Would you want to be a borg?
I wrote this as a joke in another thread but now I want to know what others think.
The Borg are fictional alien race from the television show Star Trek. This race is composed of thousands of different species all mentally networked together so that they function as a single unit. The network allows their individual bodies to become mere tools to do the will of the collective. Each individual mind is accounted for though and they get to live in a dream like state flowing along with every other mind.
They can imagine themselves frying an omelet simultaneously along with millions of other thoughts and memories all at the same time. They’re flying in space ships and invading planets and assimilating innocents the universe over all while having a nice cup of tea, saving damsels from fire breathing dragons and surfing the waves on Jupiter.
So, my question is… would it really be that bad to be a Borg?
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36 Answers
I liken that whole tube-to-the-neck assimilation bit to sex. Sign me up. I’d love to convert people!
I do like the idea of not having to think. If everything you do is essentially collectively decided upon, then my arduous day planning would cease to exist, and that is welcome any time. Plus, I’m into the whole cyberpunk thing, and a drill popping out of your eye would definitely be the shiz!
you could even virtually experience that drill popping your eye out several times per day if you wanted to!
A tube to the eye?
EVEN BETTER!!
Ew, no thanks! I was thinking about this once and with all that equipment, how could they shower? The Borg collective must smell pretty bad!!!
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you could just imagine it smells like roses.
you could imagine away all your problems.
LIKE ONE BIG FRAT PARTY!!!!
@MarbleHost,do tell what you mean, here.
[I’m a wee bit confuzed, and that’s making me feel insecure… (a demonstration of not borg-ness) ]
also… its cool and all that you don’t know this, but HTML doesn’t work. Use the notation at the bottom of the compose textfield, or just paste the link. Fluther backend will style it for you…
I don’t know, do Borg’s have sex? I would definately miss sex…
This would be a definitive NO for me. Like you said in your question’s details, people are assimilated into a collective and that alone would mean that I’m giving up my individuality and uniqueness and that is unacceptable.
Living in the dream like state would not be the same as being in the here and now. I don’t think there would be any good substitutes for the actual experiences that people enjoy in the real world.
I knew it, no sex. Forget it then. I resist!!!
Sure there’s sex. If its mechanical, it’s game.
Gosh! Just because Gene Rodenberrry (sp?) didn’t put it on TV doesn’t mean dildos didn’t exist.
Hmm. That might explain some of those mechanical attachments…
Plus, the ships are made out of the same things as the bolt-ons… Possibilities!
THINK POSITIVE PEOPLE!
bluefreedom: “I don’t think there would be any good substitutes for the actual experiences that people enjoy in the real world.”
who said anything about substitutes. I’m talking upgrade!
You’re barely living in the “real world” as it is!
Your 5 senses take in data, feed it to your brain and then you base your decisions on what your mind happens to believe is going on outside of itself. Often times, we’re wrong and we end up stubbing our toe or tripping over the cat or eating food we’re allergic to. Our virtual experience is hardly accurate as is!
In the Borg/Matrix reality, you get to experience everything you can imagine, better than you can imagine and better than you can possibly experience it in the limited physical universe. You don’t just look at lions on a safari you can become one! You can feel happy, you can feel sad, you can do anything your mind can conceive and know anything there is to know.
What makes “the real world” better than this?
What a silly question! Of course we all want to be Borg! Isn’t that what we are doing here anyway? Without all the typing and reading.
Awesome, ckinyc. I agree we’re totally linked in already. We can access other minds without having to talk anymore. We can take what we like of their thoughts and benefit ourselves while they sleep. Hmm.. and everything is someone’s thought too.. every color choice and graphic.. we’re sharing the same mind experience. The communication’s just way slower and limited by privacy and stuff.
Great question @ninjacolin.
I will admit the temptation of becoming Borg (remember, there is no a borg, there is just the Borg collective) is high. Their technological skills are amazing simply because of being a mishmash of tech from many species in the galaxy. The knowledge they must have is mindblowingly expansive. And the fact that the drone is essentially immortal (this is a bit of an assumption here – I’m basing this on the fact that you don’t see old geezer drones. However since they do have maturation chambers for maturing children into becoming full Borg, perhaps the drones do age, if so I suppose the Borg simply dispose of the geezers once they are no longer useful. Regardless of the body, the mind and thoughts will stay alive in the collective forever, so that’s immortality of a sort.) is a big draw.
But ultimately, I would not want to be a part of the Borg collective. You pay a price in exchange for the above listed things, and that price is your individuality. You are no longer you but a drone with a position (Seven of Nine, tertiary adjunct to Unimatrix Zero One and I didn’t have to look that up!) instead of a name, mundane missions and objectives instead of your own life goals. And there’s the whole Borg purpose too: the Borg’s purpose is to assimilate everything – what happens after that? These themes were touched a bit in the Voyager episode “The Omega Directive”, where Seven finds the most valuable Borg item, one of the better Voyager episodes in my opinion. And of course, the whole destroying other species doesn’t sit well with me (devil’s advocate, do the Borg really destroy a species? The species becomes a part of them and the species’ culture and knowledge are passed down forever…)
Is it really the case that you lose individuality? Is it much different from modern day citizenship to a country? Every country operates as individual entity. But a country’s actions are determined by the collective minds inside each democracy.
I always got the impression that the Borg operated as some sort of “hyper-democracy” not really anything actually evil or souless as per se.
No no, they’re absolute drones. They cease to exist as one person. They lose their name and gain a designation based on their working hierarchy. They are linked with the collective intelligence (effectively uploading their memories and downloading ones deemed relevant) and process/give orders in a top-down fashion. When they are not working, they are recharging and do not go into a dream state save for Unimatrix Zero, check it out on Memory Alpha. They cannot pursue hobbies. They do not engage in romance nor form social relationships (such things would be irrelevant). You are no longer an individual as far as I define individuality (life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness is a simple guide which fails in this case). How do you define individuality? Certainly the thoughts of the smaller drones will go back up the pipleline, thus the drones themselves are not mindless… it’s just their entire purpose is now working on the ship, or assimilating creatures, or researching tediously. Perhaps there is a security in being a part of the collective, but I certainly would not call that being happy.
I wouldn’t consider the Borg to be a hyper democracy. The Queen pretty much is the only sentient creature who has any tangible say in what goes on, save for the few rogue drones here and there. Sure, even the smallest drone can look and speak and let the Queen know, but that drone doesn’t have a “desire” or “thought” to express even if there WAS a democracy. They have no will. They exist solely to fulfill the Queen’s desire, with a few underlying rules about assimilation. They are drones as much as a bumblebee is a drone.
I see the Borg as a technological form of demon possession; one has no say in ones own life, its all dictated to them from the hive mentality, directed by the Queen.
Techno-possession in a society of Socialist-like parameters.
I will not adapt to service such a Collective!
I did however long ago write my very own Star Trek story, and in it the Captain of the starship challenged the Borg King (yes, I said King) to develop a collective that is at the same time, a unified collective, but still retaining individuality on some significant level.
that wouldn’t be TOO bad, I spose! ; D
Hells to the naw.
Unless my name is Seven of Nine.
you couldn’t be Seven of Nine. She’s Seven of Nine.
musings: Imagine if a leader of a country had access to all the knowledge and wisdom of each and every citizen before making a decision.
@poofandmook – Would the Borg queen not have replaced Seven of Nine’s position in Unimatrix Zero One, when Seven was severed from the hive? There would also be other Seven of Nines elsewhere on the cube and likely on other cubes, just not the tertiary adjunct to U01.
Anything about the drones are just “details”. I AM isolated when I am tapping on the iPhone accessing data from the collective. I could go on for hours way past anyone’s bedtime. I usually don’t drink nor eat anything during these hours. I guess my point is when your mind is gone (somewhere). You rarely care about anything around you.
The question is: would the Borg want to assimilate you?
@Zen: I will never get tired of seeing Jean-Luc in Fluther.
@poofandmook Then I’ll wear this avatar a little longer, just for you.
I would love to be Borg, because I think the whole assimilation process would be cool. And assimilating people sounds fun.
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