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ignissa · 6 years

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So I wanted to get your take on something that's been stuck in my head recently about SU. I've seen a good number of people using the PD's zoo as material for pink being a bad person, but the more I think of the time depictions the more I think this is wrong. I keep thinking of it as a snapshot of how the humans were. Like it was their natural environment but without threats. I think this has interesting ramifications on the timeline, specifically in regards to Pearls hunter gatherer remark

Pt2. People I think humans could have grown to be co-dpendent on Gems before the war. Like that was the start of civilization for them. It could explain how we have this sliding scale of culture being referenced and how gems were shown to have left some icons in the culture behind.

If you don’t mind, I think I’ll use this ask as an opportunity to also talk a bit more about what the Zoo actually is.

I should start by saying that I do think the Zoo is perfectly consistent with what we know about Pink. She was clearly fascinated by unusual and novel things (just look at how she interacted with Garnet and how it’s implied she interacted with humans), even though she didn’t understand them. Empathy is based in understanding and respect, but Pink clearly lacked the emotional maturity required for both things - she was never a “bad person” but she was definitely immature and motivated by selfish desires. Regardless, her motivations don’t change how good or bad the zoo actually was.

(On a related note, do you know who does apparently have the emotional maturity to understand and empathise with humans?)

So, exactly how “bad” was the Zoo?

When we talk about the issue of “human zoos” it’s worth acknowledging that they were, in the not-so-distant past, a real thing:

This is Ota Benga, a Mbuti man who was put on display in St. Louis (1904) and at the Bronx Zoo Monkey House (1906). He committed suicide due to depression at the age of 32 when it became clear that he would never return to his native Congo.

Apparently, humans don’t take well to captivity, but once you understand their needs, they’re easy to control. - Holly Blue

During her reign on Earth, Pink Diamond stole humans from their families as trophies of her conquest.- Garnet

Oh no. It was very serious. When I still served… Homeworld, I saw it myself. A private menagerie deep in space. Humans in captivity. We were never able to rescue them. We had no way to get to them after the war.- Pearl

It’s fairly heavily implied that, at the Zoo’s conception, the humans housed there were not having a good time, to say the least. Holly Blue’s words imply that there was a time when they didn’t understand the needs of the humans, and as a result the humans were difficult to control. This, however, clearly happened before she arrived, suggesting that it was under Pink’s guidance that conditions in the human zoo improved. That’s not too surprising either, given the fact that the “solution” that was decided on looks suspiciously like the way Pink/Rose herself would infantilise humans. This suggests, to me at least, that the purpose of the zoo evolved as Pink spent more time on Earth.

What was a little vanity project very quickly became a serious undertaking, likely as Pink realised the true implications of colonisation and saw the effect captivity was having on the humans in her care. It would have only taken a few generations for humans to lose their emotional and sentimental ties to home, and humans are exceptionally good at adapting to new environments. Towards the end of her time as a Diamond, Pink probably justified the Zoo as a way of keeping some of humanity safe from the horrors of colonisation and war. I definitely get the feeling that she saw humans as somewhat interchangeable, especially given that Gems seem to view gem types in a similar way. Add to that Pink/Rose’s lack of respect towards humans in general, and it’s not too surprising that she never thought to return the humans to Earth (even after starting the rebellion for the sake of Earth - we know she was living a double life for quite some time at least) until it was far too late. That’s not to say she didn’t regret it.

Garnet describes the humans as “trophies of conquest”, which is very similar to the plight of people like Ota Benga. I’d bet that these original humans suffered with similar bouts of depression and self-destructive (and from a gem perspective unexplainable) behaviour. The comparitive docility of their modern-day counterparts can be explained away as a result of nurture and a lack of selective pressures - the lack of competition (including sexual competition) and absence of risk would naturally remove any evolutionary advantage from things like predispositions towards aggression and violence. Selective breeding via the “choosening” is another explanation.

It could be argued that Garnet wasn’t privy to all of the details of the Zoo, but Pearl certainly was and her own word choice paints a similar image. The word menagerie has some very specific connotations:

The aristocratic menageries are distinguished from the later zoological gardens since they were founded and owned by aristocrats whose intentions were not primarily of scientific and educational interest. These aristocrats wanted to illustrate their power and wealth, because exotic animals, alive and active, were less common, more difficult to acquire, and more expensive to maintain.

The focus on the exotic can even be seen in the humans that were chosen to live in the Zoo:

We see a whole range of skin, hair and eye colours here, as well as variation in height and build. There is a clear suggestion here that humans weren’t just randomly grabbed from a single community, but were specifically selected to be as diverse and exotic as possible (I mean 6000 years ago the genes for blue eyes, pale skin and light hair were fairly new and rare - they would have really needed to go out of their way to find one of every colour, so to speak). Garnet calls the Zoo “insidious”, meaning “proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with very harmful effects". This implies that the humans were gathered over a fairly long period of time, perhaps even continuing after the beginning of the rebellion.

Was humanity dependent on Gem technology?

The most likely answer is no. We have nothing that suggests this was the case. Beyond the Zoo, gems had no reason to interact with humans at all; going by Aquamarine’s reactions gems don’t seem to have any problem considering humans sentient, they simply don’t value sentience to the same extent we do. I think, with the exception of the rebellion, it’s fairly unlikely that gems ever co-operated with humans in any way. Gem technology wouldn’t have ever been particularly valuable to humanity; their materials are useless unless you can learn to replicate them, the only technology that could have helped humans survive would have been light-years away at the Zoo, and even exploring gem-related locations would have been dangerous. Most gem locations are inaccesible to humans and non-gems don’t seem to be able to operate warp pads.

The only gem tech we’ve even seen humans use are the Replicator Wand (used by Onion) and the Warp Whistle (used by Greg). Now you could certainly make the argument that the Warp Whistle was designed for non-gem use and is therefore evidence of co-operation between gems and humans, except we already know that humans were involved in the rebellion so it doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about the situation between humans and Homeworld gems.

We see examples of gem-related iconography in human culture, so I think if there was any part of human culture that was effected by the presence of gems it would be folklore and mythology. Even then, the only concrete hint we get is in the money (which is extra interesting now we know that it likely depicts Steven’s gemstone), which could be handwaved as a reference to Rose Quartz and whatever involvement she had with the country’s history.

The state of Human Civilisation

All things considered, 6000 years ago really wasn’t that long ago. Humans had already reached more-or-less the same distribution as modern day (with the exception of a few islands) and plenty of early civilisations had moved beyond the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and on to agriculture and organised society.

The official guide places the start of the gem war 5,500 years ago, so the time period we’re looking at is around 3500 BC. The state of human society at the time depends pretty heavily on where you look in the world. For example Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) had already been fairly advanced for about half a century at that point; they had basic writing, mathematics, civil law, knowledge of various sciences (astronomy, hydrology), boats, pottery, the wheel… They were also just entering into the bronze age. The native American inhabitants of the Delmarva Peninsula (presumably the closest real-world equivalent to the area around Beach City), as well as the Koreans, on the other hand, did not generally practice agriculture, didn’t yet create pottery, had no written language (and would continue to not write for several thousand years after that), and lived as hunter-gatherers and nomads.

Indeed, it is a possibility that the gem presence on Earth either accelerated or set back human development, but there are simpler explanations. It’s likely that the hunter-gatherers Pearl refers to are the aforementioned native American and Korean tribes. In any case hunter-gatherers exist to this day in small pockets. Besides, we don’t actually know when Gems first arrived on Earth (and it can be assumed that Pearl was among the first) - Gemkind could have easily had run-ins with humans at much earlier dates, via scouts for example. Things like writing, mathematics, law, science, etc. were developed independently by many different civilisations, so even if one group was set back by dependency, others simply would have eclipsed them in technological development.

#su #su analysis #ask ignissa #justicemode

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