(no subject)

I have a weird annoyance with the idea that humans are special in SFF for their boldness of spirit or whatever. They are the boldest, the most resilient, the most noble! In Mass Effect, it's their "genetic diversity."

Humanity suffered a population bottleneck that has left us with four major lineages. For the amount of time we've been on this planet, we are an incredibly non-diverse species as compared to others. We are the only example of our genus-- of our subspecies (some anthropologists believe we're not just Homo sapiens but Homo sapiens sapiens, because some earlier hominids may have also been Homo sapiens just... not us). We're not like cheetahs, which have such little genetic diversity that a case of the sniffles could wipe out the entire population, but as far as genetic diversity goes, we're a bunch of inbred cousins poised on the precipice of an epidemic or climate change. Yeah, we're adaptable. We're good survivors. This is because we're sapient tool-users, not due to some innate biology.

The idea that humans are the most diverse species in the galaxy means that the other sapient races are facing down eradication at every turn. This year's outbreak of influenza? BAM! There goes an entire civilization. Like colony collapse among honey bees, the Tasmanian devil's contagious facial cancer, the bats being wiped out by a fungus-- all what happens when you don't have enough genetic diversity.

That's just the scientific problem. I see it a lot in fantasy with elves. "Humans are so adaptable, not like us old sticks in the mud!" Really? Really? Elves usually have magic and floating cities or other grand floaty architecture if they're living in trees, and you expect me to believe that elves didn't adapt? That Elfus erectus was putting up tree houses and zinging spells around before they had language? Yeah yeah, it's fantasy and elves didn't evolve. Whatever. I would think a society with grand magic would be way more adaptable than humans in the face of catastrophe-- in case of an earthquake I'll take the floating city above standing in a doorway any day (this ties in with my "magic is technology! Treat it like a technological innovation!" rant which I'm sure other people have touched on more eloquently than I could).

If you have a sapient tool-user, chances are, they have most of the same quality humans have. And the more abstract the tool-use, the more adaptable they are: see bonobos versus sea otters. And on that score, humans are definitely not the most noble of possible other races. That honor would have to go to the bonobo, which domesticated itself and solves its problems with peace and love instead of murder. The very idea that we're the most noble is, frankly, depressing. There are studies that show that people are much nicer than we give ourselves credit for, but that niceness exists on a visceral level. The more abstract things get (as they would inevitably become in space) the more heartless we become.

Granted, a nebulous quality like "nobility" isn't something that can be quantified like genetic diversity, so it's just this grumble in the back of my head regarding world-building. I think it all mostly annoys me because it's an excuse to completely homogenize whatever other you're discussing, be they elves or aliens. They are all the same, they lack the spark of humanity. And that's just lazy.