12-12-2014, 01:40 PM
The issue of Western cultural bias is actually quite real in OA. Virtually all of our authors come from a single set of cultures with very similar values, many of which we simply take for granted as 'the only way things can be done', when really they are just 'the way our cultures happen to do things'.
While I don't have the background in other cultures to speak to them (although I suspect Stephen may have something to say on the matter when he returns), I can point to several examples of things from our own cultures that were taken for granted as 'the way of things' not so long ago in history but which we (mostly) think very differently about now. These include:
Race relations, especially inter-racial relationships and sex
Slavery
Colonialism
Monarchy
The divine right of kings
The conquering of the Americas by Europeans or 'the white man'
The status of women to varying degrees across time
Looking back over the last 500 years or so, we can see that views on all of these issues have changed drastically. People at various points in 'Western' history would have looked at some or all of these things in ways that most of us here would find repugnant and/or baffling. But to them their viewpoint was 'the only way things can be done'. This wasn't just something they mouthed in public while secretly yearning to live in a Jeffersonian democracy or a world of equality between the races and genders. They actually thought how they did things was the right way to live. Every bit as much as we may think our way of doing things or thinking is 'the right way'.
For a more immediate example, look at the Middle East. Prior to the second Iraq War it was popular to think that all you had to do was give any given population the opportunity and a pluralistic democracy would just spring into being of its own accord as the only 'natural' way for human beings to organize their affairs. The reality has turned out to be rather more...complicated.
It should also be noted that monarchy and feudalism in various flavors has been the norm for most of human history. Whether democracy will be 'the new normal' or just a historical aberration has yet to be determined.
This is not to say that non-Western cultures won't go in for democracy or treating women or minorities equally or whatever. Rather they can (and often do) have their own very strong ideas about 'the right way' that may be somewhat or significantly different from our own. We have our biases and they will have theirs. The interesting question is what that might look like after 10,000yrs of history spread across the stars. And what new notions on 'the right way' might develop at the same time.
Certainly in the case of the sephirotics, it seems that most sophonts thing that rule by transapient is 'the right way' to live one's life. But they likely have additional notions as well that we might find very strange, either in Y11k or at earlier points in the timeline.
Todd
While I don't have the background in other cultures to speak to them (although I suspect Stephen may have something to say on the matter when he returns), I can point to several examples of things from our own cultures that were taken for granted as 'the way of things' not so long ago in history but which we (mostly) think very differently about now. These include:
Race relations, especially inter-racial relationships and sex
Slavery
Colonialism
Monarchy
The divine right of kings
The conquering of the Americas by Europeans or 'the white man'
The status of women to varying degrees across time
Looking back over the last 500 years or so, we can see that views on all of these issues have changed drastically. People at various points in 'Western' history would have looked at some or all of these things in ways that most of us here would find repugnant and/or baffling. But to them their viewpoint was 'the only way things can be done'. This wasn't just something they mouthed in public while secretly yearning to live in a Jeffersonian democracy or a world of equality between the races and genders. They actually thought how they did things was the right way to live. Every bit as much as we may think our way of doing things or thinking is 'the right way'.
For a more immediate example, look at the Middle East. Prior to the second Iraq War it was popular to think that all you had to do was give any given population the opportunity and a pluralistic democracy would just spring into being of its own accord as the only 'natural' way for human beings to organize their affairs. The reality has turned out to be rather more...complicated.
It should also be noted that monarchy and feudalism in various flavors has been the norm for most of human history. Whether democracy will be 'the new normal' or just a historical aberration has yet to be determined.
This is not to say that non-Western cultures won't go in for democracy or treating women or minorities equally or whatever. Rather they can (and often do) have their own very strong ideas about 'the right way' that may be somewhat or significantly different from our own. We have our biases and they will have theirs. The interesting question is what that might look like after 10,000yrs of history spread across the stars. And what new notions on 'the right way' might develop at the same time.
Certainly in the case of the sephirotics, it seems that most sophonts thing that rule by transapient is 'the right way' to live one's life. But they likely have additional notions as well that we might find very strange, either in Y11k or at earlier points in the timeline.
Todd