Make the most unusual culture you can even imagine.

Modern Western humanism is extremely unusual from an anthropological perspective.
Humanism alone? Maybe not extremely unusual as there are predecessors of humanism in Ancient India, Greece, and some sects of Sunni Islam during the Middle Ages.

Modern Western culture and economy in aggregate? Very unusual from a historical perspective.
 

Dolan

Banned
Mesoamericans IOTL is already quite unusual in their human sacrifices and cannibalism as major sustenance. If the Europeans never conquered The Aztecs and let them evolve for another 300-400 years, their society could evolve into even more dystopian society coming from the deepest of Nightmares. Mayans are only marginally better, but then, they are already on the decline when the Europeans come.

Not that this justify the brutality of the Spanish conquest themselves, but...
 
Last edited:

Skallagrim

Banned
Imagine, if you will, a society that by and large embraces a linear view of history (rather than a cyclical one), that widely embraces the premise of universal citizenship, and espouses the intrinsic equlity of all persons regardless of gender, religion, ethnicity, physical or mental fitness etc. etc. -- and then imagine that the people living in this same society are to an unprecentedent degree atheistic or agnostic. Imagine that not only are there no ties of importance between the stte and the priesthood-- there are explicit laws preventing such ties. Finally, imagine that this society combines in immense dedication to respecting human freedoms with a general tendency to unprecedented scope of government involvement in their lives (which must surely seem strange to virtually everyone from virtually all other periods, because throughout history, unusually expansive state power has been the foremost danger to human freedom).

This is, without a doubt, one of the most unusual societies from all of human history. Of the vast scores of humans not born into the time and place that produced this culture, virtually every single one would consider it -- if it were described to them by a time traveller -- to be both utterly alien and completely unbelievable. The man describing this world is clearly insane, or belongs to one of the weirder religious cults...
 

Vuu

Banned
Australian aboriginal cock splitting (subincision I think it's called), anyone?

Unless it's just propaganda. Seriously, why the fuck would anyone do such a thing????
 
Top