Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 1099590" data-attributes="member: 7240">Tuerny says, First of all, I would argue that Objectivism (Rand's philosophy) would be viewed as completely absurd outside of a capitalist society. I cannot imagine the character who believes in these ideas to actually be in a majority anywhere. Basically, even if the society from which he comes is a proto-capitalist society like the Netherlands in the 16th century, his religion/philosophy would be, at best, an incredibly weird fringe cult at the margins of society. So, I'm not sure how reasonable it would be for him to expect to convert the majority in a new culture to his ideas when it's likely that his church/philosophy has failed to convert the majority in the culture he comes from.I don't know what AU says about the good-evil mechanic. Can you give me a little info on that?Well, I don't know how good your knowledge base is here. We are taught very little about India in the West. I have only gained insight after taking a phenomenally good course on India this summer. The first thing to do is recognize that "caste" maps to two different terms in India which are conflated into the caste system: jati and varna. Most people know about the varna part but not the jati part. The varna is the standard 4/5 caste system which corresponds surprisingly closely to the estates system of early modern Europe. There are two categories of varna: the twice-born (actually meaning more than once born) and the once-born. The top three castes are twice-born: brahmins (priests), ksatriyahs (warriors/rulers), vaishiya (merchants/entrepreneurs). Interaction amongst these castes is pretty common; although people do not marry across these castes typically, the groups do work together with relative ease. The once born are either all shudras if you are running caste based strictly on the vedic texts or are divided into shudras (labourers/peasants) and panchamas (untouchables/people who work in unclean occupations). There are real problems with twice-born working with once-born castes and there is a problem with anyone working with untouchables. Ok... that was the easy part.A jati is a group of people associated generally with the same occupation in a particular region. Thus, there could be a jati based around collecting tribute for a local ruler. This jati might originally have been considered to be part of of vaishiya varna; however, over time, this group might have used its wealth from tax farming to purchase land (a criterion to be recognized as a ksatriyah); similarly, as local peasants resisted, this caste of minor bureaucrats and criers might have needed to arm themselves to ensure that they collected taxes. The jati might then, to reflect its new prestige, have begun styling itself part of the more prestigious ksatriyah varna; some people might see the jati as part of its new self-proclaimed identity while others, likely including the existing ksatriyah jatis, might contest this attempt. Such conflicts are often, to some degree, arbitrated by brahmins.So, here's what I need to know from you:(a) are you playing with just varna or are you working with jatitoo?(b) if you aren't playing with jati, do you want to?(c) what is the varna and jati makeup of the adventuring party right now?(d) how different is your varna model from the actual Indian one? It seems like one could vary it quite a bit, provided one retains the basic concept.</blockquote>

Verification