Google+ Worldbuilding Hangout Report: Morals & Values

We had a smaller group last week for our discussion of morals and values. I was joined by Jaleh Dragich and Glenda Pfeiffer.

Jaleh started our discussion by mentioning a multiplayer role-playing game featuring a team of people trying to stop an invasion of Earth - and hampered by the fact that all team members didn't share the same sense of morality. She specifically mentioned a Victorian English player who would get caught up over how little clothing her more modern character was wearing ("showing a scandalous amount of leg").

I thought this was a very perceptive place to start, because morals and values stand out most when they are put in a context of contrast - either between different members of a group, or between readers and characters. They are also a huge potential source of conflict (as they are in our real lives). Imagine a story where a priest and a pirate had to work together!

It's easier when working with fantasy or science fiction to set up groups with a huge contrast of moral value systems, but also important to remember that there is no such thing as a mono-culture. Even within groups who ostensibly possess the same morality, not everyone will agree. I thought immediately of sectarian disputes within religions, and all of the wars and terrible acts they have inspired - indeed, these have also inspired world-changing acts like the departure of the pilgrims for the Americas.

The second question we discussed was where morals and values come from. A society can have laws, but those are generally a later development that follows on a preexisting set of societal values and traditions, which may or may not be religious (indeed, it's hard to separate societal values and religious values).

So how do you go about creating morals and values in a world you are designing?

Glenda suggested that we consider that there were often practical purposes at the root of certain behavioral prohibitions (or other guidelines), and that these may fossilize while the world around the people continues to change. So in creating a world it's useful to consider what the initial conditions of environment and food production were, for example. "Be fruitful and multiply" is a pretty good admonition for farmers who need more laborers to help them bring in the harvest, and would probably also work well (but for different reasons) for hunter/gatherers in a position where child mortality might be high. Once we hit the post-industrial age, however, having a lot of children becomes less clearly beneficial and more problematic.

Leaders, and elite groups, can also have a large effect on societal values. Jaleh mentioned the influence of charismatic leaders whose beliefs can influence the larger society. There can also be aspirational values established by small groups, which make other people want to emulate them, but may be impractical for people who are not members of the elite themselves (I think here of certain types of conspicuous consumption in our world). Glenda gave a good example of the value of pale skin, which started out as a sign of wealth when people who had to work spent a lot more time outside - but which, now that industrial laborers work indoors, has changed to valuing tanning as a sign of wealth and leisure.

One question you might want to ask yourself is this: how do you define a good person, a good member of society? That definition will change depending on the social subgroup you ask. Each group will have specific ideas of the way a person "should be" in order to contribute in an ideal way.

Glenda mentioned manners here. The question of manners had already come up in passing once before, but they can be seen as critical indicators of whether one is a "good person." Using the wrong set of manners, and being "rude," can easily turn into a serious moral condemnation. We'll talk more about this in today's discussion (so come and visit!).

Outsiders coming in to join a group can give conflicting signals because they are not accustomed to the behavioral rules of the group. Jaleh noted that manners are a way to demonstrate that you have the proper morals.

In fact, two people can have the same basic moral code but their way of expressing it through behavior may differ significantly. People very often have a relationship with their own morality - they may hold a set of beliefs, and have a way that they know they should behave, but they may or may not be able to achieve this, and this can fundamentally influence their own self-value.

One interesting thing to do in a story is to take two people who ostensibly have the same morality system, and put them in a situation of stress. Chances are not bad that under those conditions the two people will diverge significantly in their decisions and behavior in spite of those basic moral similarities. Glenda mentioned a Regency context in which one person was more interested in preserving form and appearances, while another person was more interested in "doing the right thing" regardless of appearances; this meant they dealt with the poor very differently.

Jaleh told us a really interesting story about two monks who encountered a woman beside a river. Neither one was supposed to "mix" with women, but one of the two monks decided to help the woman by carrying her across the river. He carried her across, set her down, and she went on her way, but once the two monks continued walking, the one who had not touched the woman started criticizing the other for helping her. The first monk then said "I carried her across and set her down. So why are you still carrying her [mentally]?"

Not only was this story a good example of divergent behavior based on the same morals, but it also demonstrated that morals are often passed on through stories. It's definitely worth thinking through what the parables and morality tales of your world are, and what kinds of language are associated with morals and values. Is there such a word as "scandalous" or "indecent"? What other judgments might use special words in your world?

Our last major topic was the question of placing value on objects/substances. This phenomenon ranges from assessing whether an object is generally valuable or not, to imbuing certain objects with spirit or with other sacred value (around which there may be considerable ritual).

I mentioned that in Japan's history there was a period where Portuguese traders brought Christianity to Japan, and gained quite a large number of followers, but when the local Daimyo realized that Christianity was becoming imperialist and wasn't simply going to be an additional religion that people could follow (since Shinto and Buddhism were side by side), they decided to stamp it out. This led to a period of terrible violence against both the Portuguese and the Japanese Christians. The relevance of this to sacred objects is that one of the tests for seeing whether a Japanese person was secretly Christian was forcing them to walk over an image of the Crucifixion. If they didn't see the image as possessing sacred value, the idea was, then they would walk over it no problem. Other images and objects have had sacred value throughout history, like the holy grail, relics of the saints, the Shroud of Turin, temples and statues of all sorts. Some places come to be imbued with similar value because of the depth of their sacred history. Glenda mentioned a rebellion in India where Hindu troops refused to use their guns because they had been told that the black paper around their shells (which had to be torn with the teeth) had pork fat on it.

This kind of thing is so potent and so omnipresent in our society that I urge writers to try to include something like it in their stories. The lack of any such significance (regardless of whether it is religious or based on some other belief system) will likely seem strange. Thus, unless that strangeness is a deliberate choice, it's good to think these things through for your world.

The question of pork fat also brought us to the value of foods. Is there a concept of clean vs. unclean in your society? Where does it lie? Did the fact that one food isn't acceptable to your people arise from some condition in their early history where the food could not be prepared properly/safely? Might it have been based on an injunction against over-fishing? Or based on the seasonal algae bloom?

Often, even when the original purpose of a prohibition or of a moral rule has been lost, the practice that arose from it has come to have inherent social value. In fact, it can serve as a marker of membership in the social group that holds this particular set of morals. We thought of both the Holocaust and the Spanish Inquisition as examples of people outside a religious group using social practices to single people out for persecution.

Would you be willing to break a taboo to save your own life? Would your character?

An example of a very common substance that gets a special value is water. I wrote about this on the blog once before (A different value: water). Is it for drinking? Is it for bathing? Is it, as in the novel Dune, your entire earthly wealth and something to be preserved at all costs (but wasted extravagantly by the people in power)? Is it something that should never be wasted because of frequent droughts? Or something that should be used to purify yourself and the area around your business?

The list of possible things goes on and on. We also mentioned how often people bathe, and whether a person's smell has social value, as in Babylon 5's Mars domes where any kind of strong smell was not approved of.

It was a good discussion, and at the end we decided to move over into the arena of Manners for this week. I hope you will stop by and join us later this morning.

A Different Value: Nature (also printed at SIMF)

This one is for those among my readers who didn't make it over to SIMF last Friday...

As human beings, we place value on the things around us; our surroundings and our experiences mean something. If you look around the world, though, you’ll find that the way we place value on things doesn’t match the way someone else’s culture does. Exploring these differences can give us insight and ideas for stories set in alternate worlds. Place a different value on something whose value we take for granted, and you may just surprise and fascinate your reader.

Today I’m thinking about nature. There are a lot of things that have brought the topic up for me: my recent trip to Yosemite, the Gulf oil spill, a recent article about the value of “green exercise” for mental health (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8654350.stm). Most recently I discovered a story where planting trees is saving girls' lives in India (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/south_asia/10204759.stm).

The value placed on nature varies both across cultures and over time. The Biblical view places mankind in charge of nature and licenses our species to use its bounty. In that kind of model, gaining control over nature is a good thing – this would probably involve winning safety against natural threats as well as organizing what grows in one’s garden – growing food would be a part of this, to my mind. It would be interesting to ask whether portrayals of nature as relentless and unforgiving, like those by Jack London, can be included in this view. It’s possible, since gaining control of nature would take people out of danger (even though in the case of The Call of the Wild it can’t be done). On the other hand, the triumph of nature in a story can be interpreted in different ways.

Another often-seen view of nature is that of nature as good, as something we shouldn’t try to control, and particularly not to subjugate. The Garden of Eden would probably be one sort of example of this. Pocahontas has this going on in spades, and in fact there’s a common association between the idea of nature preservation as good and the image of the noble savage. The view that we are a part of nature has grown stronger and stronger over time, influenced in part by the growth of environmentalism. Science fiction has brought us an extreme extension of this idea: that of the ecosystem possessing a collective mind. Midworld by Alan Dean Foster contains one example of this idea, and James Cameron’s Avatar another.

There’s more complexity to be had, though, than just seeing nature as good or bad. The Japanese philosophy of gardening falls at an interesting point between these two extremes, because the idea there is to build a relationship between wild nature and man-controlled nature. (http://www.columbia.edu/itc/ealac/V3613/gardens/overview.html) If you look at a bonsai, you can see part of this philosophy at work: the bonsai is planted in a tiny pot, and in that context the shoot of a full-sized tree is trained into such a shape that it looks like a miniature version of the real thing. I think it’s fascinating that the goal of human control in this case is to emulate actual nature on a different scale.

“The garden can imitate the wider landscape in miniature by the construction of artificial hills for tiny mountains and valleys, meandering pathways and streams. Viewing points are essential in the Japanese garden. The arrangement of features within the garden must consider the different views, and what will be seen from each viewing position.” (http://www.gosfordregionalgallery.com/garden.htm) Japanese gardens, as they design their viewing points, are also known for trying to create a scene that incorporates both the planned areas of the garden and the nature around it, making them match and flow into one another.

Nature can be good. It can be terrifying. It can be majestic, even religious. It can be our servant. It can be our mother. Or it can be so normal that it’s hardly noticed. Whichever value you pick, keep in mind that that value will probably be nuanced in different societal contexts – different aspects of nature may take precedence or be held at different levels of importance. Much of its value will be based on what part it plays in the life of a people.

Woodland dwellers might see it as normal and unnoticed, or possibly they might see it reverently, or as a mother figure.
City dwellers might see it as something vague to yearn for, or they might perceive it as a symbol that people argue over, or they might be frightened of its realities.
Cave dwellers might perceive nature as riotous and out of control, or as a paradise.
The possibilities are endless.

Keep in mind as you write that the way a society perceives nature will influence not only their behavior towards it, but also the language they use in thoughts or conversations about it. Explore how nuances of thought are reflected in language, and what we imply through speech (and thought) about the values we hold. Here are some examples to consider:

“Ejii fought against her surety that this time the world really was ending, that the Sahara Desert was finally finishing what it had started, swallowing up the rest of what was there.” (Nnedi Okorafor, The Shadow Speaker)
“Our great mother Eywa does not take sides, Jake; only protects the balance of life.” (Neytiri, from James Cameron’s Avatar)
“God damn, but he was sick of green.” (a human in Alan Dean Foster’s Midworld)
“‘Your honor, you mean you want me to go into the Sticks? I mean,’ he said, groping for words, ‘you want me to play for the Muckfeet?” (Alvah Gustad in Damon Knight’s “Natural State”)

In countless stories, we see that Nature has meaning to people. I encourage you to think about what nature means – and what it could mean – to the people in yours.

To see this article and many others dealing with the question of using real science in the context of fiction, check out http://crossedgenres.com/simf/

A Different Value: Nature up at SIMF!

My post is up at Science In My Fiction. I'm excited! Enjoy...

A different value: Teeth

I'm going to spend some time in a periodontist's chair tomorrow, so tonight I'm thinking about teeth.

I look around at America today and I see that teeth are treated as a big deal. Especially white teeth. There are lots of smiles that have seen extensive orthodontics - including mine! Lots which have been whitened (not including mine). Teeth are a whole business which advertises at us constantly. The best brush, the best toothpaste, the best whitener, etc. etc. We are told to brush twice daily, floss daily, see the dentist every six months for a cleaning and checkup.

Not everyone thinks about teeth this way.

I remember when I was studying early hominids, I was fascinated to learn that up to a certain time period, cavities (they were referred to as caries in this context) didn't exist. Skulls dated after the beginning of that period are often found to have rotting teeth; skulls from the earlier period don't. Imagine it!

When I went to Japan, I was warned not to try to go to the dentist. One of my friends said memorably, "If you have a cavity, wait a year." What I discovered when I was there was an entirely different attitude toward dentistry. I saw little or no orthodontics. I saw lots and lots of people with missing teeth, partly missing teeth (ack!), very crooked teeth, etc. I tried to think about it in comparison with the attitude toward teeth in ancient Japan, where a young woman's teeth were seen as showy and after marriage women would blacken their teeth. In any case, one of my host moms went to see the dentist for tooth pain and reported when she came back that she'd been told if it continued, she could have the tooth pulled out. I shuddered.

I admit this was quite a stressor on me, and on my attempts to keep an open mind. It's interesting how much harder it is to be culturally sensitive when the effects of an alternate belief system may be directly applied to a part of one's body. Fortunately, I didn't encounter tooth trouble while I was there.

After I returned from Japan, I met a young woman who had moved to the US from Japan, and I learned something else. She preferred the Japanese way, and complained that she was always having to go to the dentist here, and that every time she went they seemed to find something wrong, so she wondered why she kept going at all. This surprised me a lot, but on one level it does make sense. It simply grows out of a very different way of thinking about the problem.

I think there are lots of possible attitudes to have about one's teeth, ranging from absolute not caring to hyperattentiveness to their health and appearance. In our own world you can find a large degree of variation, both in attitudes and in the base conditions that influence oral health. Different environmental factors like the available food and drink can have a huge influence on the amount of care that teeth need (I think immediately of Dances With Wolves). Not caring for one's teeth can't really be considered neglect if the natural foods you eat don't cause you to have trouble with them. It's only neglect if it results in bad oral health. The amount of care we Americans need to take of our teeth certainly has a lot to do with the amount of sugary food we eat. And of course in our own country oral health brings along with it a good number of related issues, like fluoridation of water, or heart disease's link to periodontal disease, or school registration for Kindergarteners.

People often neglect the question of teeth in their worldbuilding. It's simpler to create a fantasy world where you don't have to worry about tooth care - and not entirely implausible, in fact, if you think about it from the early hominids' point of view. It's certainly nicer not to have to worry about whether your potential love interest's mouth is a complete nightmare. Still, I always appreciate when some little attention is paid to such things, even so far as to give a small nod to why people's teeth look or feel the way they do.

It's something to think about.

A different value: pale skin

I'm not talking about light versus dark skin here, but about pale versus tanned skin. This post was inspired by the following article, which was picked up by Fox News dot com after appearing in the Adelaide Now paper under the title Fair go for beauty. Apparently - and I can't help laughing about this - the Twilight phenomenon has made pale skin trendy again.

Sun exposure hasn't always had the same value. I've read plenty of stories taking place in historical England (at varying time periods from Victorian to medieval) where young girls were striving not to have any freckles at all. I personally have been subjected to all kinds of teasing about my pale-to-freckly skin because of the value placed on "a healthy tan." I imagine the skin cancer researchers might have their own issues with that phrase! I remember saying when people commented, "My skin comes in three colors: white, pink, and red. Of those three, I prefer white." I have known at least two women who took tanning to an unbelievable (to me) extreme. I have also witnessed the French tendency to engage in tanning, which can take place anywhere from the mountains to the sea (no discrimination as to where the sun rays should come from!). I have had the distinctly uncomfortable experience of seeing a tourist in France who had decided for what appeared to be the first time in her life to tan wearing a "monokini" instead of a "bikini." I don't even want to imagine the pain that followed.

This is one of the details of appearance that might slip notice in the process of building a very different world - but it's something worth thinking about.

A different value: alcohol

I've heard it said that every society in the world has some sort of intoxicant. Alcohol is a big one worldwide. What brought it to mind for me today was a link that a friend passed on to me, about a group of researchers in England who are trying to find a healthier substitute for alcohol. They're working to find a substance that would cause pleasant inebriation, but wouldn't poison people or cause hangovers, wouldn't cause emotional swings or addiction, and which could be counteracted rapidly by an antidote that could be given at any time. The article is here.

I imagine the consequences of substituting that stuff into alcoholic drinks. Now, that's science fiction. There's an entire culture, or two, or three, or more, surrounding alcohol consumption. Substitution would require an enormous revision. Lots of money and lives saved, first of all. Lots. But I could also see plenty of push-back. Where is the hard edge that you're perceived to have, as an alcohol drinker? If you need that perception of risk and danger, where will you buy it?

I suspect there would be instant upheaval followed by a longer-term shift in cultural perception. Who knows whether a shift like that could be successful on the long term, or where it would land the largest segments of the population.

But it's worth considering the value that we place on alcohol and other intoxicants. I'll remind new readers that when I say value, I don't mean "values" in an ideological sense, and I don't mean good or bad. Alcohol plays a role in our culture, different from the role it plays in other world cultures in some subtle ways. I remember being surprised when I visited France by the difference in the way alcohol consumption was treated. I remember thinking at a certain time in my life that people wouldn't go as crazy on their 21st birthday if alcohol weren't treated as such an awful taboo, and thereby given such incredible cachet. Who knows - maybe they would, but I suspect it wouldn't be nearly such a big deal.

Let me remark that there are excellent physiological reasons for age restrictions on alcohol. Alcoholism is a serious problem, surrounded by its own patterns of behavior. But it's interesting to me to watch movies and take a look at how the consumption of alcohol is portrayed in different ways. I believe there has been a shift in our perceptions of alcohol consumption, because for years and years - from Shakespeare's Stefano up to Uncle Waldo in the Aristocats - the drunkard was portrayed as an amusing clown. I don't see that image any more. The scientific recognition of alcoholism as a disease has changed that. There are still plenty of movies where you have party behaviors and binge drinking, etc. but even there it's no longer seen as solely amusing. The sense of risk is there, I think, even if the pathos and the real danger are not.

If you were creating a society, would you include alcoholic drinks or other intoxicants? It seems likely. I wonder if it might be fruitful to consider changing their value. Ask, for example, for whom the alcohol might be most attractive, and to whom it might be most readily available (possibly not the same group). Does the society have alcoholism? How does that express itself at different levels of socioeconomic status? Does it have locations dedicated to the consumption of alcohol? How are they accepted or perceived by others? Does alcohol consumption have a classy side and an ugly side, as it does for us? What form might that take?

There's lots of potential there for interesting stories.

A different value: choice

Would you rather have a choice? Or would you rather not?

I'm going to guess that when the question is asked that way, a lot of people will answer, "yes." In America, we tend to like to have choices. We have tons of them - just walk into the supermarket and try to buy breakfast cereal, or laundry detergent, and you'll discover how many options go into just a single choice around here.

Or how about a restaurant, when you order? Would you like soup or salad with that? Salad? Great. What kind of dressing? You have six options to choose from.

This is the kind of thing that many Americans relish. It's also the kind of thing that shuts a lot of people's brains down. My Australian and British friends tend to wonder at the diversity of options over here, and at the same time say, "Isn't it ridiculous?"

The availability of choice has also changed over time. When I was a kid, I never remember choosing what I had for breakfast, except when I chose my breakfast cereal at the store. I chose the cereal then, and then ate it day after day. But I find myself asking my kids what they'd like on almost a daily basis. This becomes a problem, because it opens me up to complaints about having given them the wrong thing. I never gave the choice problem a single thought when I began this routine, but I probably should have. Now I have to try to train my kids out of being finicky. Sad to say, I was the one who inadvertently trained them into it, at least where breakfast was concerned.

And then there are life choices. We talk about these with our kids regularly. If someone at school is constantly bugging you, what do you do? Often enough, you feel like you have no options - so talking it out and making sure you consider different possibilities can have great value. Tell the teacher is one option. Call the kid's bluff is another option. Bluff or tease back is another, and yet another is to get violent. Some of these options are socially acceptable, and others are not - and don't even get me started about questions like drugs and alcohol. I've already mentioned those issues to my kids, even though they're just 4 and 6. I figure the orientation had better start early.

My friend Janice Hardy has a great little quote in her book, The Shifter: "She who has a choice has trouble."

Now, when it comes to writing and worldbuilding advice, I'll start with the obvious: make sure that your setting has a level of choice consistent with that present in any historical analog you're using for background. Don't have your medieval character walk into the equivalent of a Y2K grocery store, or even a 1950's grocery store! If you're working from the ground up in a science fictional or fantasy economy, think through how goods are supplied and transported, and that will help you arrive at how they might be presented. Different social groups can have different ways of accessing goods depending on their level of affluence, as well.

Second, keep your eye out for places where people are likely to be asked to make choices, either between objects or between life options. You can really give your world a lot of depth if you can think through what kind of reasoning might go into your character's choices in each situation.

Third - and I think this is the sneaky one - keep your eye out for a character's tacit expectation of choice. A character without the means to access the choices available to others will not react easily to being presented with the kind choice a rich or powerful person is accustomed to dealing with. The options that spring up in the character's mind will be limited by their culture and upbringing. They'll probably struggle. They'll probably also wonder why they have to choose at all, and whether there's any potential for punishment involved in the choice. Furthermore, they'll be far more likely simply to accept what they're given without question or objection. So watch out for situations where your poor or undercaste character acts as if he/she feels entitled to the privileges of the rich. Even as this character objects to his/her status, even as he/she plots revolution, there's going to be a subconscious level on which they fear the ability to make a choice.

It's something to think about.

A different value: information

I was thinking about the value of information this week. Such thoughts come to me whenever I hear about DVD piracy, or whenever I watch my friend reading academic journals and trying to find a place in which to join that ongoing discourse - articles of scientific thought like turns in a giant and glacially slow conversation. Information has great value in our society. It is sought for. It is defended.

It can mean even mean life or death, as in The Bourne Ultimatum where the critical top secret information about the spy project Bourne was involved in makes people into targets, and the tension finally drops when Pamela Landy is able to get it into a fax machine and send it to the press, where it becomes public.

In our society, information is power. But are there different ways for information to be valued, distributed, etc? Certainly there must be.

Consider the difference between the gossip and the spy.

The spy succeeds by knowing as much as possible, by keeping information secret, by being invisible, and by never telling anyone (except a select few). Even the spy's identity is masked. Spies feel powerful when they know that no one suspects who they are, or what they know, and when what they know gives them power over people, things, or events.

The gossip succeeds by knowing as much as possible, by spreading that information widely, by being highly visible, and by telling everyone they can reach. Gossips feel powerful when they feel they know everything that is going on, that everyone knows who they are but not what they know, and when they have power over people by being the primary source of news in town, or even when they can gain power over events by distributing that information as they wish.

In my Varin world, I have a special servant caste called the Imbati, and one of their functions is that of gleaning and distributing information. They are known as the keepers of secrets, and they use their ability to distribute information to gain power over others. They are not like spies, though, because they are highly visible. Because they work for the nobility, nobles who want to gain information from one another can engage in a high-stakes game of twenty questions, where one noble asks questions of another one's servant, and vice versa. For every question one servant answers, the other must also answer one - so the trick is to know which questions to ask.

The Imbati are contrasted with the undercaste, called the Akrabitti, who are notorious gossips. But for an oppressed group, information may be the only thing of value they possess. A well-connected gossip has the most power in this group, because that person can not only keep everyone up with their friends' news, but also potentially save lives by letting people know who is in trouble or where the police are conducting raids or which stores are giving out free samples that afternoon.

The Akrabitti are terrified of the Imbati, because the Imbati are the group whose behavior is hardest to predict. The Imbati are appalled by the Akrabitti, because they feel that the undercaste treat information with absolutely no respect at all. But unlike with pirated DVDs, the information they take has no commercial value, only quality of life value for the people who learn it.

I was lately asking myself what a society would be like if there were no such thing as private information. It was challenging. How would you go about getting credit for your accomplishments? How would it be possible to make sure, short of some money-redistribution scheme, to make sure people were paid for their work? But partial transparency is actually more difficult than complete transparency, because if you do have complete transparency, then you can trace exactly what it is that everyone is accomplishing. The tricky part is then creating a system where the power to observe isn't reserved for a few who hold all the resources, and that those who do hold the resources aren't too keen on keeping all of them for themselves.

Nancy Kress had an interesting take on this in her book, Probability Moon, where people relied on a collective sense of reality that was updated as quickly as possible by message-senders called "sunflashers." The cool part of this for me was the way that the society could pass information so quickly - by mirror chains - even though they didn't have heavy electronic resources like ours. I had a tougher time with how this collective reality affected people physiologically... but it was still a fascinating take on the distribution of information.

So if you're looking for a way to make your world distinct from ours, the value of information is a fruitful path to consider.