RE: Many Topics

From: Sergio Mascarenhas <sermasalmeida_at_mail.telepac.pt>
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 20:05:09 -0000


Peter Metcalfe:
>>And you may very well live with other people without giving out your
>>culture, if you accept to give out power.
>
>Of course we'll let ourselves be enslaved by the trolls and give them
>our babies and our cattle when they feel hungry!
Exactly. The same way africans did some centuries ago... Notice that the notion that trolls eat anything, including sentient creatures is not present IMG. Yes, most everybody accepts it, I don't. IMG trolls may in certain very particular circunstances do it (usually according to very strict and exceptional rituals), but this is not the norm. I don't believe in trolls practizing extensive canibalism any more than I believe RW humans do or did it.

> I don't know about you but I do feel a lot safer living under a human
leader
> where he at least understands basic human needs.
The question is wether the elf (or dwarf; or troll; or human) slavers will (quindly) ask you (or your leader) if you mind being enslaved... There is something that puzzles me about statements like the one I just quoted: Why do you always think that the oppressed are humans and the oppressors ER? In third era Glorantha the opposite would be more likely (I'm not saying this is what happens...). Humans would want to have dwarf slaves for their skills; elf slaves for their fertily magic and plant lore; trolls for their force.

Think of it: a society where you don't have food shortages thanks to elf gardens; your dwarfs conceive to you beautifull and complex homes with all the commodities you may think about; and all the hard work is done by trolls (which will live on any shit you throw at them)... And when any of them tries to rebel, you just throw at them the other two!

>>Sometimes it's even better if you
>>keep your culture: like in RW, when the dominant and the dominated ar
>>of the same race, the dominant can prefer not to enforce their culture on
>> you to keep the line that separates both peoples well delineated.
>
> Name one culture where this was so.

You know what the word gheto means (in Portugal we had "Mourarias" and "judiarias" until the Renaissance - moorish and jew ghetos respectively). Look at gypsies. Look at askenasi jewish communities in easter Europe until the second word war.
Certainly, after some centuries the frontiers start to get more and more fuzzy. But our current RW pattern of extensive cross-cultural fertilization was not the norm not even in our RW. Most of the time, when you put people from two different cultures in the same space the extent of mixing can vary, but it takes centuries, sometimes millenia until they become one. Sometimes it never happens.

> I think you'll find that in nearly
> all cases, the culture of the dominated has changed dramatically with
> respect to things that offend the culture of the dominator.
It can go both ways: when the visigoths gained control of the Iberian peninsula they become heavily "romanized". The recent pike discussion in GD remembered us that SDC had nomad leaders. I suppose that when the nomads settled, they acquired most of the cultural traits of the sun domers. In most of south America, religious practices combine a mantle of catholicism with undercovered afro-based practices.

Once more, the things are not black or white. When two peoples live togheter you will find a range of behavior going from the purest to the more mixed. Since in Glorantha we are not dealing only with different cultures but with different species, I think it would be easier to have different people living togheter and keeping their cultures than in the RW.

Sergio


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