From: jph613@huxley.anu.edu.au (John P Hughes)
Newsgroups: aus.games.roleplay
Subject: Re: Cultural regeneration zones
Date: 13 Dec 92 01:14:32 GMT
Organization: Australian National University
Distribution: aus
NNTP-Posting-Host: 150.203.2.12
Keywords: Culture utopia distopia, body hair, peppermint lamp posts

rrdjro@minyos.xx.rmit.OZ.AU (Jonathan O'Donnell) writes:

>>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.

I did my first thesis on the growth of new religious movements in Korea
and Japan post WW2 and Korean War. Definite similarities - utter social
disruption, families destroyed or split apart, collapse of cultural
power of native tradition, utter hopelessness with little hope of recovery.

Such religions tend to question the inherited traditions, base themselves
on gnosis and personal experience, place a great value on ecstatic or
mystical phenomena, and be incredibly syncretistic.

>>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.

One woman's Mary Daly is another man's rad fem antichrist.

>	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.

Hmmm. Certainly it shouldn't be diificult to reconstruct almost anyone whose
life and personality have been extensively recorded or commented upon. 
However, here's where the earlier questions of legality and freedom crop
up. I'm certain (partial) Hitlers would be kept on-line by SOMEONE, but
I'm not sure they'd be legal. If AIs were monitoring and controlling Virtual,
they might well have evolved different ideas of "the common good". But 
would listening to a Virtual Hitler necessarily be more convincing than
reading Mein Kamph (sp?)? Messiahs and demigods are always most dangerous
when they exist only in people's imaginations, where there perfection
cannot be questioned and their embarrassing personal habits aren't open
to question. Sun Moon went to jail for tax dodging, the entire world laughed
 at Bhagwhan's obsession with Long cars and oral sex on the toilet.

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

I imagine there would be some control (and expense!). Only figures having
some redeeeming social value (Mozart for music lessons, Homer for roleplaying,
Marie Curie for chemistry etc) would be maintained. I imagining keeping
a Virtual Mom on-line after she's died would happen, but I would posit it 
as illegal. If anyone one has ideas on regulating this, I'd love to hear.

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

Sure. Why not. Dream Park is already being built. Just a question of supply and
demand. Alternatively, buy a plug in chip and BECOME Sherlock Holmes.

[thoughtful comments deleted]

>>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.  

Is any organisation truly benevolent, or indeed truly evil? 
Let's just say they've replaced most strands of government.

My stuff about Cultural Regeneration Zones deleted.

>	'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.  :-)

I'm talking about population densities of one person per hundred square km
or so for CRZs. They wouldn't be established if sustainable environments
weren't up and running.

>>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.

Hmmm. Possibly, but why take chances. I'd imagine the value of a human life
going up considerably post-El Wipeout.

>	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?

I see the tech as neutral. Its the social and cultural forms that grow
up around the technology that I've applied the radical surgery to.
Think about the social effects of tv. Then throw yours out the window...

>>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!

I've always thought he wanted Satan to win. Like all great mystics, he had
a healthy respect for chaos.

>	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.

Why 'eking out an existence'. The lifestyle isn't compulsory (in fact I'd see
a steady  migration to the cities) and is in fact fairly leisurely and 
pleasant. At the time of first contact, Australian Aborigines had a higher
life expectancy and "standard of living" than most Europeans. They simply had a
non-materialistic civilisation. And They didn't have 

Shadows or nano-technology...

The folk in the CRZs would have limited access to most of the pleasures of
Virtual (though they'd probably regard it with healthy suspicion).

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

True. The failure of all attempted utopias. They work except that 
there has to be people in them...

John