Much intersting stuff deleted...
> What is the excuse for the Centauri, Narn, Drazi, Draconians, Ice
Well, I didn't want to jump into this one, but what the hey!!!
I wonder what we mean by "culture"? The Mimbari have different castes, and
there is no reason to believe that different castes might not have different
ways to perform ceremonies to their different deities (from what I remember,
and I could be wrong, Valen is a political figure, if you will, and not a
"god").
The Centauri have multiple gods, and we rarely see anybody but the
royal family/emperor. Other than some language variations, I doubt
one could tell apart different monarchs. Granted, I am working poor in the
U.S., not European, but we have rarely seen anything other than the emperor's
court and the military. In addition, Centauri was populated by the Xon (sp?)
who evolved in parallel with the Centauri. After a war to the death (you add
your own Mollari accent here) with them, what was left was the Centauri. Wars
tend to bring people
together - see the Persian Gulf/World-Iraq war and the U.S.
population...
The Narn, well, now more than ever there is a single culture - a
warrior culture. Whoever thinks that Centauri occupation is good would have to
keep quite. I remember G'Kar had a flower god, there could be people who
follow the river goddess or what not.
The Drazi do get into fights over colors, so you could claim their concept of
culture is rather..., umh.... colorful! (duck!)
I think the real problem with the Alien cultures is that all these shows are
not about the aliens, but about the Humans. All the examples above are not
about purple Drazi finding shameful to have
spinach on their teeth, but considering sub-human to refuse a fresh
plum. (The green Drazi, of course, would believe the opposite...)
If you think about having dark skinned aliens, versus light skinned aliens, or
different languages, or something else, well, the real problem is then that
nobody would care. I am not at all interested in watching the story of how the
xontrads went to war because the blue xontrad got green eggs sunny side up
while visiting the plaid xontrad's capital (blue xontrads find green eggs
sunny side up an
affront on their gender - it means they can't switch genders when the
opposite gender is unavailable for mating...)
To bring this somewhere in the vicinity of the list's subject matter,
when we are dealing with Sci-Fi combat (as we are), the least thing
we are going to see is different cultures. We might have the Oceanic Union
Aborigene, but we aren't going to have him go into a walkabout. We have the
Russian Babushka with the pig (PLasma Gun) and the Chinese sniper for the ESU,
but the one won't prepare goulash and the other won't prepare some Cantonese
delight. I don't expect this not only because they are figures, but just
because they are in the military, which some might argue is a different
culture in and of itself... (MRE's, anyone?)
I also have to agree with the other comment about culture
amalgamation - Look at the Chinese "Communists" (ROTFLMFAO). Hey,
look at me! I'm Puerto Rican, but have been here in the middle of
the MidWest (Minnesota) for almost ten years... I am bi-cultural at
best, at worst Minnesotan (darn tooting!, for those who watched
_Fargo_)... My children, if any, will be Minnesotans. Bi-lingual,
but Minnesotans...
I'll shut my trap now....
> At 10:40 12/09/97 +0000, you wrote:
Well it depends on the granularity of your view. Take the minbari for example
(since I don't know too much about trek cultures). They are split into 3
castes, warrior, worker and religous. This happened when Valen appeared 1000
years ago, apparently dramatically enough to become all prevading very
quickly. Each caste is a very different culture from the
others - the Warrior caste are (surprisingly enough) very aggressive and
seem to have a very fluid hierachy of families, while the religous are much
less caring about family and more the caste as a whole. The Narn are probably
monocultural because they were enslaved as a race by the Centauri. One thing
that reccurs in Earth cultures is that slaves have their native culture wiped
out by those who enslave them. As it is they also have a 'father figure' 1,000
years ago, J'Quon. (Note, I'm not saying why to avoid spoilers, but 1,000
years ago was a time of great upheaval in the B5
universe). I would say the Drazi are just odd - they're comedy value
aliens mostly. Whether Telepathy would create a moncultural race is a
debatable question, but the Greys in Conspiracy X are a great example of how
that might come about.
So, In essence, I think if you look at the details for those races that have
them, few are truly monocultural. An ordered culture, which I think is a
prerequisite of a race with very high technology (note: that doesn't mean a
peaceful one), might appear monocultural at first glance but on further
examination turns out not to be.
TTFN
Jon
Some of the 'best' aliens are monocultures and justifiably so.
The Borg, the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Sontarans, and the Cylons are all
deliberately monocultured. They couldn't be anything else and it is an
essential part of their menace. The problem is that the Star Trek writers
keeping on giving the Borg individuality, and the doctor who writers kept on
bringing Davros back.
For the more human alien races the monoculture thing is a bit of a problem.
There are two possible get outs:
1. If an alien encountered a Federation or Earth Force ship and made first
contact, what would their impression be of the human culture? They'd get the
impression that humans were essentially monocultured with that culture being
rather similrat to modern western culture. (ie democratic, believing in
individual freedoms, fairly materialistic and religeously somewhere between
christianity and aetheism.) The different cultures amongst humans would humans
would not be obvious (why are there no Muslim starship captains in Star
Trek?).
So maybe our encounters with aliens have been similarly biased towards only
seeing the dominant culture.
2. Most alien cultures are portrayed as being older than our own. Look at how
much western culture has taken over others in the past two hundred years and
tell me that in another thousand earth will have the cultural diversity that
it does now? Maybe there will only be three or four distinct culture
remaining.
The Ferengi mention 10,000 years of history, or is it 5000? Either way that is
a long time. In that time their capitalist system would easily have had the
oppotunity to invade and destroy all others.
The Romulans are allowed to be mono-culture, they are all descended
from the same buch of rebels who left Vulcan for the same reason.
The Bajorans are mono-cultured, but they do have their real deities
sitting on their doorstep: it's hard to be agnostic when the gods send an orb
down every few hundred years to bring a new set of visions.
Other cultures are defined by a single individual: Kahless for the Klingons,
Surak for the Vulcans, Valen for the Minbari. This is more dubious, but
perhaps the followers of these were very persuasive in one way or another.
Valen and Kahless were about 1000 years before the present. Surak longer ago
and we know what happened to the people who disagreed with him: they became
the Romulans.
What is the excuse for the Centauri, Narn, Drazi, Draconians, Ice
Warriors, Betazoids or Kazon being mono-culture? There isn't one.
:-(
Cheers,
> Steve Pugh wrote:
snip<
> What is the excuse for the Centauri, Narn, Drazi, Draconians, Ice
As for the Kazon, the show (ST Voyager) has clearly stated that there are many
different factions of Kazons, and that they have only been encountering a few
of those factions. The Narn are victims of the Centauri, along with the
unifying force of their religion. One of the problems with this entire thread
is the assumption that we are typical, i.e. that if there are multiple
cultures on this planet there MUST be the same thing out there. Not only is
assuming anything slightly silly, but also the "Earth is just a typical
planet" idea is almost as arrogant as the "Earth is special" one. There might
be any number of reasons that almost every other species is monocultural, and
many for the idea that this is wrong, but the bottom line is that we just
don't know. If a writer chooses to make alien races monocultural, for any
reason but that he just didn't think, it's their call.
> Cheers,
> Steve Pugh wrote:
> AHA! For the Centauri there is a very good reason. Thye were not the
The war against the Xon seems to have taken place in ancient
pre-history. I doubt the Centauri were a unified force at that time.
Did Londo give an exact figure in 'Parliament of Dreams' for how long ago the
Xon were wiped out?
It is possible that the Centauri and other races developed society and culture
whilst they were much fewer in number and contained in a much smaller region
than mankind did. Maybe the Shadows and Vorlons gave some races a helping hand
(a la 2001 or David Brin's Uplift novels) that resulted in them developing a
culture at an earlier stage in their expamsion across their planet.
In Trek something like this is quite likely, most planets seem to have
populations in the thousands or millions rather than the billions found in
Babylon 5 or on Earth today.
> As for the Kazon, the show (ST Voyager) has clearly stated that
Yes, but all the factions we have encountered have had the same culture and
there has been no indication that anywhere there are Kazon who do not have the
same hierarchal tribal structure to their society.
Wow, physics threads and xeno-anthropology threads. This mailing list
has gone higbrow all of a sudden!
In message <874058001.1417570.0@kryten.acs.bolton.ac.uk>
> "Steve Pugh" <mafb90@pop.dial.pipex.com> wrote:
> Some of the 'best' aliens are monocultures and justifiably so.
Daleks did begin to become less monocultured over time, with the Imperial and
Renegade factions (basically, blobs,
and bionic blobs with bits on - to quote a certain young
'lady' :) ).
> For the more human alien races the monoculture thing is a bit of a
> 2. Most alien cultures are portrayed as being older than our own.
Fast and easy global communication tends to break down the barriers of
language and culture, so what any race will end
up with is probably a conglomorised mess of a mono-culture,
with a few small pockets of other cultures here and there.
There will always be differences, but these differences will be subtle. Would
an alien pick up different human accents? Probably not. Neither would they
notice the difference between one human putting his sweet wrapper in a rubbish
bin, while another puts his candy wrapper in a trash can.
Likewise we're going to be oblivious to minor differences in hair style, bone
structure, clothing and all the other things that an alien race considers to
be important distinctions between their own cultures.
Television shows don't generally have the time to show all the little details
about a race, unless that difference is important to the plot, so it's very
understandable that they don't bother to try (generally).
RPGS don't have this excuse of course. Also, it's not
only science fiction to blame - fantasy can be very bad
for this as well.
In message <3.0.3.32.19970912112548.00989af0@rincewind.sar.bolton.ac.uk>
> Deeply in Love with Dot writes:
> Take the minbari for
This three-way split in the Minbari isn't exactly novel, and is
seen quite often in ancient cultures. There's one lot to do all the work, one
lot that skives off by doing ritual stuff, and another lot to skive off by
being the (core of) the military.
The caste system in India is similar, although there's (IIRC) a merchant caste
as well. I guess the Minbari are another utopian society that's evolved beyond
money and trade and so on...
> This happened when Valen
I don't know if I'd call that really multi-cultural. It all seems
too symboitic. They all speak the same language don't they?
> So, In essence, I think if you look at the details for those races
I don't know that I'd really agree with this at all. The most ordered cultures
historically, as best as I can tell, were the most static cultures. Fuedal
Japan stands as a good example. To protect it's orderly nature it closed
itself off completely from all external influence for a few centuries. An
orderly culture would not seem to me to have any particular need for new
technologies.
I suppose this is a horrendously Euro-(Amero-)centric position to
take.
I suppose the Minbari are a bit better than the Klingons. Don't
you ever wonder who, in a culture entirely made up of War-yaws,
does all the really hard work?
> This happened when Valen
I don't think so. In one of the earliest episodes Leneer is boring Londo to
death by telling him in detail his life on Minbar. He mentions something
about 25(?) tongues and sub-tongues. Then later on in "War Without End
Part II" Zathras mentions that the Minbari have three languages. So take your
pick. I'm pretty sure they don't all speak the same language.
> At 07:47 PM 9/14/97 GMT, David Brewer wrote:
> I don't know that I'd really agree with this at all. The most
I had to chuckle at your reference of Feudal Japan as an orderly culture, as
Japan from the Heian period through the Tokugawa Period was one of the LEAST
orderly cultures known, with civil war being pretty much constant from the
Onin War to the end of the Sengoku Jidai. However, you are right that under
the reforms of Tokugawa, Japan closed itself from the outside world and lived
a relatively orderly lifestyle.
> I suppose the Minbari are a bit better than the Klingons. Don't
I've always assumed that the Klingons were the equivalent of the samurai. You
hear about the warrior class as they are the rulers of the empire, but you
don't hear about the lower classes that do the grunt work. Or do you?
Did you see the _Trouble with Tribbles_ remake on DS9, when they used
Classic Trek footage to tell us what REALLY happened on the space station? The
old style Klingons come into the room, and Worf says, "Klingons." O'Brien and
Odo look around, expecting the dark skinned guys with the big foreheads.
"Where? I don't see any Klingons." Worf points them to the classic Trek
Klingons, and O'Brien says, "Those are Klingons?" Worf answers, "We don't like
to talk about it." I almost fell off my chair, laughing!
Anyway, I'm going to throw in my 2 cents worth (1.4 cents US). I will contend
that multiculturalism is the NORM and not something just common to Earth. The
proof: the Neandrathals. The Neandrathals were NOT simply a stepping stone to
homo sapiens sapiens (us, modern man). They were a different, um, species? I'm
not sure if they were a different species as their DNA was close enough to us
for cross mating to occur. But they were a different type of human from homo
sapiens. We're not sure why they died out. Theories suggest that they may have
been beaten in the competition for food by homo sapiens. They may also have
simply been cross bred out of existance.
At any case, two separate types of humans developed on Earth. If you look at
this with an eye towards biodiversification, you can see that it's likely that
different species could develop on the same planet. If not different species,
why not different cultures? Human cultures come out of human tribalism. I'd
assume that any species with the same kind of tribalism would also have the
same multiculturalism. And that tribalism comes from evolution. Did you know
that women who have an adulteress affair are more likely to become pregnant by
their lover? There's a lot of evolutionary baggage in our bodies designed to
perpetuate the species in the face of competition. This same baggage results
in us banding together in societies (from family to nation) but also fight
against outsiders (xenophobia, often showing itself as racism). We run into
problems when these two forces collide.
I have problems seeing an evolutionary species that grew up in the face of
competition and was NOT multicultural. We see this in human
biodiversification. Even species as simple as ants fight each other in wars.
One nest will attack another nest in competition for scarce food resources.
The humble ant is radically different in various parts of the world (compare
the North American carpenter ant with the African fire ant and tell me which
one YOU'D rather sit on). Assume a larger planet than Earth with fewer land
and/or ice bridges to the different continents and you could see more
diversification than we have on Earth.
That being said, I have little problem with monocultural aliens in SF. I think
monoculturalism will develop in old races, where xenophobic feelings have been
washed out through diverse genetics. Given another ten or twenty thousand
years of mass media and acceptable interacial marriages and you might see
humanity become monocultural. It all depends on whether or not we can shed our
evolutionary baggage towards competition and embrace our sense of family.
My conclusion? I'll go either way on this. :-) I think old space faring
races are probably likely to be monocultural though they didn't start that
way. Younger races are apt to be more multicultural. This is assuming that
there wasn't something evolutionary that caused them to become monocultural
sooner. At any rate, there's enough room for me to suspend my disbelief if
only for the length of a movie, novel, or wargame scenario.