> In essence, I believe that the God Learners were like those
> irritating modern-day scholars who proclaim that all cultures have a
> subjective world-view, including our own (a manifest truth), but then
> go on to proclaim that therefore all cultures are equally viable and
> worthy of respect, and make their people equally happy (a manifest
> untruth).
Aha. After a little snipe a while ago at cultural relativism Sandy now lets rip. I can see your point here but how do we apply it to Glorantha?
In the real world if we want to decide who is happiest and whose
culture is best we have nice quantitative measures of misery to look at and
as the CIA world handbook is available on the net we can look some facts up.
America has a higher child mortality rate than the UK, Americans pay less
taxes, are more likely to be involved in crimes of violence but also have a
lot more cars and cinemas than the UK. But I am happy to admit that the
average American is happier than the average Brit because he comes from a
culture that believes in itself.
( Actually - I don't want to turn this into a squabble about the real
world.)
So, how can we quantitatively compare cultures in Glorantha if we want to think about lifespan, hunger and death?
It seems to me that we assume that Gloranthans are a happy little lot with a negligible infant mortality rate and little hunger and disease. Is this so? Do we have any evidence to allow cultural comparison along these lines in Glorantha? Is it just a matter of who has access to the best magic or what? I suppose the ability of a society to organise itself to provide care (magical or otherwise) to the weak and needy is also important so issues of family and clan versus caste and country are also relevant.
Comments?
Paul Snow
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