Game 10

Wonder if getting excommunicated will boost rather than damage the esteem of Msr Forbin & Bart,

So far it seems the Papal "nuclear "option of excommunication has had little effect on Savoy.

France could always go Protestant & let the Gallican church break from Rome, has that ever happened in a game before? Could be the Protestant rebels become the defenders of French religious freedom. Is that the Apollo plan from the start?

May have to send out for a double portion of pop corn, this could be a good watch!

J Flower wrote:Wonder if getting excommunicated will boost rather than damage the esteem of Msr Forbin & Bart,

So far it seems the Papal "nuclear "option of excommunication has had little effect on Savoy.

France could always go Protestant & let the Gallican church break from Rome, has that ever happened in a game before? Could be the Protestant rebels become the defenders of French religious freedom. Is that the Apollo plan from the start?

May have to send out for a double portion of pop corn, this could be a good watch!

Ref page 48 of the Miscellany on the Gallican Church - "Therefore, the general canons of discipline as issued by Rome are deemed optional in France."

Think France will just take option to ignore the Emperor's lawyer in Rome to shouts of boreing and pop corn being thrown from the cheap seats.

More interesting will be how Spain and Portugal react to the new Papal ban on slavery which if they follow it is probably going to wipe out their colonial economies along with a lot of Dutch, English and Asante trade.

But since the Royal Council in Madrid (lead by a Cardinal) has already thrown one order from the Emperor's Legal Department in Rome into the bin I would not be surprized if another one goes the same way. But what will Portugal do about orders from the new Radical Papacy ????????!!!!!! Will it now ban English, French, Spanish & Dutch slavers from its Ports?

Some how I think smuggling could be entering a golden age.

PS Msr Forbin & Bart are very well thought of by their Crews, investors, merchant partners, girl friends etc.......perhaps linked to current score of Corsairs 200 plus Prizes V Corsair losses of 5 Barges torched by nasty Imperial Hussars. But I like to think its down to swash buckling style and honest trade.........did Forbin flog any of that revolting Geonoan Plonk in France? No he sold it to the English.

Historically there were multiple papal condemnations of slavery at different periods. They were all mostly ignored, sometimes even by his own bishops. Greed has a way of blinding men to moral questions.

My guess is that if France tries to break away from Rome that would create huge chaos inside the country. I imagine France's enemies very much hope they do choose that course. I'm not sure why they would though. Ignoring the pope, while it will bleed honour, is a time honoured tradition.

Can't Colonial Powers just exploit people by paying them poorly and move poor people to work from Europe and sure Africa but as wage workers with rights? Why slavery? Why Chattel slavery the Muslims have it but don't often abuse them so harshly?

tkolter wrote:Can't Colonial Powers just exploit people by paying them poorly and move poor people to work from Europe and sure Africa but as wage workers with rights? Why slavery? Why Chattel slavery the Muslims have it but don't often abuse them so harshly?

I suspect you're thinking of using endentured service a lot more, which is an option and (let's be honest) it's really slavery-lite even if time limited.

I think the issue is what was needed in the Americas was an additional large workforce to do the terrible jobs and there simply wasn't a sufficient "surplus" workforce in Europe that was desperate enough that would consider working in the cotton fields or on the sugar plantations.

As to the idea of recruiting a (poorly) paid workforce in Africa, my personal view is that even with incredibly low rates of pay, the cost would have been too high and, at the end of the day, slavery was the cheaper option in the long-run esp as the rights of a paid workforce would make them even less an attractive option that slaves who had few if any rights.  Also, why would they want to leave and go and work in the Americas?  There wasn't a drive, so unlike the later situation in regards China and the large-scale movement of a workforce to 19th Century USA (for example).

Add in the arguments of whether or not the enslaved people were human, were the moral equals of the enslavers (and using that to justify the slavery and treatment), unfortunately it's easy to see why the darker side of humanity made the idea of slavery so acceptable

I think Monsieur Forbin may be confusing himself with the fine upstanding, and dashingly honest trader, the Doge of Genoa... No piracy from ‘Honest Federico’, the man at the helm of Genoa, Naples & Sicily.

I got a great book for Christmas, a biography of Louis XIV (King of the World). I honestly had no idea just how Catholic France was at this time. Gallican aside, they really did see themselves as the bastion of the Catholic faith. I’ll be taking some of this into my G8 position, to see how it plays out, but it gave me a whole new perspective on the G10 conflict. I guess we will see, as 1704 plays out.

On slavery, it was the application of total power and the arrogance of innate superiority. To treat someone as a slave, you do not recognise them as a human being. They were viewed as a commodity, not as someone worthy of pay or any other rights.

In my view, evil does not need to wear horns, it can merely persuade you that something morally repugnant is morally ambivalent. And finally, it normalises is it as morally neutral.

I notice the subject of slavery has raised it's ugly head in this thread, personally wonder if as most of us are of the Western world we view slavery in a certain way. Not trying to defend it as it is a cruel & disgusting abuse of power.

However in the time period we are emulating it was an accepted practice & for good or bad is part of the game mechanics.

That said when looking at slavery & as some Western positions see it as a stick to beat Eastern positions with. I wonder if the Eastern outlook on slavery are similar to those in the West, after all the entire Janissary Corps were slaves of the Sultan, not chained, whipped into line, but a fearsome bunch of warriors Plus many of the Sultans chief advisers are also slaves, along with the eunuchs who guard the harem,to my mind this doesn't fit the picture of slave gangs or rows of African slaves working the cotton fields that fill Western history books

Another point to ponder is the boarder between serfdom & slavery , serfdom could possibly be viewed in a similar light to slavery.

Trying to make the point that trying to use slavery as( quite rightly) a way of claiming the moral ground is all well & good, but if you abolish slavery then is serfdom any better?
Another point is the cultural one that slavery evokes, If the Ottomans abandon slavery then their whole society falls apart.

Is our C20th viewpoint clashing with the historical reality of it all.

The harsh & draconian methods used to train & discipline troops , did that make them a form of slave as well to desert carried the death penalty or branding, possibly a whipping , is that any different from the fate of an escaped slave.

Where do you draw the line & out of which perspective should it be viewed?

Can't say I disagree with anything you say Jason.  That's why I included indentured service in my reply.  As an aside one issue I am pondering on in G10 is serfdom still existed in Scotland, in a specialised form in the mining industry.  It wasn't abolished until 1799 and only then under pressure from parts of the English establishment who were uncomfortable with a union with a country that allowed it 

I think we wouldn't be decent people if we could play these games without having "issues" (shall we say) with the idea of slavery in the games, even if it involves completely fictional slavery that is really nothing more than dots of ink on a piece of paper. Though as point you out, why we are more accepting other unpleasant behaviours is an interesting point

tkolter wrote:Can't Colonial Powers just exploit people by paying them poorly and move poor people to work from Europe and sure Africa but as wage workers with rights? Why slavery? Why Chattel slavery the Muslims have it but don't often abuse them so harshly?

An oddity of mercantile and government development's and the spread of world trade from after say 1450 is the different effect it had on the freedom or otherwise of peasants (the bulk of the population) in different societies.

In Europe generally speaking west of the Elbe these developments lead to a move away from labour duties and towards money rents.  With a growth in towns and open field system's farmed by unfree labour being replaced with rent paying or even free hold farmers.

While East of the Elbe the demand for baulk grain exports etc plus ever greater demands from their Governments allowed the (now richer)  nobility of Russia, Prussia, Poland, Hungary etc to impose stricter and greater labour demands on the peasants and reduce many formerly free peasants to serfs who were de-facto slaves in that they were unfree labour and could be bought and sold with the land they were tied too.

Alongside, this was a continued concept of taking captives as "War booty" esp strong in the border regions were Islam and Christendom meet.  Ottomans like the Barbary Corsairs and the Tartars tend to get the worst press as "Slave Raiders" in Europe and no doubt their slave raid's by land and sea could be truely brutal and were responsible for the enslavement of hundreds of thousands if not millions of people.

However, such raids were not all one way and I suspect being a muslim slave on a Christain galley or working in the quaries of Naples (the absolute worse jobs for slaves.....probably dead in a couple of years) was equally as bad as being a Christain Slave in an Ottoman Galley or breaking rocks in North Africa.  Interestingly, Russian and Polish serfs taken in Ottoman raid's if they lived through the experience were often settled as unfree cultivators and had to give up a smaller percentage of their harvest to their landlord/owner than they did at home.  

One result of having a large pool of unfree Surfs and war captives was that the Czar's and other Eastern Rulers could raise huge labour levies for really unhealthy work that the Czar considered as vital to the building of modern Russia like building cities in a bog, digging hundreds of miles of canals through forests and fighting his wars etc.  Other rulers in the East either copied this or got crushed.

No doubt when it came to doing the things required to fund the new developments in Navies, the Artillery etc such as Sugar, Tobacco & Cotton planting, mining in the Andes, building roads and ports etc the new Western European rulers of the America's would have liked to follow the original rulers like the Inca Emperor's and just levy spare labour from the farming population.  Unfortunately, in the 100 years after the arrival of the Europeans in the America's it is estimated that the Native population reduced by 100M mostly due to the effect of Small Pox and other previously unknown diseases.  Back home in Europe it is estimated that 1 in 3 caught small pox and 10% of the infected died and 90% lived.  In the America's it is possible that populations unfamiliar with small pox suffered up to 90% fatality.  Result the spare population did not exist esp not in places like Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola were the Native Taino peoples were liturally wiped out.

Next option after natives was to bring in "settlers" ........also a failure.  European convicts sent by Judge Jefferies etc after the Monmouth revolt to work on the Sugar Islands were just too puny to withstand the heat and the yellow fever and free colonists who could be attracted were not keen on growing Sugar.  They tended to either prefer Farming in more temperate climes like New England or turned to get rich quick schemes like privateering, fur trade, invasion of Mexico etc.

African slaves were then turned too because they could best stand the heat and other conditions of the tropics and because the Slave Kingdoms of West Africa such as the Asante could supply the demand.  For thousands of years the Arabs and the African Kingdoms had waged wars which feed a well established slave trade in both West & East Africa.  

The cross Sahara and Indian Ocean slave trade continued but many people believe that European demand for the America's slave market created additional wars in Africa.  

In game it may be possible to abolish the transatlantic trade 100 years early.......as per the wishes of the Pope in G10 if all players give up say 50% of their existing African and American trade and send Naval Patrols to Africa.  As for freeing existing Slaves I think as a rough estimate for say Spain I think Population £25m 5% unfree = 1,250,000 @ say £30 each compensation to owners = £37,500,000

Which would be possible for Spain in some games but perhaps not just yet in G10.

Other small problem's would be honour taking a hell of a hit due to the complusory purchase of Nobles property etc.

But I look forward to the first player to try to do this action ........but still think the greater challenge would be for a Russian player to free the Serfs.

Kerensky wrote:I think Monsieur Forbin may be confusing himself with the fine upstanding, and dashingly honest trader, the Doge of Genoa... No piracy from ‘Honest Federico’, the man at the helm of Genoa, Naples & Sicily.

I got a great book for Christmas, a biography of Louis XIV (King of the World). I honestly had no idea just how Catholic France was at this time. Gallican aside, they really did see themselves as the bastion of the Catholic faith. I’ll be taking some of this into my G8 position, to see how it plays out, but it gave me a whole new perspective on the G10 conflict. I guess we will see, as 1704 plays out.

Does this mean that the Doge never sits down? If he does sit down, how fine is he?

I wonder Kerensky, does the bio suggest Louis saw himself and France as being Catholic outwith being Papal?

Just had a thought, when the British government abolished slavery it compensated the slave owners (not the slaves)...maybe Spain et al should ask the Pope to compensate them for the cost.  

Of course the Pope can offer access to Heaven as compensation but will be interesting to see who takes that over money in the here and now

J Flower wrote:I notice the subject of slavery has raised it's ugly head in this thread, personally wonder if as most of us are of the Western world we view slavery in a certain way. Not trying to defend it as it is a cruel & disgusting abuse of power. However in the time period we are emulating it was an accepted practice & for good or bad is part of the game mechanics.

It was a very interesting query from Abyssinia that prompted discussion at Tivoli. I could have just replied by letter, but thought it would be more interesting and ecumenical to consider the wider issues raised. Attitudes have evolved through time, but the starting point is that Moses led the Hebrews out of slavery. Slavery was the norm in the Ancient world, probably reaching an extreme in Ancient Rome where, as Kerensky points out, it was the treating of human beings as property with no rights, no ability to express their religion; they could be killed at the whim of their owners. It was the Pagan denial of the value of life which is diametrically opposed to the incarnation of God in Christ so theologically it is therefore very difficult for the church to support slavery. Of course in the first thousand years of its existence slavery throughout Europe gradually reduced, being replaced by serfdom, so it was not necessary for the church to push for its abolition - but when the New World was discovered there was a struggle between those who wished to convert the natives and those who wished to enslave them. The progress which had been made was in danger of being rolled back so the church began to issue clarifications as I referenced in the newspaper.

J Flower wrote:That said when looking at slavery & as some Western positions see it as a stick to beat Eastern positions with. I wonder if the Eastern outlook on slavery are similar to those in the West, after all the entire Janissary Corps were slaves of the Sultan, not chained, whipped into line, but a fearsome bunch of warriors Plus many of the Sultans chief advisers are also slaves, along with the eunuchs who guard the harem,to my mind this doesn't fit the picture of slave gangs or rows of African slaves working the cotton fields that fill Western history books.

From the church's viewpoint at the time, the people in non-Catholic nations were to some extent slaves to sinful rulers who had rejected the church. Natives in Africa or America were not considered to be human and they were treated as the property of their tribal chiefs, available for sale, so the church did face an uphill struggle to change this. This also had knock on effects in Europe where in some areas serfs were treated as slaves.

It was one of the complaints during the American Civil War that slaves who had fled to the north were housed in worse conditions than they had left, the freedom they gained merely replaced one form of exploitation with another. This is not a defence of slavery, just a reminder that there always seem to be those who are prepared to exploit the vulnerable.

J Flower wrote:Another point to ponder is the boarder between serfdom & slavery. Serfdom could possibly be viewed in a similar light to slavery. Trying to make the point that trying to use slavery as( quite rightly) a way of claiming the moral ground is all well & good, but if you abolish slavery then is serfdom any better? Another point is the cultural one that slavery evokes, If the Ottomans abandon slavery then their whole society falls apart. Is our C20th viewpoint clashing with the historical reality of it all. The harsh & draconian methods used to train & discipline troops , did that make them a form of slave as well to desert carried the death penalty or branding, possibly a whipping , is that any different from the fate of an escaped slave. Where do you draw the line & out of which perspective should it be viewed?

As I understand it there are broadly 3 categories:
1. Slaves - people who are the property of someone else who is able to use/sell them.
2. Serfs - people who are tied to the land and thus deemed to be the property of the owner of the land, such that if the land is sold, so are the labourers (serfs) who live on it. Serfs do have some legal rights under most systems, but of course since the landowner was often responsible for administration of the law, those rights were not respected. There was a reciprocal relationship between the serfs and landowner since the landowner's ability to generate an income from his land (and thereby keep his serfs) was dependent upon those serfs being used to increase productivity. Since there was no freedom of movement of labour, if serfs were mistreated the priests (and everyone else) would know about it so the church did act at a local level to restrain some abuses.
3. Indentured Servants - people who are assigned to work for a set period for an employer, without rights to leave that employment, and usually without pay. The conditions may not appear to be much better, but people became indentured servants through debt (working for their creditor until the debt was discharged), as a sentence handed out by the courts, or even sometimes through choice (a kind of apprenticeship whereby they were trained in exchange for so many years of service).

So there are important differences: slavery and serfdom are perpetual (unless the owner frees them), whereas indentured servitude has a finite period and a purpose.

This is not 20th/21st century moralising - the distinctions have been around for centuries and the Church documents quoted in the newspaper are from 400 years earlier, so I was simply reflecting the church's position at the time. I'm sure others know more about the nature and conditions of work in 1700 than I do, but it is worth remembering that the working week was considerably shorter because of the celebration of feast days, at least in Catholic countries, where depending upon the local calendar a third of potentially working days were religious holidays. Protestants had a longer working week because they dismissed such festivities, but whether it made them any more productive I don't know. In occupations/areas where there was surplus labour anyway, working longer probably just meant working slower, so productivity would not be greater - I have never really subscribed to the myth of the 'protestant' work ethic. And of course the ability to celebrate the feasts did depend upon occupation - ships still needed sailing, livestock feeding, etc, feast day or no feast day. Industrialization changed this which prompted the development of catholic social policy.

Jason2 wrote: As an aside one issue I am pondering on in G10 is serfdom still existed in Scotland, in a specialised form in the mining industry. It wasn't abolished until 1799 and only then under pressure from parts of the English establishment who were uncomfortable with a union with a country that allowed it

I think we wouldn't be decent people if we could play these games without having "issues" (shall we say) with the idea of slavery in the games, even if it involves completely fictional slavery that is really nothing more than dots of ink on a piece of paper. Though as point you out, why we are more accepting other unpleasant behaviours is an interesting point.

You probably know more about the Scottish side than I do, but one thing that did come up in my research for G7 was that Highland Chiefs retained the right to sell their people well into the 1700s, as many did because the land couldn't support them. So although Clansmen would not have been slaves, their rights as serfs were being badly eroded by circumstance. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples of the exploitation of people by the rich for commercial gain, such as the payment of wages in tokens that could only be used at the employer's shop (which naturally was more expensive than any other shop). I seem to remember this kind of thing was the norm for labourers building canals/railways until governments stopped it.

There are many forms of modern slavery and exploitative employment today as well as the exploitation of the citizen by the state. I find myself in agreement with Kerensky's observation that "evil does not need to wear horns, it can merely persuade you that something morally repugnant is morally ambivalent. And finally, it normalises is it as morally neutral." Philosophically we see that today with such nonsense as moral relativism and political correctness. Rest assured such approaches will receive just criticism as Tivoli, and if there are any other issues players believe should be discussed by the church they can always send me a letter in game and I will see if the church formed a historic view on them.

Papa Clement wrote:

You probably know more about the Scottish side than I do, but one thing that did come up in my research for G7 was that Highland Chiefs retained the right to sell their people well into the 1700s, as many did because the land couldn't support them.  So although Clansmen would not have been slaves, their rights as serfs were being badly eroded by circumstance.  I'm sure there are plenty of other examples of the exploitation of people by the rich for commercial gain, such as the payment of wages in tokens that could only be used at the employer's shop (which naturally was more expensive than any other shop).  I seem to remember this kind of thing was the norm for labourers building canals/railways until governments stopped it.

While I'm quite low down the pecking order, I am one of those heritage types who has had threats for their postings on certain historical matters...based on those I'm happy to comment on Scottish mining, not the Clans

Stuart Bailey wrote:In game it may be possible to abolish the transatlantic trade 100 years early...as per the wishes of the Pope in G10 if all players give up say 50% of their existing African and American trade and send Naval Patrols to Africa.  As for freeing existing Slaves I think as a rough estimate for say Spain I think Population £25m 5% unfree = 1,250,000 @ say £30 each compensation to owners = £37,500,000

Which would be possible for Spain in some games but perhaps not just yet in G10.

Other small problem's would be honour taking a hell of a hit due to the compulsory purchase of Nobles property etc.

But I look forward to the first player to try to do this action...but still think the greater challenge would be for a Russian player to free the Serfs.

I suggest you read the newspaper carefully for what Tivoli decided.

Then consider the average life expectancy of a slave (depending on sources referred to) was 7-9 years on a plantation.

Jason2 wrote:Of course the Pope can offer access to Heaven as compensation but will be interesting to see who takes that over money in the here and now.

The Pope has no such power as you should know, Jason2.

To quote the Council of Trent: "As a means of regaining grace and justice, penance was at all times necessary for those who had defiled their souls with any mortal sin... Before the coming of Christ, penance was not a sacrament, nor is it since His coming a sacrament for those who are not baptized. But the Lord then principally instituted the Sacrament of Penance, when, being raised from the dead, he breathed upon His disciples saying: 'Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained' (John 20:22-23). By which action so signal and words so clear the consent of all the Fathers has ever understood that the power of forgiving and retaining sins was communicated to the Apostles and to their lawful successors, for the reconciling of the faithful who have fallen after Baptism." (Sess. XIV, c. i)

Those who die unreconciled to the Church are obliged to spend more time in Purgatory (unless their sin is so great that they go straight to hell); to move from Purgatory to heaven cannot be directly brought about by earthly action, though prayers for the dead do fortify them in their struggle for purification so that at a time known only to God they may one day join him. Thus the Pope does not decide who gets into heaven.

The theology of prayers for the dead is quite complicated so could be a topic for Tivoli. The Council of Trent did not provide for any means by which those who go to hell can escape from it, but the liturgy does include prayers for all the dead. This is because none of us can be sure who is in hell, and of course the rules God has set for man through the Church are not binding on Himself.

Jason2 wrote:

Papa Clement wrote:

You probably know more about the Scottish side than I do, but one thing that did come up in my research for G7 was that Highland Chiefs retained the right to sell their people well into the 1700s, as many did because the land couldn't support them.  So although Clansmen would not have been slaves, their rights as serfs were being badly eroded by circumstance.  I'm sure there are plenty of other examples of the exploitation of people by the rich for commercial gain, such as the payment of wages in tokens that could only be used at the employer's shop (which naturally was more expensive than any other shop).  I seem to remember this kind of thing was the norm for labourers building canals/railways until governments stopped it.

While I'm quite low down the pecking order, I am one of those heritage types who has had threats for their postings on certain historical matters...based on those I'm happy to comment on Scottish mining, not the Clans

Just when it was getting interesting!  Is there really a more militant Jacobite than me on the forum?

I'm always getting threatened and criticised for my posts - I think of it as evidence that I am doing something right.  

i'm afraid Papa,  (as a result of my professional work)  many have offered me abuse online, so I have to be careful when commenting on certain issues, even when on a forum where I don't go by my full name.  When you are challenging popular myths on say the Celts, the Jacobites or the issue of slavery, there are certain online "activists" who spend their free time simply searching the internet to be abusive to those who disagree with their own beliefs.  Rather scarily they are quite good at working out who people really are.
As a result of projects (exhibitions and books) I've been involved in in regards the Clans, I have had threats of physical violence.  I'm lucky, I haven't had death threats or (unlike some female colleagues) rape threats...though I did once get a "white powder" sent to me at my place of work...so discussing the darker side of the clans here isn't something I am going to do

There are lots of historical myths that people carry for their own reasons.

Modern pagans frequently inflate the number of people killed in the witch crazes, never mind that most of these people were just innocent Christians who hadn't a pagan bone in their bodies. They also frequently blame the catholic church for these killings, when in fact the greatest numbers occurred in places where there wasn't good central control. In other words, mob panic leading to mob killing.

The early celts were head hunters and not exactly nice people. Hardly the poor victims of also not so nice Romans.

In the new world, many believe that the large scale devastation by disease of the native populations was intentionally inflicted.

War, torture and other horrors were as endemic in the new world as they were in the old.

The list goes on and on. It is always interesting to me how people feel the need to believe certain things about history to live with themselves in the present.

I can well imagine if you deal with this stuff professionally that you'd run into a fair number of lunatics.

@ Jason2

One nice thing about being English is that we know that most of our founding fathers/leaders/Hero's/Clan chief types were pirates and not very nice people and if you want to say nasty things about them no one is going to really object.

Other people got Saints, The Good, The Strong, The Bold & loads of Greats......we got a Croockback, Longshanks, Lackland and questionable birth.

Its why when giving our new National Image a bit of a polish cicra 1200 we had to borrow our Patron Saint from the Turks and our great Mythic Hero from the Welsh after working out that a National epic about a Pirate Crew's industrial dispute with their employer set in the Thames flood plain was never going to rival Homer.

About our only defence is a claim that that most of them were Germans, French, Scots, Welsh etc and not really English. Or were only nasty to foreigners which does not count.

Odd thing is the number of people now who seem to want to try and defend the historic "Villians" of English History like Richard III and Jacobites.

Jason2 wrote:I'm afraid Papa, (as a result of my professional work) many have offered me abuse online, so I have to be careful when commenting on certain issues, even when on a forum where I don't go by my full name.  When you are challenging popular myths on say the Celts, the Jacobites or the issue of slavery, there are certain online "activists" who spend their free time simply searching the internet to be abusive to those who disagree with their own beliefs.  Rather scarily they are quite good at working out who people really are.
As a result of projects (exhibitions and books) I've been involved in in regards the Clans, I have had threats of physical violence.  I'm lucky, I haven't had death threats or (unlike some female colleagues) rape threats...though I did once get a "white powder" sent to me at my place of work...so discussing the darker side of the clans here isn't something I am going to do.

That's really sad, Jason2. Academic freedom to discuss all issues should be respected.

From previous letters in game your knowledge of Scotland has added a lot to my own game experience, so you can always write to me - as you know we don't always agree, but that is healthy and gives us something to discuss.

I'm not on 'social' media so have probably missed the way the internet has changed. There are plenty of nutters out there (not just religious nutters or nutters from Scotland), although after reading this from the BBC earlier today, I may be vastly underestimating the numbers: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-51027744

Deacon wrote:It is always interesting to me how people feel the need to believe certain things about history to live with themselves in the present.

It is. But perhaps the cause is not a misreading of history rather the modern determination to reject established cultural groups and for individuals to define themselves in terms of shared values? We see it increasingly in how companies market their products, or politicians promote themselves. As an individual a nutter can be dismissed, but if they join with others who claim to share similar values (whether they can trace these values or an element of them back in history or not), then they can exert pressure and demand recognition from the courts or society. It doesn't seem to make any difference if those values form a coherent philosophy or are true, because anyone who challenges them is simply denounced. I'm waiting for some professor of psychology to set up a group for people who self-identify as teapots; if it reaches a certain number then they will be able to request a special box on the next census form. Of course the group may violently disagree about the colour of the teapots they self-identify as (blue, red or for those who can't make up their mind, purple?), but if in a few months time you hear that the BBC has recruited a new editor for 'teapot rights', I wouldn't be surprised.

I don't mind at all the morphing of modern society into a freer place where people can self-define either individually or as a group. I think it's kind of cool, actually.

Historically, society has been organized for the rich and powerful. Modern technology has opened that up for the rest of us to do that for ourselves. Heck, what is this forum but such a creature? A group of like-minded crazy gamers making community for ourselves.

I just get mildly annoyed when people can't just own that and need to make up stuff. Of course, the snarky person inside me says that is what religion has been doing since the beginning of time, so nothing new there, just applying to different things than we used to!

@ Jason2, I am sorry to hear about that kind of behaviour impacting your professional life. I understand the need to be careful, as everything is fully discoverable.

@ Deacon & Papa C. I am with Deacon on not minding the morphing of society, although that may be my personality type and view on life.

But I do not subscribe to one persons view preventing another view from existing. We all get to make our choices, and I do not like to see aggressive victimisation of alternative views (per J2 above).

I think the internet is brilliant, but it has eroded the practice of accepting (if not agreeing) to two well thought out opposing views.

I think the "well-thought out" part is the rub. I was on the internet before it was the internet. It was the arpanet back then. We used to grumble that if you let every damn fool on the internet pretty soon every damn fool would be on the internet. Turns out, we were right!

Deacon wrote:I think the "well-thought out" part is the rub. I was on the internet before it was the internet. It was the arpanet back then. We used to grumble that if you let every damn fool on the internet pretty soon every damn fool would be on the internet. Turns out, we were right!

I’m not an expert, but I’m fairly sure that nutters were around long before the internet or Arpanet, and although I’m not much of a technology fan, even I won’t blame the electrons for an increase in their number.

I agree with the ‘well thought out’ part, though. But to be ‘well thought out’, views have to be challenged. Redefining or morphing society is not always a case of being inclusive, it changes how everyone is defined. I was only partly joking in my teapot point – a few years ago people put ‘Jedi’ down as their religion on census forms. Now if you subscribe to the notion that religion is man made and therefore anyone is free to make up a new belief and call it a religion, you may be quite happy with the principle, but you are also likely to offend the billions of people who disagree. You are also taking away from them the accepted definition of what religion is, denying them their identity by redefining it in terms which are incompatible with their understanding.

Once that happens you have lost the common ground necessary for rational discussion to challenge views so that it can be determined whether they are ‘well thought out’. Then you are left with people shouting at each other, or making threats, selectively picking bits out of history, science or religious texts and using them to justify their existence and demanding the rest of us accept their validity. And so the cycle goes on as more and more bizarre views are suggested that are impossible to reconcile because the dynamics postulated and the framework they exist within is artificial and false. I don’t think that makes for a freer society, simply one which has fragmented and broken down. The irony is that a framework that demands tolerance of everything however teapot it may be, is actually tolerant of nothing and instead of bringing people together pushes them apart.

I'm afraid we must disagree.

Once we killed people for disagreeing on religion. Some places still do, and I want nothing to do with those places.

I don't think society was at all better when we attempted to you force to ensure uniformity of religious thought. Do we really want more religious wars as we attempt to enforce such a thing?

Nor would that enforcement necessarily help with logic, since it seems remarkably common to me for many of those of faith to have no coherency to their theology. A good portion of American Christians, for instance, seem to have little interest or understanding of the fundamental views that their faith is supposed to espouse.

I imagine you could push for better religious education. But this country also has large numbers of people who got a public education, and still believe science is wrong because they read something on the internet.

The internet has just given a printing press, as it were, to all these people with all the consequences that entails.

Deacon, you're either making my point for me or completely missing it.

If as a society you attempt to redefine religion (or indeed any other aspect of life) against the beliefs of those who hold it then you are imposing uniformity upon them which they cannot accept. That creates division by forcing conflict.

It is not a choice between uniformity of religious thought or toleration of everything except intolerance. Your own American constitution protects freedom of religion, without trying to enforce uniformity by using a bit of common sense. I'm sure you can find lots of problems with it if you look for them, but it seems to have served the US fairly well over the last few hundred years.

What is philosophically wrong and somewhat impractical is to try to redefine religion as a subset of aetheism for one cannot subsist within the other. The analogy is that you would not go to a doctor and ask him to check whether you had cancer if that doctor refused to believe cancer existed. Unbelief cannot be equated with belief. It does not follow that only those who believe can discuss a particular subject, but there has to be a common acceptance of concepts for the discussion to happen. Without that there is inevitably discord.

If you disagree with me, then that is your choice.