Minbari Mondays, and Two Lessons from “War Without End, P1” (B5:s3e16) on Empathy & Trust

       This week’s lessons:

          1.  Sometimes empathy requires putting yourself in really old shoes, like Valen’s.

          2.  Sometimes one must trust others to complete what one has begun.

          This episode is the first in which we finally see Minbar, where the current Ranger One, Sinclair, takes delivery of a box sealed 900 years ago, addressed to him:   with a letter to himself.

         I generally don’t go for time travel episodes in hard sf, but given the Vorlon technology, I could live with this (especially since we’ve already seen their ability to travel through time and pluck out certain people who are perfectly suited to certain tasks…) one.  The fact that it starts with the shock of hearing a distress call from an uncharacteristically frantic Cmdr Ivanova helps set the mood, while the origin being Sector 14, quarantined three years ago due to Bermuda Triangle like phenomenon, caps off the feeling of anticipation.  “Strange things” have happened there…

   Marcus shows why the Rangers are a trustworthy institution:

    “Where Delenn points, I follow.”

   Leading the soon to be Valen to have enough trust to say that:

“…come what may, the Rangers will finish the job.”

   I love the ties in this episode to the tragic fate of Londo Mollari, which we see hints of now, but will only be able to fully understand much later.

   So, this episode required a lot of empathy, and a lot of trust.

  Let’s learn to build community and trust, which we need in spades to solve our current problems, please.  

We, as a society and globally, really can Do Better.

 

Last Monday’s review was S3e15: Minbari Mondays, Two Lessons from “Interludes And Examinations,” (B5:s3e15) on Empathy for a Useful Death?  , and 

Next Minbari Monday will be Part 2, Season 3 ep17: Minbari Mondays, and Two Lessons from “War Without End, P2” (B5:s3e17) on Empathy & Trust ;

  …

Shira

 

Nih sakh sh’lekk, sleem wa.

I come in peace, I am your friend.

 

 

Action Prompts:

1.)  Share your thoughts on how we Human Beings might start to build a more fully inclusive society for all of us, and how this episode of Babylon 5 could help that process.

2.) Write a book, story, post or tweet that uses these thoughts.

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Click here to read, if you like:

Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Lupin, & La Casa de Papel/Money Heist Reviews

Holistic High School Lessons,

           or Long Term Nonfiction & Historical Fiction

 

 

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

 

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