Macross and culture: Why you can’t force one’s opinions or religious affiliations onto someone else

Or Why do people sometimes don’t want to see from my point of view.

ALRIGHT, CUE G GUNDAM OP

UNCUE G GUNDAM OP

There are a hundred things so very wrong with including G Gundam into what is essentially a Macross post, but eh. There’s a ton of things that’s about to go very wrong in the show by episode 33.

There’s the fact that Hikaru now has 2 women who want him (Misa and MINMAY), Minmay realizing that Kaifun is a massive dickbutt who’s becoming more pronounced in his visceral hate over the military (and yes, letting the PRIME OBJECTIVE of the terrorists stay where it is IS considered a RETARDED strategy, no matter what one says), and well, CULTURE SHOCK does not work on the enemy anymore (Seeing Quamjin kiss Lap’lamiz and showing Kaifun whatfor has never been this satisfying).

There’s also the pile of awesome when Hikaru realizes that Misa OBVIOUSLY has feelings for him and Minmay, who pretty much redeems herself by stopping Kaifun from being a bigger dickbutt (WHEN WILL YOU BREAK UP, MINMAY, HE’S GONNA KICK YOU NEXT).

But I’m kinda losing the point here.

There are rare moments where everything clicks into place and then you learn something new from the experience.  That point was in episode 32 (or 33, memory’s fuzzy) where Minmay’s singing stops working and Kaifun’s impassioned (and annoying) speech about peace falls on deaf ears.

Quamjin haughtily mentions that the same trick won’t work on him again. Same trick being Minmay’s singing and the culture shock thing the Earthlings use against rogue Zentraedi. He then proceeds to “make culture” by making out with Lap’lamiz after Kaifun fails miserably.

For those of you in the audience who think that you can make a race “more cultured” by importing culture, you’re in for the worst possible shock. Quamjin proves that you can expose people to a different way of living, and that for some of them, the old ways are a lot better.

Let’s put this quandry in perspective of the show by then. A bunch of unhappy Zentraedi are rioting on Earth because they don’t like working for their keep. Remember that these people were originally warmongers and knew nothing of peace. (Which leads to a lot of mechanical breakdowns that even MORE COURAGE can’t fix. No Guy, if you can’t maintain your super robot well enough, MORE COURAGE won’t fix it.) The Earthlings hoped that through exposure to Earth culture, or PROTOCULTURE in the Zentraedi lexicon, they’d lose their warmongering ways and settle down peacefully, which most of them do. There’s still the violent minority that refuse to do so, however, and it is this violent minority that forces the New UN Spacy to increase defensive spending.

What strikes me as odd and illuminating is that even exposure to a better way of living (or the truth) can’t change some people, and that people have to make a decision to either stay as they are or acknowledge that they might have been wrong and may have to adopt to the new way. And that forcing it down their throats (like Kaifun, who does it all the time with varying results) is pretty much a good way to make enemies.

So then, how should one go see this? Well, in my opinion, culture here is like a gateway one can enter. The gate may look very nice, or may have visions pleasing to the eye, or other things, but ultimately, it’s your decision to step into the gate. It’s hard to swallow that there will be people who will disagree with you, but that’s their problem. You’ve already done a lot by showing them the way, whether they choose to follow or not is another matter altogether.

And now I think I lost my point. But the point isn’t religious in nature, even though it helps.