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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6316098" data-attributes="member: 2067">I wonder if the analogy to Japan can have other ramifications. The sociological idea behind a society of low theft is that the pressure to be a good member of the system is felt more pointedly than it is in more individualistic societies. Compare, say, how the US reveres Bonnie & Clyde with that idea of a near-theftless society. So there are no famous eladrin outlaws, no famous eladrin rogues, no eladrin Robin Hoods.What there might be is eladrin yakuza -- organized crime. They rule their districts and, of course, few are willing to challenge the status quo. And you don't need to break into places as a gangster, you rule by dint of reputation and allegiance, your crimes are market-based, your murders are in broad daylight. The eladrin don't have a Bonnie & Clyde, but they do have a Godfather, a Pablo Escobar, a Scarface. They traffic in the dark lusts and base desires of their people readily, but they have no need to hide it. What might also emerge are eladrin coroprations (taking this in a bit of a dungeonpunk direction there), all gleaming spires and perfect pale white stone. Eladrin as the Apple of the fantasy world clean and modern and like magic (but, of course, kind of a luxury good and very much tightly controlled). And eladrin salarymen with the corresponding work stress and stigma of unemployment.And, of course, there's the culture of honor, where death and suicide are seen as things responsible people occasionally do, where there is a high toleration of self-harm for the greater good. Maybe there is an eladrin equivalent to Aokigahara, a forest of death where one goes when one doesn't fit in to eladrin society, when one wants to rebel, or simply when one finds society an ill fit, where the eccentric and the jobless go to die, where people deposit the old women they can no longer care for...The idea would be that SHAME is more important than GUILT -- that others' judgement in society is more important than self-judgement or divine judgement. And then there's the (very Fey-like) emphasis on proper etiquette and behavior, on doing the proper rituals and on never offending the delicate princess sensisbilities...it's like Miss Manners rules the society and those who are deemed "rude" just wander off into the forest to die of their own free will, ashamed of themselves.</blockquote>

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