Wavinator, what you''re suggesting is preposterous from a socialogical point of view. That doesn''t make it BAD in my opinion, just that it interferes with (my) suspension of disbelief. An entire race that shares one mindset?

Truth be told, if you want alien races, make them VERY alien. Why do they all have tongues, dammit?! But if you want to make human-like characters, understand that people don''t all think alike (unless, like the Borg, it is their very nature.) Members of a race will disagree often, and a whole race will rarely band together entirely unless they are few in number. People are individuals!

The first three starwars movies were very good about this, I feel. There were no races that had "gimmicks" per se, and the humans were the BAD guys as well as the good guys. It''s amazing how much Lucas has fallen from grace.

quote: Original post by Landfish

Wavinator, what you're suggesting is preposterous from a socialogical point of view. That doesn't make it BAD in my opinion, just that it interferes with (my) suspension of disbelief. An entire race that shares one mindset?

Hahaha, LF! I don't think *either* of us can claim expertise here, as we really only have one sample to go on-- which is a poor case to study! (Unless you'd like to share something with the group!)

But, let's take human kind. Can't we note *some* general attitudes that apply pretty universally?

Like:

Most humans seem to believe that murder without cause is wrong.
Most humans seem to have an affinity for material goods, comfort, and advancement.
Most humans seem to form couples for emotional and physical intimacy
Most human males seem to enjoy various forms of risk taking and conflict.
Most humans seem to prefer pleasure over pain.
Most humans seem to require emotional connection
...etc...

Now, be it made of biological or cultural reasons, consider societies where:

...Random murder is considered a welcome part of life.
...There is little use for comfort or status based advancement
...Physical and emotional intimacy is shared by groups as a norm, rather than couples
...Risk taking and conflict are considered signs of mental instability
...There is absolutely *no* concept of pain or pleasure
...Emotional connection, as a norm, is considered a childish, superfluous indulgence

If it's biologically based, or if one culture's beliefs have spread throughout the civilization, this does not seem preposterous to me at all.
'


I'm afraid not. Most of the different cultural behaviors you mentioned have existed amongst human cultures somewhere on this world in the last 1000 years. Yes, all of those conflicting ideas originating from the same species. I find it VERY hard to believe that once we start spacing out across the stars that we will not have great diversity in our OWN species.

Look, you can write CULTURES, but I hate it when people write CULTURE and RACES as one and the same! It's so dumb! Sociologically, culture tends to evolve out of a group of people who have direct access to eachother. One a racial scale, this cannot happen! The Japanese are still VERY different from americans in cultural context.



Edited by - Landfish on September 24, 2000 11:44:46 AM

quote:Original post by Wavinator-- OR, ACTUALLY Landfish **Edited**

''


I''m afraid not. Most of the different cultural behaviors you mentioned have existed amongst human cultures somewhere on this world in the last 1000 years. Yes, all of those conflicting ideas originating from the same species. I find it VERY hard to believe that once we start spacing out across the stars that we will not have great diversity in our OWN species.

Look, you can write CULTURES, but I hate it when people write CULTURE and RACES as one and the same! It''s so dumb! Sociologically, culture tends to evolve out of a group of people who have direct access to eachother. One a racial scale, this cannot happen! The Japanese are still VERY different from americans in cultural context.


Edited by - Landfish on September 24, 2000 11:44:46 AM

Oh, there''s your reply. I kept wondering what you thought.

I''ve never seen a culture that welcomed random murder. That''s just, as we say, inhuman. Nor have I ever known a society that had absolutely no concept of pleasure and pain. This also isn''t human. (I''ll concede the others I mentioned, tho'' they by and large seem to be very human universals).

I''ll add:: A society that kicks it''s children out to fend for themselves at birth, and engages in no child rearing whatsoever. Or a society that doesn''t know the difference between self and other.

C''mon, you''ll have to give that there are certain physical / psychological traits that, taken alone, would lend to civilization-based generalities. (I''m not buying the politically correct argument that we''re all the same-- if that was the case, then I could birth a baby, dammit! )

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Just waiting for the mothership...

I know we like to think we are so cool, and so intelligent, but what about taking inspiration from other animals ?

I mean, if you want exotic mentalities, all you''ve to do is to go out and look at the nature around. Even in a town, just look at the insects, there is plenty of interesting stuff going on.

In those weird societies, you see females eating males, you see slavery, you see self sacrifice, you see cannibalism, as for random murders ... do you know a lot of predators species that could survive without killing ? And the argument that you don''t kill other people of your kind doesn''t hold water very long when survival of the fittest is all that counts.

The problem/difference is that we humans seem to have developed a terrible/wonderful thing called consience, and we use it a lot, for good and bad deeds.

One thing I wanted to mention. It''s always funny how you have all those worlds in the galaxy that always seem to consist of one unified system, one climate, one species.
It seems we always assume that travel to space would imply a unified Earth... and the rest of the universe would be the same.

This is soooo bland. I mean, look at all the diversity of the homo sapiens sapiens, and the number of species on Earth, and all we see in sci fi, is one planet, one dominating species, one associated culture. Isn''t there a culture of peaceful, spiritual Klingons ? Or a culture of warmongers Vulcans ?

youpla :-P

quote:Original post by ahw

I mean, if you want exotic mentalities, all you''ve to do is to go out and look at the nature around. Even in a town, just look at the insects, there is plenty of interesting stuff going on.

You know, a really well done Hive society would be so cool. No real sense of individuality, just the guiding soul of the Hive. You might not even be able to trade or talk with them, and their actions would be all you''d have to judge them by.

quote:
It''s always funny how you have all those worlds in the galaxy that always seem to consist of one unified system, one climate, one species.
It seems we always assume that travel to space would imply a unified Earth... and the rest of the universe would be the same.

Yeah, you know, this actually can be pretty cool, or lame, depending on how much it''s used. It can be interesting to contemplate a monoclimate world, like Dune (deserts) or Degoba (jungle) just because we''ve never seen anything like that. But on the other hand, when you keep coming to "X," the _insert Earth climate here_ planet, it''s just plain lazy.

quote:
Isn''t there a culture of peaceful, spiritual Klingons ? Or a culture of warmongers Vulcans ?

Yes, actually! Whorf met pacified Klingons in one episode. (Klingons had crash landed with Romulans and had learned to live together.) And in another, Cpt. Picard had to stop Vulcan dissidents who wanted to unearth a powerful psionic weapon from out of Vulcan''s past.

The point is, though, that these groups might not have been striking if it weren''t for the baseline that got established by the stereotype.



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Just waiting for the mothership...

Wavinator : and here we go back to the stereotypes again
I don''t understand why we couldn''t us them. I mean, we are not totally different, or totally the same ... I am a french guy, so like the vast majority of french men, I have a sense of humour that say, an american just won''t get (tried and tested) no matter how hard I try to explain. But any french man I meet will usually get it ... I am only unique because of my conscience saying so to myself. Cogito ergo sum. We assume this to be so true that we push it to the limit where everybody is an atomic being, distinct from the rest of the world. No, this doesn''t work ! There *are* stereotypes, as soon as there are groups, and since we are a social being, there HAS to be groups.
We gather by similarities.
On Earth we gather geographically, usually, then by lots of other criteria. With the arrival of the Net, people are not restricted anymore by geographic location, Gamedev for instance, is typical of this... there are lots of yankees, some english (I won''t use the irish word for them ), some australorednecks, I even came across a chinese, but all people interested by game programming.

To give unicity to each people, you need a referential. that this referential be purely theoretical is ok, but it exists nonetheless. And I don''t want to hear any politically correct bullshit about not emphasizing our differences because, oh!, it could hurt someone''s feelings ... fuck that !

mmmh, ok, I guess I am digressing now.

youpla :-P