Current day John, trying to understand his future self and Future John sending machines instead of people for protection, says to Jesse that human beings can never be replaced, or fixed, or repaired; once they are gone, they are gone forever.
What struck me the most about that statement was the fact that John couldn't fix Cameron, either, any more than he could fix Riley. This seems to me to be an inclusive definition of what makes someone important, that can apply to machines as well as humans - Cameron can't be replaced, either, nor John Henry, nor Catherine Weaver. And in fact, John's words remind me a lot of what Catherine Weaver said in one of the first scenes we met her about why the Turk was important and had to be protected. To Catherine Weaver, humans were interchangeable, and the Turk was the one who couldn't be duplicated or replaced, but the underlying definition of what made someone important was the same. Contrast that with Ellison's definition of humans as important because they are God's children and were made in His image, which applies to humans alone, and as you said, it's not hard to see how John Henry might react badly to the implication that humans are important, but he is not.
I think that the biggest mistake Future!John made that led to the tragedy on the Jimmy Carter was that he was treating the humans under his command the same way he was treating the machines. He assumed that just because the machines he had reprogrammed were ready to work with humans, then that meant that the humans were ready to work with machines. And I'm hoping that what happened with Riley and Jesse has taught him that he should never take humans for granted in his plans, that changing the minds of the humans is just as important as changing the minds of the machines. (I talk a lot about this in my review (http://veritykindle.livejournal.com/72392.html) of the episode, in case you are interested. :) ) And the fact that the episode ended with John asking Derek about the humans he will one day command seems to imply to me that he did learn that lesson, which means that Jesse's actions actually might have prevented the tragedy on the Jimmy Carter from happening, if not in the way that Jesse expected.
And the way it looks like right now, John won’t let anyone human get that close again – and thus will trigger the situation that sends Jesse back to the past.
It's interesting - John's words to Jesse seems to imply that he thought Future!John had chosen who to send back because those were the people he could afford to lose, and yet it seems clear to me that, with the possible exception of Arnie from T2, whose future relationship to John we know nothing about, the people Future!John actually sent back were the ones he cared about the most, the ones who were closest to him - his father, his uncle, his closest confidante. I think John's mistake isn't that he doesn't let himself get close to anyone - it's that like Cameron, he sees it as a weakness. He sees the fact that he is human as something he has to suppress, so that he can figure out how to win "his giant chess game" against Skynet. And hopefully, with Sarah still alive and the John of the present therefore getting more of an opportunity to sit back and learn about more about both sides of the war in relative safety, John will have a chance to see that this is the wrong way to approach things.
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What struck me the most about that statement was the fact that John couldn't fix Cameron, either, any more than he could fix Riley. This seems to me to be an inclusive definition of what makes someone important, that can apply to machines as well as humans - Cameron can't be replaced, either, nor John Henry, nor Catherine Weaver. And in fact, John's words remind me a lot of what Catherine Weaver said in one of the first scenes we met her about why the Turk was important and had to be protected. To Catherine Weaver, humans were interchangeable, and the Turk was the one who couldn't be duplicated or replaced, but the underlying definition of what made someone important was the same. Contrast that with Ellison's definition of humans as important because they are God's children and were made in His image, which applies to humans alone, and as you said, it's not hard to see how John Henry might react badly to the implication that humans are important, but he is not.
I think that the biggest mistake Future!John made that led to the tragedy on the Jimmy Carter was that he was treating the humans under his command the same way he was treating the machines. He assumed that just because the machines he had reprogrammed were ready to work with humans, then that meant that the humans were ready to work with machines. And I'm hoping that what happened with Riley and Jesse has taught him that he should never take humans for granted in his plans, that changing the minds of the humans is just as important as changing the minds of the machines. (I talk a lot about this in my review (http://veritykindle.livejournal.com/72392.html) of the episode, in case you are interested. :) ) And the fact that the episode ended with John asking Derek about the humans he will one day command seems to imply to me that he did learn that lesson, which means that Jesse's actions actually might have prevented the tragedy on the Jimmy Carter from happening, if not in the way that Jesse expected.
And the way it looks like right now, John won’t let anyone human get that close again – and thus will trigger the situation that sends Jesse back to the past.
It's interesting - John's words to Jesse seems to imply that he thought Future!John had chosen who to send back because those were the people he could afford to lose, and yet it seems clear to me that, with the possible exception of Arnie from T2, whose future relationship to John we know nothing about, the people Future!John actually sent back were the ones he cared about the most, the ones who were closest to him - his father, his uncle, his closest confidante. I think John's mistake isn't that he doesn't let himself get close to anyone - it's that like Cameron, he sees it as a weakness. He sees the fact that he is human as something he has to suppress, so that he can figure out how to win "his giant chess game" against Skynet. And hopefully, with Sarah still alive and the John of the present therefore getting more of an opportunity to sit back and learn about more about both sides of the war in relative safety, John will have a chance to see that this is the wrong way to approach things.