War! (Of Equals)

[avatar (Alistair Young)]

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@Specialist290 <specialist290@hughes.net> on 2016-03-13 12:04:12 wrote

To possibly make for an interesting exercise: What if the Empire was facing off against its own shadow archetype: A society with an equivalent tech base, technepraxic mindset, and commitment to making war ruthlessly unfair for the other guy, but without the same moral commitments to the fundamental freedoms?

(Or, to use an old cliche analogy, how would the eldrae equivalent of Star Trek’s “Mirror, Mirror” go?)

@Mark Atwood <me@mark.atwood.name> on 2016-03-14 02:29:03 wrote

“Mirror, Mirror”, while a fun story, is not a useful narrative metaphor. I would argue that it is Not Possible for there to be an dark mirror civilization, because the tech base, wealth, technepraxic mindset, and ability to bring intelligence and cunning on point are because of the “commitments to the fundamental freedoms”.

Remember, even in the context of the Star Trek narrative, the dark mirror Terran Empire was about to fall apart when it was rescued and invigorated by a very lucky outside context excision in the form of a UFP starship a hundred years advance falling out of a temporal rupture. And by the time they caught up to that unearned tech base, they were one gifted man away from being destroyed from within, again.

To invoke yet another fictional dark mirror narrative, the Dominion of the Draka, the successful and wealthily reverse of every possible ideal that the United States of America has ever imperfectly tried to hold dear, even in-story, they know they are a singular lucky outlier, in that every single possible timeline next to their own, and extending out in probability space for quite some distance, the world is a blasted ruin from the war to the death between the DotD and the AfD.

No, I think that if our Author here ever wants to come up with a civilization that can give the Empire an even fight but with a different philosophy, they are going to have to be really utterly alien, taking the black/white morality axis, rotating to the orange/blue of this setting, and then rotating it yet again around a couple of other dimensions.

@Specialist290 <specialist290@hughes.net> on 2016-03-15 00:04:01 wrote

Fair enough. It’s been a while since I’ve watched that episode, so a few of the specifics may have escaped me.

@Alistair Young <athanasius.skytower@arkane-systems.net> on 2016-03-16 13:03:50 wrote

Well, the first and most obvious thing that came to mind is that if we’re talking an absolute equivalent, that’s pretty much by definition a double loss: mutual annihilation, moderated by blind luck.

But on due and sober reflection, I conclude that Mark Atwood’s comment is on the money, and I’m pretty sure that Imperial clionomists and sociodynamicists agree. Enlightened libertism is the cause, not consequence, of their tech base and economy; and technepraxic, I note, is a philosophy of technology for sophont aspiration, which doesn’t play well with societies which place equality/conformity/obedience above aspiration. It even applies in matters of morale: free sophs work, play, and fight a lot harder than whipped orcs with political officers, and you certainly can’t have, say, the healthy universal mutual-defense pact in anything like the seething mass of resentment and advantage-seeking the latter type of society tends to be. It’d shred itself apart.

tl;dr Evil is inefficient to the point of being disutile.

+++MELON MELON MELON+++
+++OUT OF PLAUSIBILITY ERROR+++
+++REDO FROM START+++

(As a side note, I’d add that the Stratarchy of Warrior Philosophy simply loves that kind of society, because in a society that has both resentment and advantage-seeking and a built-in instrumentality suitable for use for either implied purpose, there are consequentially any number of eminently suitable stress points where a light poke can destabilize the whole mess with consequences ranging from “momentary disarray” to “most die, oh the embarrassment”.)

@Eric Manwill <ericmanwill@gmail.com> on 2016-03-14 09:16:25 wrote

Thanks for the in-depth reply! In hindsight it really shouldn’t surprise me that the Empire would have departments assigned to think through potential outside context problems and eldrich horrors.

I wonder if they call on some of their own sci fi and fantasy authors for scenarios.