Question about the wraith

[vonbismarck]

Hello, I was wondering, from a philosophical point of a view, are the wraith really bad? As far as I know, they are only feeding on people to live. I don't believe they torture, kill for the pleasure of it or do anything else that is really bad. I do believe that consider us below them and just food. But look at it this way, imagine if cows all of a sudden developed our level of intelligence. The cows would think the same way of us as we do the wraith. Don't get me wrong, if someone came to me and said that they had to eat my family members, I would tell them things that are not appropriatefor this site.

[captain keys]

as far as i can tell there worse than the gould and they do torcher use by feeding on use trust me, wraith bad, human good

[Hatcheter]

Hello, I was wondering, from a philosophical point of a view, are the wraith really bad? As far as I know, they are only feeding on people to live. I don't believe they torture, kill for the pleasure of it or do anything else that is really bad. I do believe that consider us below them and just food. But look at it this way, imagine if cows all of a sudden developed our level of intelligence. The cows would think the same way of us as we do the wraith. Don't get me wrong, if someone came to me and said that they had to eat my family members, I would tell them things that are not appropriatefor this site.

reposting and old response of mine on this topic:

Have you ever read Orson Scott Card's Ender series? There's a very important concept that applies to the Stargate universe, the Hierarchy of Alienness:

Utlannings - strangers from one's own world.

Framlings - strangers of one's own species but from a different world. Telya and Jonas Quinn would both be framlings.

Ramen - strangers of another species but capable of communication and peaceful coexistence. Asgard, Goa'uld/Tok'ra, Jaffa, Ancients, etc.

Varelse - an alien species incapable of peaceful coexistence.

The Wraith are varelse; they are so alien that coexistance is impossible. It's not a matter of decency or morality. Unless the Wraith learn to feed on something other than humans, it is a biological imperative that one species must kill the other in order to survive.

[vonbismarck]

Do you consider it torture when people eat animals live, as many people throughout the world do? We are just food to them, animals if you will that is only here for them to feed on. Everything they do from the feeding to the hunting staged hunting (i.e. with Rex) is the same that we do with animals.

[archeer]

the wraith is considered the ultimate consumer. they have no regards for sentient beings. us humans have high respect for sentient life. we cannot destroy a civilization that is sentient. we try to find ways to co-exist.

[veneticuss]

by the way, we see that the wraith can eat normal food ;] and also

Spoiler:

that wraith woman in instict surely does not eat humans ;]

[captain keys]

no i do not consider it mean or vile that ppl around the world eat things alive cause humans are the only specis that is selfaware(meaning we no that we will die)so those animals die but they dont no that they are dieing its inhumane to eat the animal alive but not many cultures do that

[Ouroboros]

I can't see them as evil for wanting to survive. I don't consider voluntary suicide for their entire species in the name of preserving ours to be a reasonable expectation to make of them.

Also they do seem to go somewhat out of their way to reduce their impact on their human prey. Their long hibernations and the fact that all their humans live "free range" as opposed to in farms or some other industrialized means of processing them as food can be taken as evidence that they're not being half as cruel in the name of expediency as they could be.

Like I've said before with their hibernations it would be possible for a human to be born, live and die, without ever seeing a Wraith or experiencing any pain at the hands of one. The same can not be said for feed cattle.

[Ses]

Can we say for sure that animals don't know they are going to die?
I've seen a few animals look terrified as my car hurtles toward them.... (I never hit them! lol)

[captain keys]

yes animals ar not selfaware its been proven and as for that car thing there scared of the object not what they think will come afterwords

and for that farm thing the wraith kull humans and put them in stacies +there
suposed to be the bad guys they shouldnt have a friendly face put on the wraith there suposed to be evil

[MarshAngel]

The Wraith are pretty nasty guys if only for this reason. While human beings do cage animals they certainly don't keep them in a state of semi-consciousness where they know they're going to die, know and understand in fine detail what's going to happen to them and are fully aware enough of their own weakness and inability to help themselves.

We also can't communicate with our food, understand their desire to live and pursue happines, fight for their lives, and determine to eat them anyway. We don't inject them with our own DNA to make them taste better. And most people on Earth have an eversion to eating bipedal species even the notably less intelligent ones.

I personally don't like eating cute animals. The Wraith obviously don't have the same reservation because we humans are damn cute.....welll some of us anyway.

[J_B]

Define Bad! In 'Runner' they couldn't feed on Dex, So they implanted a tracker in his back & hunted him like an animal for 7 years. He was always forced to go on the run, the one time he did stop over at the same place they came & took out the entire village.

Then in 'The Gift' we learn that they wiped out Teyla's ancestors village when they Wraith found out what their scientist was up to.

The simple reason they sllep is that there is not enough food to go around, thus they rotate themselves in sleeping patterns. They couldn't all afford to be up at the same time otherwise they'd bleed the remainder of the Pegasus galaxy dry very quickly. That would ultimately mean the end for them also. So they've been forced into it in a way, Had they not gone on an eating rampage while they were fighting the Ancients then they wouldn't be in this position.

[Arative]

I'm sure the Wraith consider themselves no more evil than a wolf hunting a deer. Of course we consider them evil because we're the deer.

[jenks]

yes animals ar not selfaware its been proven

Proven? How?

[Dr Weir]

I agree that the wraith are evil because of all the reasons for this discussed so far and that the wraith really do enjoy eating humans alive. In runner the wraith was smiling when he feed on Dex, I think he could've continued to feed on him and found he had lots of life force and so let him go as explained by J B. Before they did that Dex was forcibly given an injection and an implant without any pain relief while the wraith smiled, which gives the impression that the wraith enjoyed causing him pain. It looks like from condemned wraith can eat normal food and even if it doesn't provide enough nourishment they could suck the life out of animals instead of humans. As they seem to prefer sentient beings they could feed on more animals per humans to make up for this. They do this partly because they like to dominant humans but they don't farm them as this makes human minds weaker, so weaking the life force they have.