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How on earth might this society function?

Tom

Istar
Okay, so this is about one of my civilizations, the Karthec. They are a gender-equal, individualistic culture that worships three gods: the god of Chaos, the god of Order, and the god of Balance. The most important value in their culture is wisdom, and people such as doctors, priests, philosophers, historians, mathematicians, etc, are given high honor.

Like all my civilizations, they have an atypical government. Every major city is a separate city-state ruled by a 10-person council elected democratically by every male and female citizen over 18. Each city-state also has a consul, an official elected to represent his or her city-state at the national council. The city-state rules over the countryside and any villages that might be in its vicinity, but the national-level government is responsible for maintaining roads, bridges, public way-stations, etc.

The problem is, I have all these separate elements of the culture, but I have no idea how to weave them all together into a whole, believable civilization.
 

Scalvi

Scribe
I feel like this set up is incredibly fragile. Unless the race is unnaturally law-abiding and altruistic, either the city-states would refuse to cooperate with any national elements or the national elements would try to consume the city-states and form a normal empire.

And something else to think about is that all societies need some level of industry to provide for everyone that isn't industry. If the majority of the population is going into sciences and humanities, then their industrial force must be highly advanced (such that a smaller percentage of the people can support the larger) or their entire race has a patron nation that pays them to be artsy. Otherwise, those science and humanities careers become something of a luxury and a mark of status. That would likely lead to a sort of philosopher-nobility.
 

WooHooMan

Auror
Civilization is a broad term. There can be more than one nation, more than one type of government and more than you philosophy in a civilization.

However, for this example, I would recommend boiling it down to one political entity (be it a city-state or otherwise) that enforces gender-neutral, individualist ideals. Basically, what Scalvi said.

The Michael Moorecockian religion would probably be older and more wide-spread than just this one nation. Perhaps it can be the foundation for their ideology.

So, there's my feedback. I think if you want the elements to work together, you have to set-up connections. Perhaps try to flesh-out these people's history.
 
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Tom

Istar
Hm. Think I need to provide more background.

The technology level is Iron-age, and I created this culture with an eye toward Athens at the height of the democracy. Of course not everyone is going to be in sciences or humanities; there are plenty of farmers, craftsmen, and unskilled laborers. Wisdom is an ideal of their culture, a standard that everybody tries to live up to no matter what their position.

The religion really is an ancient one--it came from the older, now-extinct people that the Karthec conquered. The language and religion of the conquered people gradually bled into the Karthec culture, becoming mixed with their own language and pantheistic religion. Their sister-nation, Yianlai, still practices the original, unaltered pantheistic religion, and speaks the "pure" form of the Karthec language, Niah Sorone.

What I was really wondering was if anyone had any ideas on how to connect all the separate elements in this culture. I have all the dots, but I'm missing the lines that turn the whole thing into a complete picture. How might the religion influence the government? How might the ideology of wisdom influence the religion and vice versa?

Just toss out some ideas, and I'll use them as a jumping-off point.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
Okay. The challenge for making this work is in the communication and population shifts between the city states. The more people communicate across the boundaries and move a lot from one city state to another, the more they can have unified cultural values. But insomuch as they don't, regional cultures are going to set in and eventually create divisions.

So if you want "wisdom" to be a cultural value across the city-states, then the doctors, mathematicians and so forth pretty much need to go on tour, and there needs to be something that draws the crowds to them. Even then, different ciity-states will have different attitudes about the travelling brainiacs, but at least individuals in those areas will have the opportunity to view it differently than their local cultures, which will maintain some degree of unity.
 

ThinkerX

Myth Weaver
Okay, so this is about one of my civilizations, the Karthec. They are a gender-equal, individualistic culture that worships three gods: the god of Chaos, the god of Order, and the god of Balance. The most important value in their culture is wisdom, and people such as doctors, priests, philosophers, historians, mathematicians, etc, are given high honor.

Like all my civilizations, they have an atypical government. Every major city is a separate city-state ruled by a 10-person council elected democratically by every male and female citizen over 18. Each city-state also has a consul, an official elected to represent his or her city-state at the national council. The city-state rules over the countryside and any villages that might be in its vicinity, but the national-level government is responsible for maintaining roads, bridges, public way-stations, etc.

Ok...what you have is...

A confederacy of city states with a religion applicable to the whole confederacy. The religion is more ancient than the confederacy, or the city states, for that matter.

Therefor, the 'norm' is maintained by the religion. Yes, each city state has elections - but the religion determines what *candidates* are acceptable. (You mentioned Athens democracy. Socrates was put to death on grounds of heresy.) Priests in all the council chambers, maybe in the background, maybe up front making deals. Candidates a lot more successful politically if they did a stint as a priest or lay-brother or have a cleric as an uncle.

Members of the Order Clergy would be builders, the ones overseeing road crews, building way stations and bridges and the like.

Members of the Balance Clergy would be the ones in the various council chambers. The status-quo bunch - which would have immense appeal to a lot of people.

The Chaos clergy would be with the military and nautical types. Political priests of this stripe would be advocating invasions or daring ventures into the unknown.

Part of your problem here is you are making a church/state distinction that usually did not exist.
 
It may not be Politically Correct, but frankly, PC is just a...PC word for speech and thought suppression. So I'll say it anyway. In every primitive civilization known to man, or at least known to me, there were/are clear and distinct roles for men and women. By God's design or by Darwin's Evolution, it has been so.

If you are in an iron age era, as you said, without magical abilities, then the gender equality is going to have to be woven very tightly. Warfare and labor will be incredibly strength dependent which, unfortunately, puts women at a distinct disadvantage.

Put 100 men with swords against 100 women with swords in a field, all else being equal, and let them have at it. In the end you will have a field full of men, albeit less than 100, unless one side or the other quits. They are nice to look at, as a heterosexual man and presumably as a lesbian, but the whole sexy warrior girl thing has been stretched to the breaking point. (I'm looking at you The Legend of Hercules).

Even now, we live in a quasi 'gender equal' society, right? Yet it is still women and children off the sinking ship first and the female hostages are who they bargain for first. Look what happens in society if a man pops another man in the jaw for being an ass vs. the same scenario against a woman.

An additional, but relevant issue is that of child birth and care. How do you account for being pregnant? I know, you can be active and run marathons at 7 months and all that. But we are talking iron age medicine, too, one would presume.

In an iron age period, child care will be critical and the natural gravitation to that will be the women, with the breasts and nurturing, while the men with their strength will gravitate towards other areas. Frankly men are expendable -- one man and twenty women still make twenty kids. Twenty men and one woman makes for all sorts of issues.

Its not to say it won't work, but you will need, in my opinion, to weave a story-line that is tighter to maintain suspension of belief.

Or you can just cop out and use something like the God of Balance purposely made all people exactly the same physically and have men lactating breasts and the ability to bear children.

Hell, fiction is just that and fantasy even more so, but if these issues were not handled well, I would lose patience with a book like that and toss it down. I can believe in orcs and wizards, but only if you give me half a reason to. Just my opinion.
 
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K.S. Crooks

Maester
My first thought was I hope people are elected for a long time, otherwise elections will be happening all the time. Are all the levels of government integral to your story? If not then only mention them in passing. Remember that the more goverment levels and people involved the slower things run, which means for anything to change takes a long time.
One thing you mention is that the most important thing to them is knowledge, but they have three gods. To me religion/faith is - Belief regardless of proof- If they vaule knowledge more than anything else then this does not fit with their religion unless the gods make themselves known to the people is some manner that is pretty clear. Hope this sparks some ideas.
 

Tom

Istar
Thank you all for the feedback.

I feel kind of stupid, and that some intensive overhauling of this culture is in order. Did I really expect idealism to hold up in the real world?! Or, well, a real...fantasy...world.

My design plan behind the Karthec was to have this pacifist, idealist culture as a foil for my two main cultures, Northerners and Yianlai, who are all a bunch of hotheads with violent tendencies. The land the Karthec live in is a lot more fertile and mild than the other two's, so they have a more settled civilization, and their religion condemns violence as a disruption of Holy Balance.
 
Hi,

It sounds to me as though you're trying to model your society on ancient Greece which was essentially a set of city states. But Athens was only one of them. Troy was also a Greek city state, and yet in character and ideology was completely different. Just as were Corinth, Sparta, Thebes, Argos, Delphi, Olympia and quite a few others. To add to your woes the city states used to regularly war with one another.

Then you want to establish across all these city states a single religion of three gods, and a single set of ideals including veneration for wisdom and respect for women as equals.

The only way I can see this happening is if you can bring in one overriding ideology / faith / culture that someone subsumes the cultural, ethnic and political differences between the city states. Certain religions could do this, though I suspect only for a time. The presence of a common foe such as Rome - though history says otherwise - might allow for the various city states to all pull together. And of course it would help if these ideals were backed up by some sort of political or other strength. If women had magic or were routinely trained as warriors / assassins where men weren't. If the elderly wisdom was somehow reliably able to defeat youthful vigour.

Cheers, Greg.
 

Mythopoet

Auror
Then you want to establish across all these city states a single religion of three gods, and a single set of ideals including veneration for wisdom and respect for women as equals.

This is really not an obstacle IF in this particular fantasy world the three gods are in fact real and there has been empirical evidence for their existence in the world so that everyone knows for a fact that they are real and thus it is only common sense for everyone, regardless of where they live, to worship them.
 

Tom

Istar
Urgh, gods.

I prefer not to create worlds that have gods that explicitly prove they exist by popping in and out of the story and directly interfering with human affairs. In fact, I don't think I've ever created a world with gods that Do Exist, No Question About It. Not to say that I don't have gods and religions in my stories, but that I prefer not to reveal whose god is real and whose isn't, or even the existence of the gods in general. Having gods too real and involved to ignore eliminates the possibility of atheism, agnosticism, or even just casual belief, which are all things I love to explore. Plus, if the gods are real and actively involved in the world, what need do we have for philosophy, that great and ancient search for the meaning of life?

And why does gender equality have to be an idea that overtakes an older, more prevalent idea (gender inequality)? I wanted to imagine what a world would be like if it had simply never occurred to anyone to think of women as inferior. What if they don't have the history of women being seen as inferior that we do? What if the differences between men and women are seen as two weights that balance the scale at equality? Isn't that what fantasy is all about? Imagining the "what ifs"?

And with the addition of magic, it becomes more plausible to have gender equality. Sure, a man can wield a broadsword more ably than a woman, but if she can call up a spell that blocks blood flow to his brain and kills him, that pretty neatly solves the dilemma.
 
... And why does gender equality have to be an idea that overtakes an older, more prevalent idea (gender inequality)? I wanted to imagine what a world would be like if it had simply never occurred to anyone to think of women as inferior.

Hi Tom! It is semantics, perhaps, but why does different have to imply inferior? I doubt you meant that either, right?

I am unable to bear children. Does that make me less worthy of a human than a woman? Because most women cannot "equal" most men in strength based athletics/warfare, does that imply they are not worth living?

The answer to both is 'of course not!'

I am curious what the OP meant by "equality". Equal in that they are precisely the same? Or equal in that they are allowed to pursue happiness and live unmolested, yadda yadda or at least equally so to others?

Tom Nimenai said:
... And with the addition of magic, it becomes more plausible to have gender equality. Sure, a man can wield a broadsword more ably than a woman, but if she can call up a spell that blocks blood flow to his brain and kills him, that pretty neatly solves the dilemma.

True, that. That is why I specified 'all else being equal' in my first reply as well as mentioning the possible use of magic.

Hey OP, how about a clarification on what you meant by 'equality'? :)
 
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Tom

Istar
"Different" certainly does not imply "inferior" all on its own. However, when viewed in light of history right up to the last century, "different" almost always meant "inferior" when the comparison was between men and women. Women were seen as inferior because they were different than men. Their worth was judged against men, and most often they were found lacking because in certain respects they deviated from the male-defined norm.

I see men and women as equal yet different. Equal in this case does not mean "the same". It means "both parties having the same rights, privileges, and worth as human beings".

That is what I meant in the OP.
 

Amanya Binti

New Member
I'm writing a novel where originally I had a gender-equal society, that was in a time of great peace, with the different areas (farming, fishing, hunting, governing, creative endeavors, etc) all getting along great, providing everything that is needed for every citizen. Further, there was no distinction or stigma whether marriages were same-sex or opposite sex. They, too, had enemies at the door, so they also had great noble Warriors - men and women. Some had magic, some did not.

But as I'm writing the book, I'm realizing that no society could ever be this peaceful. It's not in human nature. So I'm trying to keep some of the tenets I really want, while being more realistic with the structure and organization of the whole thing.

I do think for yours, it will be the religion that rules and holds everything together. That religion IS government, even if elected. And there will be some people who grumble about their lot, and maybe minor uprisings or other things that are human nature.

But I love your idealism, and mine. If only it could be that way for real...
 

Trick

Auror
And why does gender equality have to be an idea that overtakes an older, more prevalent idea (gender inequality)? I wanted to imagine what a world would be like if it had simply never occurred to anyone to think of women as inferior.

As long as you don't have an Adam&Eve type creation story, that shouldn't be too much of an issue. Something else that you might need to mull over though is one inherent difference that I see in the men and women in history. Remember, I'm speaking generally and not implying this applies to all people all of the time. Men want to conquer, Women want to be happy. Bad men conquer in many ways, from devastating civilizations to rape. Bad women will achieve happiness at the expense of others, which may include violence also, including war. With men being bigger and stronger, if they are bad they will target women in many cases because they will see them as something to conquer. If you can remove or at least mute these traits, neither sex being (incorrectly) viewed as inferior will be an easier sell.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
As long as you don't have an Adam&Eve type creation story, that shouldn't be too much of an issue. Something else that you might need to mull over though is one inherent difference that I see in the men and women in history. Remember, I'm speaking generally and not implying this applies to all people all of the time. Men want to conquer, Women want to be happy. Bad men conquer in many ways, from devastating civilizations to rape. Bad women will achieve happiness at the expense of others, which may include violence also, including war. With men being bigger and stronger, if they are bad they will target women in many cases because they will see them as something to conquer. If you can remove or at least mute these traits, neither sex being (incorrectly) viewed as inferior will be an easier sell.

Allowing, for the moment, that this is true as a general matter (for the sake of argument), even if that applies to men and women in the real world, there's no particular reason it should apply to men and women in any given fantasy world. You create the people of that world, along with their proclivities.
 

Trick

Auror
Allowing, for the moment, that this is true as a general matter (for the sake of argument), even if that applies to men and women in the real world, there's no particular reason it should apply to men and women in any given fantasy world. You create the people of that world, along with their proclivities.

That's exactly what I'm saying. If he can present his men and women in such a way that it feels real for them to not have these tendencies, he can pull it off just fine. Perhaps even amazingly. To me, it would feel unnatural to have real world men, with those among us who want to conquer through some lingering instinct, simply not take that out on those physically weaker than themselves, ever. There are always bad people. If not, where's the story? They can, however, be bad in more interesting ways.
 

Tom

Istar
Yeah, there are always bad people. I think what everyone's getting mixed up is that I presented this as the IDEAL for this society, not the actual condition the society's in. There's plenty of backstabbing, bureaucracy, crime, and everything else that plagues civilization. I chose not to deal with that because I'm trying simply to work out the basic structure of the society right now. I'm just trying to get a feel for how the government and religion and ideology and all that play with and against each other, you know?
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
A more recent theory with some scientific backing is that people are a big like rubber bands. You can pull them as much as you want to reshape them, but if you let go, they eventually snap back to their normal positions. Parents, for instance, can push their children as much as they want, but once those children have freedom, they eventually turn into the people they were always meant to be.

I don't know what the natural state of society is. I won't even try. But your upbringing and your culture are the parts pulling on the rubber bands. The more you want these ideals to be actualized, the tighter you have to pull.

In my view, that's what you need to be thinking about. These city states have the same form of government? Great, but what's enforcing that? People view equality and wisdom as ideals? Great, but who's pushing those values and how?

Consider all that, and then recognize that each city state is going to react a little differently to their rubber bands being pulled, because the local culture is always going to be the tightest force on those rubber bands. Given relatively little intermingling between them, they're each going to be a very different place.
 
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