A while back, I discussed politics (and gaming) with a European guy. He was obviously smart, and with a good understanding of the world which caused me some problems because occasionally he would say things that were flat out insane.
He'd say things like the US is the greatest threat in the world today. Its worse than Saddam Hussein's Iraq. I'd list a whole host of bad things that Hussein was doing and was trying to do, but it did not help. So...from my point of view...its kinda like talking to a flat-earther.
And then I read an article which made a loud CLICK in my brain.
My friend was a transnational progressive, a tranzi, and he believed that nationalism was the greatest danger to the world today. This was his unstated premise. And its pretty obvious that the US is one of the most nationalist and is clearly the most powerful nation, thus its completely logical that the US is the worst threat to the planet....if you start from his premise.
Now I don't agree with that premise. I think its pretty silly actually, but the mental problem posed by someone seeming to be smart and well read and yet a serious nutcase was resolved for me by exposing his premises.
Much of the time we don't realize our own premises, or we think everyone has them.
Shifting away from politics to another war...the war between the sexes, and we come to another theory of mine. Women sometimes seem to be irrational which is a common theory among men throughout the ages. I suspect that a large part of it is that women have different premises. And in part because of even more foundational premises they assign differing weights of importance to various facts.
As has been said...everyone has the same facts, its just the interpretation that differs.
Of course, before anyone thinks I've totally handed out the key to understanding women, let me also add that they are frequently playing a different game so strategies that make sense for a guy won't for them, and women tend to be of average intelligence while men have a much greater spread from not so great to superlative.
A country music singer, Randy Travis, described it well...'old men standing about talking about the weather, old women standing about talking about old men'. Different games.
Now what does all this have to do with roleplaying gaming?
MJ has mentioned the Blue People at the Lake who killed Di Vars for saying "Hi". One wonders what 'hi' meant in their language.
Can we take this up to another level or two? Can we create a world where you're talking to another guy, and both of you think the other person is making sense until you realize he's totally nuts?
Can we take this even deeper down into the rabbit hole so you live with a group for some time only to realize with a sense of dawning horror that what you thought was going on is totally not what is going on? Maybe you find out that the noble heroic sorts you thought you were hanging out with are actually the bandits of the region?
What buried premises or assumptions can we use to make players think the locals are saying one thing while actually they are saying another?
One interesting rhetorical trick is the 'fact/value distinction' which is currently used like so..."I would never want to impose my beliefs on another person. I believe in intellectual freedom. However, evolution is a fact, and if you don't subscribe to it, I'll have to fail you in this class."
And ..."No, you are not allowed to impose your beliefs on science education about Creationism."
Now, its obvious we can use this distinction in another world to amusing effect. That is, the player once you confront him with the reasonable sounding, polite and completely intolerant person who thinks he's for intellectual freedom but is the exact opposite, your player is likely to ruefully laugh or grimace.
Like..."I'm a firm believer in the equality of all men." Said the slavemaster with a genial smile. "However..." Cracking the whip over the line of slaves. "Its a fact that residents of North Rhonistan are not really men. All the best authorities say so."
I invite help in taking these ideas further.
And yes, I've discussed some of this before, but among other things I'd like to see some reaonsable seeming cultures that would make the verser drop his jaw in astonishment as suddenly everything strange and kinda odd about his new setting went CLICK, and he realized things were totally different than he had thought.
People obviously lying to themselves is one thing...the guy who calls himself a knight, but knows not very deep in his heart, that he's a bandit. But even more than that is serious different views.
Here's one that I used to do a lot. I hate lying. So, in order to stay out of trouble, I would tell the complete truth. I just made sure the listener misunderstood what I said. One way I would do this is to use double negatives in my speech. "Mom, I ain't been doing nothing wrong." That ACTUALLY means "Mom, I have been doing something wrong". However, she would misunderstand it to mean that I wasn't doing anything.
Maybe you land in a world where everyone speaks in double negatives. You, being used to that, take it at the supposed face value, when in actuality, it means exactly the opposite of what you thought it meant.
A number of points come to me.
- Concerning whether your friend was a transnational progressive, while that premise will lead to that conclusion (that is, transnationalism-->United States bad), it's not the only one that will do so.
Muslim extremists think the United States is the worst thing in the world because we attempt to enforce religious pluralism throughout the world, and they believe that the proper use for government is enforcing a single religion.
Greens think the United States is bad because we consume more resources than we produce and contribute significantly to the types of polution they consider globally dangerous.
European nationalists think the United States is bad because we keep treating other western nations as if they must agree with us and support our policies, and won't discuss it if they don't.
So there are a lot of premises that can lead to the conclusion that the U.S. is the villain.
- Getting to your own presuppositions is a very important part of understanding your own position; getting to the other guy's is a very important part of undermining his position. I learned that in college; I'm always surprised when college graduates don't know that.
- Women are not more irrational than men; they are irrational in exactly the same way as men: they start from their premises. All presuppositions are fundamentally irrational--we believe them because we have to start somewhere, and thus we treat them as axiomatic and build on them without considering whether they can be challenged.
- Your suggestions for the conflicts between people are good, but they require particularly skilled referees who really know their players well to make them work. Even so, I've thrown a few curve balls in a few worlds--Bah Ke'gehn is a notable example of a world in which players leap to the wrong conclusion as often as not, aided by the other versers there who have already reached the wrong conclusion and are reinforcing that belief.
- The men/not men distinction is also used in a number of my worlds.
Good thoughts.
--M. J. Young
John, yes, that would work. Its not the same thing, but different cultures have different ways of speaking. The Irish are supposed to make statements by asking questions, don't you understand? Which in an odd sort of way makes sense wouldn't you agree? The Southerner might not come out and say "I don't trust him", but say something more smoothly politic that others in his culture understand as "I don't trust him".
MJ, he might have been in part a nationalist. He was patriotically proud of his nation, I think, which is an odd thing for a tranzi. I still think he was a tranzi, but I think for many people (including him) being a tranzi is really, in part, an excuse for other views.
And that gets into a whole other group of things. There's what you say you believe, and even think you believe, and how you act.
"I'm a free marketer capitalism guy! But my company is losing money, and the government needs to bail me out!"
And last, before I wrote this, I realized I was aiming for the expert GM's with this concept. DO NOT try this at home, I should have added. :)
Here's an idea that I had Eric. You land in a world where all of the indigs look normal to you. However, they have completely different senses. You see with eyesight, perhaps they see by echo location, the way a bat does. You wouldn't realize this right away. Perhaps they see by reading heat images. Maybe instead of hearing with their ears, they hear with their nose and smell with their ears. So, you go to whisper something to the guy that's helping you, and he turns around and comments on how bad your breath smells. Just a thought.
There are a couple interesting ideas in there, John. A world of sonar sensers with little light, and a world with senses mixed.