# How on earth might this society function?



## Tom (Nov 2, 2014)

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 (Nov 2, 2014)

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 (Nov 2, 2014)

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.


----------



## Tom (Nov 3, 2014)

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 (Nov 3, 2014)

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 (Nov 4, 2014)

> 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.


----------



## George Lightgood (Nov 5, 2014)

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.


----------



## K.S. Crooks (Nov 7, 2014)

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 (Nov 7, 2014)

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.


----------



## psychotick (Nov 7, 2014)

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 (Nov 8, 2014)

psychotick said:


> 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 (Nov 8, 2014)

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.


----------



## George Lightgood (Nov 9, 2014)

Tom Nimenai said:


> ... 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'?


----------



## Tom (Nov 9, 2014)

"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 (Nov 12, 2014)

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 (Nov 12, 2014)

Tom Nimenai said:


> 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 (Nov 12, 2014)

Trick said:


> 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 (Nov 12, 2014)

Steerpike said:


> 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 (Nov 12, 2014)

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 (Nov 13, 2014)

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.


----------



## Zāl Dastān (Jan 4, 2015)

Two things are absolutely imperative here: power projection and national identity.

First, if the central government lacks the capacity to enforce its rule, the society will collapse in short order. What's to stop one of the constituent cities from rebelling? Usually military forces, but then territorial extent and logistics come into play. How big is the realm? If it is large, then an infrastructure at or equivalent to Rome or Persia must be present. If not, you can get away with something more medieval. The easier it is for the core to keep the periphery in line, the more stable the civilization. Facilitators are things like professional military forces (or warrior castes), roads, postal services (the faster the gov't knows about a rebellion the faster they can respond, and spy networks. Conversely, road blocks might be things like feudal armies levies (longer to assemble and therefore to respond), a weak or illegitimate central government, or social tensions within the country as a whole or individual city states.

*tl;dr:* If force capacity is insufficient, territory will shrink either through secession or foreign conquest.

Secondly there is what Ibn Khaldun calls *asabiyyah*, 'group feeling'. To put it simply, asabiyyah is the degree to which the people and factions which constitute a country (or any organization) acknowledge the authority of said central authority. If group feeling/national identity falls below a certain threshold, the country begins to suffer from a host of problems. Professional armies struggle to find recruits. Feudal lords fail to answer the call of their king. Crime increases and so does internal corruption. This effect more often than not self-perpetuates until ultimately the core is no longer able to keep the system together and at last collapses, either to internal unrest or external pressure. Common religion/civil philosophies, shared tradition, quality of life, and public splendor are boons to group feeling; sectarian tension, corruption, government weakness, and crumbling infrastructure hamper it.

*tl;dr:* A system stands only so long as people identify with it and see it as legitimate.

Hope this helps!  

BTW, If you're interested in more of Ibn Khaldun's stuff, look into the his masterpiece the Muqaddimmah. Great stuff IMHO.


----------



## Tom (Jan 5, 2015)

Thanks for the advice, and welcome to the forums!

I've created a strong infrastructure, and a lot of ties that bind the cities together. It's a little like the feudal system, as you pointed out, with the cities' councils like lords and the council of the capital city the king. The government has solidified a lot in my mind since I posted this thread.

Can I get that book (won't even attempt to spell it, as I'll probably make hash of it) at a bookstore like Barnes & Noble? Additionally, is it available in an English translation? I'm assuming by the title that it's not written in English, and the only other languages I can read in are Spanish and German.


----------



## Zāl Dastān (Jan 5, 2015)

Thanks for the welcome, Tom!

As for the Muqaddimmah, I should have a PDF of an English translation on my computer that I can send you. Let me dig around a bit and I'll send it in a PM. Last I checked hard copies can get a bit pricey. The original is in arabic, but as a non-arabic speaker English is all I've got


----------



## Zāl Dastān (Jan 5, 2015)

Well, it seems I can't send you a PM and I can't post attachments (presumably due to being new here). You can just send me your e-mail or something and I can shoot you the pdf. Whatever's convenient!


----------



## Tom (Jan 5, 2015)

Oh, sorry, that's my bad. I have my PM inbox set to only accept messages from friends. I'll fix it. Thanks!


----------



## Caged Maiden (Jan 6, 2015)

I just want to throw a concept of gender equality out there.  The Celts were one of the most advanced cultures in the world and many of their societal concepts didn't exist again until very recently.

One thing that made them particularly interesting was that their penal system was built off fines.  Basically, a person lived in a clan and their clan owned common land.  Every three years, families would draw lots and that was their land to farm for three years.  That way, no one got stuck with the best or worst plots for too long.  Well anyways, so wealth was important.  heads of cattle, crops, tools, whatever.  As a man accumulated items or wealth, he was more important in a way.  He could benefit his clan more, I guess.  Now they had a whole list of laws, things like "if a poor man and a rich man meet at the same point on a bridge, the poor man is allowed to cross first."  They protected the poor, women, children, the elderly, etc. by making laws very noble in spirit.  If your rich man shoved the old beggar into the mud and crossed the bridge, he was assessed a fine.  A few more angry acts, and that rich man was soon a poor man and then he didn't have any clan status, or the ability to support his family.  

Now to women.  Women in this society were protected I believe by one concept more than any other.  Any union that resulted in a child, was considered a marriage.  So a woman could have several husbands, and a man could have several wives.  They didn't necessarily live together, but that's where the concept "Ireland has no bastards" comes from.  The English couldn't understand what they were hearing.  "What?  Which of these men is your husband?"  "Oh, that one, and that one, and him over there."  Anyways, when a man and woman had a child, the child was raised by the women and supported by the father, like modern child support.  When the child was about ten, it would go to foster and leave home, living with uncles or cousins, etc.  So women weren't inferior, they were as equal as has ever been in our world.  They ran their own families, weren't considered property of their husbands, and chose whom they wanted to marry.  

I think one thing you have to establish, to really deal with the fundamental "equality" of men and women, is establish a really free culture.  See, Celtic women were women.  They weren't in denial about their female traits or their sexuality, but they had options and the laws supported all members of the society, based on wealth.

One thing I think you have overlooked is general intelligence of humans.  It's fine to have a society that loves art and intellect, but let's face it, most people are less intelligent than German Shepherds and the biggest problem with intelligence as your main societal ideal, is that genes must be passed on in overwhelming majority to create a changed society.  So for instance, if you have a pillaging, raping horde of barbarians, who conquer a region and take all the women for themselves...that's your next few generations, violent, brawny, meat-heads.  So, to establish a society who are drastically different from the norm, you have to establish how a culture's most successful genes were intelligence, artistry, etc. 

Now, here would be my suggestion...establish a lower class of sorts, those who work the land, your typical peasant class.  They're like peasants throughout history, shorter, thinner, bad teeth, kinda smelly, you know the ones.  Then you have a sort of nobility, the ones who live in the city, basically off the backs of the lower class.  I mean, I just don't see any way around it.  In Medieval Europe, it took 50 peasants to support one armored knight.  If you have an army, you need a lower class.  It isn't so different today.  For every person who earns $250k a year, how many earn $25k a year?

So ideals and equality aren't things that can't happen, but the balance is really that for every notch up higher your cultural hub gets, (like Rome even), you need to widen the pool at the bottom exponentially.  For instance, how do people make a living?  Your average guy, say a guild member who makes furniture or whatever.  Who were his parents?  Where did he receive an education?  Who paid for it?  Who ran the school/ apprenticeship, a guild?  SO this guy's pretty well off. good.  But who grows his food?  How much land is available in the near vicinity for agriculture?  Can a carpenter afford meat?  Books? Gold jewelry?  What limitations are placed upon this carpenter?  Is he taxed?  Told what he cannot buy, even if he can afford it?  Can he marry any woman who loves him or does he have to earn a wife by his wealth/ status/ a certain rite?

There are a ton of small things to consider when creating a society and it's a bit like a madhouse game of Jenga.  It can come crashing down at any moment.  No city-state could function without protection.  They need resources, which means someone to work in the mines, the fields, etc.  and when people aren't happy, crime is inevitable, jails, penal code, outlaws, not to imply you haven't thought of it, but so much of the structure is interwoven, it's hard to "just change a couple things".  

If you want to create a democratic, equal, intelligent society, I think you need to start with wealth and law.  Make crimes hold heavy fines, banishment from the city, etc.  I mean, that's what the Celts did.  if a man committed a crime, he was fined.  If he didn't have anything to pay, he'd be exiled.  That was pretty much a death sentence.  

Anyways, I hope I gave you some ideas.


----------

