Femina wrote: ↑1 year ago
shevek wrote: ↑1 year ago
Femina wrote: ↑1 year ago
I mean it's incredulous that the engineers would be the lowest class of citizen when they are actually the people most responsible for existence to even be possible. IT is sort of the 'god emperor' of the Silo (Metaphorically speaking) regardless of the 'professed' societal structure of the Silo... but as the Silo is essentially a microcosm of an entire WORLD... and there's only one group of people who control the core (aka the literal beating heart of that world) THOSE people would have to be the only ones who could realistically rise in power to become the 'god emperors' and wouldn't be the bum hole of the social hierarchy as they are in the show. The story simply is choosing to rely on what feels 'true' to us viewers relevant to how jobs and societies structure works on our planet, but it's not a true representation of how society would HAVE to work in a fully realized depiction of a Silo society. The truest concept of Silo society would be one where the people at the BOTTOM are in charge, because at any moment they hold the power to end civilization as we know it at the flip of a switch. There's no realistic power structure imaginable that can hope to have the kind of authoritarian stranglehold over the Silo as the show's leaders are depicted having WITHOUT also having total control over the core themselves. In this sense, we have to allow that the show is at least marginally 'metaphorical' similar perhaps in how you can't actually watch 'Snowpiercer' and take it at face value.
I'm going to have to disagree. I think in considering the role of the mechanicals so much, you're drastically under-emphasizing the importance of the Pact in this world. The Pact is referred to *constantly* in the story in both Seasons 1 and 2.
It is essentially a political text which attains religious importance in the population's adhesion to its strictures, like Chairman Mao's little red book.
In fact, the Silo is pretty similar to Maoist China (except for the diversity casting) in that you would *think* that the specialized workers (whose skills cannot easily be replaced or replicated) would have all the power (because that, in fact, is what Communism preaches) and yet it is the Party Apparatchiks at the top who control everything, scheming and intriguing amongst themselves as they jockey for power, all the while constantly citing chapter and verse from their little red book to keep the populace in line.
My thinking is that the Pact would, realistically, necessitate that Engineers be treated as a venerated class of citizen for it to ever have had any chance or hope of actually succeeding. I mean consider that the pact ALREADY venerates IT the way it does in a 'secritive' sense, making IT the real shadow overlords... but why IT and not Engineers? I mean don't get me wrong, IT is important... but not as important as the Core, which if it stops spinning means everyone dies. Most of my theories about the show have the pact existing as meticulously and all encompassing as it does specifically to prevent a situation in which the vault door is EVER opened before the world is somehow made save to live in. I DON'T in any way think ANYTHING about the pact is power mongering or maliciously authoritarian. I think that conceptually to the show, the pact exists as it does because an enormous think tank of the most brilliant minds of a dying earth tried to set up an outline method to house the last of humanity in these Silo's... and tried to imagine any sorts of trials and tribulations, be they external incursions, psychological phenomena etc. that would threaten humanity... and that yes, most of the problems that result in everyone dead are just eventualities that no amount of foresight could ever have prevented.. but in NO situation that I consider the universe set up the way it is, can I fathom a pact that would realistically ignore the IMPERATIVE that the core never. ever. EVER. stop running, so for this reason I have to suspend my disbelief that the Silo wouldn't venerate it's engineers.
Now we could always find down the line that the pact is all BS and meant orchestrated to give power to a certain class over others just 'cause'... or that IT somehow SEIZED control over Engineering and that's one of the things that's been lost and IT's just covering it up... but I would be devastated to see the show fall to such banal nonsense after doing things so well for so long... in which case it would all make sense... but in the Siloverse as it's currently set up, taking the show in as smart and believable a way as it's generally been running, it will always feel to me that they've sacrificed a smidge of realism for the metaphor to better resonate with people's every day livelihood.
Understood, but I'm not sure you got the sense of what I meant when I was talking about The Pact.
I don't think the Pact is prioritizing one class over another - for example, IT over Engineer.
Again, I think the Pact is very similar to, and perhaps patterned after, the Little Red Book and its aphorisms.
The purpose and intent of Maoism and Communism was to create a great Levelling (in fact, that's what the philosophy was originally called in England before Marx: the Levellers) where all the specialized industrial and agricultural classes were essentially regarded as equal contributors to the nation, and where the elected 'chairmen' were of the people and for the people.
That was the purpose. The practice is very different in the sense that real Communism cannot actually exist on a large scale, not even on a scale of a society of 10,000 people. I doubt there was any kibbutz or kolkhoz that was even that big?. (The only exception has been Rojava, and we've seen that precious experiment is only as strong as the invading Turkish army who could wipe it out within a few months.)
What actually happens is that you get a class of bureaucrats at the top who accrue power and are then entrenched, and then they begin to squabble amongst themselves rather than act as one for the good of the community.
The principles of The Pact try to prevent this from happening, but they really can't.
So what you wind up with, almost no matter what, is a situation where the IT apparatchiks at the top lord over the mechanical workers at the bottom. Theoretically, the mechanicals could then go on strike if their rights aren't respected, but in reality what happens is that the bureaucrats send down a repressive army (the Raiders) to force them back in line.
None of what you see in Silo is reinventing the wheel in any way whatsoever - the plot replicates what happens when you implement a system which on its surface seems egalitarian and mutually beneficial but in practice becomes authoritarian and oppressive because of human nature.
On another note, why doesn't the Silo have freight elevators? If its architects can design a spiral staircase which winds around a central shaft for more than 100 levels, then why isn't there simply a lever-and-pulley system in the middle of that shaft?
