Zhodani in your TU?

[atpollard]

Social Darwinism at work.

Individuals born with a thirst for power and the natural ability to acquire it (psionics) are lifted above the masses and given power. Those who naturally strive for power within an organized framework (middle management personality type) are happy and prosper. Those who naturally strive for power at the expense of others (dictator personality type) are identified as a dangerous sociopath and ‘repaired’.

For the masses born without a thirst for power or the natural ability to acquire it (psionics), survival is best achieved through the same personality type that has marked peasants throughout history – the slave mentality. Work hard, avoid trouble, expect little and be happy in your position. On Earth, those who did not embrace their position could hide a spirit of quiet rebellion, but the Zho can detect your thoughts and correct ‘defects’. Natural selection would quickly breed people temperamentally suited to their station.

Zho society would probably function like a Japanese Shogun, a medieval Manor or a Southern Colonial Plantation. If you sat down to discuss the quality of life with ‘the Colonel’ on the veranda, he would explain the importance of ‘Duty’ and ‘Honor’ for a gentleman and extol the peaceful harmony of such a naturally ordered society. He would be correct - it IS good to be the king.


[PS. a brief footnote to the Psi-shield states that many Imperial installations have psionic shielding built into the building to prevent spying.]

 

[Tobias]

Let me handle all the things that are wrong with your post.
a) Zhodani society is not a psionic-based meritocracy. The ruling caste is hereditary, but receives new members by psionic merit.
b) Zhodani Nobles and Intendants are just as conformist, duty-bound and honest as the lower classes, probably even more so, these values being instilled in them from early childhood by psionic means.
c) Zhodani Proles are neither chattel slaves nor serfs. Nor do they necessarily live in less material comfort than Nobles or Intendants. They are certainly not "peasants". Indeed, they can accumulate considerable technical expertise and/or wealth.
d) Zhodani nobility emphasizes group action, not individual sovereignity. The Consulate is a democracy with limited franchise (Athens-style) - this cannot be repeated often enough apparently.

 

[atpollard]

Tobias,
If you believe that Zhodani society is a utopian structure in which everyone is born happy with their station and lives in perfect harmony, then Zhodiani ARE NOT HUMAN in your Traveller universe. The only way to achieve complete conformity in any human society is to use draconian means to achieve it (whether physical, psychological or psionic).

Is not the definition of a psionic-based meritocracy, a ruling class in which the ruling caste receives new members by psionic merit. (Hereditary members get training early to ensure an advantage over the non-nobles thus a perceived inherent superiority).

I defy you to name any human culture group that does not have inequality, or in which the 'have not' are content to be 'have not' and would not prefer to be 'have'. The closest thing to equality is a hunter-gatherer or refugee - everyone has nothing. That does not sound like Zhodiani culture.

Look hard at how 'Athens-style democracy' really worked. Stalin Russia and Mao China were both democracies and both tried to completely re-educate the people for the collective good. Those are better models for your psionic police state of hereditary nobility and complete loyalty of all citizens.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

From the outside, yes, it looks oppressive, but most Zhos are genuinely happy. Partly they're reeducated into happiness, but there's also the lack of crime and mental illness, and a general atmosphere of trust and safety.

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

Tobias, I'm sure that, given its two-dimensionality, the Zhodani belief system as published could be reconciled with some equally two-dimensional version of Confucianism. But I would call that a dead end.

Further, I'd say that it's precisely the incomplete nature of Zhodani ethics as published that prohibits any one of our fine selves from claiming to be its ultimate arbiter. (For an analogous example, see any thread on the technology of Jump Drives.)

But that's a good thing. It means we get to be creative ourselves.

 

[Golan2072]

I don't think that "conformity" should be the term here - but rather "an inhuman level of mental health and trust". A Zhodani police state of the Stalinist of Fascist type would be far less interesting to interact with in-game than a strange society made alien by its wide use of psionics.

I'm not sure that we're talking about "perfect harmony" either - but rather "a race with an inhumanly stable psychological structure". Ofcourse, this makes roleplaying Zhodani quite difficult, as their character would be quite... "flat". No inner conflicts, no deep psychological motives... Not even in the ruling class.

The average zhodani prole WILL feel frustration - ut will be taught to channel that frustration into "acceptable" avenues. The main form of repression within the Consulate would be co-optation - if you dissent, you won't be punished, but instead taught to seek to improve the system rather than work against it. The consulate won't fear criticism - instead of supressing criticism, it will tame it into a tool for improving the existing system.

A democracy? No. An utopia? No. A police-state? No. An aliens society? By all means.

 

[Tobias]

Originally posted by atpollard:
If you believe that Zhodani society is a utopian structure in which everyone is born happy with their station and lives in perfect harmony, then Zhodiani ARE NOT HUMAN in your Traveller universe.

In our current sense, they are probably not. They are certainly less recognizably human than either the Aslan or the Vargr, who ostensibly are non-human creatures.
The Zhodani have hundreds of millenia of difference to seperate us from them. If anything, they are too similar to us (of course, the same can be said for other human races in the OTU as well.)

The only way to achieve complete conformity in any human society is to use draconian means to achieve it (whether physical, psychological or psionic).

"Draconian" implies forcing people to do something they do not want to do. The Zhodani force you to want to.

(Hereditary members get training early to ensure an advantage over the non-nobles thus a perceived inherent superiority).

Talented non-nobles get the same training.

I defy you to name any human culture group that does not have inequality, or in which the 'have not' are content to be 'have not' and would not prefer to be 'have'.

Why? The Zhodani are not a pre-21st-century Terran culture. They are Aliens. I prefer them alien.

Look hard at how 'Athens-style democracy' really worked.

This was merely an analogy regarding the limited franchise.

Stalin Russia and Mao China were both democracies and both tried to completely re-educate the people for the collective good. Those are better models for your psionic police state of hereditary nobility and complete loyalty of all citizens.

Scarcely. For the single reason, if no other, that they failed miserably, while the Zhodani Consulate succeeded with chillingly scary efficiency.

 

[Tobias]

Originally posted by Rhialto the Marvelous:
Tobias, I'm sure that, given its two-dimensionality, the Zhodani belief system as published could be reconciled with some equally two-dimensional version of Confucianism. But I would call that a dead end.

It can be reconciled with basically any Confucianism - taking away a few China-specific rituals.
If you are searching for theology, grand philosophy, universal ethic principles - why should these be there? Just because our particular Terran regional culture considers them necessary?

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

No, because I'm looking for something that I, as somebody professionally working in the humanities, can recognize as worth thinking about. An equivalent to what people who are professionally working in the sciences demand from the tech sections of scifi games.

Employee 2-fourmoredigitshere points to the problem:

I'm not sure that we're talking about "perfect harmony" either - but rather "a race with an inhumanly stable psychological structure". Ofcourse, this makes roleplaying Zhodani quite difficult, as their character would be quite... "flat". No inner conflicts, no deep psychological motives... Not even in the ruling class.

This is right. What I'm looking for is a description of psychological richness that's neither conflicted a la bourgeois adolescent nor "flat." Because flatness is merely the absence of depth, which is a handwavy way of saying: "It's not like THIS." So true... but then, what IS it like?

 

[Tobias]

Can you, in a non-Zhodani-example, show what you are looking for?

 

[robject]

Originally posted by Rhialto the Marvelous:
[...snip...]
Further, I'd say that it's precisely the incomplete nature of Zhodani ethics as published that prohibits any one of our fine selves from claiming to be its ultimate arbiter. (For an analogous example, see any thread on the technology of Jump Drives.)

But that's a good thing. It means we get to be creative ourselves.

Yes! And in my mind that means: to the winner goes the spoils. Cook up a good profile of Zhodani that makes sense of the stereotype, adds a richness to Travellers interacting with or playing Zhodani, and preserves some alienness; explain that in language people understand, and it gets my vote.

Do it well enough, and perhaps it might even get Marc Miller's vote.

Shape the Zhodani's main language with all that in mind, and you've got a slam-dunk.

 

[Golan2072]

Originally posted by Rhialto the Marvelous:
What I'm looking for is a description of psychological richness that's neither conflicted a la bourgeois adolescent nor "flat." Because flatness is merely the absence of depth, which is a handwavy way of saying: "It's not like THIS." So true... but then, what IS it like?

I wrote "flat" with quotation marks for a reason. They are not "flat" in terms of motivation but rather in that their psychology is inhumanly solid and unconflicting. "Smooth inner workings" might have been a better term.

 

[Spinward Scout]

I've always thought of the Zhodani more like Amish with Psionics, er... without the religion, of course.

 

[epicenter00]

Originally posted by Rhialto the Marvelous:
No, because I'm looking for something that I, as somebody professionally working in the humanities, can recognize as worth thinking about. An equivalent to what people who are professionally working in the sciences demand from the tech sections of scifi games.

I think in some ways you've run into a kind of brick wall. GDW has made flat alien races before. If you don't believe me, find a copy of the "Kafer Sourcebook" for 2300. I think the Zhodani are very much a similar group. They're often described by GDW's line writers as "a chillingly happy police state." In both cases, I think GDW wanted a group of bogeymen. In both cases they wanted to show that these bogeymen aren't inherently "evil" but instead by their view of the universe, what they're doing is perfectly rational, sane, and moral. In think in both cases, GDW didn't realize (or didn't care) that they're still just bogeymen.

GDW has pointed out that there are stress lines in Zhodani society. In both cases that I can think of, I think they're a bit clumsy. There's the whole "Princess Wave" hullabaloo that you find in TNE that is ripping apart Zhodani society. But then again, this is Nilsen written material we're talking about, and I'm quite often not partial to his writing style, ideas, or morality.

Then it is occasionally mentioned the nobles can (and do) hide various ugly (but human) personality faults if they're careful because nobles are not subject to the same kind of routine mind probing that the proles are. On the surface, I think it's more subtle and a bit more interesting than some crushing outside force ripping apart the Zhodani happy-land, I find even this is somehow unsatisfying - a sophomoric attempt to infuse the Zhodani with human faults.

I think what is interesting about the Zhodani is that GDW tried to take psionics to its logical conclusion (unlike most technologies and ideas in Traveller which are often just bashed and hacked to fit to create an "age of sail" amongst the stars). In so doing, I think that GDW created a truly alien society, one made all the more alien because genetically they're still humans that can interbreed with other humans. However, with the widespread use of psionics, the Zhodani are not human, at least in the way we think of humans. They've removed one of the inherent limitations and realities of being human that we collectively refer to as the "human condition." It's similar to considering the implications of widespread use of anagathics (which Traveller does not do - Traveller society would be pretty weird).

 

[Sifu Blackirish]

I must admit, I never quite wrapped my head around the Zhodani "perfect society" just as I couldn't accept the Solomani basically going Communist. I did like the idea of a psionic society but had to twist things a little, so...

My major malevolent aliens occuly Zhodani space IMTU. Their society has elements of Feudal Japan and the Soviet Union. There are more surprises, but I can't put all my cards on the table at once, can I?

 

[GypsyComet]

The parallel with Star Trek's Vulcans has already been mentioned. The difference is that where Vulcans do not "get" most motivations or actions that come from an emotional response, the Zhodani do not "get" most motivations or actions that come from a need to conceal or be dishonest.

What conflicts with this view is the statements in several places that the Zhodani are keen hagglers, and have been playing the "give the bully a bloody nose" game with the Imperium for centuries, which implies an ability to keep others in ignorance of your motives. The "Need to know" threshold is alive and well in the Consulate, and I suspect it comes from the cultural desire to minimize stress in others, and thus society as a whole.

A world's nobles may know, for example, that the planet one jump away has been raided by Vargr and is deeply wounded in many respects, including infrastructure and societal confidence. The earnest business-proles that operate tradelines to that world will also know this, though they will probably see only the surface effects. Those business-proles will be in regular contact with stress management agents of the Tavrchedl' at both ends, to make certain that they continue to perform their vital commerce and do not transmit the raided world's stress to the healthy neighbor. Were that stress to "infect" the other world, the commerce and rebuilding would suffer, and the stress might jump to yet another world.

At the same time, the Tavrchedl' agents are using the same business-proles as information gatherers, since the Guardians cannot be everywhere in such a recently traumatized situation. Simple interrogation techniques, already in use by the Guardians, can elicit a lot of information quickly that would take field agents "walking the beat" many man-power hours to discover. "Who did you sell the farmed Noql shipment to yesterday? How did they react to your arrival? Did they seem nervous, or ask for credit?" Simple questions with hopefully simple answers. Followed by reassurances and other fairly standard debriefing techniques, the Guardians can keep unhealthy stresses localized for easier neutralization.

The obvious question here: Who Guards the Guardians?

 

[flykiller]

The obvious question here: Who Guards the Guardians?

the obvious answer is, since they define and enact what is normal, guarding them has no function.

 

[kafka47]

I have always liked the Zhodani as a foil to the Imperium. Whereas, the Imperium proclaims its actions as virtous, the ZC lives a life of virtue. Naturally, there are foibles like every human society in history but I like to present it as the ZC, as the society who has got it mostly right. Which then makes their fall all the more tragic when the TNE rolls in.

 

[GypsyComet]

Originally posted by flykiller:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />The obvious question here: Who Guards the Guardians?

the obvious answer is, since they define and enact what is normal, guarding them has no function. </font>[/QUOTE]To some extent, yes.

In theory, the proles are guided and guarded by the Tavrchedl', who are in turn guided by the nobility who, when all is said and done, serve the proles through their strong sense of service to the society as a whole.

Sometimes this derails. It might be a noble who has strong feelings that he "recognizes" are right, despite being at odds with the other nobles at his level. It might be a failure of the Guardians to catch a malcontent in the making, or it could simply be a wildfire reaction among proles, perhaps in response to some great trauma. It doesn't happen often, due to the Zhodani's level of mastery over human psychology, but it does happen. Just because they guard the psychological well-being of the proles doesn't mean they are immune to stress themselves...

This is when, normally, the structure of the Consulate as a whole starts to manifest for damage control. Nearby worlds may notice odd issues with commerce or routine communications, the Consulate Navy may pay a visit and notice something, or, in extreme cases, the world breaks down so fast that one day a merchant arrives at a world gone mad. All the worlds around the failure may be tapped for unaffected Guardians, or the Navy may treat extreme cases like warzones, unleashing the Military branch of the Tavrchedl' on a deviant population to enact quick triage. *Then* the ugly business of cleaning house begins, and the rarely used procedures for the censure of nobility are dusted off and carried out. Nobility and Intendants alike are evaluated with little attention to station, and will be handled much like the rare cases of intransigent proles. Reassignment to a world suited to their particular views, or "recruitment" into extra-Consular services to get them away from civilian proles entirely, will be typical. Mental scrubbing and re-education will be rarer, due to the sheer difficulty of such activities against a psionic mind.

Despite the rarity of such events, the Consulate probably has a few dozen "Unabsorbed" worlds of this type on the records at any given moment, if only because they can take generations to heal back to the Zhodani norm. There will be other types of Unabsorbed worlds, with alien influence being a common factor.

Among Zhodani worlds, this type of societal trauma is more likely to happen to low-population resource worlds than to the hi-pop bastions. Fewer local checks on such behaviors, for starters, and often more stressfull environments.

So who guards the Guardians? They Guard each other, with the Nobility over them all and the proles as the ultimate weathervane. The balance can be sturdy or precarious, but every responsible noble (which is ALL of them save a few undiscovered maverics) fears a "death-spiral" on his watch.

 

[flykiller]

guided by the nobility who, when all is said and done, serve the proles through their strong sense of service to the society as a whole.

Sometimes this derails.

no it wouldn't - by definition. they are the ones who decide what "service" is. they are the ones who decide who the "society as a whole" is. there is no disagreement with them - not because it merely isn't allowed, but because it is overturned. they speak, and everyone not merely obeys without question, but believes. by definition, they are the only ones who matter. by definition, they are the only ones who count. by definition, they are the only humans. everyone else is a farmyard animal, a purpose-bred pet, a programmable machine - and no-one serves a programmable machine. they'll serve themselves.

what a head trip that would be.