Currently writing the next installment of my trilogy, wherein issues of loyalty and duty are going to play a prominent part. I have been considering the whole aspect of duty, and the way people in western civilization have regarded it throughout history. I won't attempt to address other culture's attitudes.
To me, loyalty and duty are swords with two edges. A leader who fails to exhibit the same level of commitment to his followers that he demands deserves to be impaled and replaced. But this attitude is far from common in western history.
Roman generals were expected to fall on their sword on command when ordered to do so, regardless of the reason. Medieval knights defended their king to the death, regardless of what kind of backstabbing SOB he might be. Although in fairness, many medieval knights were also backstabbing SOBs from what I have read.
Even today there are a lot of people who preach loyalty to a cause or a leader, at the expense of their own honor or common sense (in my opinion).
***Spoiler below in case someone might not want to want to read about my new book in advance. I should be so lucky.*** . . . . . . . . Reason I am bringing this up, one of my main protagonists is a younger prince. He is going to launch a civil war to usurp his brother, who he believes is unfit to rule. Everyone in the kingdom, from the more powerful nobles down to the peasant farmers are going to be faced with choosing between them.
I want to present the quandary realistically. But I am inherently incapable of blind loyalty to anyone or anything, and I have real trouble understanding that mindset. Any suggestions? I don't think it will ring true to have a bunch of people in a medieval kingdom reacting like twentieth century college educated authors.
Posted by Meredith (Member # 8368) on :
LOL. I had a feeling that was coming from the first book.
As one who's read it, you've already got a significant portion of the lower classes set up to support the younger. It's the "nobles" who are going to be your problem.
As with anything, I'd recommend treating them as individuals. Some are going to be traditionalists--it's just more comfortable to know all the rules and follow them without question. Some are going to feel the same about the older brother as the younger one does, especially since he wasn't originally the heir. Some are going to ride the fence and try to side with the expected winner or look for the best advantage--ie. can they get one side or the other to offer them rewards for their "loyalty". For some examples of this, look into the civil war that erupted when Stephen of Blois took the crown of England upon the death of his uncle, Henry the First, jumping over Henry's acknowledged heir--his daughter, Matilda. (A civil war that ended when Matilda's son, Henry the Second (father of Richard the Lionheart, et. al.) took the crown back.)
Posted by redux (Member # 9277) on :
Here are my thoughts on the matter. I think it might help to separate the "ideal" of loyalty from its actual application. Like you mentioned, Roman generals were expected to fall on their swords, knights to defend their kings to the death, and yet history is full of betrayals.
I believe the reason for this is that people want to uphold an ideal but are not always capable of doing so for many different reasons. This to me has to do with a person's psychology of self-worth.
When the world is at odds with people's view of themselves, a defense mechanism is to rationalize and justify their behaviors and actions in order to bring back the world to fit their personal view. In other words, people are more likely to change things around them rather to change themselves.
So, even the most loyal of subjects can be capable of poisoning his king so that the world re-aligns with how they see the world.
Posted by Meredith (Member # 8368) on :
FYI. The civil war mentioned above was known as "The Anarchy". Gives some idea of what Stephen's reign was like. Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
Well, people don't think much about their day-to-day actions. Their actions and their opinions tend to reflect those of the people around them. And that's not such a terrible thing, in moderation. It's good to have simple, common, mostly reliable rules of thumb, like "obey the law" and "be respectful of authority", so long as the behavior those rules prescribe is consistent with reason. But when law and authority tell you to hand over Anne Frank to Gestapo, it's time to ignore those ingrained habits, which is not so easy to do.
The habit of loyalty to authority is ingrained by systems in which that habit works out well for the habitue; either in which the authority is just and competent, or the impact of the injustice and incompetence occurs out of the habitue's sight.
So what about when the character of authority changes, as may happen with a change of leader? Or when suddenly the depravity of leadership is revealed? Surely rejecting that authority would be the reasonable thing to do.
The problem is that this is an upsetting development, and under threat people tend to make a snap decision then filter out information which undermines that decision. Emotional thinking, cognitive psychologists tell us, is "refractory", which means you can budge someone who makes a decision because they're angry or scared.
So one natural response to finding out that authority is incompetent or evil is to fall back on the old habit of trusting that authority, then supporting that decision by rationalization. The newspapers are lying. The atrocities never happened, and the victims had it coming. That kind of thinking.
And it's easy to fall into that kind of thinking. Nobody thinks they do it, but most people do. Here's a question: how many times in a typical month do you spend at least a minute thinking about whether something you are doing is ethical (which is NOT the same thing as thinking about how to justify something you have done)? If the answer is zero, like for most people, chances are you are more susceptible to self-protective rationalization than you think.
So how does that kind of refractory thinking get turned off? Two ways. Either the threat is removed and in the cold light of hindsight you reevaluate your position, OR you keep doubling down on the losing position until your tolerance for absurdity is overwhelmed.
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
quote:Originally posted by redux: Here are my thoughts on the matter. I think it might help to separate the "ideal" of loyalty from its actual application. Like you mentioned, Roman generals were expected to fall on their swords, knights to defend their kings to the death, and yet history is full of betrayals.
Yes! Never assume the ideals of a society (especially expressed in fiction or political rhetoric) are representative of common practice. A society of perfectly honest, brave, and industrious people wouldn't even have words for those virtues. It's a huge mistake to assume the average knight was chivalrous, or the average samurai lived by the code of bushido.
Posted by redux (Member # 9277) on :
quote:So one natural response to finding out that authority is incompetent or evil is to fall back on the old habit of trusting that authority, then supporting that decision by rationalization. The newspapers are lying. The atrocities never happened, and the victims had it coming. That kind of thinking.
Precisely. Sometimes people interpret the same fact (that authority did something evil) differently and rationalize it (the newspapers are lying) in order to bring that "change" in their world back into line with their fixed beliefs (authorities are always right and good).
Posted by rcmann (Member # 9757) on :
In my world, the old king was competent. He was a mean, selfish, manipulative son of a dog, but he was a ruthlessly competent statesman who held the kingdom together firmly and successfully maintained its interests against rival nations around it.
The current elder son is just as mean, but not nearly as competent. As a result, he is failing to maintain border security and falling victim to paranoia regarding internal power struggles. Law and order are crumbling and former allies are about to invade.
On this basis, the younger son (who had been exiled) decides to return with some mercenaries and organize an insurrection. His primary advantage is that he isn't a SOB and the peasants prefer him. The nobility used to sneer at him, until he killed the eldest brother, the original crown prince, in a duel and got exiled for it. Now they regard him with wary suspicion.
This is the backdrop. From here I need to work out the most likely reaction. Should I have it be a true insurrection, a peasant's revolt with the younger prince as leader? Or a re-arrangement of power with the main nobility switching over to the younger prince? Which would be more plausible?
Posted by redux (Member # 9277) on :
Feel free to tell me to jump in a lake...
I think you can have both - peasant revolt and nobles changing sides.
For instance, you can have a noble who was close or champion of the dead king and now among the new king's advisers. This new king's incompetence would certainly upset him, make him nervous about the impending invasion. Order must be restored, but does he remain loyal to an incompetent king and potentially allow the kingdom be destroyed?
Or does he rationalize that his loyalty is to the crown and kingdom, not to the person, and so maneuvers and schemes to bring back the exiled prince. After all, the peasants love the prince, and they will need as many people as possible to join in the war against the invaders. So the adviser cannot risk having the very people they are trying to defend be against the crown. This adviser could very well then try to incite a peasant's revolt, in order to justify deposing the current king and placing the exiled prince in his place.
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
Well, we need to know more about the power structure of the kingdom. Is it a somewhat modern, centralized state? Or is it more feudal with local power centers?
The devil that is far away is usually assumed to be more benign than the devil that is near, even if there is little or no proof. In a kingdom with locally powerful barons, *they* are the devil near-at-hand, and are apt to take the blame for local problems, even if those problems are the result of royal policies and practices. Perhaps the king is pressing the barons for more money, and the barons turn around and tax the local populace. It's the baron's men beating down the door to take your money away.
A clever king might well cultivate the myth that he cares about the common folk and it's the barons that are heartless. It makes the barons easier to replace. In reality he probably doesn't give a fig about the farmers, merchants, and even the low ranking men-at-arms; his natural focus is the aristocracy -- that's where he acquires political allies and suppresses rivals.
A strong baron might well prefer a weak and incompetent king. In the power vacuum, his personal status and power are enhanced. The lesser barons may well split, some preferring a stronger alternative as king and others throwing their lots in with other rivals.
Then there's the question of other institutional power centers in your kingdom, such as the church in the middle ages, chock full of archbishops and abbots drawn from the younger sons of great aristocrats. Or take Carthage, for example. Carthage was a *commercial* empire, built on trading. Membership in Carthaginian ruling assembly wasn't based on heredity, as in the Roman Senate; it was based on wealth, and wealth alone. This guaranteed Carthage a stead stream of pragmatic, capable rulers, which made them unbeatable by anyone other than the fanatical, grudge-holding Romans. Prolonged war was too wasteful for Carthage's taste, where the Romans were driven by irrational motivations like honor, glory and revenge.
So you could well imagine great merchants taking sides based on who they'd make the most money under, and a certain class of hereditary military leaders (as in Rome) motivated by a fanatical devotion to traditional order, with some equally fanatical on the other side due to some slight of honor.
There's no limit to the ways you can get people to line up on either side of a divide so they can slaughter the people on the other side. Both sides will claim legitimacy. Indeed, whose theory of legitimacy will prevail is one of the things being fought over. Generations of English schoolchildren have been taught to regard the Glorious Revolution of William and Mary as legitimate, and so I suppose it must be; legitimacy is like spelling, it depends on what most people agree upon. But if you believe in the right of the king to rule by birth (which I don't), you have to look at the Glorious Revolution as a usurpation of James II's throne (i.e. you're a Jacobite).
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
quote:Originally posted by redux: For instance, you can have a noble who was close or champion of the dead king and now among the new king's advisers. This new king's incompetence would certainly upset him, make him nervous about the impending invasion. Order must be restored, but does he remain loyal to an incompetent king and potentially allow the kingdom be destroyed?
Or does he rationalize that his loyalty is to the crown and kingdom, not to the person, and so maneuvers and schemes to bring back the exiled prince.
He could go either way, and you could find historical precedents for people who conceptualize loyalty to the crown as being indivisible from loyalty to the person, and those who do not. Since the very idea of rule by a hereditary monarch is ridiculous, it doesn't matter which version of a ridiculous system of government he believes in.
The problem I see is that either way he is an uncommon bird; a powerful and influential noble who is motivated by principle than self-interest.
Posted by redux (Member # 9277) on :
The possibilities are really limitless.
That very adviser might have been powerful and influential once, but finds he cannot sway the new king. He might be a petty and selfish man and thinks to himself perhaps the young prince would be more manageable.
Maybe the young prince knows about the adviser's character flaw and decides to use it to his advantage.
We could probably spend all day here doing "what if" exercises
Edited to add:
Which brings me to the point - what kind of person is the prince? What does he think of himself and the world? As protagonist, he is the one who will have to struggle to achieve his goal.
If he thinks of himself as a good and just person, how does he rationalize bringing in mercenaries to depose his brother the king?
Everything else is a history lesson, but novels are about people and how they cope with changes in their world and try to either change it or change themselves.
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
quote:Originally posted by redux: The possibilities are really limitless.
That very adviser might have been powerful and influential once, but finds he cannot sway the new king. He might be a petty and selfish man and thinks to himself perhaps the young prince would be more manageable.
Maybe the young prince knows about the adviser's character flaw and decides to use it to his advantage.
We could probably spend all day here doing "what if" exercises
Now you're making the story sound really interesting -- not like the characters are automatons to fill out pre-defined roles, but like complicated, believable people whose personal foibles have great out-sized consequences.
Posted by redux (Member # 9277) on :
rcmann certainly knows his characters best, so I am just throwing out generalized ideas to help him brainstorm. Please know I don't presume to tell him how the people in his story should act.
Posted by rcmann (Member # 9757) on :
I sincerely hope to do just what MattLeo said, make my characters individuals.
The kingdom is a long term dynasty whose founder is revered as larger than life, an who laid down a system of laws that have been in place long enough to be regarded as semi-sacred (think US constitution to some people).
His descendants include the royal family as well as the higher level nobles who constitute a ruling council. The sole purpose of the ruling council is to ensure that the throne does not get out of hand and violate the Code. Otherwise, their loyalty to the throne is supposed to be absolute. The council's collective power is greater than the throne's, but individually they are not capable of overpowering the king.
Lesser nobles and commoners hold their positions by the pleasure of the throne and the Council.
I was toying with the concept of "the loyal opposition" on the part of the Council. My difficulty is trying to figure out the most compelling approach to take.
Anyway, thanks folks. You have given me a feast for thought.
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
I'm coming in at the ar*e end of this and have only skimmed through the posts, so feel free to ignore me. I'm assuming this society is based on the western-European medieval kingdom in which case a peasant revolt is so not going to happen.
Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but the first popular uprising against the Monarchy was the french Revolution. All other uprisings, including the one against King John that resulted in Magna Carta, were instigated by the nobility simply because they felt their own power was being usurped by the King. And, taxes etc rarely had any input. It was always about power
Just my take on it.
Phil.
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
Loyalty and duty are another matter; just what is a leader and what makes him such? I think you need to distinguish between blind duty, the modern equivalent being the Nuremberg defense, and duty born out of loyalty to either a man or an idea.
A real leader is one who exemplifies the moral and spiritual ideals that the majority of the led aspire to. And therein lies a danger to the leader and the led. The leader, through public adoration, comes to believe themselves infallible and universally adored and is thus corrupted. The led, seeing their ideals personified, abrogate more and more of their moral certitude to their leader. In one, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. In the other, a messiah who can do no wrong is created and He would never ask me to do something that was wrong.
Exaggerated extremes I know, but indicative of historical events.
Phil.
Posted by rcmann (Member # 9757) on :
All valid points. The peasant army I was considering would be one that the younger prince recruited himself, using his own popularity, and had his hired mercenaries train into something resembling a militia. But as you point out, they still wouldn't do so well against professional fighters.
The younger brother would be the more charismatic one. The older brother would be able to claim traditional authority. So there's my conflict. People torn between established tradition, and the obvious welfare of the kingdom.
Two avenues suggest themselves.
Thanks.
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
In contemporary perceptions, the age of monarchs is a nostalgic fable mostly. Fealty to a monarch is based more on precedent of fidelity and a rigidly stratified social class standing than to loyalty and duty. The individual is subservient to the ideal whole's greater good. That's the ideal anyway. In practice, the human condition is a wild card. European medieval and renaissance and colonial era politics are a treasure trove of succession disputes.
Peculiarly, many of the European power struggle participants were related by blood or marriage to the Hapsburg dynasty, the right of accession or succession predicated on proximal lineage to the Hapsburg blood.
I suggest considering research and development of a representative succession dispute. Say, the Cromwell parliamentary power struggle, which reasserted the John at Runymede Magna Carta.
Posted by rcmann (Member # 9757) on :
I am more concerned with a realistic portrayal of the character's internal struggle on an individual basis, than I am in the broader sweep of things.
I tend to focus my writing on what happens to characters, and let the reader pick up on the larger picture of events in the context of the protagonist's struggles. The grand and sweeping dramas described in some narrative saga's simply do not interest me.
I care about people. Nations can take care of themselves, as far as I'm concerned. My idealism was burned out years ago. My trilogy includes a civil war, and it is one of the three main plot lines of the series. But I am not writing about the civil war. I am writing about the people who are fighting in it, and why they fight.
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
quote:Originally posted by rcmann: All valid points. The peasant army I was considering would be one that the younger prince recruited himself, using his own popularity, and had his hired mercenaries train into something resembling a militia. But as you point out, they still wouldn't do so well against professional fighters.
Unless they were like the longbowmen at Agincourt, of course. Though they weren't noblemen, they also weren't peasants, per se. But your mercenaries could capitolize on what your peasants could do from their own capabilities and experience (guerrilla-type warfare?) and not try to mold them after the conventional ways of fighting.
Posted by rcmann (Member # 9757) on :
That's the general idea. The southern forest has long been a place of refuge for renegades, and the woodsfolk are mainly hunters and trappers, with subsistance farming to supplement. They woudl act as scouts and archers.
The peasants north of the forest are mainly farmers. About all I could see them doing is basic infantry moves, and only then after extensive training. Almost none of them have ever held a weapon.
I would expect a lot of reliance on traps and ambush.
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
Medieval longbowmen were a bit like place kickers in an NFL team: the played a vital but narrow and technical role. In England yeomen were required by law to practice their archery regularly, and which forbid competing pasttimes like bowling or quoits. A few years ago a vicar in Wiltshire found out that the law had never been repealed, and in accordance with the authority the law vested in her she called out everyone in her parish to compulsory archery practice.
As for how well a militia does against a professional army, it depends greatly on the commanders involved, the terrain, and knowledge of tactics. Professional or quasi-professional troops can rapidly execute maneuvers to bring force to an enemy's weak point, but if the terrain doesn't favor those maneuvers that advantage is nullified.
The Romans started with Greek style phalanxes, but these were ineffective on rough or sloggy terrain which is better for lightly burdened troops. Over the centuries the Romans adopted ever more flexible formations and severe training regimens so that they were all but unbeatable on land unless their opponents possessed an unusually skilled cavalry (e.g. the Nabateans). Even so a bunch of club-wielding Germans slaughtered three legions in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. The legions were stretched out along a narrow road, trapped between a wooded slope and an un-crossable marsh. The German tribesmen swept down out of the forest and bludgeoned twenty thousand Roman soldiers to death, in a classic example of Sun-tzu's advice about choosing the place of battle to your best advantage. Hannibal too made great advantage of terrain, preferring to trap the Romans in impossible situations rather than to meet them on a level playing field.
George Washington was a fine example of a general who was great -- on the right terrain. In the Battle of New York he attempted symmetrical warfare against the brother and brother team of Admiral and General Howe. The Howes skillfully conducted an elaborate campaign of amphibious landings that overwhelmed Washington's forces with alarming speed.
Washington fled to New Jersey where he discovered an ability which soon struck fear in the British soldiers: an uncanny aptitude for running away. In the more rural terrain of New Jersey Washington might be lurking anywhere, ready to strike at any time, and by the time the British army had formed up to deliver a crushing counter-strike he'd have vanished without a trace. British officers also remarked that while the Americans weren't professional soldiers, they had certain native attributes that were prized in a soldier: industriousness, hardihood, and enterprise. The Americans could build earthwork fortifications with surprising speed, were pretty good shots, and could travel very quickly.
The New Jersey terrain likewise exposed the weaknesses of the British army. For one thing it required a huge amount of forage for its draft animals. This had to be commandeered by conscript troops from overseas who felt little connection to the colonists, and who were led by officers who'd purchased their commissions. Not only was the army crippled by lack of supplies, the inevitable atrocities undermined Howe's strategy, which in modern terms would be called a "hearts and minds" campaign. He hoped to win back American sympathies by quickly crushing the rebel army; instead he found himself bogged down amid civilians stung to fury by the murders and rapes committed by his men.
The Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War holds similar lessons. The Americans were licking their lips at a chance to fight in the hinterlands of Quan Tri and Dak To, where we could really unleash our firepower. Then the NVA and NLF launched a surprise urban compaign, forcing us to use that power in urban areas and villages. That's where the famous phrase "we had to destroy the village in order to save it" came from. Even though we won the body count by a five-fold margin, the destruction involved was critical in souring American opinions on the war.
While a non-professional militia is at an enormous disadvantage to professional soldiers, a commander who knows how to choose his place and time to fight, and who is adept at getting his forces out of trouble can turn the tables. This would be especially true in medieval warfare. Much of medieval warfare was little more than brawling with individuals hoping to capture an opponent for ransom; by ancient or modern standards their tactics were appalling. Note how the emphasis of personal invulnerability over tactical maneuverability yields the armored knight. It was more the rediscovery of tactics than the development of firearms that made the armored knight obsolete.
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
quote:Originally posted by rcmann: The peasants north of the forest are mainly farmers. About all I could see them doing is basic infantry moves, and only then after extensive training. Almost none of them have ever held a weapon.
You may be surprised. I understand that there are at least a few weapons in history that started out as farming implements or as other kinds of tools used for simple living.
One example would be the two-handed flail--scroll down to the "non-agricultural uses" and follow the Flail (weapon) link.
Posted by rcmann (Member # 9757) on :
If I'm not mistaken, most bladed weapons started out as either farming tools or hunting weapons. I know that the first Egyptian swords were all but indistinguishable from their grain scythes. and the only real difference between a battle axe and a wood axe is the shape of the blade. Of course a spear is a spear whether you are going after fish, or pig, or man.
The problem is that corn and deer don't fight back. Wild pigs and bears do fight back, but most peasants never had the chance, or any reason, to face off against a dangerous foe of any breed.
I'm not saying that a peasant can't learn to be a fighter. But much of it involves social conditioning to regard the world with a competitive mindset, and a willingness to take the hits for the sake of hurting your opponent. That can't be learned overnight.
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
"Peasant" in a European contest has a very specific meaning. It's a kind of bondage to the land which comes with poor hygiene and nutrition. But people often use the term loosely to indicate any medieval farmer. It was bad health and small stature that made actual peasants poor fighting stock. A strapping yeoman farmer -- your typical viking, for example -- wouldn't need much training to be a formidable skirmisher.
My father was born in a village in deep southern Guandong Province, China, in the last decade of the Qing dynasty. The Qings never quite consolidated their control over the southern provinces, which teemed with bandits, rebels, and (seriously) pirates. So law and order was a local affair, and people provided for themselves. They banded together to drive off raiders and the toughest guys hired themselves out to merchants as caravan guards.
Now many people might loosely refer to the people in my father's village as "peasants" because they'd been farming the same plots of land for centuries (over five hundred years in my family's case), but let me assure you they were familiar with weapons -- real, purpose-built weapons, not improvised ones. My father remembered itinerant kung-fu teachers coming to town, although he himself left while he was still too young to take it up himself. At age 12 his parent sent him overseas to work and send money back to the family, which he did for the rest of his life. Poor, hard-working people can be incredibly tough.
Posted by rcmann (Member # 9757) on :
My family background is KY hillbilly. Coalminers, bootleggers, tobacco farmers, loggers. I know poor people can be tough.
I use peasant in the generic sense of rural commoner, although I realize that it could be more finely tuned. Since my own background is Celtic/Amerindian, this is the cultural heritage that I draw from when writing. I am not, or I am not yet, to a point in my writing development that I am willing to tackle an unfamiliar culture. I just finished my first novel. i want to get a few more under my belt before i get too experimental.
Posted by MartinV (Member # 5512) on :
Create characters with various backgrounds and with various reasons to support one or another. Some may be forced to choose between the two by geography, upbringing, religion, family, spouses, personal experience with the candidates or their families. There are literally infinite possibilities.
Posted by Reziac (Member # 9345) on :
quote:Originally posted by rcmann: I am more concerned with a realistic portrayal of the character's internal struggle on an individual basis, than I am in the broader sweep of things.
I tend to focus my writing on what happens to characters, and let the reader pick up on the larger picture of events in the context of the protagonist's struggles. The grand and sweeping dramas described in some narrative saga's simply do not interest me.
I care about people. Nations can take care of themselves, as far as I'm concerned. My idealism was burned out years ago. My trilogy includes a civil war, and it is one of the three main plot lines of the series. But I am not writing about the civil war. I am writing about the people who are fighting in it, and why they fight.
Same here. That's what interests me to read and to write. But I think you've kinda answered your own question... just write each character as the person you know him to be, let him react to others and events according to his nature, let events and reactions follow as they will, and the result should be inherently believable.
Posted by hoptoad (Member # 2145) on :
There are some long posts and I didn't read them... sorry. If I repeat anyone here, I apologise.
How does one identify what is 'right' and what is 'wrong' in your world? Does the context call for a belief in a divine mandate? Do the people believe in one? Does the protagonist?
The idea of doing something simply because it will produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people is an ethically dubious proposition when that action defies divine will, it is a fiery urge when one feels they have that mandate.
Posted by hoptoad (Member # 2145) on :
BTW: Saul and David.
Posted by Reziac (Member # 9345) on :
quote:Originally posted by hoptoad: How does one identify what is 'right' and what is 'wrong' in your world? Does the context call for a belief in a divine mandate? Do the people believe in one? Does the protagonist?
Through long acquaintance I've learned the following about 'my' world:
The people are humanoid but not human, and socially are leader-and-pack, not tribal (they evolved from a wolf-alike, not an ape-alike). A good chunk of the population have 'psychic' abilities, which have a physiological basis.
The two great crimes in their eyes are cannibalism, and rape. Why? Because 'eating someone's mind' can be a literalism (co-opting a relative's body can be done), and in their eyes rape is a similarly invasive preemption.
Murder, not so much... individually, they'll shrug and move on. But a 'pack leader' is liable to respond like "How dare you kill MY people??!"
They don't have any strong religions; there are two more or less prevalent religions, but objectively most folks would admit under their breaths, "Even so, we know the gods don't really exist; it's just a primitive interpretation of the energies some of us can feel from stars and planets."
I didn't plan 'em this way; they developed their own ideas without bothering to consult me.
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
quote:Originally posted by hoptoad: BTW: Saul and David.
I'll see your Saul and David and raise you an Abraham and Isaac.
The issue of whether something is right because of divine will or whether God wills what he does because it is right has been a serious issue in moral theology since Plato, who raised this dilemma in the dialog Euthyphro. The binding of Isaac supports both potential interpretations: (a) When God ordered Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, that made it the right thing to do and (b) God was teaching Abraham (or perhaps Isaac!) a lesson, but stopped Abraham before he killed Isaac because that would be a sin.
Even if you take the extreme "Divine Sovereignty" position and think that anything, even a heretofore evil act, becomes good when God commands it, you as a novelist have to remember you aren't in the position of God. Not even in the universe you create. The reason is that you are not absolutely sovereign over your universe; you answer to the readers. You can (through your in-universe divine proxy) order a character to tie up his son and butcher him, but don't expect readers to accept that.
So as a rule, morality in your universe has to be subject to reason. It has to be justifiable and it doesn't hurt if it's humane.
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
I'll go a bit further MattLeo; the morality of your world must mirror the morality prevalent in the society within which you live. If it doesn't, the reader will either not understand the conundrums of choice that you place in front of them, or they will dismiss your work as 'evil' or 'trashy' or in some other prejudicial manner.
Phil.
Posted by rcmann (Member # 9757) on :
in order to answer the question about how morality is defined in my world, it's necessary to understand that there is no functional difference between a "witch" (an evil creature to be hunted down by all right thinking people) and a temple handmaiden (a chaste, beloved, and loyal servant of the gods who waits on the priesthood hand and foot). The distinction is that the witches made a break for it and live without temple supervision. That's a no no.
In my world, like in medieval Europe, the churches (it's polytheistic) are regarded as the ultimate arbiter of ethical standards. Also like medieval Europe, the degree of dedication to those standards is somewhat variable.
Posted by hoptoad (Member # 2145) on :
So, Rcmann, does the protagonist believe?
Posted by hoptoad (Member # 2145) on :
MattLeo, Saul and David story is about loyalty to the anointing not the man.
Posted by Meredith (Member # 8368) on :
quote:Originally posted by rcmann: In my world, like in medieval Europe, the churches (it's polytheistic) are regarded as the ultimate arbiter of ethical standards. Also like medieval Europe, the degree of dedication to those standards is somewhat variable.
Well, at least one temple is going to be firmly behind the older brother. They've already tried to kill your protagonist, after all. So anyone who is swayed by the dictates of that temple is going to be a problem for him. But, what about the other temples? One seemed at least a little disposed towards him as I recall.
Posted by rcmann (Member # 9757) on :
Church Reformation, anyone? Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
The thing about loyalty is that it's easy for some people to form *new* loyalties than others, thus what constitutes "loyal" is in the eye of the beholder
Let's say Alice is a person who is extremely open to new ideas; she's also makes friends easily and is easily impressionable by her friends. She's not very conscientious in religious matters. Alice can spend five minutes with a "witch" and form a new loyalty that overrides her lifelong loyalty to the church
What Alice sees as a "new" loyalty, Bob sees as a betrayal of the church. Bob does not like new ideas. He's suspicious of them, and extremely scrupulous in religious matters. He's going to turn in anybody he suspects is a witch. In fact he'd turn in his own mother if he thought she was being "soft on witchcraft".
Now it so happens that both Alice and Bob as described are vicious fanatics. Alice's "loyalty" is only good as her next infatuation. Bob's loyalty is only good so long as you don't stray from orthodoxy *as he defines it*.
The virtue of loyalty lay somewhere in between the extremes. It's a struggle to reconcile competing duties, but that is something neither Alice nor Bob experience, Alice because she leaps past it, Bob because he denies the very possibility of a dilemma in his values. There are other people who are Alice-like or Bob-like, but not so viciously extreme. They can experience divided loyalty, which is a powerful storytelling theme.
Now there are other personality traits to consider when talking about loyalty. One is self-interest. Even moderate selfishness corrupts loyalty; people rationalize their self-interest to make it seem like the right thing to do. It's a rare person who will do something selfless out of loyalty, but it's rarer still to find somebody who doesn't make an excuse to himself when he violates his loyalty.
So where greed is moderate, it generates internal conflict. I want to support the younger prince, but I think he's going to lose... Where it is extreme, it corrupts loyalty. I thought the younger prince was better for the country, but since the older prince made me Duke I see things differently.
So it's fair to say that greedy people tend to be less interesting, except insofar as they're heading for a terrible lesson, or if they can parlay that into anti-heroism. That's because they're less conflicted.
[ April 16, 2013, 06:45 PM: Message edited by: MattLeo ]
Posted by hoptoad (Member # 2145) on :
Yeah, Aristotle said the virtue lies suspended between two vices. He also said that the virtue is not necessarily the mean,but can be placed closer to one vice than the other. His analogy of the amount of food needed to produce a satisfying meal made that clear. In the case of loyalty, I suggest the virtue lays closer to Bob than to Alice. Alice is 'open' to the point of being fickle, this is not loyalty by any measure, ( without semantic contortions). Bob for all his vindictivness is at least steadfast.
The Alice vs Bob analogy does point out the interpersonal nature of loyalty ( and raises the question of loyalty to things and concepts and what it means to have 'misplace loyalties.)
Posted by rcmann (Member # 9757) on :
Leads me back to my functionalist attitude toward morality. Loyalty is moral if it promotes survival. Bottom line, the idea is to survive long enough to get the next generation up and running. Anything else is window dressing. Otherwise the blood line dies out and it's all a moot point.
Who remembers the moral victories of extinct cultures or races? Does anyone have a clue about the moral or ethical systems of the Neanderthal, or Erectus? Yet both of them lasted as long as our own race. They're gone now, so they whatever they thought about any subject is irrelevant.
Therefore, loyalty to a group, an ideal, or another person is valid only insofar as it promotes survival of the blood line. Looking at it from that point of view, I can see advantages for both Alice and Bob. Meaning no offense, Alive might be better off with her approach since she is female, and Bob might be better off with his approach since he is male. Different genders adopt different strategies for survival. That's just how it works in nature.
---later afterthought-----
Of course, it doesn't have to be either, or. The same person can have different degrees and types of loyalty to different groups at the same time. My loyalty to my family and and clan (lower case 'c", not capital K) is immovable. My "loyalty" to any political party affiliation is tenuous at best.
Posted by innesjen (Member # 6126) on :
While you probably have a good handle now, after such a long discussion, on what you're going to do I thought I'd add something to the mix. I agree with Meredith in that loyalty should be an individual's decision. While you can look at time-period reasoning, some things about humans are true no matter the time period. Personally, when considering loyalty to a government or family I think of the American Civil War (different time period I know, but I think some central human themes can be gleaned from soldiers' experiences). Reading about individual feelings in letters and biographies might be helpful if you want to explore personal reasons for loyalty or revolution. Or even personal conflict between supporting a leader and protecting yourself/your family. Sullivan Ballou wrote an interesting letter about this issue stating: "If it is necessary that I should fall on the battlefield for my country, I am ready. I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans upon the triumph of the Government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing—perfectly willing—to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt. But, my dear wife, when I know that with my own joys I lay down nearly all of yours, and replace them in this life with cares and sorrows—when, after having eaten for long years the bitter fruit of orphanage myself, I must offer it as their only sustenance to my dear little children—is it weak or dishonorable, while the banner of my purpose floats calmly and proudly in the breeze, that my unbounded love for you, my darling wife and children, should struggle in fierce, though useless, contest with my love of country. Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me to you with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly on with all these chains to the battlefield." In his experience it wasn't just a conflict between North and South but between family and duty. This is something complex characters might experience during a revolution.
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
quote:Originally posted by rcmann: Leads me back to my functionalist attitude toward morality. Loyalty is moral if it promotes survival. Bottom line, the idea is to survive long enough to get the next generation up and running. Anything else is window dressing. Otherwise the blood line dies out and it's all a moot point.
Well, by this definition of morality, people who are too old to reproduce and who are to sick to work ought to be killed, because they divert resources away from producing and nurturing another generation. Furthermore the only thing that matters about the means of killing them is the impact on the effort to generate and raise the next generation. Whether or not the method of killing these surplus people causes them suffering is irrelevant, because suffering neither adds to nor detracts from the "bottom line". For example taking the old and sick and throwing them alive into a pit would be more moral than caring for them in a hospice in your proposed morality.
Even better would be cutting them up alive and harvesting their tissues for uses that support the future generation project. That would be the most moral way of dealing with the non-productive elderly, provided you didn't waste money on anesthesia. It's not that causing them pain sick is desirable, mind you, it's that pain or no pain is neither here nor there. It's "window dressing".
There's a natural human tendency to become enamored with ideas. Falling in love with a beautiful-seeming idea not unlike falling in love with a beautiful-looking person. In the early stages of love you tend to be blind to or dismissive of the beloved's faults, but if you're planning on getting married it's wiser to be aware of the shortcomings and to be certain you can live with them.
I suspect that reducing morality to its impact on future generations may be a product of confusing necessity with sufficiency.
Posted by rcmann (Member # 9757) on :
quote:Originally posted by MattLeo:
quote:Originally posted by rcmann: Leads me back to my functionalist attitude toward morality. Loyalty is moral if it promotes survival. Bottom line, the idea is to survive long enough to get the next generation up and running. Anything else is window dressing. Otherwise the blood line dies out and it's all a moot point.
Well, by this definition of morality, people who are too old to reproduce and who are to sick to work ought to be killed, because they divert resources away from producing and nurturing another generation. Furthermore the only thing that matters about the means of killing them is the impact on the effort to generate and raise the next generation. Whether or not the method of killing these surplus people causes them suffering is irrelevant, because suffering neither adds to nor detracts from the "bottom line". For example taking the old and sick and throwing them alive into a pit would be more moral than caring for them in a hospice in your proposed morality.
Even better would be cutting them up alive and harvesting their tissues for uses that support the future generation project. That would be the most moral way of dealing with the non-productive elderly, provided you didn't waste money on anesthesia. It's not that causing them pain sick is desirable, mind you, it's that pain or no pain is neither here nor there. It's "window dressing".
There's a natural human tendency to become enamored with ideas. Falling in love with a beautiful-seeming idea not unlike falling in love with a beautiful-looking person. In the early stages of love you tend to be blind to or dismissive of the beloved's faults, but if you're planning on getting married it's wiser to be aware of the shortcomings and to be certain you can live with them.
I suspect that reducing morality to its impact on future generations may be a product of confusing necessity with sufficiency.
I'm sorry, but that response was more than slightly unjustified by what I said. You took my words, inserted meaning into them that wasn't there, and then propped them up as a straw man for target practice. I don't appreciate that. I am not angry, but I am not going to let it pass without remark, either.
If you will re-read my words, and see what is actually there instead of what you think I may have meant, you will note that I said "up and running". Simply reproducing is insufficient. The next generation must be nurtured. They must be protected. They must be trained. They must be indoctrinated with the skills and conditioned reflexes that will not only keep them alive, but will also permit them to become effective parents in their own time.
Also, nothing I said - I repeat, NOTHING I said - in any way suggests that inter-personal bonding in human groups was anti-survival. To the contrary, Group cohesion, and mutual loyalty to other individuals in one's group (especially those who share the same ancestry) offers a very high value advantage in terms of preserving the bloodline.
Your suggestion that killing off the old people when the become too old to breed not only ignores the destabilizing effect that internal violence toward group members causes. It also ignores the value that aged individuals provide as not only caretakers but also teachers. Thus the morality of preserving other members of the family group is illustrated and my premise is supported.
Preserving the kinship group as a whole not only provides benefits to the group, it also reassures each individual that they, too, will be cared for when their time comes. Thus, motivation to willingly defer personal desires for the good of all is reinforced.
In terms of morality:
"But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel." - 1 Timothy 5:8
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
In other words "window dressing" is more important than it sounds. Good. Now what about people *outside* your kinship group? Exodus 23:9 -- Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
I think projecting meaning onto MattLeo's projected meaning of the discussion's projected meaning misses the probability he expanded upon the topic. Loyalty in a social context very much concerns cultural indifference if not outright hostility toward aging and infirm persons, if not gender and other differences. The U.N. council on gender issues observes that fifty million or more female newborns may have vanished without a trace during the twentieth-century in China. The gender gap is obvious in population statistics. Fifty-one percent, or thereabouts, of a population should be female.
When a society has no traditions or customs that empower aged, infirm, or other identity distinctions, like gender and ethnicity, from the majority status quo, those persons become for all intents and purposes disenfranchised and powerless. They are also fertile sources for dissent. Hence, loyalty in a social context declines among effectively disenfranchised groups and individuals due to powerlessness.
Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451 speaks deeply to this. Reader, eh? Think you're better than everyone else? Onto the auto-da-fé along with your books you go.
[ April 19, 2013, 03:22 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
Let me make it clear I don't believe you want to euthanize old people. What I'm pointing out is that any kind of "bottom line" thinking in moral reasoning is highly suspect. It's not always easy to know the right thing to do. It's a struggle. It *should* be a struggle.
Think for a moment, not about what morality should be, but what it *does*. It takes an intent you have, and after some form of reflection modifies it. Somebody cuts me off in traffic, so I pull out my handgun with the intent of shooting them. Then after moral reflection I put the handgun down because that reflection has altered my intention. No matter which style of moral reasoning I happened to choose, it functions the same way: to modify my intended course of action.
So I ask you this: what sort of things *should* weigh in when you consider a future action? The interesting thing about approaching the question of ethics this way is that it becomes pretty clear you can't boil the universe of moral reasoning down to one and only one factor that ever matters, or even which matters all the time. That's why most people in practice use a mix of ethical reasoning styles (e.g. both utilitarian and deontological). A Christian might find ethical egoism morally repugnant, but in fact the question "do I really want to do this?" is a perfectly valid one, even for a Christian moralist. The wickedness in ethical egoism is *reducing* morality to one factor, even if it is a valid one.
Curiously, C.S. Lewis in his Christian apologia didn't place much store in the future of the human race (e.g. see *THE ABOLITION OF MAN*). For the same message delivered in fiction, see *OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET*.
Posted by rcmann (Member # 9757) on :
To continue your analogy, why didn't you shoot them? Because they were a member of your group, and the "social contract" forbids intra-group violence except under very strict guidelines, and in a very narrowly defined set of circumstances. Why does ti do this? Because intra-group violence fragments the group and weakens it, thereby reducing the probability of getting the next generation up and running.
WRT to the chinese tradition of female infanticide, I will point out recent news stories that mention a severe shortage of wives in China nowadays. In fact, some news stories I recently read have stated that women are being, in essence, purchased and hauled over the border from nearby countries to take up the slack.
Thus, the custom of killing girl babies reduced bloodline survival by removing members of the bloodline, and also by forcing the Chinese to dilute their existing bloodlines simply to survive. Note that this custom of female infanticide, in fact infanticide generally, was once commonplace. It was done in the days before birth control, under harsh survival conditions, when every group needed as many males as it could get just to stay alive.
Those circumstances no longer apply most places. Infanticide is also no longer commonplace in most parts of the world. I confidently predict that the custom is going to die out in China as well within the next generation or two. Because it no longer promotes group survival.
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
So far as I know, nobody in my family practiced female infanticide. Of course that didn't mean that a male baby wasn't a much bigger deal than a female one, but that doesn't mean that Chinese ethics condones female infanticide. Calling infanticide a "tradition" is insulting, like saying "rape is an American tradition" because some Americans rape.
China, like India, has a problem with sex-selection abortions. Traditionally in China there is a moral duty to have a male offspring -- at least one, but the more the better. This is because when a daughter marries she leaves her father's family and enters her father-in-law's family. This change in family identify was held to extend into the afterlife. It was eternal.
What this means is that under China's one child policy, your only shot at ensuring your family's survival is with a male child. The practice of aborting female offspring is actually *intended* to promote group survival. It is, by your criteria, the moral thing to do.
Of course that assumes by "group" you mean "the traditional Chinese concept of family, i.e. a continuous male lineage". If you mean "the Han people", well sex-selection abortions are neither here nor there because there is no prospect of the ethnic Chinese people going extinct. At current rates China is tracking to have something like 35 million excess males. In a country of 1.3 billion, that's not going to cause a population collapse.
If you take a "consequetionalist" stance toward aborting females (which you do), the particular consequence you are talking about (the extinction of the Chinese "group") is not on the table. The consequence that *will* come of it is social unrest, caused by 35 million men who won't be able to get married. It's a quality of life issue, not a survival issue.
The self-limiting consequence in this situation isn't "group" extinction. It's the rising value of young women in the marriage market. There's a tradition in China and some parts of India for the groom's family to pay a reverse dowry -- a "bride price", and these are going up. Already there are reports of grooms paying up to a 1 million RMB for a bride. This is bound to raise the status of women.
Posted by redux (Member # 9277) on :
quote: This is bound to raise the status of women.
Yes. Because nothing raises the status of women more than being sold and bought as chattel so long as the price is high.
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
quote:Originally posted by redux:
quote: This is bound to raise the status of women.
Yes. Because nothing raises the status of women more than being sold and bought as chattel so long as the price is high.
That only shows you don't understand bride price. Brice price compensates the family for the loss of a daughter; it is not a purchase. The legal status of wives in China is not tantamount to chattel. For one thing divorce in China has become commonplace -- even fashionable these days because of tax advantages. In the PRC husbands and wives are supposed to have equal status under the law; for example children may opt to take either their father or mother's name, which is a radical departure with tradition.
Of course legal equality and social equality are two different things (although under PRC law they're not supposed to be).
In any case, girls who are more educated and accomplished, who have a higher earning potential, are going to fetch higher prices. That will encourage families with daughters to invest more in them, which will over time raise the status of women.
Posted by redux (Member # 9277) on :
You are correct. I don't understand bride price, nor should I, nor should any woman. To place monetary value on a woman does absolutely nothing to raise her status in society.
I find your comment highly offensive and insulting.
Are you married? How much did you compensate your wife's family?
Posted by redux (Member # 9277) on :
By the way, let me explain something to you. It's called trying to weasel yourself out of a sexist comment when you patronize me and tell me that I don't know what bride price is when you define it in one sentence as "a family's loss of a daughter" then forget your own definition and go back to treating women as chattel when you state "going to fetch higher prices."
You know what fetches higher prices? Cows at fairs, when farmers invest in good grain for them and fatten them up, and are then compensated for their "loss" when sold to the highest bidder.
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
Umm, I think this 'conversation' has gotten a little heated. However, if we're going to 'argue' bride-price, let's not make it ethnically based. Marriage in Western society was originally a financial contract between two families, not a religious or emotional compact between two willing participants.
What about now? Well, we like to think that arranged marriages are so passe, and yet, a large number of people who are in arranged marriages find that, in the end, they love each other just as much as us fools who 'fall in love at first sight'.
I don't think MattLeo was condoning the notion that women are simply chattels to be bought, sold and traded. I believe he was trying to point out that, as 'girls' are looked upon as an asset rather than a liability (a cultural imperative of those tied to the land, regardless of nationality), the discrimination against them will lessen.
Just my $0.02 worth; but what do I know, I'm a man.
Phil.
Posted by hoptoad (Member # 2145) on :
So, how does one identify what is 'right' and what is 'wrong' in your world?
How does the protagonist determine what is 'right' and what is 'wrong'?
Everything else if fluffery. IMHO.
Posted by rcmann (Member # 9757) on :
You're right, everything else is fluffery. The way I see it, most people don't stop to analyze why they do things, and most groups don't stop to analyze why they censure some activity and forbid other activity. They do it via natural selection, because it works. Actions that promote survival continue, actions that cause the individual, or the group, to self-destruct get weeded out.
I wasn't singling out Chinese culture. Infanticide is a universal human practice and has been throughout human history. I was responding to extrinsic when he said:
"The U.N. council on gender issues observes that fifty million or more female newborns may have vanished without a trace during the twentieth-century in China."
I have not researched this issue, so I simply took his word for it. The issue of Chinese men needing to buy wives that I mentioned came from information that I have read through various news reports regarding human trafficking in Asia.
I have no issue with either bride price or dowry. Both serve the function of sealing the deal and making sure that the families involved go through with the negotiated arrangement. Kind of like a down payment on a car or a house. neither custom means that the families won't be giving the married couple additional help down the line after they get married.
I also wasn't meaning to imply that the Chinese, nor any sub=group of the Chinese, are in danger of extinction. From the start I have been talking about bloodlines.
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
quote:Originally posted by redux: I don't understand bride price, nor should I, nor should any woman.
If you don't understand it, what basis do you have for concluding that no woman *should* understand it? It seems to me you ought to understand something before you condemn it, much less insist other people not try to understand it.
Calling somebody's remarks "sexist" isn't an argument, it's a rhetorical brickbat. If you want to make an argument, you'll have to set aside your dudgeon and try to understand first.
quote:Originally posted by redux: Are you married? How much did you compensate your wife's family?
Indeed I am married. I married an American so their family did not demand a bride price. However I do support my wife's family, for example when my father-in-law died or in making decisions about how to care for my mother-in-law. This functions something like bride price in China. Here we see marriage as blending families and so while my wife's duties to her birth family were not discharged her new obligations to my birth family are offset by my new obligations to hers.
Of course if we were culturally Chinese, I'd probably still help out of affection, but I'd be much more a secondary player.
I'm culturally American, but my Chinese heritage has given me a perspective on American culture. I frequently laugh at Star Trek's notions of "alien cultures", because they are uniformly easy for Americans to grasp. Chinese culture, on the other hand, is family-centric in a way that is almost beyond American comprehension.
Bride price wasn't the big issue for a young woman entering traditional marriage. The total subservience to her mother-in-law traditionally expected of her *was*. It was a notoriously difficult relationship, but it was often close and affectionate, because the mother-in-law would have gone through same experience.
Think of your typical "Disney princess"; she is a prototype of the young female hero in our culture, and she invariably throws off the bonds of authority to pursue her own agenda, and is rewarded with joy and personal fulfillment. In stories told to Chinese children, that doesn't happen. The heroes in those stories set aside their personal aspirations for the good of the family, and are rewarded by peace, harmony and understanding.
And it's not just women who have to do this. Recall that earlier I mentioned that my father was sent abroad to work when he was twelve. Can you imagine that? Being sent away from home forever, at the age of twelve, just so you can send money back to support the family? Can you imagine doing that to your own children? I can't. I want my children close by, where I can cuddle, coddle and spoil them to my heart's content.
Chinese and American stories don't so much differ on what character traits are virtuous, but rather which virtues they place at the center. In an American story, a hero is invariably intrepid, independent and driven. Chinese heroes display self-discipline, patience, and discernment. There's something to be said for the Chinese perspective. How many Americans have you heard complain that math was too hard? The implication is that if something isn't personally rewarding, we shouldn't have to do it. The Chinese attitude is if you have no talent for something, you should overcome that by working harder and longer.
If you're totally wrapped up in your own culture, the values of other cultures can seem outrageously corrupt. Bride price sends you through the roof. From a chauvinistic Chinese perspective, Americans look like horrible, self-centered narcissists.
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
Writing discussions invariably touch upon sensitive topics, especially topics with culture group contentions and differences of conducts, customs, and traditions, like loyalty, fealty, fidelity, and respect. Hatrack membership spans most of the English-speaking globe, eastward from India and Oceania and the Orient to the Baltics, southward from Scandanavia to Australia, northward from South Africa to Canada, not to overlook South America, and English speakers and many non-native English-speaking writers' countries between.
Discussing sensitive topics in this global culture, as a best practice, ought to qualify that a neutral, analytical position is espoused, and one that does not per se condone or glorify a particular unpleasant conduct, custom, or tradition.
This is a forum for writing discussions. Any given culture's custom or tradition from a purely neutral analytical approach for the purposes of writing discussion is potentially open for open-minded discussion. And here and above I use custom and tradition to mean the accepted and common cultural practices of esoteric identity groups, otherwise known as folk groups or culture groups.
Any writing topic is open for discussion so long as it stays within a theoretically speculative writing domain. Speculative meaning intellectual thought, a free and open exchange of writing ideas. Such topic discussion must respect the sentiments and sensibilities, the feelings of potential or actual Hatrack audiences no matter where or wherever they be from.
There is no doubt that one folk group's unpleasantness may offend others' sensibilities unintentionally. Anyone might not know that a particular conduct, custom, or tradition is unpleasant to another person or group, though, again, in this global culture the opportunities to learn them are manifold. Such unpleasant topic circumstances require greater consideration and sensitivity than celebrating unique culture group motifs, like, say, the concepts of the so-called "Noble Savage Myth," which I find misrepresentative of Native Nations' people's and other culture groups' identities. Nobleness in contemporary meaning is merely sincere self-sacrifice for a warranted greater good. Heroism too. Hence not unique to savages, which I take to mean expressly stone and bone tool and weapon users.
Unintentional cognitive biases are part of culture group identities, as are intentional biases. Such is life. Without differences, we would all be identically dreary automatons and about as monotonously dull as a stagnant wheat field. However, as a discussion best practice for the sake of the Hatrack culture group's harmony and mutual respect, respecting those differences is paramount. Relating every discussion, every topic, every response to the broad topic of writing, at least, if not a specific thread's writing-related topic assumes a neutral approach, not negative, for sure.
Contrarily, on the positive side of emotional attitude valence, though celebrating a respectable unique identity, conduct, custom, tradition, or culture runs the risk of tacitly approving of, glorifying, or condoning a parallel unpleasantness, a degree of celebration is warranted.
I presented a paper to a writing conference last year titled, and I paraphrase out of personal privacy concerns, "Writing the Other: Identity Malappropriation." As writers of dramatic fiction, our stories need villains, nemeses, competitors, personas against which protagonists struggle. Yet we run the risk of alienating potential audiences when we indict entire culture groups by stereotyping our antagonist personas, like dehumanizing and demonizing, say, white Anglo Protestant male middle adults.
In simple summary terms, my paper's two main and related points are, be specific, "spell it out," portray unique characters that do not respresent entire culture groups, and, if as a writer the former is realized, then one can portray characters and narrators to whatever degree of credible wickedness and misery we desire with impunity that suits the drama. But in the story, please, not in discussions about writing.
Bringing this at length response into topic coordination, we Hatrack contributors owe to our audiences: actively-participating fellow contributors, solely grazing readers, and future readers, a loyalty in the social context to the group's harmony and respect in our mutual pursuit of writing development.
By the way;
A best practice, as I use it above and always, from the business culture group, means the safest and most efficient critical path process that accomplishes a desired task. Obviously, fair pratice, poor practice, and bad practice are increasingly less safe and efficient.
[ April 20, 2013, 12:55 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]
Posted by redux (Member # 9277) on :
quote: That will encourage families with daughters to invest more in them, which will over time raise the status of women.
quote: I believe he was trying to point out that, as 'girls' are looked upon as an asset rather than a liability
quote:I have no issue with either bride price or dowry. Both serve the function of sealing the deal and making sure that the families involved go through with the negotiated arrangement. Kind of like a down payment on a car or a house. neither custom means that the families won't be giving the married couple additional help down the line after they get married.
Invest. Liability. Assets. Sealing the deal. Down Payment.
Can you men seriously stop? Do you not see how talking about human beings as if they were objects is wrong? Why do any of you think this is remotely ok?
Women are human beings. Human beings are not objects. Simple.
And let me emphasize that believing, condoning, and putting forward the idea that bride price raises the status of women in society is reprehensible.
I will explain why. Bride price does not raise the status of women. It raises their value as objects. Get it?
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
quote:I will explain why. Bride price does not raise the status of women. It raises their value as objects. Get it?
I get it, it's just wrong. At issue is not the woman as an *object*, as she would be in the American media, which only cares whether she's "hot". The issue here is the woman as a source of labor. Recognizing that the work a woman does has economic value does not necessarily reduce that woman to nothing *but* a source of labor.
Would you agree that the work a woman who chooses to remain at home and raise the children has economic value? By your argument giving the woman a share of the cash her husband has earned in a divorce settlement reduces her to an object.
Posted by Foste (Member # 8892) on :
quote:Originally posted by MattLeo: Would you agree that the work a woman who chooses to remain at home and raise the children has economic value? By your argument giving the woman a share of the cash her husband has earned in a divorce settlement reduces her to an object. [/QB]
Confusing apples and oranges makes for a fruity argument, indeed.
Posted by redux (Member # 9277) on :
It's very, very simple.
My argument is so simple that it does not involve cultural or economic nuances.
So I will state it again.
Treating or talking about a woman as an object is wrong.
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
quote:Originally posted by redux: My argument is so simple that it does not involve cultural or economic nuances.
In other words it is too simple to be of any use to anyone, other than for giving ourselves a pleasurable thrill of self-righteous indignation.
Any program that is going to raise the status of an actual, living, non-fictional woman is going to have to start with the culture she finds herself in, that's embedded in *her* view of the world. It has to start with respect for her as an individual, and her cultural identity is part of her individuality.
"Wake up and find you've magically become an American, along with everyone around you," is not a piece advice that is supportive or respectful to a woman born in a very different culture than yours. You have no idea how rural Chinese or Indian women view bride price. You see it as reducing them to commodities, they may see it as providing support to the families that raised and loved them. Chances are it's more complex and yes, there are cultural nuances involved.
Saying something is a "nuance" in America is like saying "Math is too hard". It means it's something we'd rather not concern ourselves with because it's too much work. But people value the nuances in their culture -- even Americans. We just don't see them as "nuances" because we don't have to work to understand them.
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
While widely deprecated in Western society today, the sociology, political geography, and anthopology concept "natural division of labors" is nonetheless still used to stratify Western cultures. In its primordial day, the concept was about cooperation by each according to their abilities. Grog have best eyesight. Molda have best berry-picking fingers, Larry have funniest story. Ochitaugh cure teethaches best. Burl have strongest club swing. Hante best keep fire. Lordes run fastest from raging mammoth.
Long since then, however, the concept has been used to oppress and dehumanize powerless persons and peoples. Womankind, ethnic minorities, young, aged, and emotionally, physically, intellectually underprivileged people powerless before the corecive force majeur of a numerical, political, or fiscal majority.
Treating any human being as an object diminishes her or his cooperative contributions. I'm surprised that as many oppressed people, as do still cooperate, cooperate with those who do not recognize their duty to mutually cooperate. And a duty of loyalty it is, since one and all benefit from the cooperative labors of others.
I raise these points because of a concept I'm developing, working titled "The First Story Ever Told." The natural division of labors I imagine was a far different concept when language first emerged and, hence, storytelling, than it is today. The discussions of "labor" and objectification raised new areas of consideration for my story's development. Like maybe in its fictional world, social stratification begins or at least becomes a social issue when Burl decides he's going to be in charge of everyone.
[ April 20, 2013, 01:47 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
To bring this back to the issue of writing about loyalty, the different nuances in the ways people view something like "loyalty" are what makes writing interesting. They're a rich source of both internal and external conflict.
Let's imagine a story in which a rural Chinese girl is befriended by a young American woman. The American opens the Chinese girl's eyes to new possibilities; encourages her to pursue her personal ambitions. It's all a great success until they have a falling out about bride price. The girl has an offer of marriage from a distant village, but her American mentor views bride price as literally selling out.
Here we have a conflict over different notions of loyalty. From an American individualist perspective, there can almost be no conflict between loyalty and self-fulfillment, because self-actualization is the highest goal in life. People either want you to be personally fulfilled or they don't deserve your loyalty. The way an American contributes to the group is to reach his highest individual potential. Accepting bride price in the American's view lets the side down; taking money would be symbolically accepting the girl's status as chattel.
The Chinese girl, on the other hand, is the product of the one-child policy; she will be moving far away and there is nobody to look after her parents. Loyalty to them demands she go along with the traditional arrangements so that her parents will have the resources to care for themselves, for forgo marriage entirely and care for them herself.
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
Thank you for striving to keep this topic focussed on writing. It can be difficult when issues come up that may be hot buttons for some.
Individual objectification is a valid subject to discuss, in talking about writing and in writing itself.
But we need to remember that we shouldn't take personally each others' observations about cultural things, especially as those things may be explored in our writing.
This is a writing discussion. Again, thank you to those who are trying to keep it that way.
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
I should confess that Foste has taken me to the offline woodshed for my online manners. As well he should.
So apologies to redux for responding to her in a high-handed way.
Posted by redux (Member # 9277) on :
Thank you MattLeo. Your apology is accepted.
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
quote:Originally posted by hoptoad: In the case of loyalty, I suggest the virtue lays closer to Bob than to Alice. Alice is 'open' to the point of being fickle, this is not loyalty by any measure, ( without semantic contortions). Bob for all his vindictivness is at least steadfast.
I'd like to return to Alice and Bob for a moment, because the differences between them bears on rcmann's original problem.
Let me propose a question: which is more durable, loyalty to a person, or loyalty to an ideal? I submit loyalty to a person is more durable, because it's embodied in that person as long as he lives. Your loyalty to your mother may be extremely strong, but it has its limits if she demands to much -- say if she's an abusive alcoholic. If she does not live up to what you see the responsibilities of a mother, chances are you still feel the tug of loyalty, although you may consciously limit her opportunity to capitalize on your loyalty. But you still are loyal to her as you can manage to be.
Loyalty to an ideal has a different nature. It lasts only as long as you hold that ideal to be true. Let's say you're a worshiper of Baal; you've sworn many a solemn oath to him. Then a missionary comes along and converts you to Christianity, and *poof*, there goes all your oaths of loyalty to Baal. They're null and void, and if your new beliefs are true they *should* be. The same treatment goes for socialism or capitalism; democracy or monarchy. As soon as you decide an ideal is untrue, it has no claims upon you. Truth per se always has a higher claim than any ideal.
Now loyalty to an *institution* is complicated, because institutions consist of both *value* and *people*. Maybe the Church of Baal does many good works; the priests of Baal fed, clothed and educated you when you were an indigent child. Your loyalty to the people in the church would probably to spread over into acceptance of the doctrines of Baal-ism. But in our hypothetical conversion case, you have a dilemma of divided loyalties.
The monarchy is another institution where the ideals of monarchical rule and the person of the monarch himself create potential clashes. It's fine when you have a king who embodies your ideals of a ruler, but what if he's absolute rubbish? Rationally it should make you want to chuck the ideals of monarchical rule, but that's a lot easier said than done.
So to return to Alice and Bob, Bob's loyalty to the church isn't necessarily closer to virtue than Alice's loyalty to her new friends. It depends on the church itself. If the doctrines are patently false, and the leadership of the church patently corrupt, then Bob's loyalty is quite vicious. Whether it is more vicious than Alice's abandonment of the church for her new friends depends on those friends.
Posted by rcmann (Member # 9757) on :
So many comments, so few fingers to type with...
I'd like to respond to the comment regarding bride price and/or dowry (i.e. husband price). I don't see them as being a case of objectifying the individuals involved.
In the days when such exchanges were typical, marriages were arranged on the basis of social and economic advantages for the two families involved. If the couple happened to enjoy each other's company, so much the better. But that wasn't the point. The point was the formation of a long term alliance between two kinship groups.
Which comes back around to the morality of the practice. Was it moral or immoral? Does morality change over time in response to changing conditions?
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
Dowry and bride price are two different customs. A dowry, more often a traditional Western custom, is the materials and monies a bride brings into a marriage, materials being the dowry chest items accumulated since her birth, many items like quilts and laces and linens, domestic items made by her own hand, or gifts of and awards won for the same, the monies usually paid by her family. A firearm in a dowry chest might surprise a husband and fill him in on his wife's proclivities.
A bride price, typically an Eastern tradition, is the money a groom or groom's family pays for a bride.
A rationale behind both customs, disparate as they may be, ensures that wife and husband are comparatively fiscal equals, which is also an indicator of equal social status, perhaps equal belief systems as well.
Both customs are largely out of fashion in the West, at least not as ritually rigid as they once were not more than two generations ago. Middle twentieth century social reforms driven by Postmodernism's questioning and challenging presupposed notions of propriety impacted marriage rituals too.
[ April 21, 2013, 03:07 AM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
Ever since human beings formed societies, morality ceased being about group survival and became an issue of conformity, or personal survival within society. Growing up in a tribe of cannibals, I would see the eating of human flesh as nothing immoral. In the society I did grow up in, it is immoral--except in the most desperate of circumstances.
As far as loyalty is concerned, I see no connection with morality. The SS were absolutely, and fatally 'loyal' to a personification of evil and an immoral idea. I would assume that the US Marines are loyal to an ideal (the Constitution, in theory, their comrades in practice). Are the Australian SAS loyal and moral? They're loyal to their mates and the ideals this country is founded on, but are they all, and always, moral in their actions? I don't know the answer to that but I'd hope so. Yet, reality tells me that 'incidents' do occur in situations of extreme stress.
So, rcmann, I'd say that loyalty is one coin and morality is another coin. The conundrum the individual faces is: Will they forgo their morality for loyalty, or their loyalty for their morality. That answer depends on the makeup of each individual character.
Phil.
Posted by rcmann (Member # 9757) on :
quote:Originally posted by extrinsic: Dowry and bride price are two different customs. A dowry, more often a traditional Western custom, is the materials and monies a bride brings into a marriage, materials being the dowry chest items accumulated since her birth, many items like quilts and laces and linens, domestic items made by her own hand, or gifts of and awards won for the same, the monies usually paid by her family. A firearm in a dowry chest might surprise a husband and fill him in on his wife's proclivities.
A bride price, typically an Eastern tradition, is the money a groom or groom's family pays for a bride.
A rationale behind both customs, disparate as they may be, ensures that wife and husband are comparatively fiscal equals, which is also an indicator of equal social status, perhaps equal belief systems as well.
Both customs are largely out of fashion in the West, at least not as ritually rigid as they once were not more than two generations ago. Middle twentieth century social reforms driven by Postmodernism's questioning and challenging presupposed notions of propriety impacted marriage rituals too.
It also helps stabilize the situation, since in many cases a marriage failure would require the return of the money/gifts. In the case of upper class families, this could easily add up to a goodly piece of change. Both bride and groom would be under a fair amount of pressure to make things work, when one or both of their families stand to lose mucho dinero if they don't. Plus the status issue.
Grumpy, I don't see how you can separate one aspect of human behavior from any other aspect. People aren't subdivided like that. Morality, loyalty, respect for status, respect for law, sense of identification with a larger group, these are all intertwined inside a person. I have no idea how one would go about separating them even if I wanted to.
I agree about the cannibal example. That's part of what I am working toward. All humans used to be cannibals. Just ask a paleontologist. As we became more technically sophisticated, we gradually dropped the practice.
Why? Was it because we received divine instruction? Was it because the slowly dawning awareness of civilization taught us that cannibalism was *a bad thing*? Or was it because cannibalism gradually became a behavior pattern that threatened group survival, and therefore the groups that practiced it most assiduously suffered a disproportionate disadvantage in competition to those groups that were not quite as voracious about it?
Whatever the reason, it is a fact that the most numerous, richest, and most powerful human civilizations today universally condemn cannibalism except in emergency survival civilization, and them only under strictly defined limits, and even then to do so incurs lifelong stigma.
Posted by redux (Member # 9277) on :
This reminds me of when Johnny Lingo pays eight cows for Mahana. Her loyalty is guaranteed since she is worth five to six cows more than the average village woman. She has a lot to live up to. Johnny, in exchange, will be loyal to her in order to get a return on his investment. Johnny was indeed a shrewd trader, making him priceless.
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
Contemporary customs surrounding engagement rings reflect the bride price custom. Expending a quarter to a third of a suitor's annual salary is the common custom.
Placing a moral importance upon a contentious custom is for me partly a matter of appreciating the place moral values play in a given culture in a given time, place, and situation, or setting, and partly more for me about analysis and interpreting functionality than value judgments. I respect and appreciate feminist values as much as I do masculinist (macho) values.
I might appreciate misogyny in a fictional context, like be amused or disgusted by it and thus enjoy it, but I don't hold much respect for it as a social custom. I like determining that a particular narrative, one that disguises its misogyny, might espouse that ideal, and hence the writer's world view, but I don't have to agree with it. Of all my reading passions, glimpses into the unique lives of others most interests me.
I might equally as well appreciate radical or reactionary feminism in prose, but, again, I don't have to agree with it. Frankly, I'm a big fan of New Feminism, which expresses the unique roles of women's lives. I like New Feminism because it shows how others cope with the struggles the accident-of-birth gender complications impose upon women.
Empowerment of womankind is to me a noble and neccessary practice for the global greater good. They say the Colt revolver and Winchester repeating rifles tamed the Wild West. I don't agree. The fairer gender's civilizing influences tamed the West, and much of society since long before humans settled into permanent habitations.
Womankind's empowerment is one of the most influential factors for the present and future of the planet. Overpopulation links to every social and enviromental issue before us today. Womankind's empowerment directly results in sustainable fertility rates, for one. Yet more than half the world's population, including women, believes women should be subjugated to a degree. I'm not one of them.
One novel project I have under development and on the front burner turns both the Robin Hood legend and William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies, and other inspirations, around and portrays them from a female perspective. On point is matters of loyalty in a social context as a duty toward womankind and humankind. The idea is of a large scope but managable through the writing principle of specificity. An underlying complication of the whole, perhaps the most influential yet intangible one, is coping with a woman's identity crises in a male dominated society.
[ April 21, 2013, 12:49 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]
Posted by redux (Member # 9277) on :
quote:Contemporary customs surrounding engagement rings reflect the bride price custom. Expending a quarter to a third of a suitor's annual salary is the common custom.
A marked difference of the engagement ring from bride price is that the bride, and not her family, is the one receiving the consideration for the engagement.
Historically, the ring was held as security against default of the engagement because a jilted bride was considered damaged goods. Now much of its original meaning has been forgotten, or ignored, and the engagement ring has taken on the equivalent of signaling.
An interesting and potential correlation that emerges is that perhaps loyalty is closely tied to economic rewards and punishments.
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
quote:Originally posted by redux: An interesting and potential correlation that emerges is that perhaps loyalty is closely tied to economic rewards and punishments.
I believe now we're getting closer to addressing rcmann's original inquiry. Preservation of the status quo and dissent in the face of possible gains and losses buy loyalty, fealty, and fidelity. I think precedence too becomes a matter of habit and not rocking the boat, although history has shown that following the pack can be a dangerous precedent.
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
I'm sorry, rcmann, but morality, loyalty, respect for status, respect for law and a sense of identification with a larger group are all learned behaviours and none of them are intrinsic parts of human nature, either collectively or individually.
As individuals we all make choices on which group we will join, who we will respect or follow and every other sort of 'moral' judgement you care to name. However these choices are not based on some genetic imperative, but by the society we embrace; and some of us choose to embrace it less wholeheartedly than others.
Phil.
Posted by MattLeo (Member # 9331) on :
quote:Originally posted by extrinsic:
quote:Originally posted by redux: An interesting and potential correlation that emerges is that perhaps loyalty is closely tied to economic rewards and punishments.
I believe now we're getting closer to addressing rcmann's original inquiry. Preservation of the status quo and dissent in the face of possible gains and losses buy loyalty, fealty, and fidelity. I think precedence too becomes a matter of habit and not rocking the boat, although history has shown that following the pack can be a dangerous precedent.
Although I think I've also pointed out the importance of self-interest when it comes to how loyalties are formed and broken, I think loyalty is more complex than that. Yes, economics and power shape our loyalties in ways we may be reluctant to admit, but people often act against their own interests -- or at least the superficial ones.
What we call loyalty is the intersection of many behavioral and value axes. For example, there is a person's stance toward authority and tradition. Some people react strongly against questioning authority or received norms. Others react strongly against accepting authority or expected behavior. This intersects with personal relationships: feelings of affection, affiliation, and gratitude (sometimes misplaced).
And then there's the question of economic or political self-interest, modified by the degree to which a character is capable of questioning his own motives. Some selfish people may be cynical, fully realizing they're acting against accepted norms of behavior. Others may be self-deluded, and rationalize their self-interested actions so they appear generous to themselves.
You create different mixes of these factors, and you get different kinds of character situations. For example you may have a cynical, selfish character who nonetheless feels genuine affection towards someone he ought to be working against. This is just as much a dilemma as an idealistic person who is tempted by a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to score big at the expense of his principles.
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
Can anyone define loyalty? I am loyal to certain intellectual and emotional precepts, but not to any one ideology or demigod. My loyalty is to myself and my own perceived notions of morality, which I would not, in any fashion, attempt to impose on any others.
Does this mean I stand outside accepted society? I damn well hope it does, because I find that the unquestioning predilection of most of today's youth to follow the herd a worrying trend indeed. To thine own self be true, is not a platitude.
In response to rcmann's original question, even he has forgotten what he originally asked: What's the tension between 'loyalty' and 'duty'? Suddenly we got sidetracked into questions of morality. Duty and morality have nothing in common.
Phil.
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
The qualities of loyalty and duty, and blindly following a leader are I believe rcmann's original quandries. Loyalty and duty, fealty and fidelity are intangibles, abstracts, immaterial in the sense they are not tangible objects that can be held in the hand. Bought loyalty is tangible to a degree in the sense thirty pieces of silver expresses where loyalties lie most faithfully. The silver being tangible tokens of monetary value.
A monarch expects barons or lords to be faithful, if for no other reason than they owe their positions to the monarch's generosity, their lands, fortunes, and estates, from which the monarch may draw human, monetary, and object resources in times of need.
Posted by rcmann (Member # 9757) on :
The longer this conversation continues, the more fascinated I become with the implications relative to behavioral evolution. Granted, morality and duty are learned behaviors, at least to a degree. although I would advance the premise that humans demonstrate an inborn tendency to display loyalty toward their blood kin. Every human society everywhere in the world, as far as we know throughout all of human history, has placed a high value on family.
If one is loyal to family, it follows like stink on sewage that one must feel a sense of obligation toward one's family, which is another way of saying that one feels a sense of duty. By that reasoning, loyalty an duty, at least to one's own kinship group, could very well be instinctive. If that's the case, how does an instinctive sense of loyalty to one's caregivers and siblings transfer to a sense of loyalty to one's clan and tribe? And thence to one's nation? And then, possibly, to humanity as a whole?
Behavior evolution figures that behavior patterns evolve just like physical structures, and usually in conjunction with physical structures. The anteater didn't suddenly grow a long snout and tongue, then decide to go eat ants. he ate ants, and the ones who had the longest snouts and tongues got the most munchies.
So is this true for humans? Does a strong sense of loyalty to one's group provide survival benefits? Does the survival value of learned behavior shift over time? I speculate that it does, like my earlier example of the American bison hunters.
A more controversial, and to some enraging, example might be the attitude that some of the founding fathers had toward slavery. From reading their writings I get the impression that both Thomas Jefferson and George Washington disliked slavery in principle, and wished that they could free their slaves. But they (1) couldn't afford to do it without putting themselves and their families in hardship, (2) couldn't do it without invoking the wrath of their fellows, and (3) truly didn't believe that their slaves were capable of taking care of themselves without white supervision.
It's interesting to me that Washington evidently either changed his mind, or didn't give a care, when he died because he freed his own slaves in his will and damn the consequences to his widow. Makes you wonder what was going on behind closed doors at Mt. Vernon.
and thus
Posted by redux (Member # 9277) on :
Actually, Washington stipulated in his will that his slaves would be freed only after Martha's death. And I thought it was quite clear what was going on behind closed doors at Mt. Vernon.
Posted by rcmann (Member # 9757) on :
You are right. I sit corrected. I recall from his will that he freed his personal sidekick, and said that he would have freed the other slaves except that they had married his wife's slaves and he didn't want to bust up the families right away.
So, since his wife's slaves would become the property of her heirs once she kicked off, Washington's slaves would be freed once Martha was dead. I gather she freed them about a year or so after he died, by rumor because she was afraid they would kill her.
Weird institution, American slavery. Odd in many respects, and not merely in terms of modern morality.
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
By and large, Washington acquired his slaves when he married Martha. They were hers, not his. (Marrying for money does work out sometimes.)
One thing about Washington's last will and testament. Mostly it's the standard "give and bequeath" stuff---but the paragraph on freeing the slaves reads like it was written by someone accustomed to giving orders, and also one accustomed to having those orders obeyed.
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