Sandy ("Claws") Petersen says:
> To cover your points. First. Yes, I think the Malkioni
>are more sophisticated than do you. What's it to ya?
That's "What's it to ya, *sir*" from you!
> Second: I don't think the Malkioni believe they have the
>Revealed Word of God in the way you seem to use the phrase. I
>don't, in fact, believe that the Malkioni are born-again
>Christians in the least, nor do I think that they are medieval
>Catholics.
By "revealed word of God" I mean that the Biggest Cheese has spoken, telling people what to do. This is what separates monotheists from the many peoples around the world who have an otiose high god. People with it tend to be self-righteous, but they don't have to be, and people without it can be selfrighteous too.
>They haven't had a universally acceptable prophet since Hrestol,
>sixteen centuries ago, ...
Prophet, shmophet. What difference does it make? People can be just as convinced they have the One True Way (tm) 2000 years after their central religious events as the day after them. In fact, lapse of time probably leads to more dogmatism, not less.
>...and I believe that the "intelligentsia" of Malkionism realize
>that their attempts to create a social structure based on
>Hrestol's teachings are at best imperfect, though obviously _my_
>interpretation is better than the damn _insert bad guys here_
>theories. I'm sure the Malkioni are just as adept at compromise
>and fitting available theories into self-serving dogma as were
>all of us at How the West Was Won [sic].
That's an interesting view, but the extremists tend to get the upper hand in authoritarian societies. The 'Abbassid Caliphate is one exception, and there was religious tolerance in China for a long time, but that didn't mean that people weren't convinced that they were right and everybody else was condemned to hell. If (and that's a big if) the Malkioni *really* are as weaselly as you say, then it's from growing weary of religious wars--the main cause of the rise of tolerance in Europe.
Do you want to cite any evidence for your statement?
> Third, the Malkioni have _had_ centuries of faith-shaking
>social upheaval and scholarly advancement -- sixteen hundred
>years ago, the Malkioni were already at a reasonably advanced
>social level -- they had social ranks, kings, emperors,
>iron-working, sorcerers, philosophers, etc., _and_ those ranks
>have continued to the present day. European Christians 1600
>years ago were still part of the Roman Empire or else howling
>barbarians.
There are a lot of possible responses to this statement. I guess the answer depends on what you need for your campaign, at least until something Official gets published. There are examples of people returning to simpler faiths after periods of philosophical enlightenment: post-'Abbassid Islam and the Bhakti movement in India are two. The existence of social ranks proves little, since the Roman Empire's social ranks led directly into medieval Europe's, with functions changing while the names remained the same. Upheaval by itself isn't enough. Cultural relativism developed from extensive contact with non-Western cultures. The West in Glorantha hasn't got colonialism like Western Europe's, and centuries of colonialism is the kind of rub-your-face-in-the-existence-of-differing-worldviews experience you need to have C.R.
> I think that the Malkioni are intellectually far more
>sophisticated than 14th-century Europeans.
I'm unconvinced. On the (scanty) evidence before us, this just doesn't add up. MGF, to my mind, leads us toward theological debates where the loser can get burned at the stake. (SPI's wargame "A Mighty Fortress" had a theological debate table where Protestant and Catholic missionaries duked it out, with the loser getting the barbecue treatment. Great game.)
End of Glorantha Digest V1 #22
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