Re: Monoculture Aliens, etc.

At 10:40 12/09/97 +0000, you wrote:
>What is the excuse for the Centauri, Narn, Drazi, Draconians, Ice 
>Warriors, Betazoids or Kazon being mono-culture? There isn't one.
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

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