24 September 2011

Hegemony

Reposted on new blog at http://dynamitochondria.blogspot.com/2011/09/hegemony.html.

Time to grab another three bits of random and see what can be made of them.

The Writer's Book of Matches. A woman with a terrible disease is offered an experimental drug therapy.

I at first thought this one might be tough to work into whatever I picked from the other sources, but the point of the exercise is not to make it particularly easy either.

From Archetype to Zeitgeist. Hegemony

Hegemony is the domination of one culture, or group, over another by nonviolent means. The book has a good 2-page entry that includes some evolution of the idea from Antonio Gramsci and mid-20th century feminism to expand the scope from one political body over another to cultural, class, gender, or ethnic dominance.

A Dictionary of Symbols. The Minstrel

This had me scratching my head a bit. The entry refers to the Minstrel Tarot card, but I didn't recall that card. Then I couldn't find the Tarot reference I thought I had in my library. To the Internet! Turns out, the Minstrel card is considered by some sources to be the original card that became the Magician.

In many interpretations, the Minstrel/Magician represents mastery, whether of a skill or the situation at hand. It can also represent teaching or learning.

It didn't take too much thought before these three fell neatly into place. In an intellectual hegemony, the dominance of a highly educated elite would be sustained in the long term by a system of education that confers the unstated implication that more education equals better. A fine message in itself, if somewhat simple in the blatant abstract, but can it be called hegemony, is it actually dominance, if the system is meant to bringing greater education to all?

It could be argued that maximizing every educational opportunity to every member of a culture is an economic non-starter. In some perfect system, it might be possible to make available all the education every individual cares to consume, but in the world's current model, it costs time and money to attend school. Investing time and money into a given vocation faces diminishing returns, sooner for some professional areas, later for others.

The education system in an intellectual hegemony would almost certainly be multi-tiered. There would be extremely basic schooling available for a labor class, teaching the absolutely necessary skills to get by within the larger culture. At the other end of the spectrum, a highly educated elite would receive every opportunity to expand their knowledge and skills.

But common to every tier of this education system would be the implication that the more education received, the more worthy the individual to make decisions and benefit from the best the culture has to offer. The elite class would be taught this to bolster their commitment to continue their studies and their confidence in their "rightful" place at the top of the hierarchy. The labor class would be taught this to convince them that others are more worthy to make their decisions for them and reap the benefits of those decisions.

This strategy is a multi-generational strategy, gaining strength with passing decades. How does such a hegemony start, especially in cultures that don't necessarily value a classic education, holding more dear the lessons taught by life experience?

One way it might do is via gifts of the fruits of intellectualism. Under the guise of a helping hand, another culture is wooed with surplus food, luxury goods, and medicines. While none can call foul that the hungry are fed and sick are healed, there is always the spectre of ulterior motive.

It's not always conscious. World history is full of examples of the hauteur of the more prosperous sowing the seeds of cultural destruction among a "less advanced" people. Sometimes the result is a thriving partnership, but it should be clear to the astute observer that the result is more often subjugation or conflict.

I'd originally intended to take this into a dark fictional setting for stories or a game, but instead it would appear that I've crafted more of a commentary on the current state of world affairs. Honestly, that wasn't my intent.

When the real world begins to resemble dystopian fiction, it might be time to reconsider the direction we're traveling, time to challenge our shared assumptions, time to make sure that our helping hand isn't really a fist.

10 September 2011

Last Resort Challenge #1

Reposted on new blog at http://dynamitochondria.blogspot.com/2011/09/last-resort-challenge-1.html.

It's time for the first try at the Last Resort Challenge. So let's pull down three books and get cracking.

First component: from ISMs: A Compendium of Concepts, Doctrines, Traits, and Beliefs: Hyperpituitarism, the glandular condition that triggers growth disorders such as giantism and acromegaly. I need to look up that last one. [...] OK, it's like giantism but mainly in the extremities and usually adult onset.

Second component: from the Cassell Dictionary of Superstitions: Flying Ointment, made by a witch and smeared on the body to gain the power of flight.

Third and last component: from the Dictionary of Theories: Group Theory. This one is in the book twice, and I happened to stab my finger on the Politics version rather than the Physics version. In Politics, Group Theory states that individuals and whole societies are not significant political actors. Rather, groups of individuals interact and negotiate their priorities and platforms, and from this process emerges policy.

OK, this could be tough, but I already have the kernel of an idea.

The word witch is a loaded term with a ton of cultural baggage. In stories, witches tend to be separated from society, operating solo or in small groups, figures of fear and superstition. It's reasonable to assume that their impact on societal policy is minimal. But it's not as simple as that. As a feared or possibly hated group, they've been driven out of the main social groups, but not wiped out entirely. Why? Because witches are frequently portrayed as the source of counsel and aid not commonly available, such as the classic love potion or the secret answer to the troll's riddle.

Since I drew Flying Ointment above, you can probably guess that I'll focus on the specialty products of the witch's cauldron over their information services. Witches of folklore and other story turn out a varied array of substances to produce extraordinary effects. Unguents, potions, oils, philters, powders, and ointments from the hand of the witch cause the subject to fall in love, stride seven leagues in a step, breath underwater, or fly through the air.

These unusual abilities stay unusual in most stories, and there's typically a reason for it. Either the witch's price is dear, or powerful societal censure would result if anyone found out. Frequently, both of these cases are in effect.

So the witch's customers have access to the resources to pay the witch's price, meaning that they are likely the more politically power members of society. They are also secretive, though they always assume no one will ever find out. That makes them ripe for a blackmail scheme, but what if the witches had something else in mind?

The typical witch's product is ingested somehow, whether by drinking, breathing, rubbing on the skin, mixing with food, or what have you. So suppose the witch's craft were advanced enough to sneak in some side effects, such as a subtle glandular codition, something that takes a period of years and multiple applications to produce obvious symptoms, such as elongated extremities or some other easily noticed feature. Then it becomes obvious who the most frequent consumers of witchcraft services are.

If the condition can be suppressed with yet another product, the witch has the wealthy patron over a barrel. A high price can be demanded, perhaps changes in policy, or the suppression agent will be withheld. I mentioned above that political group theory holds that policy is the result of negotiation between groups of individuals, and this is a form of negotiation. But what if the witches have something else in mind?

Over time, consumers of a witch's services would find the services indispensible, an advantage over their rivals, a way to overcome otherwise insurmountable obstacles. The witch's services are indispensible, but the witch still lives in isolation. Suppose rather than blackmail, the witches have organized and have decided to pursue societal revolution. Rather than blackmailing their customers into acting as their political proxies, they force their customers to live with their new physical features as a brand, a scarlet letter, and obvious mark of the witch's services for all to see.

It's a risky scheme, and in the short term the witches are likely to weather some level of cultural backlash, but there is the potential payoff of making it clear to the larger culture that their services are highly valued by the societal elite, individuals that many wish to emulate. In time, the negative connotations of witchcraft may fade, and the witches might be accepted into mainstream society, just another group contributing the interaction and negotiation to create and establish policy.


So there's my first post on the Last Resort Challenge. I'd hoped to come up with a better title, but the post turned out to be at least somewhat about the process of combining the components, so the brute force title stays.

04 September 2011

Last Resort Weekly Challenge

Reposted on new blog at http://dynamitochondria.blogspot.com/2011/09/last-resort-weekly-challenge.html.

At nearly a year since my last post, I am forced to admit to myself that I am not good at keeping up with this. Some people find blogging to be habit forming, but I am apparently not one of them. I did well when I challenged myself to post daily, but I didn't have much creative energy left for anything else, so this time I'll try a compromise. I'll give myself until midnight Saturday each week to post something, anything really. If I post earlier in the week, I'm off the hook.

That's the Weekly part. Now the Last Resort part. If I come up with a topic, all well and good, but if I'm stuck, or if the topic I'm working on isn't coming together on time, then I engage in an exercise I've been meaning to start anyway.

I have a shelf of books that I think of as my Brainstorming library. They're a fairly random collection of short-entry dictionary/encyclopedia-style books such as Archetype to Zeitgeist and The Encyclopedia of Dreams. Occasionally, I grab one at random to browse for something interesting to think about.

The exercise I envision is to grab three of these books, either at random or by whim, open each at random, blindly stab a finger onto each open book, and combine the three concepts thus chosen into a post somehow. It doesn't matter what it's about, just something to post. It will probably be something consistent with my existing interests and posts, but no guarantees. The point of this blog is to get and keep me writing, not any kind of consistent topicality.

So stop by for your weekly does of vitamin WTF. Or don't. As I've said before, this blog is not for you, it's for me. If anyone else gets any value out of it besides me, that's just a bonus.

Btw, this post doesn't count for this week, so look for the first challenge post by next Saturday.