From: rrdjro@minyos.xx.rmit.OZ.AU (Jonathan O'Donnell)
Newsgroups: aus.games.roleplay
Subject: Re: Cultural regeneration zones
Date: 10 Dec 1992 23:01:47 GMT
Organization: RMIT Computer Centre
Distribution: aus
NNTP-Posting-Host: minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au
Keywords: Culture utopia distopia, body hair, peppermint lamp posts

jph613@huxley.anu.edu.au (John P Hughes) writes:

>Cultural Regeneration Zones

>My view of what the CRZs are like has been shaped by my vision of the Rites
>future, to whit:

>Massive drop in population mid C21, just in time to save Gaia and the few 
>non-extinct animal species. (Cause: some say biowar between Sino-Korea
>and Greater Japan, some say something loose at the lab).

>World pop has been approx, stable around oh, 100 million for several centuries.

	Conveniently, enough time to recover from the social after-effects,
	vis a vis the Black Plague.  I think that you will find that there
	are some similarities in the 'rebirth of religion' idea.


>The religious thing is a Virtual phenomena: computer generated personalities
>of great religious leaders: Christ, Mary Daly, Malcolm X etc. You can become
>a personal disciple, and the springboard of that discipleship is your
>own life. Of course, the differences between these personalities and what their
>Institutions said about them caused a few religious revolutions...

	While we are on religious leaders, don't forget such luminaries as 
	Jim Jones, Helter Skelter and the Media Messiahs.

	Why just the religious leaders?  We have enough of the writings
	of Hitler, Stalin, Jeff Kennett and other politicos to revive
	them as well. 

	In fact, anyone that has had their ideas recorded.  I assume
	that you are rebuilding these people (better, faster...) from their
	writings or what has been written about them, refering to originals 
	where possible.

	Does this mean that there are more 'dead' people in virtual than 'live'
	people?  Lord save us from virtual Riverworld.

	Does this mean that internally consistant fictional characters, given 
	enough depth, can be 'reconstructed'?

>I told you it was post-cyberpunk (a genre largely about TODAY rather than
>TOMMORROW.

	My understanding was that all utopian genre is holding
	a mirror up to the society that it is written in.  Yours seems
	to be doing that, John.

	Once it is written, it is then filtered through the 'time' that it is
	read in.  A classic example is _1984_, which has a largely different
	impact if read today, rather than when it was written.

>Anyway, small high tech corporate cities have survived at perhaps two dozen
>points around the globe. They are research and maintenance centres.

	So the corps are benevolent?  That's a radical idea.  

>Over the rest of the inhabitable globe, Cultural nation states have established
>CRZs, and dedicate themselves to (safely and comfortably) live as humankind
>has for 99% of its history. To whit:

>settlements numbering no more than 100 people, with limited contact to wider
>groups.

>Emphasis on permaculture, hunting & gathering, and restoration/regeneration of
>the (still severely depleted) environment.

	'Hunting & gathering'?  They have just spent three hundred years
	reconstructing an ecology from the 'few non-extinct animal species'.
	Now they want to track it down and kill it?  cf: Do Androids of
	Electric Sheep.

	BTW, if most animal species were wiped out, I assume the plants
	went west as well.  Why didn't they just finish the job and
	terraform the planet?  Oh, I forgot Northern Europe - they did.  :-)

>Order maintained by extended family groups, with little or no formal
>hierarchies.

>Emphasis on personal growth and development through community sharing of
>myth and ritual, initiation and shamanic/alternative states of consciousness.

>Little use of material possessions, but plenty of non-intrusive high-tech
>support.

>I don't see a fear of technology here. In fact I'd imagine most settlements
>would have a monitoring AI with high tech health care on call. In fact, most
>people would have (non communicative) Shadow implants.

	Why?  If they have pesonal development (both physical and spiritual)
	and shamans, they can probably do anything medical that they need
	to.

	And if they are living a sustainable, subsistance lifestyle (and
	have been doing so for three hundred years), I can't imagine      
	anything hightech that they couldn't do low tech.

	It seems to be a hangover from the 'high tech can save us' idea.
	Why?

>Yes folks, before Jonathan says it :-), the text for today is Genesis III.
>And as any roleplayer knows, you can always find a serpent in the garden.

	Actually, Milton presented an internally consistant, highly plausable
	Satan in 'Paradise Lost'.  So, I guess you really can!

>Any takers for high tech hippiedom?  Philosopher Queens & Kings, a gentle life
>dedicated to religious and spiritual cultivation through close contact with a
>limited number of people. Battletekers need not apply...

	Any takers for having 90% of your population spend 90% of their time
	eking out an existance...(Oh, I forgot, that's what we have now)  :-)
	so that 10% of the population can be old, young, political
	or religious.  No thanks.

	After all, we may be able to bequeth a lot of tech sci, but
	we can't give them much help with political sci.

		Jonathan@RMIT.edu.au