Joshua Done's Blog: Joshua Done - Culture and Entertainment - Posts Tagged "excerpt"

This is a part of a lecture set in the Hyperion Universe, the same universe as The Exile Empire and the soon to be released novel Empire Ascensions. It discusses how cultures adapt to alien cohabitation.


Dr. Archibald Rolland – Excerpt from a lecture on xeno-anthropology at the Imperial Science Academy.

Disgust, while the opposite of attraction is driven by different factors than one would expect. Take for example the way in which obesity is viewed in preindustrial civilizations as opposed to postindustrial civilizations. In the survival-based society excess weight and even obesity can and most likely is seen as an indication of one of the following.
1. Superior survival skills (in very primitive societies.)
2. Superior intelligence or ability to provide.
3. Superior power or social rank.
All of these indicate the individual in question is more likely to succeed than the average slightly malnourished person. Freudian considerations of mate potential aside this raises a series of very interesting questions as the civilization in question progresses to the more prosperous and food rich industrial and postindustrial civilization levels.

As discussed in previous lessons disgust also has a strong cultural basis, in that if one person views something disgusting it is more likely that others who witness their response will see the same stimuli as disgusting. Also since attraction also has a cultural component as seen in the evolving concept of style, grooming, body hair, etc. what does that tell us about the ongoing view of excess fat as a positive trait rather than a negative?

That is right, there is a sociological bias for a positive trait to continue to be seen as positive. Why then do most societies view obesity different in postindustrial civilization? For the same reason that excess unshaved body hair can be seen as dirty in a society in one generation and not in another. As soon as one person notices negative traits from common and prolonged obesity and the sociological positive implications of that same trait are no longer seen or obvious to other members of that society. Once those traits can no longer be actively supported by the cause of their previous positive view their status will slowly erode.

Now this can seem very simple on the surface but we have to remember we are talking about changes that take place over hundreds if not thousands of years. Many of these positive and negative biases take generations to change. Even at the generational level we see forces of both preservation and destruction taking place as some children will view what their parents view in a positive light positively themselves and other children will reject that same thing simply because their parents embrace it.

These principals of anthropological development can be applied to acquiesce of alien species living in and among each other. While the aliens may initially be viewed with disgust due to their foreign nature they will eventually be viewed by whatever positive or negative effects they have on the society as a whole and their neighbors more specifically. All of which is simply a very complicated way of saying that extensive exposure to positive alien species tends to weed out xenophobia by it’s very nature.