevitably lead to exactly the sorts of consequences the Code's supporters had feared might be produced by his much more benign pre-emigration position bounced off the armor of that anger without even scuffing the paint. But it would be untrue to say that he ever had even the faintest suspicion that something like the Detweiler Plan would be named in his "honor" long after his death, and he would have been horrified for it. He passed on the anger and the bitterness that created the Plan; he would never have signed onto it himself, no matter how fervently he might have endorsed its avowed ultimate purpose.

Manpower began its slide into true degeneracy only after his death, when he was no longer there to control the board of directors, and the Detweiler Plan evolved only after Manpower had already become pretty much what it is today. The founders of the plan weren't involved with it at all, and it was left to their successors to take a still further step into expediency and embrace it. Even they didn't create it, of course; they simply incorporated Manpower into their strategy as one more weapon in their arsenal and systematically blocked any internal efforts to "reform" its excesses because of the cover it provided and the access and tools for manipulation it gave them. Which, of course, only makes their moral bankruptcy even more evident in oh so many ways.


(And I think I got the right quotes attributed to the right author. If I didn't, guys, I apologize!)

runsforcelery wrote:[H]e would never have signed onto it himself, no matter how fervently he might have endorsed its avowed ultimate purpose.

Oh. Ok,it's much clearer now. ... Thanks?

Thanks RFC. We true believers are getting a true picture all the time.
I wonder if the whole genetic engineering question though is getting close to "How long is a piece of string, as you pull it from one end it gets shorter at the other?". Honor is stronger and faster but would starve when we normals would just lose weight. Each improvement would come with a cost, and the generalists may well prevail anyway.

runsforcelery wrote:Not really, although I'll admit ol' Leonard was an interesting shade of gray by the end.

First, Leonard didn't have a thing to do with the creation of the Detweiler Plan. That came out of a later generation of the family, about the time it went officially extinct.

Second, Leonard didn't create genetic slavery. He created genetic indentured servants. The distinction is almost entirely cosmetic, of course, but there is that almost involved, since his position that all indentured servants would eventually "work off" their indentured debt to the people who'd paid to have them created. Moreover, Leonard would never have signed off on deliberately designing slaves for shortened life spans or as pleasure slaves. He was interested in designing workers/colonists tailored to specific types of work and environments (think Lois Bujold's quaddies) or as the (relatively) quick source of a labor force or of colonists. And the real reason he did it wasn't because he had a yen to create a subhuman class. In fact, all of the "genetic indentured servants" with whom he was involved represented what could be legitimately classified as improvements on the original genotypes.

What he was doing was venting his frustration and bitter hatred for the Beowulfan cretins who had rejected the possibility of human improvement, hounded him and those who thought like him off of Beowulf, classified them as some sort of Mengele-style monsters, and pretty much ruined their lives. He was royally pissed, and this represented a way for him to fund the continuation of his work (since he was adding improvements to suit his clients' needs) and to put his thumb squarely into Beowulf's supercilious, moralistic, overbearing, idiotic eye.

See, that's what I find so nuts about all of this.

If I'd been Detweiler, the gene modded ones would have had twice the votes of the mere "normals". "You idiot normals are the lesser, I'm making better humans, and I'll celebrate that by giving them more rights than everyone else!"

That's how my anger would have gone.

runsforcelery wrote:I will guarantee you that you've seen at least one Alpha who is positively brilliant and extremely deadly, although I will leave the aforesaid Alpha's identity a bit of a mystery for the moment. Be interesting to see if anyone can identify the person I'm thinking about.

Dammit, I *LIKE* Thandi, don't do that to me.

Matt

Mobryan wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:I will guarantee you that you've seen at least one Alpha who is positively brilliant and extremely deadly, although I will leave the aforesaid Alpha's identity a bit of a mystery for the moment. Be interesting to see if anyone can identify the person I'm thinking about.

Dammit, I *LIKE* Thandi, don't do that to me.

Matt

Thandi is not an alpha line. She was born on a heavy world planet that did all sorts of weird stuff with mods that nothing to do with Mesa.

Don

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n7axw wrote:
Thandi is not an alpha line. She was born on a heavy world planet that did all sorts of weird stuff with mods that nothing to do with Mesa.

Don

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What better way to hide being a genetic superwoman, than to live openly as a different genetic superwoman. She is highly intelligent, indisputably deadly, and has a habit of being in places or situations where the Alignment has either direct or indirect interests. (Maya, Torch, even on Mesa itself.)It's even arguable that she was serving Alignment interests directly when she jumpstarted the Mesan revolution. At that point, the MA had or was in the process of abandoning the planet, and chaos and destruction there only serves to muddy the waters and make them harder to track.

Even with the way the MA's plans have gone pearshaped, remember her original career path was the Solarian Marines. With her built in advantages, and a backstory that allows and encourages her to make public use of them, she could have become a very highly placed Marine and very useful to the Alignment under it's regular schedule.


Not saying that it's her, but I think a case can be made.

(Twist to the twist: Could Thandi be the first Alpha line to defect from the Mesan Alignment??? Love conquers all...)

73, Don.

Matt

Oh, NO! The Star Line descendent is Lester! I hope he is a broken branch MAlign descendent, but who knows. Ok, if it's him, he wouldn't know. Still, it's Lester!