The Problem with the Zhodani

[daryen]

You can only judge another culture as evil if you consider your own to be good and your moral code to be superior to theirs, have you spotted where this falls down yet? The self righteous view of superior morality is evil in and of itself because it provides justification for the atrocities you will commit in the name of your morality.

I am in no way saying my culture is good. And, again, I am not comparing cultures here. I am simply saying that slavery (and murder and rape and child sacrifice) is wrong.

Has it occurred to you that the "correct" answer ... is that neither party in your question has a monopoly on being correct?

Yes. But it still gets back to the point that if slavery (and murder and rape and child sacrifice) was not wrong at some point, then, really, it isn't wrong now. It may be unaccepted to some, but that still means it is intrinsically not wrong. (Whether that is because it is intrinsically right, or there is no "intrisics" to anything doesn't matter.) To be honest, this discussion is making me feel like I am some kind of weirdo of sticking to the point saying that slavery is wrong. Mostly at this point I am just very confused.

Let me give what is hopefully not a controversial analogy. When looking back at very old cultures, they believed that magic was endemic and permeated everything in their lives. You have to understand that, even though *you* don't believe in magic, they sure did. From that understanding, you then have a better chance at grasping what their actions meant and why they did things they did. But, even when you look at things that way, you still understanding that magic doesn't exist now, and didn't exist back then. It is possible to do both of those things: acknowledge that they believed in magic and "used" it in their daily lives and yet still understand that magic isn't real despite what they believed.

In the same way, saying that slavery is wrong is not to say they agreed with that position. They operated on the understanding that slavery was just a part of life and something they accepted, or at least acknowledged. It is important to understand what they believed and how they applied that into their lives. But giving that allowance and using that knowledge to better understand their lives doesn't change that slavery is wrong now and was wrong then. I am not viewing them or expecting them to operate by how I think they should have. Even for other modern cultures, I don't expect them to live life by my codes and morals. It is important to understand what they believe in order to understand what they do, to be able to relate to them, and have any chance to predict what they might do. So, if a culture has integrated slavery into its fiber, then that has to be understood in the context of their culture and what they believe. But that still doesn't make slavery not wrong.

Per-Zho's I was running a future campaign set 75 years after the events of 1248, some of the material has been uploaded to the wiki; but I remember having discussions with Don at the time, iirc he was writing the Zho book for MgT1 then. He said, and that Marc agreed, I think, everyone would be psionic in the future, something like that (which was statistically supported, I think, running the numbers).

In the 1248 Spinward States, one of the minor powers (the Jewell Covenant) is all about exactly this. Their society was fused between Regency and Zhodani and became focused on expanding psionics to the greatest degree possible. The fun thing about it is that it was intentionally set up so that it could be as utopian or distopian as the referee desired. They could be on the way to "the singularity", or to tranhumanism, or to a hive mind, or to psionic cult. Or some combination of all of them.

Clearly the majority of Zhodani are fine with the situation and don’t live in fear.

Of course the Proles don't live in fear. How can they? Especially since they are all so profoundly happy!

 

[Dragoner]

In the 1248 Spinward States, one of the minor powers (the Jewell Covenant) is all about exactly this. Their society was fused between Regency and Zhodani and became focused on expanding psionics to the greatest degree possible. The fun thing about it is that it was intentionally set up so that it could be as utopian or distopian as the referee desired. They could be on the way to "the singularity", or to tranhumanism, or to a hive mind, or to psionic cult. Or some combination of all of them.

Esalin is there also, which I always wondered if it was named after the Esalen Institute down Highway 1 from SF which seemed a pretty new-agey place by their ads:

What is Esalen?
Esalen is a not-for-profit holistic educational center offering wild comfort and space for emergent transformation and internal exploration since 1962. Anchored by the inspiring beauty of Big Sur and an incomparable intellectual history, we are always negotiating nuance, tangling with complexity, and sitting inside contradiction. All the while, we embrace the messy, imperfect practice of moving toward our highest humanity.



Which to me is more what the Zhodani sound like. Granted, Traveller was written when all this stuff was HUGE, I mean Norton had a preface in one of her books about object reading. There was all sorts of stuff like this on TV, like Fantasy Island (was Mr Rourke an angel or The Devil?), That's Incredible, or Real People, and TV specials with Uri Geller bending spoons, "Pyramid Power" and so much of the sort of weird 70's stuff.

For modern sci-fi it is difficult to sort of reign it in all back together, and for what Don said, iirc, he just thought of the Zho's, Droyne, and etc. as targets, and I guess not playable PC's. Probably why he was talking to people to get different viewpoints. Then again with a lot of Sci-Fi RPG's psi is sort ingrained, and games like EsperGenesis, pretty big, even though I don't know of any modern sci-fi books that really have prominent psi the way Norton and others did. I mean I love Norton, she is one of my favorites of the era, even if I never used the psi stuff in game too much, I mean the characters as rolled had a tendency to be really weak.

edit: killed esalen institute link

 

[Grav_Moped]

Granted, Traveller was written when all this stuff was HUGE

And there was a lot of it in SF at the time (Marion Zimmer-Bradley, Anne McCaffrey, even Larry Niven used it).

Nowadays in SF it tends to be explicitly described or treated as magic rather than as psionics.

 

[Dragoner]

And there was a lot of it in SF at the time (Marion Zimmer-Bradley, Anne McCaffrey, even Larry Niven used it).

Nowadays in SF it tends to be explicitly described or treated as magic rather than as psionics.

Yes, Heinlein, Philip K Dick, and a lot of other big writers too, I'd say it's the original blueprint for the Force; though tbh even back in the day we usually described the Zho's as the Klingons from the original Star Trek, and lost that whole turban deal, like from Johnny Carson? Just no. It should probably be lost anyways because what is it for except to make them seem non-western? That's not good. Even though I own later books I am guilty of forming most of my opinion about them from Expedition to Zhodane, which was a pretty cool adventure all together. Other than that they had the teleporting commandos from Broadsword, which were always kind of funny, I mean like "suddenly the Zhodani teleport in!" Like the Spanish Inquisition off Monty Python.

 

[Grav_Moped]

I'd say it's the original blueprint for the Force

Kind of, but it's what I'm thinking of when saying "magic". It's not using one's own mental energy; instead, it's controlling an external (and all-permeating) energy field to do things.

 

[Condottiere]

1. If it's the Force, the Jedi have had enough and taken over administration of the Republic; weak minds and all of that.

2. It's probably easier to imagine a country ruled by mages, who have access to mind reading and controlling spells, and actively use them.

3. Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. Depends on options.

 

[Spinward Flow]

3. Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. Depends on options.

Also depends on whether the person you're giving that power/authority to pulls a Cincinnatus (or not) once the threat has been dealt with.

 

[daryen]

Psionics is endemic in Golden Age science fiction, and is view as part of the science. And this even before the 70s popularized the ideas. Psionics was part and parcel of science fiction from at least the 40s onward. It wasn't necessarily in all science fiction, but it was still quite common, from what I could tell. It would appear that some people in the 40s and 50s thought that psionics would just be a natural part of human development as we got more advanced and learned to use the other 90% of our brains.** So, when psionics was introduced, it really was viewed as part of the "science", not just some kind of magic. It's only with the modern view that psionics has become "magic for science fiction".

At least that what it appeared to me from reading so much of it in older science fiction.

On a different topic, going back to the 1248 Spinward States, it intentionally had three different takes on where the Zhodani could develop:
1) Cronor Consulate: Traditional Zhodani system that is attempting to pick up the pieces and rebuild their society as it was before.
2) Jewell Covenant: All-in psionics for everyone. What that actually means is up to the referee. It was structured to allow it to go in any direction.
3) Querion Cluster: Prole-led Zhodani state. Proles get a taste of actual power and like it. Now they are terrified the traditional Zhodani will swoop in and try to "fix" them back to the old ways. Which, of course, the traditionalists swear they would never do ...

[** Yes, I know that "we only use 10% of our brains" is utter nonsense. It's a joke.]

 

[Spinward Flow]

On a different topic, going back to the 1248 Spinward States, it intentionally had three different takes on where the Zhodani could develop:
1) Cronor Consulate: Traditional Zhodani system that is attempting to pick up the pieces and rebuild their society as it was before.
2) Jewell Covenant: All-in psionics for everyone. What that actually means is up to the referee. It was structured to allow it to go in any direction.
3) Querion Cluster: Prole-led Zhodani state. Proles get a taste of actual power and like it. Now they are terrified the traditional Zhodani will swoop in and try to "fix" them back to the old ways. Which, of course, the traditionalists swear they would never do ...

All three interpretations are "fair" takes ... and not even necessarily exclusive of each other.

Bare minimum, after a traumatic shock to the system, it would be unlikely for Zhodani society/culture to simply "revert" back to being exactly like what was the ante trauma shock state of affairs. The more likely outcome is that the society/culture would be forced to adapt, evolve and "shift" somewhat from the previous power structure. There would almost certainly be a period of internal strife and chaos due to the "churn" in thinking and methods for organizing society at large (and towards what aims), so the Zhodani would emerge from events "changed" in their outlook.

Additionally, such a shake up of the system could result in a sort of renaissance of experimentation in social systems, simply as a side effect of all of the different approaches tried (with not all of them succeeding) in terms of coping with the traumatic events. Some will rise while others will fall ... but that kind of generational "churn" is already built into the Zhodani system of governing (since power isn't dynastic, per se).

In other words, all three outcomes that you cite are perfectly possible concurrently, such that the Zhodani Consulate isn't a "monolithic state" apparatus by the 1248 Spinward States time frame.

 

[daryen]

In other words, all three outcomes that you cite are perfectly possible concurrently, such that the Zhodani Consulate isn't a "monolithic state" apparatus by the 1248 Spinward States time frame.

I hope they are perfectly possible concurrently, because they are concurrent!

The overall Zhodani territory was loosely knit together by the Zhodani Concord. The Concord was a loose confederation of various successor states. Those successor states ran the gamut of how they worked, with the three "on map" Zhodani states serving as representative of the many, many more throughout Zhodani space.

And, to be clear, Querion Cluster's paranoia wasn't really justified; Cronor really didn't plan on doing anything against them. Obviously, that could be adjusted by the referee, but the default position was the Cronor was being earnest in wanting to help and not force anything on their neighbors. It was just that Querion didn't know everything that Cronor did, so was operation from an information deficit.

I could go on all day about the various 1248 Spinward States. They lived in my head for far too long for me to not have a great deal of affection for all of them. (Even the erstwhile wannabe empress Ciencia. Especially Ciencia.)