Stargate and the state of the four races

Discussion

The Asgards were the only ones left in the end who cared about the alliance.

You'll find in the linked discussion board a suggestion that the four races represent exploration, warriors, teachers, and builders.  And yet of these the warriors, Asgard, are the only ones with the fire to pass on the knowledge they have gained.  Unfortunately, they also embrace oblivion.

But anyway you look at it, the alliance for the four races failed to persist as its constituent parts turned to isolationism or other forms of abandoning the Milky Way.  The Asgard, alone, defended the freedom of lesser civilizations before finally succumbing to their own demise.

So what do we know about the four partners in the defunct endeavor?

We know that the Ancients fled disease and then their mortal bodies.
The Asgard withered away into less ideal bodies as they forwent
procreation in a bid for immortality.  To the best of our knowledge
the Nox possess mortal immortality as they are shown able to
resurrect one another, but have placed themselves in seclusion
and only seen aiding the Tollan (a society they regard as
equal to their own and therefore avoid contamination).

The Furlings are a giant question mark who are either
extinct or living in deeper seclusion than the Nox.

That the Ancients should need to flee their plague and not receive assistance from the Asgard or Nox (their equals with known technological prowess) suggests to me mutual abandonment all around.
After all, the Asgard could have done with their own assistance, too.  And whatever befell the Furlings if they did perish lies at the feet of their supposed allies as well.

The Asgard appear to be the only ones going to great pains to even make a show of mutual defense when they are severely hampered by what they can do while combating the Replicators.  They at least extend themselves to the defense of others, which either means there was factually nothing the Asgard could have done for the Ancients or else there was a falling out between all of them.

The fact that the Asgard even desire to declare humanity the fifth race colors whether or not the alliance was seen favorably.  The Asgard alone were in a position to declare there being a fifth race.  The Nox were not polled.  The Furlings are an unknown quantity, still.

What does it mean to be a lone fifth member of an organization?

Stargate is careful to have humanity originally stem from Earth and while the representatives of Earth were declared the fifth race, all of humanity is hardly united.

The Lucian Alliance is rising in the Milky Way, but that organization represents a power vacuum that need not be filled.  We can see that some people have a working knowledge of the captured Goa'uld technology so that advanced technology doesn't have to be hoarded like we're in a galactic Mad Max.  The Lucian Alliance can be outpaced by making new technology an industry.

The real barrier to freedom is
the ethno-state the Jaffa Nation.

If the Jaffa can be made to realize their own humanity then the racial lines can be weakened and people can move freely by ship and stargate and need not organize into a large enough collective to form an army.

The state of the four races alliance is that it is hopelessly defunct for reasons that have not been fully revealed to the Stargate audience.  But the title of the alliance passing to humanity revitalizes it into not being so much an alliance, but a thousand-headed bickering factions with long severed ties to Earth that few would even seek to reclaim and those that do would come up against the pathological desire for secrecy by those in control on Earth.

The Asgard passed their banner to a faction which operates in secret.  The fifth race is unlikely to succeed in the light of day by the current state of things, but it will be a hopeless failure if continued to be concealed in the shadows.

I assert the only move from here is to reveal the Stargate program.
Let the Earth people flood across the Milky Way; because they already have.




Footnote: It just occured to me that the Asgard had to study the knowledge of the Ancients received from Jack O'Neill and therefore had even less knowledge of them than I realized.