[Dragaera] Liberals

[Jerry Friedman via Dragaera]

> From: Philip Hart via Dragaera <dragaera at lists.dragaera.info>

> 
> On Tue, 18 Nov 2014, Christopher Martin via Dragaera wrote:
> 
>>  I think this misses a big point about Dragaeran culture - its fluid, and
>>  the dragons we see in the books today, when the Dragon is near the top of
>>  the Cycle, are not the Dragons you would see when they are near the
>>  bottom. [...]
> 
>>  Which raises the interesting point that the Jhereg we see in the books are
>>  the Jhereg at the bottom of the cycle - feuding, squabbling, bickering over
>>  small pieces of territory, etc.  I envision a more Anhk-Morpork-ian
>>  "organized crime" when the Jhereg are at the top of the Cycle.
> 
> These points reflect my view as well.  It depends on the Cycle period 
> compared to the length of a Dragaeran generation (which is perhaps 
> rather shorter than it would otherwise be for the warlike classes), 
> but I figure the army will be populated by Dragons who have lived their 
> lives in the expectancy that by divine or superdivine order they 
> will temporarily work for classes that in the Vlad-era standing of the 

> Cycle are dirt

Unless those Dragons have been raised with the expectation that they won't
have to work for those classes and they temporarily have to do other things.
Or with the idea that they do have to work for those classes but the
worst thing that could happen is that they like it.

> but in the time of the ascendancy of the Teckla are the 
> rich and fashionable.

Rich, yes.  Fasionable, maybe not.  When there started to be rich Jews in
Europe, it did not decrease anti-semitism--far from it.

> If the Cycle period is say 8kyears then there are > what, 4k/500 = 8 generations from Vlad's time before the bottom rail is 
> on top, or say Jane Austen's England versus ours.


But there's a biological difference between Dragons and Teckla that there
isn't between, say, medieval nobles and peasants.  I assume so, at least--
it would be funny to find out that the differences between the Houses are
all cultural.  Anyway, Dragaerans are quite clear on what kind of people
their ancestors were far more generations ago than that, and it's very
important to them.

Jerry Friedman


There may not be so much of a biological difference