Solar System RPG

[Drakon]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
No, he was being quite racist - there's no such thing as "culturalist".

I have to disagree, although I can where the confusion comes about. Because of the ways things have worked out in human history, different races have developed different cultures. But as the American experiment has proven, race does not determine culture. Or else we would not have so many suburban white kids trying to adopt the rap or hip hop aesthics

And yes, there are culturalists out there. I should know, I am one. I think our culture is superior to that seen elsewhere on the globe. But one of the reasons for that superiority is its independence from superficial trivialities such as skin tone. That is one reason why I remain in the US, because I think it is better than the alternative. And the fact that we have an "immigration problem" I see as proof that I am not alone in that assessment.

It may not be perfect, but its the best there is out there right now. And I would caution you about conflating race and culture, as that can all too easily lead to sentiments that "well those people are unfit for democracy or freedom."

There are a host of objective standards one could look at, such as per capita GDP, infant mortality rates, longevity, native tech levels, etc. that I see as going a long way to prove that position. I don't see any demand for 'gratitude' or unquestioned obedience. What I do see is a spirited defense of what Tom apparently sees, and I wholehearted agree with, a set of memes that work better than any other set that have so far been tried.

Overpopulation is when there are too many people to be supported by the local food supply/infrastructure.

Is the problem too many people, or a defective infrastructure? Again, too many people, the solution is simple, genocide. However, if Tom and I are right, then the solution may be a bit harder, but just as easy to understand, and involves a lot less death and destruction. Change the culture, you change the infrastructure and thereby build one that is better able to support more people.

When you go to the Third World however, you will find that there are many nations that cannot support their populations. That's just plain fact. In some cases, it's down to mismanagement, in others it's down to people being at the mercy of the environment and the nation being too poor.

It is usually, from the various studies I have seen, more the former and less the latter. And this seems to be the major differenc of opinion between two competing economic theories. Is economics a zero sum game, or is wealth unlike matter and energy in that it can be created and destroyed?

I have to agree with the latter, because we have a population of 6 billion souls on this rock to date. If economics were a zero sum game, then our standard of living should be declining, and there is no hope of improving it. Our children are doomed to lives of less affluence than we had, and our ancestors should have all be far more wealthy than we are today.

But the reverse is true. We are wealthy than they even dreamed. Most of us have wealth that would be science fiction, or possibly heresey, to our ancestors. Heck, look at what we are doing here and now, communicating across great distances by simply pounding a few bits of plastic. And think of the changes in capabilities of the average person today, compared to say, 100 or 1000 years ago.

A few years ago, my boss got a small nick on his thumb. I became infected and he had to take it to a doctor. The doctor was able to clear it up with a simple shot. Afterwards, the doctor told him that 100 years ago, my boss would have died from such a minor cut. But he's still alive today, because of the advances in medicine since then.

To me, that's an improvement over the previous generation's standard of living. Something that would be impossible if the 'zero sum game' school of economics were valid.

It isn't racist to claim that a nation is overpopulated though. It's nothing to do with having "too many of the wrong kind of people" at all - it's just that the population cannot be supported by that nation's infrastructure (possibly through wilful mismanagement, admittedly), which leads to all sorts of problems as what little resources are present end up being spread too thinly over too many people.

If you look at the history of Malthus' ideas, one sees a notable racist element to it. It is never applied to white Anglo Saxons guys, even when population densities are similar, (or in some cases far exceeding those of these other areas). It is always been applied to others, Irish, Chinese, blacks, etc.

There is only one real resource, and that is human ingenuity. I would argue that humans are incredibly resourceful, always thinking up new things, how to deal with what is on hand. How to turn a desert into an oasis, grow food, and thereby feed themselves. How to take a bunch of rocks, and create metal objects such as plows, or take sand and turn it into computer chips.

I find it very odd, that many of these poorer regions of the world also sit atop the most valuable known natural resource on the planet. Oil in Arabia, and gold, diamonds and precious metals throughout Africa. So the question becomes, is it the people, is there some physical or natural reason why those folks are unable to turn those resources into enough wealth to feed themselves? Or is it simply a matter of ideas, beliefs and cultural factors that keep them in poverty?

The word you use, "wilful" mismanagement kind of bothers me, because I don't really see that as the case. Usually, not always, but usually, all the horrors of poverty are brought about with the best of intentions. The problem is simply that not all ideas are created equal. Some ideas are simply wrong, they are inconsistent with reality, or do not work. (And usually the reason they do not work is because their basic assumptions are inconsistent with reality). Some guy thinks the world would be a better place if his policies were implemented, better for himself as well as his people, and goes at it. But then, because his policies are simply erronous, it proves a disaster for all.

I do find the concept that "all men are created equal", in the sense that they all have the ability to think and come up with ideas and solutions to problems they face, to be a self evident truth. And I don't think there was anything special about the dead white guys that made that a cornerstone of our culture. Anyone on the planet could have come up with exactly that idea, that meme, and I am sure that quite a few did over human history. We're just the first ones to get it off the ground, put it to practical use, and make it a part of our culture. It is because of that, no matter how ineffective it was originally implimented, that the US is the lone super power at this time in history. We are successful, because of our ideas, not the genetic stock we started from.

Now, some folks look at the world and see success as a sign of cheating, of evil, or in some other negative fashion. But to cheat, that would imply breaking the rules. And so the question becomes what those rules are and who decides. To me, its reality itself that determines the rules of the game, and the way I see the laws of physics playing out, there is no possibility of 'breaking' those rules. Ignore the law of gravity at peril to your very life. One may violate a theory, but a theory is simply some person's concept or understanding of the rules, not necessarily the rules themselves. So I see success a sign that one is doing something right, or at the very least, more right than other competing systems.

I don't see success as consistently possible without a correct perception of reality. And I see failure as consistent with simply being wrong. Intentions don't mean a thing, and while perceptions may govern actions, they do not govern consequences. If your preception is wrong, your actions won't result in what you wanted. It does result in failure, which in this case means poverty, famine, and the like. I don't see anything specially unique about the western mind, or western people, except at the cultural level, what ideas the population holds, what the population's perception of reality is. And that is what I see as making all the difference.

 

[Drakon]

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
I do not believe in White Supremacy.

I think the problem is that race and culture often are co-incidental. Meaning that in most of the world, one's race, tribe, or grouping, is associated with one's culture. Greeks adopted Greek culture, mode of dress, concepts, ideas, opinions, world views, religion, etc. Chinese, working for a while independent of Greeks, developed their own cultural system, their own ideas, values, customes, etc. The same occured all over the world, with various separated groups developing their own answers to life's many questions.

If they had stayed separated, we probably would not be having this discussion. (Which reflects back to Tom's communist colony ship in another thread)

The races were first deliniated by skin melatonin. Which we now know is a function of evolution or more specifically, geography. Folks in the lower latitudes evolved more skin melatonin to aid in blocking the sun's rays. But it also messes with folic acid, which is essential in prenatal development. Once humans moved northward, where the sun's rays are less of a problem, skin tones lightened.

Someone once said the only real difference between a black man and a white man is about 20,000 years of evolution. Take either base group, move them north or south, and the skin tone of their ancestors will evolve to fit the local climate. Even if you isolate the group, and avoid all procreative interaction with the natives of their new locale, you still get this evolutionary drift.

I do believe that if someone hates your guts and wants to kill you that you have a right to hate them right back.

This I disagree with. You have the right, the moral responsibility to protect and defend yourself, your family, or your group (political, cultural or what have you) by any means necessary. But I see hate as wasted emotion.

If people are trying to kill you, you have every right to try to kill them right back. But I would not waste the effort or resources in hating them.

If there is a cultural bias in some country against your own, then you have a right to be biased against that culture, since that culture seeks to make a victim out of you and your kind. For example, do you expect the Jews to be open-minded about Nazism, or is the Jews hatred of the Nazis a form of racism?

I think you need to be cautious here. Bigotry is bigotry, and usually focuses on the superficial, the easy to spot, rather than underlying causes. I think there is a valid reason to feel that American culture is the most right one on the planet. And I think its success as a military, economic, political, technical and cultural superpower is proof of that correctness, that agreement with reality our cultural memes have.

But this is a great illustration. Nazism is not a function of the German people's physical biology, which is the basis for the concept of race. It is a function of a particular culture, which sadly is not limited to white folks, let alone Germans. Hating all germans because some are Nazis, or even just killing all Germans because some are Nazis, I don't see as a defensible position. No more than killing all Jews because of the perceived transgressions of a few.

A good rule of thumb I find is whether it is okay to kill a child of a particular group. If one feels its okay to murder children, whose cultural implantation is incomplete, and can be more readily altered, then you've got a problem. That would be racist. Which is the big reason why I find the entire "overpopulation meme" so distressful. It is a justification for mass murder, including children.

 

[Drakon]

Originally posted by Keklas Rekobah:
How would Corporates feel about Belters? Would they appreciate the Belters for their in-depth knowledge of prospecting, mining, and survival in a zero-gee vacuum? Or would the Corporates arrange a few 'accidents' in order to take over an 'abandoned' claim?

I doubt the latter. Because such is simply bad business. If you clear out all the Belters, who is going to work the claims? Folks who DON't know as much about all that stuff you mentioned? That just won't work.

The economic interedependence of the two groups would outweigh and limit any desire by either to get rid of the other. One of the advantages of free market capitalism. Its less bloody, safer, and more profitable.

How do Orbitals treat Grounders, and vice-versa?

Well obviously the Orbital would see themselves as superior to Groundings, and would be right.

(Do I really need a smiley here?)

But seriously folks, you have the economic interdependence of the two groups again. Groundling are growing the food the Orbitals eat. The Orbitals handle incoming and outgoing freight and goods, which makes the Groundlings (and themselves) rich. There may be a friendly rivalry, such as exists between military services, or different branches of the same military service. (Bubble head versus skimmers, etc.) But I don't see it being too much a problem in general.

What about the Spacers in general? How well do they get along with people who have NOT spent their entire lives surrounded by canned air and steel?

On the other hand, living aboard a starship, is inherently dangerous. It requires a certain skill set just to survive, and without that skill set, one could be a grave threat to the rest of the crew. You don't want some groundling opening the wrong valve and evacuating the ship's air. That would be very bad, potentially fatal.

Previous in this post I was thinking of the various groups staying in their own domains. Possibly visiting each other, but not spending too much time in the other's world. The problem comes when members of either group intrude on the other's domain, such as sailors on shore leave, or say a groundling stowing away aboard a freighter. There may be some justifiable bigotry, (for lack of a better word) in such cases, like the groundling being treated as a child aboard ship. But I say justifiable, because without that prejudice, one can lose the ship and kill the crew.

IMTU there is a church based upon Luddite philosophy. This is the idea that ALL technology is de-humanizing, and therefore must be destroyed. The Luddite Church is in direct conflict with anyone who uses technology, whether for recreation or need (such as a heart pacemaker).

I don't see this becoming a major influence, because technology is quite frankly too valuable. Too many lives depend upon advanced technology just to exist. When you threaten the ability to exist, people take it kind of personal. They may exist in isolated or Red Zone colonies, and as long as they are peaceful, they may develope a static and stable culture. But if any of them deem it necessary to rid the universe of technology, they will get killed off.

This is the way biological entities do things. If something tries to kill it, it fights back by any means available. And in a war between Luddites and high tech level societies, Luddites are going to be corpses all too quickly.

I am interested in hearing how such a church developed. You might have two factions, one that is peaceful, in a live and let live kind of way, and another more agressive, militant variant, that goes out and conducts a terrorist style campaign a la the Unibomber. We don't hassle the Amish here, because frankly they are no threat and if they want to live like that, its their lives. But we did go after and lock up the Unibomber, not because of his beliefs, but because he was killing people.

Now there is a possibility that the two factions could be confused by the high tech folks, and that could get a lot of innocent folks slaughtered. The militant faction may desire and try to perpetrate that confusion, essentially hijacking the religion, just to get those casualties, and hopefully recruit more members.

Interesting ideas.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

"I am interested in hearing how such a church developed. You might have two factions, one that is peaceful, in a live and let live kind of way, and another more agressive, militant variant, that goes out and conducts a terrorist style campaign a la the Unibomber... there is a possibility that the two factions could be confused by the high tech folks, and that could get a lot of innocent folks slaughtered. The militant faction may desire and try to perpetrate that confusion, essentially hijacking the religion, just to get those casualties, and hopefully recruit more members." - Drakon.

That's pretty much it. Although I include "... and simply because they can!"

 

[GBoyett]

I could see instead of a church, but a luddite activist group similar to some of the groups in THS. For sake of discussion, let's call them Minimum Tech. Thier ideology can be summarised:

1. The advancement of technology has polluted the environment and corrupted humanity. This even includes medical advances.

2. Only the minimum amount of technology needed to sustain a viable population should be maintained. Many "scholars" point to the pre-industrial technology of the 18th century as the absolute maximum in tech development before corrupting effect begins.

Of course some will ask, "What about extraterrestrial settlements, like orbitals, Moon, Mars, and Belt?" This is where the group splinters. The mainstream view a minimum tech approach is still possible with the development of "steampunk" tech found in Victorian science fiction. This version is commonly called Vernian Minimum Tech, named after Jules Verne. There has been some small attempts at Vernian space habitats; unfortunately, they all were abandoned for various reasons (system failures, low morale, sabotage, etc).

The most extreme ideology believe if MinTech can't guarrenty survival then man should not be there. This has evolved to be the most militant aspect, including sabotage and terrorist attacks against spaceships and habitats (ocean and space).

 

[TKalbfus]

Keklas Rekobah said,

How would Corporates feel about Belters?

In the 2050 setting Belters are the employees of the Corporates. I think initally Belters would be well paid for their work, however as access to space got cheaper, there would be more competion in asteroid mining. The Corporates would feel pressure to cut labor costs so they could compete with other corporations. Belters on the other hand might organize to form unions, so you would have incipent labor management rivalry.

Would they appreciate the Belters for their in-depth knowledge of prospecting, mining, and survival in a zero-gee vacuum?

They would have to, unless they wanted to do the work themselves. Being a Belter is a new profession in 2050, very few are going to be old grizzled veterans. Belters are also likely to be employees of the corporates, getting into space and living there is not cheap and the corporates have the money to do this, but they don't want to get their hands dirty so they need Belters.

Or would the Corporates arrange a few 'accidents' in order to take over an 'abandoned' claim?

They might, but the few "accidents" would involve their corporate rivals operations, depending on whether the corporate has any scruples or not. Some accidents might involve belters trying to organize union movements. An independent prospector is likely to be a Corporate/Belter, someone who has alot of money to start out with, but is not a big time corporate and is trying to get into the business by finding the "motherlode". He can afford transportation to the belt and equipment, but he can't afford to hire too many employees, so he runs a family owned and operated business, his family lives with him out among the asteroids. One big client would be the "Mars Terraforming Authority" they need belters out among the asteroids and the comet belt. The asteroids are needed to build the mirrors to focus the Sun's light on the Martian ice caps, and the comets are needed to add gases, water and other volitiles to Mars and to thicken its atmosphere. The comets are redirected so they impact on Mars.

IMTU there is a church based upon Luddite philosophy. This is the idea that ALL technology is de-humanizing, and therefore must be destroyed. The Luddite Church is in direct conflict with anyone who uses technology, whether for recreation or need (such as a heart pacemaker).

There indeed does exist such a church, I don't know what its official title is but its the Church of the Amish people who live in Pennsylvania and other rural areas. The Amish are luddites, but they are generally peaceful people who do not believe in violence, they want most of all to be left alone. I don't think they posses enough technical knowledge to commit acts of sabotage that you seem to imply.

There is ALWAYS some way to determine that "they" are somehow not as good as "us", and that "we" need to do something about "them". This is part of humaniti and will be for a long time.

Therefore, I've incorporated it into MTU. Not in any overt sense where I require the players to express themselves in a hateful manner, but in more of a 'background' sense, where it is part of the social environment.

If someone wants to kill you hatered toward that someone is perfectly natural. What is not natural is to love one's enemies as Jesus Christ requires. What is even less natural is to expect others to behave that way. A person should not call someone who hates someone else that murdered his entire family a racist or a bigot. People should not be expected to get along with their enemies for if they could get along they would not really be enemies.

An enemy is someone who absolutely refuses to get along with you, he will plot to undermine you or kill you, that is the definition of who an enemy is. Hatred of one's enemies is a natural and reasonable expectation. If someone is trying to kill you and you are trying to kill him, you must hate in order to go through with the act and to save your life. I would think a soldier would hate his enemy while he's being shot at, as the enemy soldier means to take his life. I would take offense at that, wouldn't you? Maybe afterwards when the enemy is your prisoner you wouldn't hate him any longer, but while the fight goes on, I would think you'd have to hate in order to kill. Maybe some people difine hatred differently, but that's my definition.

Therefore, I've incorporated it into MTU. Not in any overt sense where I require the players to express themselves in a hateful manner, but in more of a 'background' sense, where it is part of the social environment.

Comments?

If the players do not hate the villain the GM produces, the GM has not done his job in making the most dispicable villian that the PCs will enjoy defeating in battle.

 

[Malenfant]

If someone wants to kill you hatered toward that someone is perfectly natural. What is not natural is to love one's enemies as Jesus Christ requires. What is even less natural is to expect others to behave that way.

This is supposedly what elevates humans from animals - more to the point, it's what's supposed to make us civilised. If someone tries to kill you, blind hatred is the simplest, most instinctive thing to feel in return. They're a threat that must be dealt with, right? It's also the basest, uncivilised thing too. What sets us apart from animals is our ability to reason. I feel a more civilised response is to keep out of harm's way, figure out WHY the person is trying to kill you, and then take some focussed, considered action against the person to negate the threat - which may be anything from reassessment of one's actions that are causing them to want to kill you, to mutual negotiation, to surgical strike. Blind hatred only exacerbates the situation and leads to a spiral of violence - you see that in Iraq, you see that in Israel/Palestine, you see it anywhere that hate is the primary motivation.

Jesus was onto something with his "turn the other cheek" approach. He knew that violence begat violence (to use a biblical turn of phrase). He also knew that turning the other cheek was a very difficult thing to do, because we instinctively want to take action against threats. These feelings are not unique to Christianity either - they're common in many philosophies around the world - because their proponents realised the same thing. I'm certainly not a religious man, but I find it a pity that so much of his teachings have been warped and twisted by people with their own agendas and generally cast aside and ignored so easily today.

A person should not call someone who hates someone else that murdered his entire family a racist or a bigot. People should not be expected to get along with their enemies for if they could get along they would not really be enemies.

That doesn't mean that people shouldn't try to understand why they are enemies and try to do something about it. If it was as simple as "well, you're my enemy, I hate you, and I want you dead" with no further consideration, then we probably all would have killed eachother centuries ago.

Hatred of one's enemies is a natural and reasonable expectation. If someone is trying to kill you and you are trying to kill him, you must hate in order to go through with the act and to save your life.

That might be true in the specific case where you're actually trying to kill eachother. But when you're a bystander, such blind hatred is rather pointless and counterproductive.

And to be honest, I doubt that a lot of soldiers actively HATE their opponents while doing their tasks. To paraphrase Yoda - Hatred leads to irrationality. Irrationality leads to mistakes. Mistakes lead to being killed. Hatred is a liability in the field - cold, hard, tactical rationality and level-headedness (and superior numbers and better equipment and strategy) is what will win battles.

I would think a soldier would hate his enemy while he's being shot at, as the enemy soldier means to take his life. I would take offense at that, wouldn't you?

If I was a soldier, I'd expect to be shot at and I'd do my damnedest to avoid being hit and to take down my opponent. Hatred wouldn't come into it.

Maybe afterwards when the enemy is your prisoner you wouldn't hate him any longer, but while the fight goes on, I would think you'd have to hate in order to kill. Maybe some people difine hatred differently, but that's my definition.

It's interesting that your definition is basically the same as the definition that the rabid terrorist ideologues use - they want their soldiers to hate the people that they're going to blow up. I find it very worrying that supposedly civilised people in the western world are finding this mentality acceptable.

I strongly suspect that the armed forces of any country (including the arab world) are NOT trained to hate their foes, for reasons stated above.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

George Boyett,

Wow, you've gone to some depth! Your MinTech seems to be a more rationalized form of Luddism. They both seem to have the same historical roots - the 'Luddites' of pre-industrial England who went around smashing shuttle-looms to protect the livelihood of those who only had hand-looms.

I added the religious aspect of 'Saint Ludd' because it seems that the most fanatical extremists - those who are willing to die for their cause - are those who believe that their 'Ideal Being' would want them to, and that martyring oneself for 'The Cause' is a sure ticket to paradise.

(Please Note: I am not pointing out any one political or religious cause - history is saturated with martyrs to gods, religions, politics, kings, family, love, hate, glory, honor, or whatever obsesses the martyr at the time. Even I am willing to die to protect my family, friends, neighbors, and country! So, please don't think that I'm pointing at anyone in particular.)

Cheers!

-KR-

 

[GBoyett]

Thanks. The idea came to mind when the luddite church was mention. Also THS has some groups and movements with somewhat similar luddite memes, particularly Preservationist (Man should not genemod or terraform). The lower tech level is roughly based on some extreme views of today's environmental movement, namely revert to a more primitive form of living in order to preserve the Earth.

Thus the Minimum Tech meme was created.

 

[TKalbfus]

Malenfant said,

And to be honest, I doubt that a lot of soldiers actively HATE their opponents while doing their tasks.

I doubt most soldiers think of war as a sport and are good sports about it. What is the enemy trying to do anyway, they are trying to kill them. To the degree in which the enemy soldier succeeds in killing off the soldier's buddies is the degree to which the soldier will be angry. If the confrontation was particularly bloody, they enemy soldier might find that their surrender is not accepted. Ever watch "Saving Private Ryan"?

War is not a sport. Soldiers don't slap th enemy on the back and say, "Better luck next time! You made a good fight, we should do this again sometime."

What sets us apart from animals is our ability to reason. I feel a more civilised response is to keep out of harm's way, figure out WHY the person is trying to kill you, and then take some focussed, considered action against the person to negate the threat - which may be anything from reassessment of one's actions that are causing them to want to kill you, to mutual negotiation, to surgical strike. Blind hatred only exacerbates the situation and leads to a spiral of violence - you see that in Iraq, you see that in Israel/Palestine, you see it anywhere that hate is the primary motivation.

I've wondered what possible greivance the terrorists had against the people working in the World Trade Center, why did they want to kill those particular people? As far as I can tell, the people who worked there weren't Arab haters of bigoted toward muslims. Also what about the innocent passengers in the planes the terrorists hijacked. What was the terrorist's primary motivation in wanting to kill those people? Like you I'm not particularly religious, a person who believed in an afterlife might be more accepting of such a mass-murder, the terrorists certainly were, as far as they were concerned they were simply sending their victims and themselves on a journey towards the afterlife a little bit sooner, death to them is no big deal, they brought these religious beliefs and imposed them on the families of the 3000 people they murdered. Blind hatred you say? This hatred is not blind, I don't care what color the terrorist's skin was, I don't give a damn about their racial features.

I'm done with this. Lets talk about a Solar System RPG. For instance the Traveller character classes in this setting.

 

[TKalbfus]

Thanks. The idea came to mind when the luddite church was mention. Also THS has some groups and movements with somewhat similar luddite memes, particularly Preservationist (Man should not genemod or terraform). The lower tech level is roughly based on some extreme views of today's environmental movement, namely revert to a more primitive form of living in order to preserve the Earth.

Thus the Minimum Tech meme was created.

The Luddites have to use the technology they dispise in order to be effective in their sabotage. If one of these characters hates spaceships for example, he can't sabotage a Moonbase because he can't get there.

 

[GBoyett]

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
The Luddites have to use the technology they dispise in order to be effective in their sabotage. If one of these characters hates spaceships for example, he can't sabotage a Moonbase because he can't get there.

If they take the "fighting fire with fire" stance in taking out a habitat they will have no problem. The same is true with some luddite and ecoterrorist elements of the modern environmental movement. They may despise modern technology, but they are not afraid to use things like the Internet, pagers, and IM for communicating.

 

[TKalbfus]

Yet if they destroy the technology while in space, they die. Being against technology is space means to murder somebody. There is no low tech way of surviving in space. The only place in the Solar System where you can have a low tech life style in on Earth. If you destroy technology on the Moon or on Mars in human habitations you would be murdering people. Most ecoterrorist groups don't go so far as to murder people.

 

[Evo Plurion]

Then they're not ecoterrorist groups, are they?

 

[TKalbfus]

Mostly ecoterrorists try to avoid killing people. What they want to do is gain public support for their cause, killing people does not do this. There is not much of an ecology out in the Solar System anyway. In the Red Mars/Green Mars/Blue Mars trilogy there was something called the Reds; a group of people who wanted to keep Mars the way it was rather than terraforming it. These folks were not against technology per se, but they were against turning the Planet Mars into another Earth, they wanted to keep the planet Red.

The mere fact of living in space would tend to undermine traditional lifestyles.

 

[GBoyett]

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
Yet if they destroy the technology while in space, they die. Being against technology is space means to murder somebody. There is no low tech way of surviving in space. The only place in the Solar System where you can have a low tech life style in on Earth. If you destroy technology on the Moon or on Mars in human habitations you would be murdering people.

That's the idea behind extreme, militant MinTech. If low tech can't guarrenty survival then man should not tread in that environment. This meme also works on the notion that man will only spread corruption if allowed to journey beyond the Earth. True other environs are not advanced enough to support human life, but man will find someway to ruin them with pollution and over exploitation.


Extreme MinTechist will go after spacecraft, space habitats, and high tech ocean habitats. Yes people will die, but they are the enemy as they spread human corruption through the reliance on high tech.

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
Most ecoterrorist groups don't go so far as to murder people.

Yet

 

[TKalbfus]

That's the idea behind extreme, militant MinTech. If low tech can't guarrenty survival then man should not tread in that environment. This meme also works on the notion that man will only spread corruption if allowed to journey beyond the Earth. True other environs are not advanced enough to support human life, but man will find someway to ruin them with pollution and over exploitation.


Extreme MinTechist will go after spacecraft, space habitats, and high tech ocean habitats. Yes people will die, but they are the enemy as they spread human corruption through the reliance on high tech.

But then their message does not spread. The people living in space will see them simply as evil people bent on murdering them. Being of a frontier mentality, they'll form a posse and hunt them down, perhaps waiting for the Marshal to arrive or perhaps lynching them themselves. The spacers will pay particular note of what nationality the MinTechists are. Perhaps that is the nation that's sponsoring them. If a patern emerges, then the Spacers declare war on whoever is attacking them.

 

[Evo Plurion]

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
The mere fact of living in space would tend to undermine traditional lifestyles.

Now there's an interesting question, explored in many works such as Asimov's Robot novels, Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy and many of his short stories. What lifestyle traditions might develop in spacefaring or extraterrestrial societies? Will some of us embrace cybernetic integration while others oppose it - violently, if necessary - fearing the end of humanity as we know it? Will the war-ravaged, disease-stricken masses of Earth see spacers as arrogant, Utopia-seeking traitors, abandoning the needs of their true home?

Things that make you go "hmmmmmm."

 

[GBoyett]

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
But then their message does not spread. The people living in space will see them simply as evil people bent on murdering them. Being of a frontier mentality, they'll form a posse and hunt them down, perhaps waiting for the Marshal to arrive or perhaps lynching them themselves. The spacers will pay particular note of what nationality the MinTechists are. Perhaps that is the nation that's sponsoring them. If a patern emerges, then the Spacers declare war on whoever is attacking them.

Oh thier message will spread, to the inhabitat of Earth and other stations. The message: Do what we want or pay with you lives. Look what happened in Madrid 3/11. The bombings caused the weekend's elections to 180 to what polls and pundits were predicting and Spain pulled out.

Remember we are talking about the extremist arm of MinTech, and the majority (ie Vernians) only advocate low tech space habitats. If spacers begin a posse (Coalition of the Willing to use a phrase) then some nations and organisations will protest the spacers as a fight against all MinTech, "patron" nations, and affected races/cultures. In worse case, it could trigger fighting between nations, corporations, and stations, which could be a benefit for the MinTechists.

As you can probaly guess, I'm using today's headlines to model the act/react scenarios of a militant, extremist group. There will be some that say we need to understand them and the MinTechists had justified cause for thier actions.

 

[Malenfant]

As you can probaly guess, I'm using today's headlines to model the act/react scenarios of a militant, extremist group. There will be some that say we need to understand them and the MinTechists had justified cause for thier actions.

Not really.

For starters, MinTech seem to be a first-world, luddite, militant anti-technology group with an irrationally extreme opinion on something that the vast majority of people in an advanced world need - as such they'd have much more in common with PETA or the Animal Liberation Front in the modern world than any arab terrorists (whose causes are based on vastly more complicated political and ideological reasons that have a very long history and a huge amount of baggage associated with them).

For another, MinTech probably don't have a huge amount of funding with which to carry out their attacks. It's very unlikely that they'd ever GET sufficient funding either, since nobody would want to do without their high-tech lifestyle. Like PETA, they'd generally have to be content with making annoying soundbites and generally get up peoples' noses wherever the opportunity arises.

They probably wouldn't last a minute in a high-tech world. They'd be annoying thorns in the side, and like PETA and other such organisations may attract a few militant extremists who support their cause, but realistically the militant side wouldn't last any longer than a violent anti-technological organisation would last in today's world. The militants would be disowned by the majority of the organisation, for a start.