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Old 09-11-2019, 07:27 AM   #21
atomiclich
 
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Default Re: Has anyone ever tried to create campaign based on Plato's Repuplic?

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Originally Posted by Donny Brook View Post
Arguably, the People's Republic of China is structured the same as a platonic republic. The ruling Communist establishnent are the philisopher class (albeit more fallible), the armed forces are the soldier class, and the burgeoning ebtrepreneurs are the merchant class.
With some lenght of imagination yes (justice is just something they are lacking IMO), within same logic you could argue that orinal Karl Marx was transhumanist(actually I'm not exacly joking here).

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Old 09-11-2019, 07:45 AM   #22
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Default Re: Has anyone ever tried to create campaign based on Plato's Repuplic?

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Isn't the correct term for a society of maximum fulfilment a eudaimonia? I was taught that "Utopia" simply means "nowhere" and can refer to any hypothetical society regardless of quality - it need be neither bad nor good, just hypothetical. If we don't like Eudaimonia the Eutopia would be effective Greek as well IIRC.
The way I learned it, "utopia" was a pun: the good place (eutopia) that is no place (outopia).
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Old 09-11-2019, 12:39 PM   #23
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Default Re: Has anyone ever tried to create campaign based on Plato's Repuplic?

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With some lenght of imagination yes (justice is just something they are lacking IMO), within same logic you could argue that orinal Karl Marx was transhumanist(actually I'm not exacly joking here).

--Mp
He kinda was... in that humans are completely incapable of "real" communism when a group exceeds their Monkeysphere.

(In that there have been fairly successful small communist societies, but anything over 50-100 or so people and the commune structure breaks down and becomes oligarchic socialism)




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The way I learned it, "utopia" was a pun: the good place (eutopia) that is no place (outopia).
Ditto actually.
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Old 09-11-2019, 02:28 PM   #24
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Default Re: Has anyone ever tried to create campaign based on Plato's Repuplic?

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(In that there have been fairly successful small communist societies, but anything over 50-100 or so people and the commune structure breaks down and becomes oligarchic socialism)
Certainly such small societies, up to maybe 120 or so, can work without formal institutions. But I'm not sure they're communist in the sense of "from each according to his ability; to each according to his needs." Yes, when a hunter has a big kill, they share it out with everyone. But if you never bother to go hunting, or you don't share your kills, or you're persistently obnoxious, the other hunters will drive you out into the wilderness, where you'll probably die. It seems more like a form of insurance, or keeping up your lodge dues, or maintaining a credit balance in an account. It's really economically rational, in that the meat will spoil before you can eat all of it, but if you didn't kill, getting a cut of someone else's kill can keep you alive, and has a lot more value than the spoiled remains of your current kill.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that the "sharing" is really an ongoing process of exchange, spread out over time, and in a society small enough so everyone knows who's pulling their weight and who isn't.
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Old 09-11-2019, 02:47 PM   #25
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Default Re: Has anyone ever tried to create campaign based on Plato's Repuplic?

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(SNIP)

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that the "sharing" is really an ongoing process of exchange, spread out over time, and in a society small enough so everyone knows who's pulling their weight and who isn't.
Communities such as those (which Marx referred to, in the aggregate, as "primitive communism") have no need of laws or formal governments.

Everybody knows everybody, the culture (to the extent any exists, at all) is wholly homogeneous, and kinship ties are well-understood.

That means any conflict can be (and usually is) resolved through either personal vendetta, or enforced conformity via social pressures backed by threat of exile.

No need for government, there and no social classes, either.
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Old 09-12-2019, 12:23 AM   #26
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Default Re: Has anyone ever tried to create campaign based on Plato's Repuplic?

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I have played with the idea of writing GURPS Utopia, a guide to campaigns set in utopian societies. Kind of the mirror image of dystopian settings like Paranoia. The big limiting factor is conflicts (...)
Sounds great.

Now, isn't conflict the actual element to make a story around utopias? Something like, the struggle to keep the status quo in front of their perpetrators (which usually are, outsiders).

Suddenly I recall the planet of the apes.
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Old 09-12-2019, 12:37 AM   #27
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Default Re: Has anyone ever tried to create campaign based on Plato's Repuplic?

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Communities such as those (which Marx referred to, in the aggregate, as "primitive communism") have no need of laws or formal governments.

Everybody knows everybody, the culture (to the extent any exists, at all) is wholly homogeneous, and kinship ties are well-understood.

That means any conflict can be (and usually is) resolved through either personal vendetta, or enforced conformity via social pressures backed by threat of exile.
Well, yes. But it's not communism in the sense of "everyone is guaranteed that they will be freely given what they need to survive." The very smallness and informality mean that there is very little room for free riding/social loafing. They may not explicitly say "my price for this haunch of antelope is that you have to promise me a side of pig next week" (for one thing, hunting's not that predictable!), but if you don't contribute, they'll start looking at you and saying "I gave you a present last week. . . ."

I don't think that the qualifier about whether they have a culture is valid at all. A human society can't be without a culture, at least unless it's becoming extinct, if then. I've read, for example, that language studies of small, isolated groups find that they have incredibly complicated and irregular grammars, much more so than English or Mandarin or Arabic. . . .
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Old 09-12-2019, 06:20 AM   #28
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Default Re: Has anyone ever tried to create campaign based on Plato's Repuplic?

There's also a history of slightly larger communities making communism work, if they're composed of ideologically well motivated volunteers. These societies don't always work, but many can pull it off for a few decades. At which point the make-up of the community has changed via births, deaths, and so forth, and it enters a slow decline.
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Old 09-12-2019, 01:02 PM   #29
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Default Re: Has anyone ever tried to create campaign based on Plato's Repuplic?

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Well, yes. But it's not communism in the sense of "everyone is guaranteed that they will be freely given what they need to survive." The very smallness and informality mean that there is very little room for free riding/social loafing. They may not explicitly say "my price for this haunch of antelope is that you have to promise me a side of pig next week" (for one thing, hunting's not that predictable!), but if you don't contribute, they'll start looking at you and saying "I gave you a present last week. . . ."
I don't think you and Marx would disagree on this, at all.

(Wait. I think the apocalypse is nigh....) 8O

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I don't think that the qualifier about whether they have a culture is valid at all. A human society can't be without a culture, at least unless it's becoming extinct, if then. I've read, for example, that language studies of small, isolated groups find that they have incredibly complicated and irregular grammars, much more so than English or Mandarin or Arabic. . . .
Okay, I'll cop to overstating that bit. :)
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Old 09-12-2019, 09:07 PM   #30
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Default Re: Has anyone ever tried to create campaign based on Plato's Repuplic?

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Communities such as those (which Marx referred to, in the aggregate, as "primitive communism") have no need of laws or formal governments.

Everybody knows everybody, the culture (to the extent any exists, at all) is wholly homogeneous, and kinship ties are well-understood.

That means any conflict can be (and usually is) resolved through either personal vendetta, or enforced conformity via social pressures backed by threat of exile.

No need for government, there and no social classes, either.
Actually they do. They just don't have need of piles of red tape bigger than the Talmud and less aesthetically pleasing reflecting judgements about gobs of people with gobs of different specialties. Everybody needs laws because they have to have some idea what comes next. It is just that the laws are enforced differently and it is hard to tell them from custom because there is no clear line.

For instance if they have no way to end vendettas, they will have a generations long attempt at mutual genocide. And it will cause so many casualties in the end that it is a toss up whether or not it is be just as well if one tribe just wipes out or enslaves the other instead of dragging the mess out and getting more people killed.
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