Loyalties

Pthom · Aug 24, 2006

What sort of event, or series of events, or situation--or how much time, if that would even do it--would cause the people of this planet to forget ingrained nationalistic tendencies?

My question is sparked in part by my own WIP and the query elsewhere in this forum about the moon base where there people from several nations.

In my WIP, I don't mention nationalities at all, primarily because it takes place with a population that is 50 generations removed from Earth. My supposition is that after a millenium, people thrust together in common against adversity would forget most of their original differences.

I recall reading a story where there are "Americans" and "Russians" and in checking the copyright date, determined it was written during the cold war when all hope of reconciliation between the two super powers seemed more remote than finding teeth in chickens. Yet one of the super powers did indeed fail and now there is just the one (dubiously, the Americans). And yet the events in this story take place in years yet to come.

So in describing differences between races, or nationalities, or economic status, are we fixing our stories in time (like some--or most--of H. G. Wells' stories)? What sort of relationship will we humans have with one another once we leave the planet, or the solar system, or the galaxy (assuming, of course, that these things happen, as they do in our science fictions)?

LeeFlower · Aug 24, 2006

Well a century or so back, the words "No Irish Need Apply" were socially acceptable. Now, people who don't have a drop of Irish blood in them pull out "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" stickers and shirts every March. That's nowhere near fifty generations.

People assimilate. Land and immediate interaction are more important than history. In 1812, I doubt many people would have forseen ours becoming the longest undefended boarder in the world. If Boneparte had thought of the Channel Tunnel, it would have been as a military maneuver.

TheIT · Aug 24, 2006

If you take Star Trek as an example, it'll take about 300 years and a nuclear war. Of course, ST was also written in the late 60's and exemplified Gene Roddenberry's vision that humanity would evolve past national differences.

I've read a lot of SF which deals with conflicts between "old Earth" and "new colonies". For example, Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Babylon 5 also comes to mind. I suspect any group of people who form a community will eventually form ties to each other, sort of an "us vs. them" mentality, though hopefully with tolerance for "them". The further removed a colony becomes from the colonizers, the greater the probability they'll leave the colonizers behind and form their own culture.

For historical examples, how long was it before colonists to America began thinking of themselves as Americans rather than transplants from the old country? The first generation might long for the old ways, but the children would only know the old ways from stories their parents tell, and so on.

yanallefish · Aug 24, 2006

I think the "us vs them" mentality is an automatic, instinctive thing. I've run into it in various communities (online, in the Real World, and in various subgroups of same). It seems to just happen.

Go figure, that moon story I'm working on these days has that kind of thing in it - ok, it isn't the actual plot but it's back there; the Moon Colonists are getting thoughts of secession from Earth. Why do I have that thought in my head, that's going into my writing? Dunno. It just seemed a natural progression. And yeah, I've seen it in science fiction and in other writing, too.

Now, does it mean that's what would actually happen? Who knows? We might get to see if it does or not in our generation, or it might be the next one after us that sees. (or, as was noted, it might take "300 years and a nuclear war" before humanity comes together and STOPS doing the separatist/nationalist stuff).

sassandgroove · Aug 25, 2006

People do have an "us and them" mentality. But it shifts. Take the small town I lived in when I was 10-12 years old. The kids banded together and hated the kids from the next town over (mainly over sports rivalry, but still.) But when they went to college, and encountered the kids from the next town over, they were suddenly freinds, becasue they were familiar with each other and not the other freshmen. I think looking at first generation verses the second is a good way to go...And certainly after 50 generations, your people would see each other as a group, or even have come up with their own geographical distinctions.

RG570 · Aug 25, 2006

In regard to the question, "what would it take...", I think it would have to be something monumental. Something that would blow away our judeo-christian capitalist false consciousness, such as E.T. contact.

I don't think anything less than that would ever bring humanity together. The veil of maya is just too damn profitable.

RedWombat · Aug 25, 2006

I think people in fifty generations will have completely forgotten most of our CURRENT issues. But they'll have a whole new crop to deal with.

Let's see--fifty generations, 25 years to a generation, that's--uh--1250 years. 1250 years ago, it was 756 AD.

In 756, the Lombard king tried to take Rome, but the Frankish king routed him. The Church got a lot of land out of the deal. St. Wando died. Bulgaria was under siege from the Byzantium empire. The Tang Dynasty came to an end, and the last Tang blames the fall of the dynasty on his concubine, who gets strangled by the chief eunuch. The Caliphate of Córdoba was founded and made the capital of Moorish Spain, Abd-al-Rahman proclaimed emir. The 45th emperor of Japan, who made a commoner the empress, dies.

Exciting stuff, but I can't say that I am burning with nationalist fervor about the Frankish empire, nor does the fate of Moorish Spain rouse my ire. I am not bothered by commoners being empresses. I do feel a pang of sympathy for the unlucky concubine, but I couldn't care less about St. Wando. Nothing here gets me hot under the collar. Hell, there's little enough here that I even recognize, and I'm not that badly versed in world history.

My conclusion is that in fifty generations, no one will give the hind end of a rat what we were gettin' all worked up about. They'll have their own gripes.

sassandgroove · Aug 25, 2006

On the other hand, the Isrealites and the Palestinians are still going at it. I'm just sayin'....

ETA: I'm not posting this to argue, I think UrsalaV makes an excellent point. And well researched. I just thought I would point out that some fights do linger.

RedWombat · Aug 25, 2006

sassandgroove said:
On the other hand, the Isrealites and the Palestinians are still going at it. I'm just sayin'....

ETA: I'm not posting this to argue, I think UrsalaV makes an excellent point. And well researched. I just thought I would point out that some fights do linger.

*grin* A point--except that the Israel/Palestine conflict of today is largely a result of the British actions in 1917, and not reflective of what was happening previously--the European movement to start a Zionist homeland quite literally did not see the conflict coming because they didn't think the Arabs of the area would mind.

The prior conflicts are literally ancient history--the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Israel were contemporaries of the Assyrians and Babylonians, and had long since vanished by our fifty-generation mark. By the time the Muslims conquered Palestine--ironically, right 'round the seventh century AD--it was a Roman territory consisting of a mishmash of faiths, and not anything that could be called a specifically Jewish territory.

So that specific conflict, while it has obvious roots in ancient Jewish cultural identity, really isn't a conflict that's been running unabated for fifty generations. It's more like two seperate conflicts with a thousand year stretch in between.

(Note: There's obviously a lot of quibble room in this particular conflict, and doubtless there are those who think I'm dead wrong. My point isn't to judge either side of the conflict, just to say that I don't think it's really an ongoing-for-fifty-generations conflict, as such.)

Pthom · Aug 27, 2006

TheIT said:
If you take Star Trek as an example, it'll take about 300 years and a nuclear war. Of course, ST was also written in the late 60's and exemplified Gene Roddenberry's vision that humanity would evolve past national differences.

Yet in the original Star Trek, there were very definite (and woefully stereotypical) nationalities: Scotty the Scot, Chekhov the Russian, Uhuru the African. Sure they all got along, but the identities remained.

... I suspect any group of people who form a community will eventually form ties to each other, sort of an "us vs. them" mentality, though hopefully with tolerance for "them". The further removed a colony becomes from the colonizers, the greater the probability they'll leave the colonizers behind and form their own culture.

For historical examples, how long was it before colonists to America began thinking of themselves as Americans rather than transplants from the old country? The first generation might long for the old ways, but the children would only know the old ways from stories their parents tell, and so on.

yanallefish said:
I think the "us vs them" mentality is an automatic, instinctive thing. I've run into it in various communities (online, in the Real World, and in various subgroups of same). It seems to just happen.

In my WIP the "old Earth" is gone (as far as any of them know, and has even taken on the aspects of a myth). But the "us vs. them" phenomenon doesn't go away, I agree. In my closed community of half a million, there is the "us" of the privileged vs. the "them" of the workers (and vice versa).

UrsulaV said:
I think people in fifty generations will have completely forgotten most of our CURRENT issues. But they'll have a whole new crop to deal with.

sassandgroove said:
And certainly after 50 generations, your people would see each other as a group, or even have come up with their own geographical distinctions.

Yes. My folks inhabit a generation ship. I assume (and I hope I'm close to accurate) that the homogenizing of the culture takes place within the first 5-10 generations and that by the time my story takes place, ALL of the original issues of society have been replaced several times over.

RG570 said:
In regard to the question, "what would it take...", I think it would have to be something monumental. Something ... such as E.T. contact.

Exactly. Only I postulate some ecological disaster instead. Something drastic enough to cause a couple of hundred people to escape the planet until "things clear up" so they can return. But then they forget why they left and when it's time to return, they can't imagine why anyone would want to.

Shweta · Aug 28, 2006

Pthom said:
Yet in the original Star Trek, there were very definite (and woefully stereotypical) nationalities: Scotty the Scot, Chekhov the Russian, Uhuru the African. Sure they all got along, but the identities remained.

And they could (generally?) only have relationships with people of the same skin tone, too?
That's another weirdness. You'd think after several generations on a spaceship, you'd have so much interbreeding that people did not have the strong ethnic markers we do now, unless there was some societal reason to maintain 'em.

RedWombat · Aug 28, 2006

Pthom said:
Something drastic enough to cause a couple of hundred people to escape the planet until "things clear up" so they can return. But then they forget why they left and when it's time to return, they can't imagine why anyone would want to.

*cough* It's, uh, worth noting that fifty generations with only a couple of hundred people may result in a bit of a genetic bottleneck. That's really not a very large breeding population, ya know?

Pthom · Aug 28, 2006

UrsulaV said:
*cough* It's, uh, worth noting that fifty generations with only a couple of hundred people may result in a bit of a genetic bottleneck. That's really not a very large breeding population, ya know?

Indeed. But I begin my population with several hundred thousand, and since it's well into our future, I enable them with all sorts of amazing prowess with genetic engineering.

Isn't there always a plot coupon when you need one? heh heh

Pthom · Aug 28, 2006

Shweta said:
... You'd think after several generations on a spaceship, you'd have so much interbreeding that people did not have the strong ethnic markers we do now, unless there was some societal reason to maintain 'em.

I'm thinking that after a thousand years, everyone is all the same color, height, size, mentality, and perhaps (see previous response) close to the same sex. . . in other words, boring as hell.

TheIT · Aug 28, 2006

Shweta said:
And they could (generally?) only have relationships with people of the same skin tone, too?
That's another weirdness. You'd think after several generations on a spaceship, you'd have so much interbreeding that people did not have the strong ethnic markers we do now, unless there was some societal reason to maintain 'em.

Classic Trek also had the problem in that it was being filmed in the 1960's, so what they were allowed to show was restricted by the censors of the day. It was the first show which showed an interracial kiss on broadcast television (between Kirk and Uhura), and the creators of the show were only allowed to show it because aliens forced the situation. Despite the progressive ideas, ST also had some blind spots especially in the roles women were allowed to play. Later versions of the show are much more relaxed and have a lot more interracial relationships.

Yes, classic ST had a lot of ethnic characters, but what I enjoyed was the fact that they all celebrated their origins. One of the concepts they gave to the Vulcans was "IDIC" (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations). Through difference came strength.

Evaine · Aug 28, 2006

The pilot episode of ST (with Captain Pike) actually had a female first officer.
The studio bosses apparently said "We don't believe a woman in charge of anything - get rid of her. And by the way, get rid of the guy with the ears, too."
Gene Rodenberry said later that he reckoned he could fight for one of those things but not both, so he kept Spock and lost Number One - who became Nurse Chapel later (and also Mrs Rodenberry).

Moving on to TNG and DS9, I always liked the happy marriage of Keiko and Miles O'Brien.

Shweta · Aug 28, 2006

Pthom said:
I'm thinking that after a thousand years, everyone is all the same color, height, size, mentality, and perhaps (see previous response) close to the same sex. . . in other words, boring as hell.

Yes, but I was talking about Star Trek, not you.
And, ok, I was talking about early classic ST, at that.

And... I bet they'll find something to be individuated by. Besides, if there's genetic engineering beyond "let's keep the mutations out" then they might well be differentiated for purpose.

Vincent · Aug 28, 2006

Some threatened species have been brought back from the brink with less than 100 breeding pairs.

Reagan, probably inspired from his B-movie days, used to like to say that if the Earth were threatened by some alien menace, the peoples of this world would forget their differences in face of the common enemy. Kind of like the climax to Independence Day. I suspect as soon as the menace is gone, however, we'd go right back to killing each other.

So, maybe the happy moral of this story is, the best way to stop all the hatin' between us, is the find someone we can all hate together.

dclary · Aug 29, 2006

sassandgroove said:
On the other hand, the Isrealites and the Palestinians are still going at it. I'm just sayin'....

ETA: I'm not posting this to argue, I think UrsalaV makes an excellent point. And well researched. I just thought I would point out that some fights do linger.

Actually, their current beef is only 3 generations old. The Palestinians had thought they'd solved the israeli problem, mostly by not having an israel.

RedWombat · Aug 29, 2006

beezle said:
Some threatened species have been brought back from the brink with less than 100 breeding pairs.

Sure, but that doesn't mean inbreeding's not a problem!

Take cheetahs for example--they're so badly inbred due to genetic bottlenecks that they're all effectively cousins, and their fertility has tanked badly as a result. Many of the animals brought back through captive breeding require obsessive care and lots of inter-zoo swapping to make sure there's as wide a range of genetic variability as possible.

It's entirely possible to survive a genetic bottleneck--species do it all the time!--but it does have a tendency to cause...issues.

Pthom · Aug 29, 2006

UrsulaV said:
Sure, but that doesn't mean inbreeding's not a problem!

Take cheetahs for example--they're so badly inbred due to genetic bottlenecks that they're all effectively cousins, and their fertility has tanked badly as a result. Many of the animals brought back through captive breeding require obsessive care and lots of inter-zoo swapping to make sure there's as wide a range of genetic variability as possible.

It's entirely possible to survive a genetic bottleneck--species do it all the time!--but it does have a tendency to cause...issues.

So what IS the optimum number of individuals to ensure genetic viability? Answers regarding any animal species are appreciated, but I am primarily concerned with humans.

Let me propose some "givens."
Technologies, which allow extensive genetic manipulation, are extant. I believe Shweta surmised genetic manipulation to achieve differentiation. That's part of my scheme. Within existing genetic parameters, I imagine large and strong individuals for heavy work, small ones for agility in ducts, and so on. And I imagine these abilities have, over some centuries, been abused, so there is a wide variety of body types and abilities, as well as a small (but significant) population of "mistakes."
There is a finite amount of genetic material. Once placed in the generation ship, my people have almost no opportunity to obtain fresh raw materials. Everything is recycled. I imagine that even with advanced technologies, there are losses--entropy hasn't gone away in my world. In fact, this limitation plays a significant role in the story arc.
There is a finite amount of everything else. Even if we assume some sort of alchemy, there is no way to replace something lost, such as making a probe and sending it out to look for a water-bearing comet, for example. Again, entropy plays a role; once you've worn holes in your jeans, you might want to recycle them to make new ones, but once cotton fibres have become dust, making more yarn to weave jeans with is impossible. Etcera.
There is an almost unlimited supply of energy. My generation ship orbits the sun in the Earth/Sun L5 Lagrangian point. If anything, they have trouble getting rid of excess energy.
The period of occupation on the ship is a millenium. Or thereabouts.
__________________________________________

I have some preconceptions, but I'm interested in what you folks think. I'm looking forward to amazing ideas from this group of thinkers.

Shweta · Aug 30, 2006

I think. especially if there's gene sequencing of a wide variety of people accessible to the relevant computers, you can get away with an actual lack of genetic material.

Making up sequences for size/agility etc, I would find less plausible, just because of how complicated genotype/phenotype relations really are.

I'd guess that loyalties would start to pattern with body type and function, especially since these pattern together (I think?) so you could tell by looking at someone what they do, and I bet people have opinions on which functions are more useful.

I bet there is little sympathy for anomalies unless they manage to be useful. In the situation you describe, people who are not useful are a waste of limited matter.

Pthom · Aug 30, 2006

Shweta said:
I think. especially if there's gene sequencing of a wide variety of people accessible to the relevant computers, you can get away with an actual lack of genetic material.

Perhaps. My thought is that even with the best computer technology we can imagine, after a thousand years without the constant upgrading we experience, things will be in a rather sad state of affairs, and such anomolies may not be apparent to the users. I may be wrong, but I doubt any scientist on earth today has experienced such an effect; when raw materials get old, out of date, our scientists can obtain fresh. Those on my generation ship cannot.

Making up sequences for size/agility etc, I would find less plausible, just because of how complicated genotype/phenotype relations really are.

This is fodder for another discussion, methinks. Put a bookmark here.

I'd guess that loyalties would start to pattern with body type and function, especially since these pattern together (I think?) so you could tell by looking at someone what they do, and I bet people have opinions on which functions are more useful.

Yeah. Since everyone exists in an artificial environment and everyone has been "made" (if you will, as opposed to being "born"), there are few if any racial characteristics left, or they're all blended up. At least, that's the premise of the story. If a thousand years in a sealed environment isn't enough time for this, I may have to rethink some stuff.

I bet there is little sympathy for anomalies unless they manage to be useful. In the situation you describe, people who are not useful are a waste of limited matter.

You're right that those who are tall and thin and pale (1/4 Earth normal gravity, no sunlight) are snobbish in the presence of those who haul things about* or work in the ventilation ducts repairing fans that keep failing but are necessary for the happiness of the elite.

*The story depends on the physical infrastructure wearing out--drastically--so plastics, metals, any machinery are dear. Attempts at maintaining a workforce of arbeiter machines (not quite robots) become increasingly difficult. It's easier to raise a population specifically designed to carry out menial tasks. Again, the story depends on them, too.

MattW · Aug 30, 2006

What is the purpose of this ship orbiting the sun? A generation ship would generally be used as a temporary environment while traversing interstellar distances in search of space, habitable locales, materials, etc.

What reason would there be for just parking a ship with these constraints and no goal in sight? It sounds like a prison, exile, an experiment, or all three...

Sorry, just having a hard time imagining the reasoning.

Exactly. Only I postulate some ecological disaster instead. Something drastic enough to cause a couple of hundred people to escape the planet until "things clear up" so they can return. But then they forget why they left and when it's time to return, they can't imagine why anyone would want to.

Ok, now I kinda see.

Pthom · Sep 1, 2006

Matt, I called it a generation ship because I felt more folks would understand how things worked. It's more of a haven, or an ark.

The original purpose of the ship was to transport populations to colonize Mars or the asteroids or whatever, but when the disaster strikes Earth, they decide instead to park it in orbit until the disaster is cleared up. Over time, the reasons for being not on Earth become blurred; no one alive has ever seen it except through a telescope. Managing the ecology in the ship is of a much larger and everyday concern. But they manage...and after awhile, most of them can't imagine living anywhere else.

There's more, but it's mostly backstory; the information necessary to understand the plot is divulged in bits and pieces throughout the novel.

Loyalties

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