Gimme That Old Time Religion

[archer]

On 2/27/2019 at 5:32 AM, Jmonty said:

Just a few random thoughts wich may apply or not at all:

If the kingdom is in an economic stage of Feudalism is hard to imagine a Social-democrat king "Olof Palme style". It has more sense in a context of absolutism, say Louis XIV with Illustration ideals. But this is fantasy, of course.

The recruitment of the brightest childs to the state administration was practiced by Romans and Chinese, but the childs had to become eunuchs. So they will not use their power to enrich themselves and his family. The Romans had public basic education, by the way, until Christian Church took it over and do the privatization thing with it.

Paganism had a strong communitary sense, it doesn't had this idea of "personal individual salvation" as the primary goal. Religious ideas come from material and social needs, if you follow the cultural materialism school of Anthropology.

 

I'm kind of imaging what it would be like in a world with no real concept of a "middle class lifestyle for everyone" but with a government and a church each groping somewhat blindly to move their citizenry in a direction which might end up better for everyone.

 

Imagine if you have no experience with running water, sanitation, heat and cooling indoors, a 9-5 job, good roads, good schools, screens on your windows to keep out flying insects, a competent police force, and all the other comforts many people take for granted in modern life. You only know that things could be much better but you not only don't know how to get from point A to point Z but you only have a fuzzy idea of what point Z might actually be.

 

The government is attempting to move things through invention, the dissemination of information, and gently forcing people to do things which are good for their own long term interests. The church is trying to do this, in part, through getting money to the right place at the right time so when there's an opportunity for an individual or a community to move forward that the lack of money isn't an obstacle.

 

I liked the concept of "commonwealth" which was mentioned as a tenant of the church because I think this is where things are heading.

 

Someone asked whether the church should be charging interest at all or not. The answer to that is a "yes" because the church is going out on a limb to finance a heck of a lot of things which might not pay off. If the church doesn't have money coming back in, it can't continue to be as generous in loaning out money for new projects. Yes, some of the payback is coming in goods and services rather than money, as was mentioned earlier (and in fact some of the loans would be in the form of the person getting goods and services rather than cash). But the money interest is vital to keep the project going over the long term.

 

Also the church is hedging secretly against future disasters such as a famine or war. If push comes to shove, the church will be trying to ship in food from overseas during famine or shipping in mercenaries and shipping out refugees in time of war. Again, I haven't figured out if the church is corrupt at the top or not. It could certainly be that the money stash could be used for personal gain and secret luxury for the people at the top while the impression of the rest of the hierarchy is that the money is being saved for extreme emergencies.

 

I'm also considering how surrounding kingdoms might be viewing the somewhat revolutionary activities occurring in this kingdom. If their activities actually increase the quality of living in the kingdom, peasants from the surrounding kingdoms might be wanting to move and/or the surrounding kings might be considering how much of a threat those changes are to their ability to stay in power. I'd imagine a lot of organized churches elsewhere would see a church which is "buying influence" among the peasantry to be a potential threat to their position.

[Jmonty]

Well, I think in Medieval times the idea of "we could be better" equals "we could be rich, or Lords" for they knew about this people living better but had none or very little idea of improvements in technology. But money were not used as today, most peasant people never had a coin, they barter and pay taxes in goods. We are used to have coins in Fantasy games because is easier and we are used to money in real life. Not an expert in Medieval Economy myself but for sure there are interesting books about this topic (how much holidays peasants had, use of commond lands, etc).

 

Also for the corruption, apart from the church may be the nobility has chances to plot for their gain, especially against the king.

 

Migration for economic reasons is almost granted. More in the case of artisans or qualified workers. It is a thing of demand and offer, people travel if people of their village tell stories about their better life abroad, if there is no job for unqualified peasants because this jobs are covered few peasants will migrate (unless crossing the border could save them from famine or war) but your kingdom could be viewed as a "brain drainer". Guilds could be losing their apprentices.

[Christopher]

On the mater of "not charging interest", this is actually a requirement in "Islamic Banking". For religious reason Interest are not allowed. So they had to become inventive to make a profit:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking_and_finance

[DShomshak]

As it happens, I just started reading a book that sort of deals with some of the topics mentioned: Why Nations Fail, by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. It's clearly twice as long as it should be due to authors' ponderous writing style, but their thesis is briefly stated: Economists have asked many times why some societies (notably western Europe and its offshoots) get rich. Maybe the real question is why most societies through history, and still today, stay poor. Their answer is that most societies have political and economic institutions designed to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few. Most people have no incentive to try bettering their lives because even if they suceeded in generating greater wealth, it would just be stolen. It's nearly impossible to break such a system, because the elites that benefit from it (feudal lords, bishops and abbots, emperor and high bureaucrats, dictator and cronies, Communist Party, etc. ad nauseum) will fight tooth and nail to protect it (and of course nobody else has much wealth and power to fight back). And if any revolution or invasion succeeds, the new masters inherit a system where every incentive is to just become the new boss, same as the old boss.

 

Only a few societies have ever broken out of this vicious circle, switching from an extractive mode -- harvest what wealth is available, for the benefit of a few -- to an inclusive mode, in which wealth and political power are both spread so people have an incentive to make the entire society wealthier because they will benefit from it themselves. This can create a "virtuous circle" in which larger numbers of people have the resources to demand a political voice, and a larger number of people have the political influence to demand a share of the goodies. There can be mixed cases -- political autocracy/oligarchy but a semi-free economy (as in China), or extreme concentration of wealth with a nominally pluralist government -- but such situations are obviously unstable.

 

It sounds like in this country, Church and State are both trying to induce a phase change from extractive to inclusive, even if they don't have the language to enunciate their intent or full understanding of what this means for them. On the state side, it may be that the monarchy has encountered serious challenge (perhaps powerful barons threaten usurpation?) and is looking for alternate bases of support -- create new centers of power in hopes they can be coopted, instead of the usual despotic practice of trying to crush any rival center of power, no matter the harm to society as a whole.

 

This sounds like there's been a genius -- a political/economic analog to Isaac Newton, who has broken through to a new way of thinking. Or maybe the comparison should be the Buddha, since the religion of Moderation feels kind of Buddhist to me. Or at least a second-generation religion like Buddhism, Confucianism or Christianity, that has developed a philosophy instead of just being about bribing gods with sacrifice and prayer, or treating worship as a ritual of social cohesion.

 

Speaking of which: Is this a world where actual and active gods determine religious practice, or a world in which mortals are chiefly responsible for the forms of religion? (The latter is not inconsistent with their being actual gods -- Lois McMaster Bujold's "World of the Five Gods" is an example of such a setting.) But that's probably a long enough chain of tangents.

 

Dean Shomshak

[archer]

3 hours ago, DShomshak said:

As it happens, I just started reading a book that sort of deals with some of the topics mentioned: Why Nations Fail, by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. It's clearly twice as long as it should be due to authors' ponderous writing style, but their thesis is briefly stated: Economists have asked many times why some societies (notably western Europe and its offshoots) get rich. Maybe the real question is why most societies through history, and still today, stay poor. Their answer is that most societies have political and economic institutions designed to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few. Most people have no incentive to try bettering their lives because even if they suceeded in generating greater wealth, it would just be stolen. It's nearly impossible to break such a system, because the elites that benefit from it (feudal lords, bishops and abbots, emperor and high bureaucrats, dictator and cronies, Communist Party, etc. ad nauseum) will fight tooth and nail to protect it (and of course nobody else has much wealth and power to fight back). And if any revolution or invasion succeeds, the new masters inherit a system where every incentive is to just become the new boss, same as the old boss.

 

Only a few societies have ever broken out of this vicious circle, switching from an extractive mode -- harvest what wealth is available, for the benefit of a few -- to an inclusive mode, in which wealth and political power are both spread so people have an incentive to make the entire society wealthier because they will benefit from it themselves. This can create a "virtuous circle" in which larger numbers of people have the resources to demand a political voice, and a larger number of people have the political influence to demand a share of the goodies. There can be mixed cases -- political autocracy/oligarchy but a semi-free economy (as in China), or extreme concentration of wealth with a nominally pluralist government -- but such situations are obviously unstable.

 

It sounds like in this country, Church and State are both trying to induce a phase change from extractive to inclusive, even if they don't have the language to enunciate their intent or full understanding of what this means for them. On the state side, it may be that the monarchy has encountered serious challenge (perhaps powerful barons threaten usurpation?) and is looking for alternate bases of support -- create new centers of power in hopes they can be coopted, instead of the usual despotic practice of trying to crush any rival center of power, no matter the harm to society as a whole.

 

This sounds like there's been a genius -- a political/economic analog to Isaac Newton, who has broken through to a new way of thinking. Or maybe the comparison should be the Buddha, since the religion of Moderation feels kind of Buddhist to me. Or at least a second-generation religion like Buddhism, Confucianism or Christianity, that has developed a philosophy instead of just being about bribing gods with sacrifice and prayer, or treating worship as a ritual of social cohesion.

 

Speaking of which: Is this a world where actual and active gods determine religious practice, or a world in which mortals are chiefly responsible for the forms of religion? (The latter is not inconsistent with their being actual gods -- Lois McMaster Bujold's "World of the Five Gods" is an example of such a setting.) But that's probably a long enough chain of tangents.

 

Dean Shomshak

 

My idea is that the original "phase change" came from a church leader who convinced/converted the king to do something new and different a few generations back. The church had the idea of the virtues of moderation but just really no philosophy of how to apply that virtue to change anything in society at large rather than just in the heart of individuals (the seeds of the idea of commonwealth were there but not emphasized as much as it is now).

 

Since that time, the royal family has been brought up in the new governing philosophy and (not incidentally) more faithfully in the church so that it's a change which takes hold and doesn't fade away whenever the current ruler dies.

 

The other religions in the world are deity-based with gods who take varying degrees of interest in their followers.

 

I haven't made up my mind whether this religion is based around a deity, around that former church leader as his religion's version of a Supreme Buddha, or whether the religion is just a philosophy without holy texts or deities. I'm a little hesitant to go the Supreme Buddha route because I don't want the religion to come across as a personality cult and I'm not sure if I can explain it without either having it come across that way or actually having to use the words "Supreme Buddha".   I'm not wanting players to pigeonhole the concept as either weird ancestor worship or as Buddhism then dismiss it from their awareness. Maybe that's inevitable from the players but I'd like the setting to make what's going on in the background weird enough that players notice and attribute it to the religion. And ideally investigate on their own to see what the heck is happening (new construction everywhere, people being nice to each other, villages being clean and being cleaned, etc) 

 

I'm more comfortable going with the deity-based religion since the players will be more familiar with that construct but not really sure about a deity who would be on point to be up for sudden massive societal changes. (Temple of the Healing Hand just east of Pandathaway, anyone?)

[Mick Price]

On 2/17/2019 at 4:22 AM, Christopher said:

Definitely. If you want to take a look at it, Extra History has a few Episodes on early Christianity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1ZZeCDGHJE

Fiat money didn't help the distribution of wealth.  It mostly redistributed it to governments who spent it on wars.  The disruption in the economy was probably worse than taxes but better than just defaulting.  Poor/middle class people always had credit options but because the loans were small  and they had little collateral  they had no good options.  Pawn shops or equivalent basically.  As society got richer in general and better at finance (literacy and numeracy became more common) the middle class and later the poor became worth lending to.

 

Fractional reserve banking also redistributed money mostly to bankers not the less fortunate.

 

A lot of people think that the premodern world was hampered by too little money  but that can't happen.  A lack of money means you have to charge less but so does everyone else.  This means that the nominal/money  GDP is less but the real/actual stuff GDP is the same.  Note that fiat and paper money are not the same, you can print pieces of paper exchangable for gold coins or other money.  If that is accepted it's functionally money.  You have to be trusted to do this, you don't have to be the government.  In some countries it helped if you weren't.