On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 7:44 PM, Tim <tim@little-possums.net> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 07:16:38PM -0400, Richard Aiken wrote:
> But didn't those race *have* such a single, shared
> biologically-based culture, prior to initial alien contact?
Some shared aspects of their culture, yes. Also a great many
differences that won't go away no matter how hard you wish.
But they are steadily going away. That's what the various cultural radicals - American as well as others - feel themselves to be fighting against.
> What I do not see but what you seem to is that - by some unexplained
> mechanism - these various distinct biological cultures will somehow
> both merge into one common culture and then split off into distinct
> regional cultures.
Yes, I agree you don't see it. They won't "merge, then split".
They'll be splitting and merging all the time, because that's what
happens to cultures even over mere generations, let alone many
thousands of years.
[I am experiencing great difficulty with the quoting structure, on this post . . . ]
Yes.
But all of our RL experience comes from the same basic race, located on the same ancestral homeworld.
I believe that encountering Others from biologically-different races and homeworlds will induce the same type of paradigm shift to such interactions, whether the race experiencing the encounter is human or otherwise.
You believe that it will not.
--
Richard Aiken
"Never insult anyone by accident." Robert A. Heinlein
"A word to the wise ain't necessary -- it's the stupid ones that need the advice." - Bill Cosby
"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous." Dean Winchester