Julianism

From: Alex Ferguson <alex_at_dcs.gla.ac.uk>
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 95 19:36:32 GMT


Mike Cule:
> Alex Fergusson

Add a new spelling to the rush of alternatives I've been getting; "Fergusen" has recently been mooted. Obviously my long lost Danish cousin.

> I'm puzzled though that he thinks them so similar to the Hrestoli.
> Perhaps from the point of view of a die-hard Rokari conservative there
> is little difference between the two

Now, I'm not a die-hard Rokari conservative (though I play one on TV^H^H a certain freeform), but they seem pretty similar in respect of caste. They're both avowedly "meritocratic", though the mechanism and doubtless the theology is different. Presumably both hark back to Hrestol as a justification for class mobility.

Seemingly also from Nick's Hrestoli's, since he has a supposedly orthodox Cardinal favouring such a scheme. And indeed, it appeared from your own, Mike, since you originally described its "improvements" over Hrestolism. (Which is why it being a Junoran statelet influnenced by Loskalm seemed such an obvious suggestion.)

> but I wrote the Julianists so as
> to frighten the Hrestoli by showing them a culture that was more
> radical and open than theirs and which had the potential to be as
> expansionist as the Lunars.

I'm not too sure that it is more radical; if anything, it seems like (alleged) pragmatism. As I've previously argued, New Idealism is almost certainly "fudged" in assorted ways, for similar reasons, and possibly in net similar ways. So if for example certain regions of Loskalm select promising youths for (say) the Wizard class, and put them on "fast track" Farmer, and then Knight occupations, one gets something which isn't very different in practice, though with a significantly different theological gloss. Mind you, I think that sadly, this "fast-tracking" normally has more to do with nepotism...

Alex.


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