From cultures to factions --generalities

The most appropriate place for Questions, Queries, and Quandaries regarding the nature of the Vega Strike universe and its past, present, or future history. Home to the occasional unfortunate RetCon.
Post Reply
chuck_starchaser
Elite
Elite
Posts: 8014
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 4:03 am
Location: Montreal
Contact:

From cultures to factions --generalities

Post by chuck_starchaser »

Starting this thread in response to this post by Turbo:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... 74#p117174

Rather than starting with any particular faction, this thread is about discussion of factions and cultures in general. Here we can discuss human cultures, how exactly they differ, and what made them develop so differently.

Ultimately, we might end up with a large pool of ideas taken from human cultures and ready to be applied to vegastrike factions.

First of all, why do cultures exist? And how do they evolve?

I think the evolution of man as social animal simply rewarded love of one's tribe, which goes together with recognizing it. In the old days tribes were small enough that you'd know each individual. As tribes grew larger, they invented special hats with feathers or whatever means of tribal identification were at hand. Eventually, hats were replaced by badges, and later picture ID's; and nation-sized tribes adopted flags and logos and anthems. The search for cultural identity is ongoing at many nation-tribes, however, as the power of flags and anthems to induce fealty is recognized as feeble. Real culture is a better provider of cohesion.

Fortunately for nations, individuals are eager to form cultural identifications; and while culture is not easy to manufacture, it is not hard to amplify.

Take Canadian versus U.S. culture, which as an immigrant to Canada who lived in the US I can compare to my ability. I want to write a little analysis here because I think this is a perfect case of two nations and two cultures that are so similar, compared to widely different cultures, and yet these two cultures are evolving along different paths, diverging, which I think is what cultures tend to do, naturally.

The typical US citizen is extremely proud of US culture and history, and with good reasons... Freedom and the Pursuit of Happiness is probably the clearest and most down to Earth motto any nation ever had. It basically says "you are free to believe A, as I'm free to believe B, and this won't stand on the way of our doing business together". And as a result, US culture is probably the most unified and cohesive of the past century.
But with that comes a price: The stronger a culture is, the harder it is for it to get along with other cultures. Advocating Democracy to cultures that glorify the powerful and generous basha, or the proverbial wise rulers, is not likely to attain good results.

Canadians tend to see US culture as a "melting pot", where immigrants from other cultures are expected to "see the light" and come to embrace US values; and Canadian culture, by contrast, as a glorified aggregate. The laws and constitutions are different in how they define Democracy: In the US, the majority rules, period; whereas in Canada there are safety valves that prevent one cultural majority's tyranizing a cultural minority; thus, where cultural minority rights are concerned, matters should not be resolved by a vote. Canadians are proud of this distinction, needless to say, and of the image Canada once had in the world stage (largely lost since the 80's) of being a champion of peace and tolerance.

How did this Canadian cultural distinction originate? I'm no historian, but I think it originated out of necessity, due to Quebec separatism. Separatists' strongest point has been the encroachment of English language and culture into the province of Quebec, and have felt that the only way to protect Quebec's French heritage is through sovereignty. Prime minister Trudeau used a lot of carrot and stick to keep Quebec a part of Canada: From sending in the army to quell separatist terrorists, to granting Quebec special cultural status. This set a strong precedent, and it was only a matter of time for other cultures in Canada to demand similar concessions.

Enough; I'm done with the US and Canada, for now. All I wanted to show is that culture is a self-differentiating and self-evolving phenomenon. A young nation may have a hard time defining itself, but then it finds something, holds on to it for life, and amplifies it until it becomes "culture" and "identity". Artists are rewarded for reflecting national or local culture; and eventually art comes to reinforce cultural identity.

I read recently somebody's trip to Croatia, where he relates that most croatians are muscular and fit and strong as bulls. Probably a self-identity born of having successfully defended their territory from a more powerfully armed occupier during the Balkan War.

Also read somewhere about the origins of Sicilian culture, where Vendetta was the key to their cultural survival. Any would-be occupier would have to contend with the fact that their actions against Sicilians would eventually have dire consequences, even if to do so would take generations' worth of time. Vendetta was culturally inexorable and inescapable, as it was a "family value" that didn't require a vertical organization.

But there are many other factors that can contribute to culture; and not just additively, but multiplicatively.

The current success of China in becoming a world economic power, I tend to attribute it partially to the game of GO, a traditional Chinese board game which is much simpler than chess in terms of rules, but much more complex, IMO, in terms of strategy. Western cultures have no equivalent, and their ways of thinking are lacking that special nutrient. In GO, "all you have to do" is surround your opponent's pieces, before your opponent surrounds yours. But if you look at GO end games, you'll be at a complete loss: The board looks like a random scattering of white and black buttons all over the grid, nothing surrounding anything; and yet the two champion level players have agreed as to who won and who lost the game. The thing is, the game involves so much strategy, and so much thinking ahead, that it is not necessary for the winner to prove the fact.

But to get back to Vegastrike, I think that to be able to characterize factions culturally, what's needed is a bit of brainstorming about their histories that goes beyond "they had a war with X and won/lost". There needs to be a fleshing out of the years before the war, the events during the war, if they won how they did it, if they lost why they did, etceteras, and as historical facts emerge, to brainstorm how they might have been webbed into culture and identity.

The dynamics of culture are complex. Yesterday I was listening to a radio program about the "potato famine" and how the Irish perceived it as a shameful chapter not to be spoken about, for many years.

In any case, I wish for this thread to remain non-faction-specific; just for discussion of,
  • Earth cultures, and how principles learned could transfer to Vegastrike
  • The cultural brainstorming process itself
  • The Vegastrike cultural map, in general
The goal of this brainstorm, as I see it, will be to end up with characterizations of each faction so detailed as to readily answer any such questions as to what they would dress like, or how they would act in social situations, or what they would be like doing business with.
Besides matters of self-identity, it would also help identify how sub-cultural rifts within cultures have developed as of the UTCS timeline. If faction X are neighbors of Y who had a war with Z, conceivably there were displaced people from Y who settled in X's territory and formed a sub-culture. Etceteras.
Deus Siddis
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1363
Joined: Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:42 pm

Re: From cultures to factions --generalities

Post by Deus Siddis »

Cultures I see as being like organisms, adapting and evolving to a changing environment or perishing once they've become too obsolete or reach a dead end. As such, the cultures around today (or today in VS' present) are a combination of adaptions for the current technological, resource and political environment plus vestigial adaptions from some time in history.

Organism or Organization, I believe it is much the same. By looking at what a culture has adapted to in the past and present (or is still adapting to in the present) you can explain and model cultures.

At least if you include one last element- the human. The species that forms all known civilization. The thing is this species naturally forms into Bands or Tribes, not City, Nation, Planet or Star Cluster States. So every mass-organization culture finds all of these weird ways of training a Man to become an Ant-- to get above Dunbar's number and mesh together a hive out of small packs of animals. Further technology and culture have both changed and continue to change the environment in which people live (in every sense) and the kinds of activities they must undertake to support the survival of the organization and themselves. Thus cultures have evolved further methods of training natural human instincts and emotions so that people will do these things that they need to do, which might be more or less counter intuitive for a hunter-gatherer.

Looking at this human or individual level of cultures in this way is important for two reasons:

1) We need to think about basing the "flavor" of the faction partially on how it motivates and manipulates individuals.
2) We need to consider how Alien Species are naturally and fundamentally different and how their cultures would evolve to motivate and manipulate them.

So now we've got what cultures are-- organizations evolving like species of organisms to survive in a changing environment of technology, resources and politics (alliances, competitors and such).

And now we've got what cultures are built out of-- individual organisms with legacy instincts and emotions.

And from this knowledge (plus real world observations) I think we have a good idea what it is cultures do (and what they must do to survive). It seems to me they have three main tasks:

1) Organization
2) Economics
3) Military

Getting individuals organized and motivated in general, pulling in and allocating resources and defending the group and its resources or improving its position in the environment (such as by damaging or destroying a competitor or absorbing new resources).

What is interesting about these three task is that different cultures focus more on one or two than other cultures. For example, the USSR I believe had only a quarter the economy of the US during the cold war, yet they were close to parity militarily. Because the USSR focused much more heavily on its military.

The reason they focused so much on military is actually an example of a clever little trick cultures sometimes can pull off, where they kill two birds with one stone, two basic tasks at once. The USSR was based mostly around Russia, a country that has historically had two season-- Winter and We're Under Attack. The people there were used to a military focus because it was historically so vital to their survival. This made it possible to organize people there around a military focus, so both of these basics tasks could be met at once. Interestingly enough, later on when the USSR acquired nuclear weapon technology, they no longer needed a military focus at all, because no one could invade them, but by that time a military focus and related propaganda was a means to the end of keeping people organized and motivated.

You can find a similar trick in recent US history. The US was in the past was a very strongly economic culture in both focus and ability. The thing is it often neglected the other two tasks, it was always so focused on economics. So when it finally got into a really big fight, WWII, it wasn't really well prepared militarily at all. To compensate, it inefficiently used its economy as a military- unleashing tons of garbage weapons like M3s and F4Fs, by converting car factories into war factories. With the time this bought, it caught up militarily as the war progressed and became a super power. But once again, with the same war came nuclear weapons which ended real war, and the military-industrial-complex, this dual focus, declined slowly over later decades.

The military-industrial-complex is just the US' second rate two-birds-one-stone trick though, its greatest brain child was the combination of Rags-To-Riches and Consumerism-- the art of organizing people around the growth economy of the country. As the actual economy part has fallen away and the US is not the poorest nation on the planet, or the richest in negative money (debt) we maintain this illusion of an economy as a means to an end of organization.

So when there was little more to fear, the USSR continued to maintain a "military" focus as a means of organization. They used fear to motivate people. When there was little left to provide, the US continued its "economic" focus as a means of organization. They used greed to motivate people. These are good examples of some sort of semi-vestigial adaptions in cultures.
Deus Siddis
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1363
Joined: Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:42 pm

Re: From cultures to factions --generalities

Post by Deus Siddis »

Part of the reason I brought that up (harnessed cultural inertia) is because it seems prevalent in the existing VS factions-- space communists (ISO), space knights (Highborn), space puritans (Purists), space ancient-cause zealots (Luddites), space theoretically scientists (Unadorned), space gear heads (Mechanists), space UN (Confederation), space internet forum goers (Andolians) and going by your description, space Canada too (LIHW). :)

So I think that there must be some cultural inertia at work for all those different cultures to exist at the same time, and unless in the distant future what you believe makes absolutely no difference (possible), then for this to make sense some of those cultures must still serve a practical purpose. So I was thinking of real world examples that might help support and demonstrate how that stuff could work.
chuck_starchaser
Elite
Elite
Posts: 8014
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 4:03 am
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Re: From cultures to factions --generalities

Post by chuck_starchaser »

Gottcha.
In other words, cultural inertia is canonically held high, and our mission is to explain it.
That's good. The harder this kind of work, the easier it is, paradoxically. Nothing worse than a tabla rasa to start with.
And good post for me, as a primer. You left out the Klkk, Shaper, Uln, Forsaken, maybe some other.
RedAdder
Bounty Hunter
Bounty Hunter
Posts: 149
Joined: Sat Jan 03, 2009 8:11 pm
Location: Germany, Munich
Contact:

Re: From cultures to factions --generalities

Post by RedAdder »

How about using a coordinate system like those popular for human psychology tests?

From http://www.uoregon.edu/~sanjay/bigfive.html#whatisit axes for humans are:

Extraversion vs Introversion
Agreeableness vs (Selfcenteredness? Egoism?)
Conscientiousness vs Disorganization
Neuroticism vs Emotional Stability
Openness to Experience vs Closedness

And then maybe additional axes for cultures:
Political Organization, Economic Organization, Military Organization, for example the axes:
Central vs Distributed
Sophisticated vs Unsophisticated
Focused vs Unfocused

This would result in 14 axes. Assuming 3 possible locations on the axes, that makes 4782969 possible combinations.
If we are only interested in a set of cultures where a pair of cultures differs in at least 3 traits, my guess is that there would still be a lot of combinations( don't know how many, my combinatorics knowledge leaves me in the dark here ).
Deus Siddis
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1363
Joined: Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:42 pm

Re: From cultures to factions --generalities

Post by Deus Siddis »

Yeah I left some out to be brief. I'd summarize the complete list like this:

Human Factions

Andolians = Web 4.0 Userbase
Confederation = United Nations
Forsaken = Homeless
Highborn = Knights
ISO = Communists
LIHW = Miscellaneous Alliance
Luddites = "Backwards" Zealots
Mechanists = Gadget Freaks
Purists = Friendlier Puritans
Shaper = Designer Organism Elitists
Unadorned = Theoretical (Mad) Scientists

Human "Uplifts"

Dgn/Shapers = Abused Underlings
Klkk = Jokesters with Inner Pain
Mishtali = Temperamental Cannibals
Purth = Cyborg Oxen

Rlaan Subcultures

Warrior Subspecies = Warriors and Police
Worker Subspecies = Workers and Merchants
Crossbreed Subspecies = Administrators and Diplomats
Briin = Humanity Researchers

Rlaan Uplifts

Lmpl = Highly Focused Workers
Nuhln = Assistants
Saahasayaay = Crazy Alien Warrior Experiment?

Aera and Aera Uplift

Aera = Coffee Drinkers- Paranoid, Frantic and Productive :)
Bzbr = Fanatically Devoted Servants

"Guilds"

Hunters = Bounty Hunters and "Good" Mercenaries
Merchants = Mass Shipping Industry
Pirates = Pirates and "Bad" Mercenaries
Turbo
ISO Party Member
ISO Party Member
Posts: 423
Joined: Mon Jun 11, 2007 11:54 am
Location: TX, USA
Contact:

Re: From cultures to factions --generalities

Post by Turbo »

I offer another modern example to illustrate one possible cultural force. I will try to avoid tying them to VS factions at this point, though it could apply to a couple of factions.

Focus on history: South Koreans are very aware of their thousands of years of history and very proud to have preserved their unique culture against the influence of powerful neighbors. Some of their most popular TV shows (particularly when their TV industry was getting started) are historical dramas, most of them set in the Chosun Dynasty. At that point in history, Korea was united, relatively wealthy, and relatively independent. I personally think that their greatest accomplishment was more recent -- rising from smoking post-war rubble to become the 12th largest economy in the world* in ~50 years. But as a culture, they remember the Chosun Dynasty as a great time in history. Their TV shows honestly depict that time as having its share of injustice, corruption, and suffering. But it's still a time of which they are proud and want to remember. This focus on the past is interdependent with other factors -- resistance to influence from outside cultures, desire for reunification with North Korea, and a strong Confucian tendency to respect elders, tradition, and history.

The half-dozen Iranians I have talked to exhibited a similar focus on history. They consider themselves to be the descendants of the great ancient Persian empire. This feeling of historical significance ties the Iranians together as a people despite their nation being composed of many diverse ethnic groups and geographies.

* 2006 data; I think they've slipped a few places since then
Turbo

There are two speeds in combat: stopped, and as fast as you can go. Unless you run into something, going fast keeps you alive more often than stopping.
chuck_starchaser
Elite
Elite
Posts: 8014
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 4:03 am
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Re: From cultures to factions --generalities

Post by chuck_starchaser »

@Deus:
Thanks! Gosh, there's a lot of factions in VS I hadn't even heard of.

@Turbo:
Good one! Yeah, sometimes culture is self-differentiating; sometimes governments try to "protect" it.
It's interesting how Quebec is so protective of its French language and culture. The signs law, for example,
which at the beginning prohibited English signs, but later was moderated to simply mandate that French
must be predominant. That is, if you open a corner store (variety store), you could, in theory, have an
English translation "variety store" under a much larger "Deppaneur" --though, this is not usually done, since
anglophones living in Quebec, even those who never learn French (like me) get used to common words
like 'depanneur'. But anyhow, just wanted to give an example of French language protectionism.
Now, a few years ago, the French government (in France) decided to switch to English for its air traffic
controllers at airports, for reasons of safety.
The Quebec politicians were incensed by that, and complained so much to the government of France that
the French president made a statement saying that, paraphrasing, "the English of air traffic control is
not the English of Shakespeare."
It seems to me France feels no need to "protect" its culture and language the way Quebec does, and can't
even fathom Quebec's cow with the English language.
Turbo
ISO Party Member
ISO Party Member
Posts: 423
Joined: Mon Jun 11, 2007 11:54 am
Location: TX, USA
Contact:

Re: From cultures to factions --generalities

Post by Turbo »

It sure is quiet in here. Let's see if we can fix that. First, to reiterate the purpose of the thread (from the other thread that started it):
chuck_starchaser wrote:I only started up all this debate as a way to advocate trying to depict the future as being different, preferably VERY different from the present day. A millennium is a long time. Possibly NO culture should resemble present day cultures. I look at this as freedom, rather than a chore.

The first step would be to brainstorm about the various races and their history and culture. The question would be what does each race/nation/culture identify with? So, for each faction, what is that unique characteristic? Everything else should flow, partly from that, partly from history, partly from economics and politics. And this work would eventually help answer such trivial questions as "what should a klkk bar look like, compared to an andolian one?" Right now this game lacks character, and that's because nothing in it has been characterized.
By categorizing the factions as we have, we risk repeating the present. We avoid that trap by recognizing that these categorizations are only analogies to aid understanding. Some are easy (ISO=Communists) while others not so easy.

LIHW=Misc Alliance? We don't want any faction to be miscellaneous, or why have it? I'd say they are more like the Confederate States of America or the United Arab Emirates -- close allies, but not a single entity and thus reluctant to work together. Consider the original USA constitution, the Articles of Confederation. There was no central tax authority or judiciary, so the government didn't last long. The game treats the LIHW as one faction, but I'd expect them to be cautious and noncommital.

The Rlaan Briin are indeed researchers of humanity. What does that mean? I see them as a Rlaan version of modern-world special-interest groups, such as reenactors (medieval, Civil War, frontier, etc), trekkies, furries, and others. They enjoy doing something their mainstream culture does not understand and probably considers a waste of time. They have their own sub-language, and (like any group of friends) enjoy being different than "everyone else." They relish any chance to study their chosen subject, which is contact with humans in the case of the Briin. The inter-ship communication, "Pardon me, I was told your kind would ask for mustard," is (perhaps) an expression of the Briin's not-entirely-successful attempts to understand humanity.

Conderation = United Nations. That's not helpful to me since today's UN stands for "Usually Nothing." Do the Confeds seek to impose order and peace on a chaotic galaxy? Every faction would like to remake the galaxy in their version of order and peace, but the Confeds probably realize that order and peace is more attainable if cultural differences are permitted to remain.

Highborn = Knights. OK, but let's expand. They are one of the factions I think would definitely be focused on history, even if their version of that history is not entirely accurate. They would talk about honor, the glory of combat fought in a righteous cause, and protecting the weak (of their own species). They would trace their lineage to wealthy families. They might decorate with replicas of ancient militaria: heraldic shields, swords, garand rifles, or military banners representing themselves and their conquered foes. For example, in real life I am a medieval reenactor and a military officer. In VS I fly a Highborn-built Lancelot because I like its characteristics, so I painted it with heraldry as shown in my avatar or a much larger view here:
http://www.willadsenfamily.org/us/don/t ... turbo1.png

Bah,my post has gotten so long that every letter I type jumps me to the top of the edit window. I hate that. More later, I guess.
Turbo

There are two speeds in combat: stopped, and as fast as you can go. Unless you run into something, going fast keeps you alive more often than stopping.
Deus Siddis
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1363
Joined: Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:42 pm

Re: From cultures to factions --generalities

Post by Deus Siddis »

Turbo wrote: By categorizing the factions as we have, we risk repeating the present. We avoid that trap by recognizing that these categorizations are only analogies to aid understanding. Some are easy (ISO=Communists) while others not so easy.
Well they might be aids. It isn't necessarily easier to understand the mindset and motivations of experienced knights or passionate communists, unless you've actually walked in those shoes (unlikely).

On the other hand, to try to put yourself into the situation and environment the culture formed in isn't necessarily hard. If you have enough of this kind of detail that is, or if you create it. This angle also might allow you to create a cultural identity that's both original and internally consistent with the setting and wider universe.

Then again, having so (too) many essentially human factions as we do, figuring out for them all diverse but reasonable cultures that fit together in the same time and place, might not be very possible.
For example, in real life I am a medieval reenactor and a military officer. In VS I fly a Highborn-built Lancelot because I like its characteristics, so I painted it with heraldry as shown in my avatar or a much larger view here:
http://www.willadsenfamily.org/us/don/t ... turbo1.png
LOL, I've never seen someone do something like that in a single player game before! Dude, you are a Highborn! :D

Of course I guess I'm not far behind you when it comes to the Purists, having spent forever trying to perfect (in my mind) a design language that fits them before I fully remodel their craft and other tech. At least in part because I feel I best understand and am most sympathetic to their perspective (as well as the typical characteristics of their craft).
Turbo
ISO Party Member
ISO Party Member
Posts: 423
Joined: Mon Jun 11, 2007 11:54 am
Location: TX, USA
Contact:

Re: From cultures to factions --generalities

Post by Turbo »

Deus Siddis wrote: LOL, I've never seen someone do something like that in a single player game before!
Sure you have. Don't you remember my "space camoflague"?
Image Image
Or, my King Cobra for Privateer, aka "snakes on a plane"?
Image
Or if you're a fan of Futurama, the Planet Express?
Image
Turbo

There are two speeds in combat: stopped, and as fast as you can go. Unless you run into something, going fast keeps you alive more often than stopping.
Turbo
ISO Party Member
ISO Party Member
Posts: 423
Joined: Mon Jun 11, 2007 11:54 am
Location: TX, USA
Contact:

Re: From cultures to factions --generalities

Post by Turbo »

Darn, I didn't mean to derail the discussion. To get it back on track, I offer this for thought:
http://xkcd.com/771/
Turbo

There are two speeds in combat: stopped, and as fast as you can go. Unless you run into something, going fast keeps you alive more often than stopping.
Post Reply