Traditionalist societies

[nancylebov]

http://limyaael.livejournal.com/495363.html

is an essay about how pervasive the idea is in sf that traditionalist/collectivist societies are bad, and the only thing commonly done with them is for the protagonist to either get out or change them.

The commenters seem to pretty much be writers. I'm a reader, so I'm going to be talking about existing stories, not to mention a little history.

Part of what I found interesting about Novik's _His Majesty's Dragon_ was that goodness was portrayed as behaving as well as possible within unquestioned constraints of British society rather than as trying to revise it. This is getting shaken in the later two books, but Lawrence is still dubious about making big changes. I'm hoping that future books will address the effects of either making those changes or not making them rather than just letting matters hang.

Before I read that essay, I was thinking about how little there was for Sam in the Shire before the War of the Rings. On the other hand, he didn't see it that way (he knew what he wanted, but that didn't include changing the Shire), and even when he becomes Mayor it apparently doesn't occur to him to set up public education (or even private education) for promising young hobbits, let alone all young hobbits.

IIRC, Foster's _Midworld_ is definitely about a collective/communal/traditional society. People are necessarily loyal to their tribes' trees--the trees are *not* replacable nor is it possible for people to connect with a different tree if their tree is killed. The misfit doesn't escape, nor does he want to.

In Recent Developments in the Study of the Great European Witch Hunt, it's proposed that the witch hunts pretty much *weren't* the result of evil hierarchies nor of settled tradition. Rather, they correlated strongly with the breakdown of central authority during the Reformation.

I don't know whether this is true (anyone have more recent research handy?), but it doesn't sound crazy. I can see people preferring traditional social structures (and I'm including stable government in this) because uprooting them carries the risk of great evils. The worst events of the past century have been the result of people who thought it was a good idea to Redesign Everything, and quite possibly there should be more sf about people who value their societies.

I'm not saying that stability is absolutely wonderful, just that the love of it is part of humanity and it isn't always the worst thing.

Link thanks to ylee.

Comments

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Since you've been nice and high-minded, and not didn't mention it, I will:
Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a highly regimented society, with specific penalties for getting out of line, and pretty horrible ones at that. Now that that country has had its structure disturbed (especially since it was disrupted by people who didn't have a realistic plan for what to do next) it's gone from a totalitarian dictatorship to a whirling chaotic hell. I can't blame the Iraqis who feel that giving up what little safety and security they did have under Saddam for the vague promise that "things will be better" sometime in the future was a bad trade.
We could search for other examples in the 20th century, and find half-a-dozen without exertion, and more as you go back in time. I think, though, that the old bad examples (including their own Civil War) were one reason the British were so cautious about change, and so frightened by the French Revolution--and one reason why the American War for Independence was a far less revolutionary affair than many would like to think. Sometimes change is good--but managing it is another thing. Most French were aiming for an British-style constitutional monarchy in 1789--and they ended up killing their king a few years later.
Vetinari is right--most people do like to think that things will pretty much be the way they are, even if they way they are isn't that great, because change can so easily be for the worse.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I wasn't deliberately being nice and high-minded. Sometimes I'd rather think about sf than current events. I got pissed off at bin Laden (though I was angry at him already) because the results of 9/11 affected _Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince_.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Current events? Excuse me, I need to go outside and howl for a bit.

There. Better now, for a little while.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

[lightningb.livejournal.com]

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will bum,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return.

-- Rudyard Kipling

[laughing-fox.livejournal.com]

"Before I read that essay, I was thinking about how little there was for Sam in the Shire before the War of the Rings..."

I can sort of relate to Sam though - I think most of us want to 'go home' sometimes, to go back to that more innocent childhood that memory paints with such a rosy brush. There's always that little jolt when I go to visit my family, and things don't match what I remember. We used to roam the area for miles, all day long without once seeing our parents till dinner. And no-one worried. No cell phones, no way of knowing where we were. Couldn't imagine anyone doing that now. It's like my own personal shire joined the modern era, and there's no way of going back, yaknow?

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Maybe "how little" is the wrong way to put it. Friends and family and work and security aren't little things. But Sam's also really interested in elves and oliphants, and there's almost no outside information available for normal hobbits, especially if they're low status.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Many thinkers went through terrible things justified on traditional grounds. It would be nice if there was a traditional society that emphasised having a better reason than, "This is the way it has always been," when doing terrible things to people.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I think your first sentence has a thinko.

The problem with tradition is that there's no internal way of criticizing it, though it's obvious that traditional societies do change. I've never seen any discussion of what that process looks like.

The thing is, tradition is used to justify terrible things. It's also used to justify good things, and to *not* get around to committing horrors on a huge scale.

I'm not arguing that tradition is automatically wonderful--just that assuming people who want to change things/get out of their home society are right is a habit in sf, and possibly shouldn't be.

Offhand, I can't think of much sf (maybe one Poul Anderson story) about people choosing what to change and what to keep.

I have seen a piece (unfortunately not bookmarked) claiming that non-literate traditional societies change fairly easily, then claim that what they're doing now is what they've always done. Literacy means that people have some actual records of how things used to be, and leads to people who want to be traditional behaving less rationally than they otherwise would.

Re: The Gods of the Copybook Headings

[shagbark.livejournal.com]

What's a copybook heading?

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Well... Not totally. The Jewish tradition seems to emphasis internal debate about traditions to some extent. And I could imagine a type of traditional society (with sufficient leisure time) actually debating their traditions and questioning things.

Actually even beyond illiterate societies it seems like certain changes fly under the radar. There are letters by English people talking about having a traditional Christmas tree just like when they were children.. in 1850, when the tradition had only come to England with Victoria's marriage to Albert in 1840 and became widespread after 1847. People have flexible memories and tradition is subject to fashion of the times. Though this is just for fluffy things rather than for traditions that are about people getting stoned to death (or whatever).

Unsettled tribal societies have a lot less hard traditions, because if a person doesn't like something he could take his followers and leave quite easily.

But back to the subject. I was saying that in our modern society the thinker types who end up writers and readers very often have felt bound and hurt by traditions. From rules about homosexuality to the way that just plain bookish people get treated. So it is no wonder that such stories make up the majority. We're all the hero in our own minds.

And I can even think of a number of stories where while the society was wrong, the rebels were worse. Starting with Illusion by Paula Volsky and back further, Steerpike in Gormenghast. In SF there is the evil rebel against an aristocratic government in Chung Kuo and this guy who wants to reform and reenergize thing but is causing much misery in Aristoi. And look at Miles Vorkosigan, he is sort of a rebel, but he works to expand the limits and rules of his society rather than totally overthrowing them, he even supports the system to a large extent.

So I don't know how big a 'problem' this actually is in SF or Fantasy. Off the top of my head I can only think of one rebel against a traditional system who's doing big dramatic things to overthrow it and is totally right. And that's from Raymond Feist's Magician books.

Re: The Gods of the Copybook Headings

[lightningb.livejournal.com]

In the 19th century, schoolchildren had to copy quotations that the Powers that Be liked into a "copybook". Taught penmanship and (supposedly) morals. The headings, of course, were the various classes that the quotes fell into.

Kipling is talking about The Common Wisdom being right.

BTW, a lot of adults kept up their copybooks, with quotes they liked instead of assignments. (We don't need them -- we have Nancy! :-)

[laughing-fox.livejournal.com]

that's a good point as well, and pretty much why i moved away. There's just too much info and experiences I don't have access to out in north-central pennsyl-tucky ;) But there are sacrifices you make for that freedom. It's not so bad when you still have that feeling 'well, i can always go home, even if only for a little bit'. But what do you do when the Tookish side of you dies down, and the Baggins comes to the fore again, if you have no home to go back to? Or if it's changed beyond all recognition?

I think that's what Tolkien was writing about when it came to the Shire, a fantasy where your childhood home is always as you left it. Frodo and Bilbo changed, the Shire never did. Some outside force tried to change the shire, but they stopped it and put everything back the way it was. You don't see that in most modern fantasy, usually the protagonists are the ones out to change their homeland. And most of the characters in tolkein are older, not young folks trying to find their place in life. It's a perspective you don't see much of in modern fantasty. I'll be interested to see how the author of the article you first mentioned in this thread tackles that (if at all)