Jump to content

Generation starships and their internal society structure


Nyrath

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 200
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

I think you'd need a self-regulating, self-reinforcing society, one without high likelihoods of social mobility up or down, and where each individual sees himself as part of a larger organization. Feudalism would work as a good basic model, with educated, fully informed rulers lording it over the mass of peasants who are kept illiterate, and uninformed over what the reality of their world is - if only to allow them to avoid feeling trapped and helpless due to an ancestor's foolish decision to join this trip.

 

You'd need a religious aspect to take the place of the church, perhaps a society of technicians (who also have the task of maintaining shipboard systems). The factors that led to the fall of feudalism in the west would be impossible here - no Plague, no growing international trade (no trade at all - no need for a currency economy, just have the nobility apportion out goods and services), no gradual improvement in literacy among the populace. Rough on the populace until they arrive, of course, but one way to improve their chances of actually doing so.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Which is pretty much how G-ships figured into the back history of our space opera setting! :rofl:

 

Have you been peeking?! :D

I hate to tell you this but you've been scooped. ;)

The old "generation ship gets leap-frogged" gag goes back at least to A.E. van Vogt's "Far Centaurus", published in 1944.

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=278

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

If there are generation ships' date=' and then someone invents FTL, it's almost an inevitable consequence that at least some of the G-ships are going to arrive at their destination 100s of years later to find people waiting for them.[/quote']

 

Which some have used as an argument against spending all the time and money on creating generation ships in the first place.

What you have to do is try to balance the risk. You compare the length of the g-ship's voyage with the home planet's expected rate of technological advance.

 

Naturally the argument against g-ships becomes moot under certain circumstances, e.g., if a immanent nuclear war will destroy civilization or if the home world's sun is scheduled to go nova.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

I think you'd need a self-regulating' date=' self-reinforcing society, one without high likelihoods of social mobility up or down, and where each individual sees himself as part of a larger organization. Feudalism would work as a good basic model, with educated, fully informed rulers lording it over the mass of peasants who are kept illiterate, and uninformed over what the reality of their world is - if only to allow them to avoid feeling trapped and helpless due to an ancestor's foolish decision to join this trip.[/quote']

A species of communism would work as well. It would do an even better job of forcing each individual to view themselves as a cog in a machine.

 

You'd need a religious aspect to take the place of the church' date=' perhaps a society of technicians (who also have the task of maintaining shipboard systems).[/quote']

 

All oligarchies need some way of controlling the ignorant masses, and religion historically has a proven track record.

 

The factors that led to the fall of feudalism in the west would be impossible here - no Plague...

 

I'm not so sure. There was a news item recently about the dangers of diseases mutating on long space voyages into new lethal strains.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/11/091104-space-diseases-mutants-mars.html

 

Rough on the populace until they arrive' date=' of course, but one way to improve their chances of actually doing so.[/quote']

What makes you think that the population will have it any better when they arrive? After several hundred years of oligarchy, the powers that be are not going to suddenly give up all their power.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Rough on the populace until they arrive' date=' of course, but one way to improve their chances of actually doing so.[/quote']

What makes you think that the population will have it any better when they arrive? After several hundred years of oligarchy' date=' the powers that be are not going to suddenly give up all their power.[/quote']

If their is a habitable planet, people suddenly have somewhere else to go. If their isn't a habitable planet, solar power, asteroid mining, and comet harvesting increases resources beyond the dreams of former generations. Either way, the after arrival generation will be better off than the transit generations.

A species of communism would work as well. It would do an even better job of forcing each individual to view themselves as a cog in a machine.

As I've pointed out elsewhere, Communism has be raised to a religion before.

 

One thing that has always bothered me about Generation Ships in fiction. Why the assumption that there will be no communication with the home world? Admittedly the "home office" cannot exert control over the ship, and if unanticipated problems break out on the ship it will take literally years to get a response. But if a problem happens on one ship, the homeworld can warn the others "watch out for this." If a technological breakthrough happens, "this is cool and how to build it with the stuff you have on board." If FTL travel becomes available, "we'll rendezvous and upgrade your engines." (Rep for the first person to recall the first novel where that DID happen!) Transmit the best selling novels, blockbuster movies, must see TV, so that cultural drift between the ship and the homeworld is kept to a minimum.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

I hate to tell you this but you've been scooped. ;)

The old "generation ship gets leap-frogged" gag goes back at least to A.E. van Vogt's "Far Centaurus", published in 1944.

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=278

 

Obviously he used his super-C drive to alter time, come ahead to my gaming notes.....

 

:rofl:

 

 

Hmmm....

I might have to hunt that book up. I read exactly one-half of a von Vogt book many, many years ago. It was called "the Silkie," I believe. Then I read exactly one-forth of one called "Man Plus."

 

Then I swore to myself that I would poke out my own eyes before I tried to read another one. But hey-- maybe I found the only two bombs and wrote him off prematurely.....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Hmmm....

I might have to hunt that book up. I read exactly one-half of a von Vogt book many, many years ago. It was called "the Silkie," I believe. Then I read exactly one-forth of one called "Man Plus."

 

Then I swore to myself that I would poke out my own eyes before I tried to read another one. But hey-- maybe I found the only two bombs and wrote him off prematurely.....

I would not bet on it. I found that there were a lot of dazzling concepts in Far Centaurus. But the writing was about on par with The Silkie.

You can find the story in a few anthologies.

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?41417

 

There are other Vogt novels that are similar, great concepts but so-so writing: Slan, Voyage of the Space Beagle, The Mixed Men (aka Misssion to the Stars).

Space Beagle was one of the influences during the creation of the original Star Trek.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/11/designing_society_for_posterit.html

 

Generation starships: they're not fast.

 

If you can crank yourself up to 1% of light-speed, alpha centauri is more than four and a half centuries away at cruising speed.

 

1% speed of light... By the way, what is the highest speed that a human made object ever attained is space (and wich object would it be)? Anybody knows?

 

I know that the Voyager 1 probe is the fartest human made object in the universe ("110.94 AU (16.596 billion km, or 10.312 billion miles") and that it has the highest specific energy, going presently at 17 km/s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1), wich I believe is about 3 AU/year.

 

Anybody knows of something I don't?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Found it!

 

New Horizons was launched on 19 January 2006 directly into an Earth-and-solar-escape trajectory. It had an Earth-relative velocity of about 16.26 km/s or 58,536 km/h (10.10 mi/s or 36,373 mi/h) after its last engine shut down. Thus, it left Earth at the fastest speed ever recorded.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons

 

Edit: Arrg!!! It supposed to be the fastest but its given speed is lower than Voyager 1's! :confused::confused::confused:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

1% speed of light... By the way, what is the highest speed that a human made object ever attained is space (and wich object would it be)? Anybody knows?

 

I know that the Voyager 1 probe is the fartest human made object in the universe ("110.94 AU (16.596 billion km, or 10.312 billion miles") and that it has the highest specific energy, going presently at 17 km/s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1), wich I believe is about 3 AU/year.

 

Anybody knows of something I don't?

Think that's it.

going presently at 17 km/s

Which would be about 0.000000567% c.

 

IIRC that was mostly original launch velocity plus some "gravity slingshot" assist by Jupiter and Saturn. Something with an on board propulsion system, say, and ion engine, could get up past that speed, but AFAIK nothing has yet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

A species of communism would work as well. It would do an even better job of forcing each individual to view themselves as a cog in a machine.

 

Possible, but an unproven long-term strategy. Feudal systems have lasted 600+ years, and usually failed due to outside pressures.

 

 

 

All oligarchies need some way of controlling the ignorant masses, and religion historically has a proven track record.

 

Yup. It's also useful to maintain a duopoly of power - a single incompetent leader can't take down the entire system.

 

I'm not so sure. There was a news item recently about the dangers of diseases mutating on long space voyages into new lethal strains.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/11/091104-space-diseases-mutants-mars.html

 

So, plague is a possibility. The other things that eventually killed feudalism in the West remain unlikely in the extreme, and the nobility would know such things as Germ Theory and barrier nursing, making plague less of a threat.

 

 

What makes you think that the population will have it any better when they arrive? After several hundred years of oligarchy, the powers that be are not going to suddenly give up all their power.

 

Wouldn't expect them to. But uneducated peasants can't tame a world, or run high-tech spacecraft - and once you start educating your populace, a feudal system is doomed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

I hate to tell you this but you've been scooped. ;)

The old "generation ship gets leap-frogged" gag goes back at least to A.E. van Vogt's "Far Centaurus", published in 1944.

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=278

 

I remember a Tharg Future Shock story as well. Which featured two stellanauts waking up from cryo-sleep as they approached their destination, only to find a thriving inhabited planet. They were treated as heroic pioneers with tickertap parades and such. Which is a nice variant on the Buck Rogers setup. Can't remember the final outcome of the story though. Either that was it or they suffered from culture shock.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Apologies in advance if I end up sounding like a grumpy old man, as I have no idea where the breakpoint between working 28 hours out of 48 (Friday-Sunday) and sleeping 10 hours puts me. The balance here is that you should and ought to be able to do whatever you want for fun in an RPG. It seems to me that a generation ship's society will probably turn out to look like a small mill town --a little parochial, perhaps, but neither technically ignorant nor particularly tyrannical.

Spicing it up, however, seems to involve some ideas about how history works that belong on my "kill it with fire" list. Hopefully no-one reading this list is deeply committed to these ideas, because, I mean, why bother? Oh, and "further reading" linkies!

 

 

i) "Feudalism" was not a single unitary system killed by exogenous shocks. The whole "the Black Death ended feudalism" thing goes back before the Civil War.

I know, I know, just because an argument is almost 200 years old doesn't mean that it's wrong. But there are all kinds of things wrong with it as an account of events, so I highlight the fact that it was started by people using the idea as a means of arguing about whether slavery was a good thing (in the United States), and whether people who didn't attend Anglican Church services should be allowed to vote (in the U.K.) Sort of overarching all other issues is the question of whether it is useful to talk about feudalism at all. http://www.amazon.ca/Fiefs-Vassals-Medieval-Evidence-Reinterpreted/dp/0198204582/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259005530&sr=8-1

The salient point here is that not only is it possible to find many historic episodes of decentralised government in the hands of armed, militia-leading landowning elites, it may well be that this is a good way of describing every government everywhere ever, and apparent examples to the contrary are just failures to do proper analysis of the way that particular regime actually functioned on the ground. Along the way you get to a kind of myopia about foreign regimes that leads to all kinds of amusingly Mr. Magoo-like contretemps such as the recent bit of business in Iraq.

 

ii) Religion is a social control mechanism that perpetuates top-down government and ignorance. Same same, only a debate from one cycle later. Bismarck's attempt to break the power of the German Catholic Church led to a decade-long "Kulturkampf" in which the idea that the Catholic Church used ignorance to control the masses was given much play, along with such charming notions as Virchow's notion that Catholics (and Jews) were to the body politic as bacteria is to the human. (Protestant) Americans and Britons adopted these ideas for slightly different reasons (immigration and elections, and Ireland, respectively), but thanks to the facile writing of one John Draper (History of the Conflict of Religion and Science) it is with us still. And it is no coincidence, nor entirely without relevance, that Draper was a New York Democrat and an early Darwinist. It might seem that race only gets involved in this debate peripherally ("Catholics are teh stupid, because the priests were celibate!"), but, in fact the dark waters close over our heads very quickly when you start thinking along these lines.

At least IMHO.

Again, there are many, many books with refutations, but a used book store near a college will probably yield this earnest old discussion: http://www.amazon.ca/God-Nature-Historical-Encounter-Christianity/dp/0520056922/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259005752&sr=1-1

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Gee, people, do you realize what you really are saying in this thread about democracy? It seems to me that the idea of autocratic government being more efficient than democracy to rule a society had been ruled out a little more than sixty years ago, around 1945... and than again in 1989 in Eastern Europe (and I'm not even mentionning the actual human disasters implied here...).

 

Human beings do not act submissively just because they aren't educated; anger and frustration will inevitably arise even without education, especially because an autocratic society is never, never, an equitable one. Even in USSR (wich proclaimed to be an equalitarian regime), rulers had access to a lot more than the everage person. Worse, lack of education will make chances of such frustrations and angers degenerate into violence much higher...

 

I think a little like Clonus:

 

Honestly it doesn't matter HOW ship-board society mutates' date=' as long we can keep them from doing the things that will compromise ship's safety or leave the final generation totally unprepared for debarkation. The safest approach would probably involve a constitutional popular democracy (although I suspect it will eventually adopt a policy of voting on who should be recycled at regular intervals).[/quote']

 

Of course, an anarchistic society with a participatory democratic regime wouldn't necessarly be an interesting setting for roleplaying... In that case, I'd go for the autocratic setting.

 

I now realize you guys maybe have been talking about a roleplay setting... :confused: In that case, please ignore my critic:hush:. But if it's not, I believe this efficient authocratic view to be a kinda dangerous thought; it is based on a degrading vision of human beings and nothing good can come from it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Vis a vis feudalism the most important reason it would end is because sooner or latter one of the lords would win and become an absolute monarch. Feudalism is most likely to occur as a result of the disintigration of the ship-board social order. It isn't going to be what the ship starts with.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

i) "Feudalism" was not a single unitary system killed by exogenous shocks. The whole "the Black Death ended feudalism" thing goes back before the Civil War.

 

I'm not sure about the intent of the original poster, but I was thinking more along these lines:

 

"It takes an awful lot of people, working together at an awful lot of jobs, to keep a civilization running. Smash the installations and kill the top technicians and scientists, and the masses don't know how to rebuild. They go back to stone hatchets. Kill off enough of the masses and even if the plant and the know-how is left, there's nobody to do the work. I've seen planets that decivilized both ways. Tanith, I think, is one of the latter."

 

replacing "smash" with "die in a plague"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

I certainly don't subscribe to the idea that the Black Death killed off feudalism. But it certainly gave it one good hard kick in the testicles - in EUROPE. Chinese Feudalism experienced no such event.

 

The ultimate killer of Feudalism in Europe was a combination of long- and medium-distance trade, rise of the trading "middle class", military pressure from alternative lifestyles (notably the then-rising second islamic Renaissance) and the slow spread of education among the populace.

 

Likewise, neither do I assume that religion is destined to keep the populace down - but I defy anyone to say that it has not been used, often, for exactly that purpose.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Gee' date=' people, do you realize what you really are saying in this thread about democracy? It seems to me that the idea of autocratic government being more efficient than democracy to rule a society had been ruled out a little more than sixty years ago, around 1945... and than again in 1989 in Eastern Europe (and I'm not even mentionning the actual human disasters implied here...).[/quote']

Actually I believe we were stipulating that very special circumstances, a fragile environment, strictly limited resources, immigration/emigration impossible, just might call for a much more structured/controlled society than any of us would find optimum in other circumstances.

 

It really bothered me that in Heinlein's generation ship, the Vanguard, regression toward the norm (and possibly inadequate radiation shielding) resulted in the F-1 generation being illiterate idiots, but that was necessary for the story he wanted to tell.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Actually I believe we were stipulating that very special circumstances' date=' a fragile environment, strictly limited resources, immigration/emigration impossible, just might call for a much more structured/controlled society than any of us would find optimum in other circumstances.[/quote']

 

Ok, I understand, though I still believe it might probably not be the case, unless power is given to some désincarnate being, like an AI computer or something else. The problem with power is that it is always real, individual human beings that handle it and as such, I don't see how favoritism, arbritariness and other social "destabilizers".

 

Of course, every real society exist with such destabilizing factors; the answer to those can differ, but it always include some coercion elements, as even in "well intended" polity, it is extremely compex to transform society in depth. But if we could start a new society from scratch (as in putting people togheter in a spaceship) we may be able to bypass these limitations.

 

For instance, a group of people letting all aside to go on a spaceship wich will never return will probably not have to deal with heavy (if any) material inequalities. Think about it: it will probably be a harsh and complex journey; people won't bring in their cars, TVs, stock options, etc. If individual property is maintained, I believe the mission parametres will make sure everybody gets wath is minimaly needed to live correctly, at least to avoid implanting complex social problems in a new society on a new world...

 

 

 

I'm not sure about the intent of the original poster, but I was thinking more along these lines:

 

"It takes an awful lot of people, working together at an awful lot of jobs, to keep a civilization running. Smash the installations and kill the top technicians and scientists, and the masses don't know how to rebuild. They go back to stone hatchets. Kill off enough of the masses and even if the plant and the know-how is left, there's nobody to do the work. I've seen planets that decivilized both ways. Tanith, I think, is one of the latter."

 

replacing "smash" with "die in a plague"

 

Interesting. The question that arises to me now is, can any social order survive a catastrophe in wich half of the population died, in closed spacship or anywhere else?

 

 

 

Likewise' date=' neither do I assume that religion is destined to keep the populace down - but I defy anyone to say that it has not been used, often, for exactly that purpose.[/quote']

 

If not always...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Ok, I understand, though I still believe it might probably not be the case, unless power is given to some désincarnate being, like an AI computer or something else. The problem with power is that it is always real, individual human beings that handle it and as such, I don't see how favoritism, arbritariness and other social "destabilizers".

 

Of course, every real society exist with such destabilizing factors; the answer to those can differ, but it always include some coercion elements, as even in "well intended" polity, it is extremely compex to transform society in depth. But if we could start a new society from scratch (as in putting people togheter in a spaceship) we may be able to bypass these limitations.

AI might do it. Or try a proof of concept with a short trip where many of the original settlers would survive to the end. Personally I think the organization of the Hutterite societies needs to be studied as a model, AFAIK they are the only one of the 19th century Utopian experiments that's survived into the 21st century. Problem is they do have emigration as a safety valve.

 

Interesting. The question that arises to me now is' date=' can any social order survive a catastrophe in wich half of the population died, in closed spacship or anywhere else?[/quote']

No examples leap to mind. My family is still feeling the effects of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Actually I believe we were stipulating that very special circumstances' date=' a fragile environment, strictly limited resources, immigration/emigration impossible, just might call for a much more structured/controlled society than any of us would find optimum in other circumstances.[/quote']

In the Erma Felna graphic novels, the various planetary societies bear imprints created by the generation ships. For one thing, being a good Samaritan is not just a good idea, it's the law.

 

In the US, you need laws to protect good Samaritans, since there is a regrettable history of people stopping to help injured persons, and later wind up being sued in court by the same people they helped. So being a good Samaritan is discouraged.

 

In the US, if you were on a road trip and happened to pass by a dam, and noticed there was a large crack in it, and you told nobody, well, you could always say it wasn't your job to be a dam inspector. The town downstream of the resulting flood would be upset, but they can't pin it on you.

 

In a generation starship, if you walk pass the outer hull, and noticed a tiny crack where the air was leaking out, and you told nobody, well, you are endangering the lives of every single person on the entire generation ship. By ship law, you are required to raise the alarm, otherwise you are guilty of reckless endangerment of the community.

 

After a few generations of this, it will be an integral part of the planetary colony's laws once the ship arrives at its destination.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...