Making Cultures, Not Races

What Becomes Of Forgotten Knowledge?
'All Seeing' by Hector Mansilla

Culture is weird. 

I find it very hard to quantify cultural beliefs. That may be because it is flat-out impossible to boil down a complex system such as this to its foundational elements, which I don't necessarily believe, but it definitely proves challenging to imitate. The general sectioning of ideas that we call "culture" is so incredibly complex, so full of hypervariation, that even an amateur artist can handle what is effectively a bottomless chest of creativity. That difficulty seems to lie not in the department of numbers but in words. How does one form a culture? How does it come about in a way that is believable and not born from the seams of mockery?

If you do not intend to humiliate a group, 8 times out of 10, it will not be portrayed as such. I think that (far more often than some may believe) it is possible to tell whether a person is genuinely portraying a group as "bad" or "lesser" or if they are merely representing it. I also believe that you can describe a culture unfavourably even if it was not your intention, so definitely something to be aware of.

However, especially in fiction, sometimes the issue coalesces not in the portrayal of already-existent negativity but in the portrayal of culture as more than what it is. Culture is many things; it is representative of an individual's ideals, codifies a multitude of traits or features into identifiable groups, and can even serve as a microscope into more extraordinary truths. Through culture, we can identify ourselves within a community and, in turn, recognize what constitutes ourselves. 

If there is one thing that culture is not, it is race.

A Misunderstanding?

It should be stated that by no means is this a rampant issue. As more and more media has been published in film and literature, this odd contextualization of cultures as one big blob has begun to die down. Nevertheless, its presence is still felt, and some of the greatest works of our time have proven guilty of adjudicating its existence. From time to time, fantasy fiction predicates an idea that species persist off of mono-cultures—the elves and dwarves of Lord of The Rings, the Daleks of Doctor Who, and the many races of The Sword Coast in D&D—which inform their behaviour. All dwarves are trudging midgets with large beards who live deep within the earth, and all elves are ethereally beautiful aristocrats, deeply "attuned" with nature (wood elves) or snobbish of its creations (high elves), who wander the woodlands with longbows. 

This is in and of itself not a bad thing. The problem is when these ideas become assumptions of the norm rather than the individual. What comes to mind when you think of an elf? An orc? A human in fantasy fiction? A walking tree? Once these monoliths of culture become synonymous with the thing they symbolize, it becomes challenging to separate them again. Arnold Kemp over at Goblin Punch has a fantastic analysis of this problem here.  

So what can be done? If this issue holds the key to worse problems, how can we solve it? I don't know, not just because I think it still has some value but because I am looking for another solution. In designing cultures, not races, I wish to develop groups which stand against the grain of preconception. 

Of course, I'm bound to stumble and fall on the way down, and there is undoubtedly a fine line where culture and race intersect, but I see value in developing one separately from the other. Like faith, lore, and ideals, these totems can be set independently of one another, serving complimentary as a result.

Let's run through an example or two.

Art by Jessie Wu

Same Beginning, Same End

Unless you were grown in a vat or removed through cesarean (salutations, my fellow tumour babies), we were all born the same way. All human beings pop out of a womb after a couple of months, and in much the same way, we all eventually return to the earth. In this sense, we are all the same, but it is beyond this beginning and end that our differences arise. Everything from our genetic makeup to our surroundings to our cultural background differentiates us. 

In a group of a hundred people, the chance that two people share a birthday is nearly 100% (some argue that you can get >50% with as few as 23!). Imagine the fact that you share a birthday with somebody may just be the only similarity you have with them? 

Humanity as a species is ridiculously diverse. Ever since our ancestors scattered across the African continent and spread upon the rest of the world like lice, we've changed in nearly every way imaginable. Think of how many kinds of people there are, and not just in the visual sense? We have conquered entire landscapes—volcanos, canyons and island chains—for no reason other than a desire to live there. How much of your life do you think has been manipulated as a result of your living environment? Ever moved to a place that's nothing like where you grew up? Weird, huh? All aspects of our living experience—immigration examples notwithstanding—serve to teach us how to survive in that environment. Our customs, routines, and social norms act as how-to, informing us exactly how anybody stays in this place, especially the dominant majority. 

What would life be like if we all stuck around? What if humanity managed to construct a babel-esque structure, a leaning tower of pisa for communes, and we just evolved there instead? The issue with mono-cultures is that, in and of itself, the problem of settling, you cannot quell dissidents unless you first dispel free thought. An entire species living in a particular, interconnected location is bound to be made of dozens, if not hundreds, of different interacting groups of people. Sure, you can argue that it's unlikely you'll explore many of these groups in a story (or the author will simply focus only on the dominant majority), but there is absolutely value in depth. 

Ignoring questions of interracial and purely racist consequences, although intriguing and potentially significant, think of how a group can evolve only through their environment? In a tower-city surrounded by desert, how do you come about water? Is emphasis placed on the construction of aqueducts or mines? How does the every-man treat it? Is water a resource (at least somewhat) openly shared, for it is considered a necessity to all, or is it tightly regulated and/or hoarded? How do groups get around the tower, and is such transportation common? Are levels segregated?

Some of these questions may seem purely anecdotal, but they fulfill two objectives: to serve and to inform. What may be seen as "normal" to one faction may be reprehensible to another and openly preached by a third. Culture is not some magical background force that symbolizes the penultimate person; it is an evergreen, constantly changing power, which not only evolves with the group who created it but with the individual it seeds.

There's Lots More To Explore. I'll Be Back.
Art by Pieter Bruegel The Elder