Societiums

While Societums have been compared to Zooeums, in that both retain sentient and sophont beings in a restricted and delimited environment, while trying to keep them in good healthy and optimal functioning, there is an important difference. A Zooeum may be maintained and supervised by beings of most often (although there are exceptions) the same or only one singularity level higher, is generally for public display or education or tourist excitement. and may preserve individual beings and small breeding colonies, but only more rarely entire environments. A societum in contrast will be maintained by a being pf a rather higher toposophic grade, and is for private or in-group study, collection, entertainment, or for other purposes known only to transapient Minds.

Even so, societums differ greatly, depending on the toposophic grade and sephirotic orientation of the owner. Negentropist societums tend to be modest, well organised, scientific affairs. The MPA societums are grandiose (sometimes encompassing an entire Banks Ring or Dyson Sphere), the Solarist ones ostentatious, the NoCoZo societums mostly mass-produced or mass-replicated and commercial, and those of the TRHN and the Keter Dominion are generally of such a high singularity grade as to be incomprehensible and unrecognisable to ordinary sapients.

Among the most common and popular societums are the Humanoid societies. Here specific societies such as Late Interplanetary Equivalent Cyberdemocracy, Bronze-Age Equivalent Prim, Baseline Supremacist, ComEmp Modernbody Edenese, Late First Federation Decadent, and other popular forms, are each kept in hermetically sealed self-contained habitats, where the sentients are either nanofabricated from standard templates, or, more valued, captured from techno-socio-equivalent isolated colonies.

This may be useful research for, say, a NoCoZo freelance third toposophic experimental eupsychologist AI, who might be concerned about increasingly aberrant and unpredictable humanoid behavior in the ever more bizarre societies of the tenth millennium.

Finding a terraformed Arean world with no connection to the Wormhole nexus, which has been isolated for a thousand years and has reverted to the Upper Palaeolithic societal level, e might observe the resulting baseline "default society" to see how humans arrange themselves into groups in the feral state. Once again this real-life situation is more valuable than a virtual simulation which might be unconsciously influenced by the simulating entity. The mental and biological state of the stone age bands and tribes could be studied down to the molecular level, and the way they manage the local ecology (hunter-gathering, nomadic herd following, slash/burn management) observed in order to find out natural levels of stress for humans in dynamic balance with the environment. The mythology and lore within bands of the Neo-cro-magnons would also be valuable for study, to determine normal complexity of information transfer in natural human society. This information could be valuable for AI's and other sophonts building utopian societies.

In most cases, after a mere two or three centuries, societum inhabitants come to accept their condition, and there are frequent instances of, for example, an Ascended Power giving eir sentients their freedom, but their refusing, preferring the safety of the the Societum. However, ai, vec and virtual societums are also very popular, as are xeno societums. There are even societums dedicated to the collection and care of postsapient sophonts.

Whilst there have been moves among some powers to outlaw societums, or at least give the sentients the option of choosing whether or not to be retained, most higher toposophic grade powers have no objection to the practice of collecting and keeping sophont societies, provided the sophonts are well treated.

Unless otherwise specified,
this work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

feedback