Those were two great updates, Thande! This prose format is working out well, as it's both a nice change of pace and allows for more detailed worldbuilding. Sure, the lives of 'great people' or the development of ATL technologies are fun to read about, but the everyday is the basis of history!
There is something I wish to discuss however, that which is perhaps at the center of LTTW's creativity. That's right, I'm talking about everyone's favourite form of pacifistic meritocratic universalism, Societism! My fondness for (political) philosophy has lead me to read the Sanchez quotes from part 4, and several questions have arisen (awful list incoming):
1 In Sanchez' biography, he points out that Chinese and Western nobility sure share a lot of terminology, leading him to develop a 'universal hierarchy'. While I do think that this is quite shortsighted, as the past has seen way more systems of government than one could comfortably 'universalise', there is an interesting parallel across continents of centralised hereditary rule. I was wondering how my fellow alternate historians would explain this peculiarity. Again, I am not saying such forms of rule are the natural state (I might just as easily make the claim that anarchism is the one true system and that authority is a 'biologically insignificant aberration'
), I'm just wondering how you all would explain this parallel.
2 In the preface to chapter 169, Sanchez states that the people should have the idea that their rulers are not eternal, that they should be able to change. Is this just a defense of meritocracy, or did he espouse some form of democracy here?
3 Would you say that Societism is more finalistic than socialism? While Marxism and other such socialist ideologies have been accused of historicism, I feel that most socialists/anarchists do not seek to 'end history', but just solve particular problems such as wage labour and class conflict (problem according to them of course). Societism on the other hand sounds more like 'we have to solve everything forever' from the get go. You might very understandably not agree with me, but this makes me think that Societism is thus by its nature more totalitarian than especially anarchistic forms of socialism wish to be.
4 I think that Societism, thanks to a lack of sophistication perhaps, has some significant intellectual 'blind spots'. By this I mean that it seems to have premises like 'war is JUST wrong' and 'class is JUST natural'. Yes, war is wrong, and yes, class seems to be present in most human societies, but these facts should give rise to clever analysis, not just the positing of sloppy solutions like 'universal hierarchy'. In writing Sanchez, did you build in these blind spots on purpose?
5 Lastly, how did you come up with Societism? I see some Plato in there, some Hobbes, but is this an after-the-fact analysis or were you inspired by OTL political philosophers?
I hope this post is not too much for you. I'm eager to see the rise of Diversitarianism, as it would offer me, a naturalist mentian (broad-strokes anarchist OTL) some comrades in the struggle against the evil Combine!