Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Better presentation; coherent story, dialogue, and plot.
Costumes seem the flowing style, but better tailored.
Dungeon Crawling in Traveller
- Thread starter TrippyHippy
- Start date
Better presentation; coherent story, dialogue, and plot.
Costumes seem the flowing style, but better tailored.
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
Something else I noticed were the popular 70's scifi tropes that isolated people revert to savagery, religion, and mythology, instead of simply being poor and reaching a stable social situation. I found it interesting that Harlan Ellison and Ben Bova were on the development team. I remember a reading a Ben Bova story as a kid, City of Darkness.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
CordwainerFish
Emperor Mongoose
Trivium: the one and only time I met Ben Bova, he insisted he knew me from somewhere. Guess I just have that kind of face.
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
Most of the world population today still believes in some sort of religion.
Ignoring the secular west and their dalliance with a weird mix of French post modernist philosophy and marxism, there are still many devout Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jews etc who believe in their world view. Add them all together and you have more who believe in a supernatural explanation of the universe than are atheist/nihilists.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
I should've been clearer in my post. I meant that it was a popular trope that people would turn factual history or technical knowledge into myth and "sacred teachings" and so forth if a population was isolated for however many generations.
Fluffy Bunny Feet
Cosmic Mongoose
Based on what I have seen where people think their "beliefs" are the same as knowing or having facts I can believe that a people who lose their advanced technology will revert to primitive beliefs and if the loss results in a lot of violence to a violent might makes right culture.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Ancient Aliens: Sumerian Myth Reveals Extraterrestrial Life (Season 20)
More than 7,000 years ago, the ancient Sumerians established what is considered the world's first civilization, and they credited their extraordinary achievements to their gods, the Anunnaki. See more in this scene from Season 20, Episode 7, "Secrets of the Sumerians."
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
I should've been clearer. On re-reading, I realize that my point couldn't really be discerned from my post.
60's / 70's tropes I'm talking about included, IIRC, things like:
- People from formerly technologically advanced civilizations thinking that their own technology and history are works of spiritual entities or gods, sacred texts, or other spiritual / supernatural whatever when such things are really the works of their mundane ancestors, and everyone knew that at the time of the downfall.
- These people did not believe this during their prior advanced period, but, for some reason, these beliefs emerged during a time of technological poverty, catastrophe, and (usually for story reasons) people just believe it even though half of their "sacred artifacts" would have Made in China stamped on them or something.
- People would turn on scientists, blame them for causing whatever catastrophe caused the downfall, and then reject knowledge, education, and learning as a population, even to the point of refusing to learn to read. An example of this is in the original 1968 Planet of the Apes film, in which humans refuse to speak and prevent the protagonist from writing, because of cultural practices from their ancestors who survived a nuclear war.
Some of the cargo cults of Melanesia believed that technological artifacts were the works of spiritual entities, but in their defense they had never seen technological artifacts until Europeans brought them. They fitted these incomprehensible artifacts into their existing belief systems.
My issue with these tropes is that I disagree that people would abandon their prior understanding of the spiritual and mundane and attribute supernatural origin to mundane things that every single person in the population knew were completely mundane for generations after whatever catastrophe reduced their once-advanced civilization to its relatively primitive state. People returning to traditional religious or spiritual traditions after a catastrophe is perfectly plausible, but people thinking mundane things are magic or have a spiritual origin is not plausible unless that is already part of their belief system.
Arthur C. Clarke stated "Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", but that is different from people thinking such advanced technology actually is magic.
A couple of real life anecdotes:
On patrol in Haiti in the 90's, a pair of US troops and their Haitian translator were confronted by a witch doctor who jumped out in front of their Humvee, opened a battered suitcase, and began setting up little idols in the road. Their translator said, "Voodoo! Voodoo! We can go no further!" The US soldier manning the roof-mounted M240B racked a round into the chamber. In less than 30 seconds, the witch doctor picked up his idols, put them back in his suitcase, and fled down an alley. The US soldier driving the Humvee looked at the translator, and the translator said, "Voodoo doesn't work against guns..."
One of my relatives, who was a teacher's aide, once made cookies for developmentally disabled children. It was an activity for the kids, so the kids got to "make cookies" out of cookie dough. She took the tray of cookies she had made at home, put it in the toy oven (not a real oven for safety purposes), then when the kids made their "cookies", she put in their tray in the toy oven and took her pre-made cookies out of the toy oven to give to them.
When the kids saw her take out a tray of real cookies, this weird moan went up from the group: "Maaaaaaaaagic..."
Sufficiently advanced technology, man. Sufficiently advanced technology.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Religions can also be attempts to control society, and information that detracts from that aim, or threatens the established hierarchy, gets censored or edited to support the existing power structure.
Colonel Kane
Mongoose
Late to the party once again, anywho, this idea reminds me of the old movie Forbidden Planet starring Leslie Nielsen. It is a nice movie from 1956. While does not fully develop this idea it does provide a very general idea of it. And yes THAT Leslie Nielsen, from Airplane and Naked Gun fame. He was at one point a serious actor. It is rather dry, but could be used as a seed for this type of game.
Fluffy Bunny Feet
Cosmic Mongoose
Some of those were taken to Europe/US given a modern education and shown things being made and when they returned home they continued in their cargo cult religion. They had faith and being shown reality didn't change that.
CordwainerFish
Emperor Mongoose
See also Heinlein's "Common Sense" (frequently bundled in Orphans of the Sky).
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
There was a kind of logic to their belief system, based on false assumptions. They had two choices: 1) stick with their belief system false logic, or 2) admit they were stagnant, primitive, and had been far surpassed by the rest of the world. They chose the former. The good news is that these cults barely exist anymore, with only a few hundred adherents.
The logic went something like this:
1. Technological artifacts are so amazing that they cannot have been produced by human beings.
2. Therefore they must have been produced by spirits.
3. The only spirits that exist are the spirits of our ancestors.
4. The spirits of our ancestors would not give such wondrous things to people besides us.
5. Therefore the foreigners must have tricked the ancestors into giving them these things by means of their rituals.
6. Therefore we must perform the rituals to convince the spirits of our ancestors to give us these things.
7. Therefore we're not stagnant and primitive, we just need to do the rituals of these tricky foreigners and our ancestors will give us these gifts.
8. Besides, we had visitations from supernatural entities that told us we would get these gifts too (John Frum, Tom Navy), and this came true (the US military buildup in Melanesia 1941-45).
Cargo cults existed in the late 1800's, but reached their peak during WW2 with the American presence in those areas 1941-1945.
Compare this with the reaction of the Japanese in the 1800's when they were confronted with technologically superior foreigners. The Japanese were also very spiritual people who believed in spirits in animals, plants, and natural features (Shinto), but when they saw the advanced technologies of foreigners, their logic went like this:
1. We've fallen pretty far behind.
2. Therefore we better get on this.
In about 50 years Japan transformed itself into an advanced competitive nation on par with other advanced nations of the time.
Fluffy Bunny Feet
Cosmic Mongoose
Alternate explanation they knew the truth but denied it to gain power, influence and wealth among their own people.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Book burning.
Gatekeeping.
Interpretation.
Gatekeeping.
Interpretation.
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
There is also a remote island where Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and Royal Consort of Queen Elizabeth II, is worshipped as a god.
en.wikipedia.org
