The Politics of Cybertron

[grahamthomson]

How does the politics of Cybertron work?

We've seen glimpses in the Marvel comics and annuals. The Autobots and Decepticons have "High Councils" and Straxus was a "Governor". Even Rumble was an advocate of democracy.

Any thoughts or theories?

[Grand Moff Muffin]

How would democracy work, when each individual could be made up of multiple other individuals, and also become a component of larger individuals, with cerebral circuits merging and splitting? And if you made multiple copies of your mind, would each copy get to vote?

Martin

[legios]

Apr 27, 2010 17:14:44 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

How would democracy work, when each individual could be made up of multiple other individuals, and also become a component of larger individuals, with cerebral circuits merging and splitting? And if you made multiple copies of your mind, would each copy get to vote?

That is an interesting question. It gets into the issue of defining what is an individual, and what an individual identity means. If you have a single mobile physical shell in which multiple conciousness are running does that count as one individual or is each component conciousness separate?

I'm not sure that representative democracy (as we know it today) was necessarily common on Cybertron. I suspect that the various city states had different internal political structures - some might have been meritocracies, some "service equals Citizenship" structures, some dictatorships, maybe some who are effectively monarchies who build their leaders to order, some Athenian style participative democracies, some representative democracies, some Free Market Oligarchies and so an and so forth.

I always felt that the High Council was selected from either all or some of the City-States with the various eligible states all decided who they would send in different ways appropriate to their own internal structures. With the Council itself operating on a sort of slightly creaky consensus decision-making model.

At least, that is how I figured that it operated in the run up to the Great War anyway. (After that I figure that the military bureacracies grew into every available niche and civilian government atrophied and vanished).

The Governer title for Straxus always made me think of Military Governers in post-occupation 1940's France - in place to ensure that production targets were met and resistance was suppressed.

But that is just my slightly random thoughts on the matter anyway.

(edit - I would also say that, in answer to the initial question "How does the politics of Cybertron work?", the answer is probably - badly, given that they eventuall were forced towards the pursuit of "politics by other means" on a global scale)

Karl

[charlesrocketboy]

We know the Overlords ruled the entire planet, and there was an upper-class aristocracy (see Mirage's backstory). We also know the city-states had their own local governments and were becoming increasingly autonomous, and they appear to have different styles of leadership (Iacon has a council, Tarn has Shockwave, Vos is a criminal cabal with a figurehead).

So it basically appears to be a constitutional monarchy with numerous local governments. We also know the city-states were focused on their own interests over the planet as a whole, with lots of rising tensions, so we can assume that the global decisions were made by Overlords; with them marginalised, there was no structure in place for global thinking and decisions.

During the war, the Autobots unified into a planetary government, seemingly composed of elders: that'd make it authoritarian, possibly an oligarchy since the elders all know each other and have common interests.

The Autobot army, at least, is partially democratic: post-Afterdeath, a new leader is chosen via vote; the Crisis Act allows for leaders to be stripped of command by complaints from the ranks.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Apr 29, 2010 16:35:30 GMT charlesrocketboy said:

We know the Overlords ruled the entire planet, and there was an upper-class aristocracy (see Mirage's backstory). We also know the city-states had their own local governments and were becoming increasingly autonomous, and they appear to have different styles of leadership (Iacon has a council, Tarn has Shockwave, Vos is a criminal cabal with a figurehead).

So it basically appears to be a constitutional monarchy with numerous local governments. We also know the city-states were focused on their own interests over the planet as a whole, with lots of rising tensions, so we can assume that the global decisions were made by Overlords; with them marginalised, there was no structure in place for global thinking and decisions.

During the war, the Autobots unified into a planetary government, seemingly composed of elders: that'd make it authoritarian, possibly an oligarchy since the elders all know each other and have common interests.

The Autobot army, at least, is partially democratic: post-Afterdeath, a new leader is chosen via vote; the Crisis Act allows for leaders to be stripped of command by complaints from the ranks.

That's all true... but rather boring, in that _we_ have all that stuff on _our_ planet.

What aspects of Cybertronian politics might be unique and different, given they are a different sort of life (i.e. sentient machines)?

Already mentioned the complication that might arise from merging and splitting of minds, in terms of a voting system.

Here's another thought - what about a system restore point?

You know how in our politics, opposition parties always say how they would have done things differently and made a better job of it, and wouldn't have made the same mistakes as those in power. Well, with a self-contained planet run by sentient computers, there's the possibility that they could test that literally, by setting a planet-wide restore point, so that when one Overlord has well and truly buggered up their society, they can trigger a system restore and return the planet to its previous state, re-boot everyone and start again with a different person in charge.

OK, there are a lot of details I'm fuzzy on, but it's something to ponder...

Martin

[charlesrocketboy]

Apr 29, 2010 17:59:34 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

That's all true... but rather boring, in that _we_ have all that stuff on _our_ planet.

Well, according to the writers for Marvel, they have it on their planet too. (Though wait, armies running along democratic lines during wartime is on our planet? Where?)

when one Overlord has well and truly buggered up their society, they can trigger a system restore and return the planet to its previous state

I doubt they could reboot all the physical changes and any depletion of resources. That'd be a toughie. (And State Games established Cybertron was running low on resources IIRC)

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Apr 29, 2010 19:25:51 GMT charlesrocketboy said:

(Though wait, armies running along democratic lines during wartime is on our planet? Where?)

Ancient Athens.

I doubt they could reboot all the physical changes and any depletion of resources. That'd be a toughie.

I know.

But I still like to think that for _most_ of Cybertronian history, everything, including politics, was much more alien and sentient-computery than we ever saw in Marvel. With 'State Games', etc., we only got to see what things were like in the last few years leading up to the war. There could have been millions of years of stable, and very weird, machine society prior to that unstable era.

Suppose Cybertron was overpopulated at one stage, for example. On Earth, you know the sorts of debates we get, about the ethics of restrictions on reproduction and immigration, ageing populations, etc. On Cybertron we're talking about a very different sort of life-form. Ignoring G2 for sake of argument, only the holder of the Creation Matrix can give life, so he can regulate the number of new Autobots coming on-line. Autobots live indefinitely, Autobots can live outside their bodies inside computer environments, Autobots can down-size to more fuel-efficient forms, Autobots can switch themselves off for any period of time and then switch on again. If Cybertron had to radically reduce its energy consumption, the majority of the population could switch off their bodies and live virtual (and virtually energy-free) lives in computer simulations. So think of the fascinating debates that would take place on that planet, so different from ours, if some of these measures became necessary for the planet to survive!

Martin

[primenova]

We really need a comic to show this - we've had it touched on in the past. Like of Shockwave, Starscream having their own cities. But it is quickly covered over to have Megatron leading.

[blueshift]

Apr 30, 2010 11:46:15 GMT primenova said:

We really need a comic to show this - we've had it touched on in the past. Like of Shockwave, Starscream having their own cities. But it is quickly covered over to have Megatron leading.

Well, G100 should sate some of your desires :v

[dyrl]

Well - in practice, from everything the comics and cartoons have shown us, Cybertron politics are ultimately the politics of Might. Whoever is better in battle rules.

And for all intents and purposes - this translates into most of Cybertron being chaotic and war torn.

It's like asking about politics in Afghanistan. The "central" government in Kabul effectively runs a couple of buildings - not the whole country. And the country itself is not so much a country as a number of tribes with complex internal ruling structures.

Most of it is "no man's land" where there is chaos and effective gang war.

This is pretty much the state of Cybertron through out most of its' history

Martin brings up very interesting points - and I agree that it would be refreshing for the stories to focus on such questions rather than on transforming robots blowing themselves up.

But that would demand that Transformers aspire to being science fiction rather than a toy commercial.

Pete

[charlesrocketboy]

May 1, 2010 11:03:40 GMT dyrl said:

Well - in practice, from everything the comics and cartoons have shown us, Cybertron politics are ultimately the politics of Might. Whoever is better in battle rules.

So Cybertron's pretty fascistic then?

(There is a pretty worrying subtext to civilian governments nearly always being incompetent against Decepticons, corrupt, or both. I think TF Animated is the only one that didn't do that, where the High Council are blunt in their frustration with and contempt for Sentinel Prime's bad leadership)

[dyrl]

Actually - that's a good point. Transformers does pretty much argue that peaceful civilian democracies need to step aside and be ruled by strongmen in order to deal with "evil Decepticons"

But

It ALSO seems to point to the result of that way of thinking - namely the total destruction of everything presumably worth fighting for and the reduction of the entire planet into a battle field...

Again - I think it would be interesting if Transformers lived up to its' Science Fiction designation and explored themes that Martin has brought up rather than giving us the old tired "we were attacked and needed a strong leader and he came and we fought back" rah rah rah

This is why I liked stories like Matrix Quest - anything that took the burden off of the "war as a whole"

Of course, then a giant planet eating monster showed up.... just going to show that they're always looking for a bigger fight

But still...

Oh...

And aren't we ignoring Beast Wars?

To me - BW was very well done - politicaly speaking - because it was just a band of rogues with very little real impact (until the Agenda at least)....

And the Pax Cybertronia seemed to be working well.

Pete

[charlesrocketboy]

May 2, 2010 6:54:01 GMT dyrl said:

Transformers does pretty much argue that peaceful civilian democracies need to step aside and be ruled by strongmen in order to deal with "evil Decepticons"

But

It ALSO seems to point to the result of that way of thinking - namely the total destruction of everything presumably worth fighting for and the reduction of the entire planet into a battle field...

Nobody seems to have thought through the implications of what they were writing here, have they?

To me - BW was very well done - politicaly speaking - because it was just a band of rogues with very little real impact (until the Agenda at least)....

And the Pax Cybertronia seemed to be working well.

Well, the show indicated the Pax works great for the Maximals but the Predacons are sick of it. Which is pretty realistic since it was the Autobots/Maximals who won and then set the terms. We can't write off all the Preds as just being dicks either, since Maximals like Rattrap show outright bigotry towards them.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

It also shouldn't be forgotten that the Transformers are all programmed by a single creator, Primus (regardless of whether we believe his and Unicron's god back-story, or reckon they have other more humble origins), so in one sense all their apparently contradictory wills could be in line with Primus' will. It has been suggested that Primus _deliberately_ programmed the Cybertronians to come into conflict with each other in order to advance in military might and create a powerful empire to stand against Unicron, something that peace-loving Cybertronians could not do. The observation that the Creation Matrix in the comics always seemed to manage to create roughly equal numbers of Autobots and Decepticons on Earth supports this view.

So although the TFs may _think_ they are disagreeing with each other, they could all be acting their intended role as laid down by the one controlling will. (Or two wills, if Unicron's minions influence events.)

Until of course an element is introduced that is not part of Primus' programming, namely humans and Nebulans, who can observe Cybertronian politics and religion as outsiders and start pointing out what's going on to the Autobots and Decepticons and introducing them to new concepts, thus enabling them to think more for themselves.

Martin

[charlesrocketboy]

May 2, 2010 14:41:17 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

It has been suggested that Primus _deliberately_ programmed the Cybertronians to come into conflict with each other in order to advance in military might and create a powerful empire to stand against Unicron, something that peace-loving Cybertronians could not do.

Which kinda implies the Autobots - especially the more peaceful, "we must preserve all of Earth even the trees" ones - have come out wrong, the programming's been corrupted at some point.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

May 2, 2010 18:05:24 GMT charlesrocketboy said:

Which kinda implies the Autobots - especially the more peaceful, "we must preserve all of Earth even the trees" ones - have come out wrong, the programming's been corrupted at some point.

Not necessarily. That may just be part of the programmed difference between Autobots and Decepticons intended to keep them disagreeing and fighting one another - and advancing their military technology. Or maybe you're right, Primus never intended the Ark to survive crashing on Earth, and everything that followed was a corruption from Primus' point of view - though not from the point of view of a higher form of ethics than Primus'. At any rate, the contact between Autobots and humans led to a set of thoughts going through their computer brains that would not have gone through them had they remained in the Primus-programmed bubble of no friendly contact with aliens.

Martin