Re: Monoculture Aliens, etc.

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
>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 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 
>you ever wonder who, in a culture entirely made up of War-yaws,
>does all the really hard work?

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.

Allan Goodall:	agoodall@sympatico.ca 
"You'll want to hear about my new obsession.
 I'm riding high upon a deep depression. 
 I'm only happy when it rains."    - Garbage