#anyway here’s a bunch of Wild tags to throw on a wtnv post

[its-your-mind]

(this reblog got Away From Me, so I’m coming back to the top to add a few things: 1. content warning for broad discussion of European colonization practices, and slight reference to police brutality. 2. disclaimer: I am myself white and from the US, so I’m speaking about those things from the perspective of someone who has learned and studied and listened, not the perspective of someone who is personally affected by it.)

yeah yeah YES and the thing that drives it home in this episode is Cecil excitedly asking Carlos to explain the magic tricks - he knows they’re tricks, and he knows Carlos ABSOLUTELY has a guess on how they work, and would absolutely LOVE to share it, but now Carlos just says “it’s magic.” because he’s afraid to explain anything for fear of breaking this place he loves.

and then, when the scientists from the University of What It Is do explain the tricks, unprompted, to Cecil, they say “Don’t you know it’s all fake? Here, I’ll explain it to you so that you can stop being uneducated and dumb.”

because like!! Carlos sees a phenomenon and wants to poke it to see how it works! He wants to explore and explain because knowing more about something should make you even more impressed with it! And Cecil knows that - he’s not asking Carlos how the tricks work because he wants him to spoil the show, he wants to know the inner workings so that he can be even more impressed by the complexity, because that’s how Carlos sees the world and Cecil loves him for that, and Carlos has taught Cecil to love science with him.

and the University of What It Is is just coming in and looking at Night Vale and saying “That’s not possible. You foolish, backwards, uneducated people - don’t worry, we’ll come in and show you how stupid you’re being.” It’s honestly pretty reminiscent of European colonization practices - “Your culture is backwards and wrong. Don’t worry, we’ll come in and fix that for you, since you clearly can’t be trusted to educate yourselves.”

And! And and!! (not to derail this post too too much, sorry op) Carlos used to be a professor at the University of What It Is! He came to Night Vale with the same intention - to explain how it worked! But instead of coming in and immediately assuming and asserting his own superior knowledge, he came with an open mind! He investigated! He asked questions! He observed and listened and let his fascination guide him, and he slowly learned the strange new rules of this strange new world. He became more a citizen of Night Vale than a professor from the University of What It Is.

Which is!! Also reminiscent of the history of colonization! The practice itself is awful and destructive and condescending and disgusting, and there isn’t any justification for the act of colonialism. Period, end of story. That doesn’t necessarily mean that every individual person who was ever part of that system is themselves a horrible awful piece of shit. There’s examples throughout history of individual members of colonizing cultures approaching new cultural understandings and practices with an open mind, bringing the good and leaving behind the bad ideas of their former culture, and becoming themselves a part of those communities.

And that doesn’t fix anything! It doesn’t mean that all of a sudden, the evils are Suddenly Less because one person on the inside noticed the evil and left (think ACAB - we keep seeing how Good Cops™️ don’t seem to last too long. It doesn’t mean everyone who has ever been a cop is the devil incarnate - it means that the system itself is inherently broken. (fuck now I’m in a tangent from my tangent.) ANYWAY). One Good Person can’t do anything to stop or undo the damage that is caused by the act of colonization.

Carlos is a scientist, and he is good at it, and he is a good person who studies the world with a mind open to mystery and wonder. But The Glow Cloud and Sarah Sultan are still dead, and scientists are still the ones who used science to kill them.

okok so i think the whole thing with Dr Lubelle's science vs Carlos' science feels like a metaphor for people using science as a means to deny people's cultures and beliefs. 9Like, Carlos likes science because he likes to understand things and wants to help people; Janet likes science because she wants to prove that she's right and Night Vale is wrong