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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chrisling" data-source="post: 395348" data-attributes="member: 6816">Ruthlessness and social DarwinismCanis' posts made me think.  Military activity is a tremendous impetus to invention -- but it made me think more.  It made me think about the stereotypical orcish culture.Orcs are these incredibly violent, incredibly ruthless, fast breeding, strong creatures.  Now, I'll concede they aren't the best in the brains department -- but, again, I ask, how smart do they need to be?In a culture devoid of acknowledging pain is to be avoided, in a culture of constant challenge from every quarter -- both from within orcish society and from outside of it -- how many chances do the orcs get to do something really right in a really big way?  Following the thinking of Toynbee, what creates great civilizations is pressure.  And out of the common races of the "average" D&D game, who's society is constantly under pressure?  Whatever the list is, orcs are way, way up on the list of societies that have every reason in the world to achieve all sorts of excellence.  After all, their lives depend on it.So, I'm thinking that it might be the case that orcs -- due to the constant pressure they and others put them in -- might be very culturally advanced.  Cultures that aren't as squeezed as the orcs -- just about everyone else -- don't have the reason to excel as much as the orcs do.Just more to think about.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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