Look to the West: Thread III, Volume IV (Tottenham Nil)!

[teg]

Fascinating update. The road that will lead to Societism is ahead and the UPSA is already starting to walk it.

One question that I think is particularly fascinating is what happens to the study of the origins of humans? Theories on human evolution has swung considerably between a view that could confirm the Societist's theories [e.g., there was indeed once a single human language/tribe/group] to one that confirms Diversertaism [modern humans did not develop language before they spread across the globe]. Really I can't see this area of science not becoming even more politicized than in OTL.

teg

 

[Alex Richards]

"Zonal Rej" Zone King in this Novalatina?

Ah, and linguistics enters the fore, glad to see it. Eurasian is a nice alternative to Indo- European. And Leibniz's attempt to create a universal "philosophical language" is an important part of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. And the Near Eastern myth of Babel is important, believe it or not, to his cyberpunk novel Snow Crash.

I do love the Baroque Cycle.

 

[othyrsyde]

Like any important historical figure, it's interesting to see their evolution reflected in the build up of events that seem rather inconsequential as they unfold.

The linguistics part I found very fascinating.

 

[St. Just]

Hmm. It looks like Societist thought holds that due the 'natural universality' of a rigid hierarchy that democracy is an abberation leading to mob rule (as many of the US Founding Fathers among others did to a degree as well). Thus the logical end point is that the only way to ensure an end to war and unity among all men is a sort of benevolent autocratic dictatorship run by an enlightened individual.

Sort of 'people don't really know what's best for them' taken to the logical extreme.

Plato approves.

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

It was because of this that Sanchez rejected the idea of a constructed universal language. “It would be dead, of less worth than any incomprehensible hieroglyphs from the Egyptian pyramids.[6] Language needs idiom, and idiom needs myth, legend, famous people, famous events to draw upon.[7] Equally, if the language of one so-called nation was imposed upon the whole world, it would fail to work because people outside that region do not have the same background of knowledge to work with and the idioms would become meaningless. But if the same language was once spoken by all the peoples of the world and its original idioms could be revived...” Thus came the idea of Habla Humana, the universal Human Speech that would be derived from a reconstruction of Old Eurasian plus carefully calculated enhancements to allow for modern technologies and so forth.

The thing is that a reconstructed "Old Eurasian" would in effect be a constructed language. Nobody has spoken it for thousands of years and (unlike, say, modern Hebrew) no literature survives in it, so its idioms would carry no more historical association for modern speakers than a Latin-based conlang would. In fact, given that the vocabulary of Esperanto, Interlingua or the like would be more familiar than that of Old Eurasian, the resurrected proto-Indo-European tongue would probably have less historical meaning. Unless, of course, Indo-European mythology were reconstructed at the same time...

BTW, you might want to check your math on the 1844 legislative election.

 

[Admiral Matt]

Proto-Indo-European-speaking Societist South America is so unremittingly cool that I find myself deeply disappointed to know it'll end up with Neo Latin.

As a side note, there's recently been the suggestion that there may have been an even broader language even deeper in the past: Proto-Eurasian. If it's true, then a group somewhere between the Caucasus and Carpathians was especially successful at taking advantage of the end of the ice age, and one of its descendants - Proto-Indo-European - won out even bigger ten thousand years later.

I'm actually a bit skeptical - especially about Dravidian - but it's a fun idea. There's been an awareness for a long time that Finno-Ugric and Indo-European may once not have been neighboring language families, but neighboring languages full stop. The vague guess being that they were north-south neighbors and when the PIE's invented the chariot or domesticated the horse or whatever gave them their advantage, the FU's (heh) were the first to learn it off of them. Maybe even the reverse. But since the former were ensconced on the Steppe by most guesses, and the latter were in the mixed terrain north of it, the PIE's were much more successful. At any rate, being at ground zero at the pivotal moment may be why Finno-Ugric was able to survive the expansion at all.

Another thought. OTL, Marxism could frame itself as modern because it was - as an outgrowth of economics - inherently scientific. In practice the science naturally became subordinated to practicality once in government, but it remained as a key part of the legitimacy of the political, ideological, and philosophical systems. Heck, it does to this day! Having math, of all things, to back up an argument, is a powerful foundation even under the assumption that most adherents will never check the math and can't.

Societism doesn't seem to have even that. At most it's more like a philosophy with some inspiration coming (so far) out of Sociology and now Linguistics. I'm not sure off the top of my head how important the lack of "Scientific Societism" will be to the resulting system, but it seems significant. Maybe sympathizers will be attracted to the "dream" or philosophy, where Maxism had relatively more appeal to the analytically minded?

And.... We've already discussed that the pivotal, idealized classes of the ideologies are very different, but it strikes me that the founding ones - well to do academics - are much the same.

 

[FDW]

As a side note, there's recently been the suggestion that there may have been an even broader language even deeper in the past: Proto-Eurasian. If it's true, then a group somewhere between the Caucasus and Carpathians was especially successful at taking advantage of the end of the ice age, and one of its descendants - Proto-Indo-European - won out even bigger ten thousand years later.

Those people left Japanese and Korean out of Altaic.

 

[Finn]

Ah, there is a reason for that connection; I'm currently reading that very book for the first time right now I had already pre-planned the Indo-European link to Societism, but it brought it back to the front of my mind.

The Baroque Cycle or Snow Crash? Both are good, but IMHO the Baroque Cycle (and its sequel/prequel the Cryptonomicon) is better.

 

[Finn]

Zonal Rej is interesting because Zonal is the opposite of Meridional...

 

[Chargone]

Running the numbers, the majority in the election at the end there is 4, not five.

Ahh, linguistics....
Always fun to play around with

And nonsense political shinanigans evidencing once again why i dislike representative democracy and Hate the party system. (Not that i don't acknowledge the flaws in other systems, mind.)

 

[OwenM]

Running the numbers, the majority in the election at the end there is 4, not five.

I make it seven. 180 seats for them, 173 for the others. 180-173=7.

 

[Googolbyte]

103+71+2=176

180-176=4

180+176 != 353

 

[Alex Richards]

Those people left Japanese and Korean out of Altaic.

Isn't there some debate on that? I thought there were some who considered them to be a seperate family themselves, much like Basque.

 

[Thande]

The thing is that a reconstructed "Old Eurasian" would in effect be a constructed language. Nobody has spoken it for thousands of years and (unlike, say, modern Hebrew) no literature survives in it, so its idioms would carry no more historical association for modern speakers than a Latin-based conlang would. In fact, given that the vocabulary of Esperanto, Interlingua or the like would be more familiar than that of Old Eurasian, the resurrected proto-Indo-European tongue would probably have less historical meaning. Unless, of course, Indo-European mythology were reconstructed at the same time...

Well yes. Remember this is in the 1840s. Sanchez is overly optimistic about the prospects of archaeolinguistics being able to reconstruct a 'genuine' primordial language, partly because he is getting his information from Laurent, who's a bit of a true believer.

The fact that this isn't actually possible goes a way towards explaining why (as Admiral Matt says) the later Societists have quietly dropped this except as a very vague long-term goal in favour of Novalatina.

BTW, you might want to check your math on the 1844 legislative election.

Oh, whoops - well spotted. Have changed it.

Proto-Indo-European-speaking Societist South America is so unremittingly cool that I find myself deeply disappointed to know it'll end up with Neo Latin.

Heh. I nearly ended up calling it Neolatina, btw; I'd forgotten Neo- was Greek rather than Latin.

Another thought. OTL, Marxism could frame itself as modern because it was - as an outgrowth of economics - inherently scientific. In practice the science naturally became subordinated to practicality once in government, but it remained as a key part of the legitimacy of the political, ideological, and philosophical systems. Heck, it does to this day! Having math, of all things, to back up an argument, is a powerful foundation even under the assumption that most adherents will never check the math and can't.

An important point and this will be discussed a bit in the future--basically it stems from the fact that both Adam Smith and the Anti-Godwinist Clique of New Cambridge (who had the ideas that Malthus did in OTL) are viewed as more obscure than their OTL counterparts, so there really isn't the same kind of existing tradition of 'I have numbers so I must be right' school of socio-economic theory for an alt-Marx to draw upon.

There is a comparison to be made with how Newton's Principia started the idea of "science equals numbers" which would have seemed quite strange to people even twenty years before. The fact that a man had found that a natural phenomenon obeyed a mathematical formula (gravitation and the inverse square law) was so extraordinary that for the next century, everyone kept trying to bash square pegs into round holes to prove that everything else somehow obeyed an inverse square or cube law.

Societism doesn't seem to have even that. At most it's more like a philosophy with some inspiration coming (so far) out of Sociology and now Linguistics. I'm not sure off the top of my head how important the lack of "Scientific Societism" will be to the resulting system, but it seems significant. Maybe sympathizers will be attracted to the "dream" or philosophy, where Maxism had relatively more appeal to the analytically minded?

To a certain extent. Although I could see Societism using the same kind of mathematical approach that that crazy Russian uses in OTL to try and claim everyone's histories describe the same kings--in this case they would use it to illustrate (or fake) a close relationship between hierarchies found in different civilisations to show that they are inherent.

And.... We've already discussed that the pivotal, idealized classes of the ideologies are very different, but it strikes me that the founding ones - well to do academics - are much the same.

Yeah. "The only people with time to debate the great problems of the world are those who are not afflicted by them".

The Baroque Cycle or Snow Crash? Both are good, but IMHO the Baroque Cycle (and its sequel/prequel the Cryptonomicon) is better.

Snow Crash. I haven't read any of his works up till now so I thought I'd start here.

 

[Makemakean]

Wonderful chapter as always, though I am a bit saddened that the United Provinces of South America, one of my favourite nations that never were, is about to meet it's fall.

I do however have one small little detail about which I must complain.

The political landscape became poisoned with bitter partisanship, with the Unionists grandstanding by, for example, filibustering a bill creating a new government railway company unless it contained clauses about requiring a certain percentage of the workers to be not only Meridian citizens, but also natural born ones.

If the consistency regarding the THANDE Institute's translation technology, which OTL-ifies this timeline's more Germanic spelling, is to be applied, then this word could not appear here. It was introduced to the English language in the 1850s, more than a century after George II:s rather uneventful coronation in our timeline, and by cheer accident.

Wikipedia informs us that the word filibuster has its roots in the Dutch vrijbuiter via the Spanish filibustero, and originally refers to piracy. When it entered the English language, it at first exclusively referred to the military adventurers who initiated coups and took over unstable republics in Latin America, seeing this was a kind of "political piracy" if you will. It first received its modern meaning when it was ironically used by a Mississippian politician to refer to a lengthy speech designed to prevent a filibuster in Cuba.

While the practice of course is far, far older than that, the name first came up then.

Feel free however to use the term I intend to use in my timeline (I swear I will one day begin publishing stuff on this website) for the practice: a Catoniad, a portmanteau of Cato and Iliad, after the Roman statesman Cato the Younger who was known for (among other things) using the trick in the Roman Senate. If you decide to use it, the noun is “Catoniad” and the verb is “to Catoneer” (conjugated as "to engineer"), and a person who embarks on a Catoniad is known as a “Catonaut.”

And there you have it:
Makemakean - solving problems he himself created since August 2011.

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Well yes. Remember this is in the 1840s. Sanchez is overly optimistic about the prospects of archaeolinguistics being able to reconstruct a 'genuine' primordial language, partly because he is getting his information from Laurent, who's a bit of a true believer.

I assume that there'd be a certain amount of political mysticism to this - i.e., that humans would instinctively feel and understand the primordial language, or at least that the educated classes would (which they might consider another data point in favor of aristocratic universality).

 

[othyrsyde]

Snow Crash. I haven't read any of his works up till now so I thought I'd start here.

Yeah, it's one of my favorite books. You'll want to read Diamond Age after, it's kind of a sequel.

 

[Thande]

If the consistency regarding the THANDE Institute's translation technology, which OTL-ifies this timeline's more Germanic spelling, is to be applied, then this word could not appear here. It was introduced to the English language in the 1850s, more than a century after George II:s rather uneventful coronation in our timeline, and by cheer accident.

This is true but you're overthinking it a tad - one thing I'm trying to establish here is that, due to the way the Institute teams are digitising the books, inconsistencies creep in (this is my justification for why sometimes I will use a post-POD phrase and say it is a cultural translation, and other times I will use a unique in-timeline phrase and explain what it means). I have avoided using the word filibuster in the William Walker style context, instead using the Dutch-derived "freebooter" that you mention, just because it makes it noticeably different and I think that term is reasonably well understood already. However in this case I felt that coming up with an alternative term for filibuster in the parliamentary sense and then defining it would slow down the sentence too much, so in this case I went with cultural translation.

(Side note: for some reason Google Chrome's spellcheck does not recognise the words 'overthinking', 'tad', or indeed, er, 'Google'...)

 

[Makemakean]

This is true but you're overthinking it a tad - one thing I'm trying to establish here is that, due to the way the Institute teams are digitising the books, inconsistencies creep in (this is my justification for why sometimes I will use a post-POD phrase and say it is a cultural translation, and other times I will use a unique in-timeline phrase and explain what it means). I have avoided using the word filibuster in the William Walker style context, instead using the Dutch-derived "freebooter" that you mention, just because it makes it noticeably different and I think that term is reasonably well understood already. However in this case I felt that coming up with an alternative term for filibuster in the parliamentary sense and then defining it would slow down the sentence too much, so in this case I went with cultural translation.

Well then, justified enough to satisfy me. Case closed.

 

[Thande]

Well then, justified enough to satisfy me. Case closed.

It is a fine line to walk. Terry Pratchett wrote about the same issue (though in that case talking about your typical mediaeval fantasy worlds rather than an AH of our own) in the introduction to the Discworld Companion:

But the fact is that any fantasy world is, sooner or later, our own world. ... However towering the local mountains, however dwarf-haunted the local woods, any character wanting to eat a piece of zorkle meat between two slices of bread probably has no other word for it than 'sandwich'. ... The builder of fresh worlds may start out carefully avoiding Alsatian dogs and Toledo steel, but if he or she has any sense will one day look up from the keyboard and utter the words "What the hell?"

On some days you want to write everything in oltirnut spelin sistemz and make everything different for the sake of being different; but not every work can be Ulysses and comprehensibility to the reader has to be a factor as well. So I'm trying to strike a middle ground here while using the in-universe factor of the exploration teams acting as (not always super-competent or consistent) 'translators' for their superiors as a justification.