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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4649997" data-attributes="member: 4937">Really?  Does any of the following sound familiar?"Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee," Exodus 20:12. "Honor thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee," Deuteronomy 5:16. "Ye shall fear every man his mother, and his father . . . ," Leviticus 19:3. "My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother," Proverbs 1:8. "Hearken unto thy father that begat thee, and despise not thy mother when she is old," Proverbs 23:22. "Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honor thy father and thy mother; which is the first commandment with promise; That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," Ephesians 6:1-4. "Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged," Colossians 3:20-21.I would say that that is pretty hard core Western tradition there, certainly in any period from the West we usually think of as inspiring D&D.  I think really we are looking at a cultural tradition in the West that barely is old enough to qualify as a tradition, and to the extent that it would inform a Westernized D&D setting I would find it an anachronism.I know a modern American farm girl whose told me that if her parents objected to her choice of spouse, she'd break off an engagement.  This isn't quite as traditional and conservative as the modern Korean college student who told me that she was anxious to return to Korea so that her parents would arrange a marriage for her with 'a nice boy', but its still extant.That might be different.  There is a strong streak of ancestor worship in much of the East that you don't really find in the West.Yes, but the modernity of both of those countries is pretty recent.  I mean, for my part, I'm an American and not that old and my mother picked cotton.  Through much of the south, mail was delivered by mule into the early 1950's.  I can still remember when many people in the South didn't have a private phone and used well water: when my mother was a girl many homes didn't have electricity.  I don't think that either Japan or Korea has a widespread industrial tradition that is much older than that of the American South.  I don't know much about the history of Thailand, and I'll defer to your experience, but I'm guessing at late as 1975 they probably had ~80% of the labor force in agriculture.  Get outside of Bangcock and possibly a few other urban centers with very fast growing 'Tiger' economies, and that's probably still true even today.  It's entirely possible that a post-Industrial Eastern culture will be vastly different than a post-Industrial Western culture, but I continue to think that the particular difference we are talking about wouldn't be remarked on by a wanderer passing from West to East before the 18th century certainly and probably not that much before the 20th.</blockquote>

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