[Dragaera] Is Kelly foolish?

[Mark Landin]

Mechanizing increased the ability of a man to grow more food than he
needs, thus providing both sustenance and income. In general terms,
mechanization allows a man to create surplus goods with his labor,
thus allowing him to participate in an economy and acquire things he
cannot provide for himself. A man with basic necessities met is less
likely to live nomadically, and would generally prefer a peaceful
stable society as opposed to a violent predatory one and would invest
personal effort to maintain such a situation.  If sorcery can multiply
a man's efforts like a machine, I see no reason widespread use of
sorcery wouldn't have a similar transformative effect. If the only
barrier to basic sorcery is literacy, then the Empire would either
eagerly pursue educational goals, or rabidly suppress them, depending
on whether they prefer the status quo or not.

On 9/22/10, Scott Schultz <scott at cjhunter.com> wrote:
>
>>One apparent change is increased literacy, which leads to the ability to do
> sorcery, which fixes many of the social problems
>>Easterners have.
>>Diseased, dirty, ignorant scum doesn't really apply if you can do sorcery
> at some reasonable level.
>> I'd love to see an Empire sponsored education program. It would be sort of
> cool way to piss off the Jhereg, while making them up their game a bit.
>
>>Mark
>
> Why would the government want to piss off the Jhereg? Zerika makes no bones
> about the fact that the Teckla and the other lower to middle classes are the
> natural prey of the Jhereg. Why rock the boat?
>
> More to the point, though, is whether your basic premise is true or not.
> Sorcery does not seem to raise anybody's standard of living. Primarily it's
> used for the sorts of reasons that we use machines in our lives. A bit of
> labor saving and travel, and the travel is a relatively new perk of sorcery.
>
> Sorcery isn't simple. Vlad knows a few handy spells, but his study has never
> gone beyond that and it may be that his skill is just that limited. If it
> was so dead simple that anyone could learn it and be proficient, then
> everyone would already be proficient.
>
> As an example of an Easterner who learned sorcery, Vlad doesn't really lend
> a lot of weight to an argument that sorcery, in and of itself, improves
> one's quality of life.
>
> Then there's the question of citizenship. Sorcery requires a link to the Orb
> and that link requires you to be a member of one of the Houses. The only
> House that's generally available is House Teckla. You can apparently walk up
> to the local rep, say "I want to join" and they'll sign you up, link you up,
> and put you to work toiling for the nearest noble. Of course, that probably
> means you'll be too busy to learn much sorcery. If joining House Teckla was
> so awfully attractive, it seems like the Easterners of South Adrilankha
> would have done it a long time ago.
>
> It doesn't seem very likely that an Empire-sponsored social program aimed at
> increasing sorcery literacy would also include a title of nobility.
>
> Mostly, though, the Empire needs an underclass to do the work that nobody
> else can stand doing, such as the leather tanning and what not. The
> Easterners provide that. Lifting them up would hurt the Empire in exactly
> the same way that destroying them would hurt. There's very little incentive
> for the Empire to develop a social conscience and improve life for the
> Easterners. This reality feeds into Kelly's stand that if anything is going
> to change, it's going to have to be that the lower classes demanded change
> and forced the upper classes into making the changes against their will.
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dragaera mailing list
> Dragaera at lists.dragaera.info
> http://lists.dragaera.info/listinfo.cgi/dragaera-dragaera.info
>

-- 
Sent from my mobile device

"He's old enough to know what's right and young enough not to choose
it. He's strong enough to win the world and weak enough to lose it." -
Neal Peart