the last free people in the world

in the outer reaches of the universe, it is just another morning in an advanced world. an advertising agency writer is having his morning stimulant beverage and thinking about a news clip he saw last night at office.

not that he goes anywhere physically for work, his pad turns into a workplace, home, hangout zone at the flick of a button. in his world, traveling is limited only to the discovery of exoplanets in the far reaches of the known universe. and this is exactly what the video was about.

just when they thought that the whole world was known and conquered, in a distant and minor spiral galaxy millions of light years away, a tiny blue planet has been recently discovered. and it is teeming with primitive bipedal life forms!

“the last free people in the universe” their discoverer said about them. he wonders for how long they’ll remain free. soon his civilization’s vast machinery will move-in to claim its right on their lands, their resources and even their lives. many reasons will be given for this, that ‘they’ are primitive and must be civilized, that they will go extinct if we don’t go and help them out, that their mineral wealth (if any) is needed for the continuation for his own civilization…. but underlying all of them will be the notion that his is a superior race and being superior, it can do anything with an inferior race.

he ponders what being civilized and advanced really means? meanwhile, as he’s getting late for that urgent campaign he was supposed to deliver last night, he flicks the button and enters his office. as he starts typing, a thought sneaks into his mind, what if his own world was some other world’s primitive world?

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a fictionalized account inspired by this video featured on BBC’s YouTube channel. the questions it generated in my mind are not fictional though.