Racial Unity - How Does It Work?

[jeff_wilson]

Various works of speculative fiction involve mystical or spiritual or psychic unity among a group of people or a race of human-like beings that remain individuals while acting in the mutual interests of their fellows as themselves. In particular, Julian May's Galactic Millieu books include a principle where this happens among a given sapient species when it reaches its "coadunate number", a level of population where the manifest and latent psychic abilities cause this to happen automatically, and cooperative violence like wars cease and individual crimes are reduced to a trickle of misdeeds by those few unable to take part in the unity for reasons of brain pathology or mutation. Separate species may have separate unities and act against each other, though once contact is established they are typically able to establish mutual familiarity and trust as if they were two people rather than bodies of billions or trillions of beings.

Is there a workable way to model this sort of thing that supports decreasing overall mental disads rather than inflicting them? And can the model be made flexible to allow something like Andi Jones' aliens that institute this sort of unity between themselves and nearby humans as part of first contact?

[Refplace]

Well if a race has certain advantages like Cultural Adaptability and Empathy as a special effect of this and possibly the disad Chummy.
They would then be easy to get along with.
Or are you looking for a way to force another race to become the same?

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Well if a race has certain advantages like Cultural Adaptability and Empathy as a special effect of this and possibly the disad Chummy.
They would then be easy to get along with.

People don't need Empathy to respect the feelings of their families and friends, and adding Chummy is a significant personality change.

Maybe something like a group Reputation (all my fellows) so that strangers' concerns are treated with importance similar to distant family members? Or a Mitigator on destructive or disruptive disads, so that they have better control numbers and less severe effects when the sufferer is within the communal rapport? Then even a Scroogelike person would feel the need to treat his employees with the begrudging toleration he gives his nephew, and would display his OPH: Ridicules Philanthropists less often but would still be recognizeable as the same person with some mellowing.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Or are you looking for a way to force another race to become the same?

I would need to avoid the one-way mind control thing. Andi's guys for instance each found themselves the sudden father-figures to hundreds of confused and heavily armed terrans going through a conflict of loyalty and genuinely concerned for the happiness of their adopted fellows and indirectly for the wellbeing of the unadopted troops who had been their brothers in arms a moment before.

[Gef]

We seem to be going through something like "racial unity" in the real world, as the banks of the world are so connected, in ways not wholly transparent, that every future recession is likely to be a global recession, according to pundits I hear on APM's Marketplace and BBC's Business Daily. -GEF

[gjc8]

I really do think you need a disadvantage to represent the change in mind-set. I'm not sure Chummy is quite right, though. Sense of Duty? You say they become "father-figures", etc, and Sense of Duty seems like the general way to represent family connections that don't rise to the level of Dependent.

On the other hand, being part of a massive group looking out for each other is a significant advantage, though I'm not sure what the best way to represent that is. Patron, perhaps?

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by gjc8

I really do think you need a disadvantage to represent the change in mind-set. I'm not sure Chummy is quite right, though. Sense of Duty? You say they become "father-figures", etc, and Sense of Duty seems like the general way to represent family connections that don't rise to the level of Dependent.

On the other hand, being part of a massive group looking out for each other is a significant advantage, though I'm not sure what the best way to represent that is. Patron, perhaps?

I think Patron is getting there, but I'm not sure you can have a sufficiently valuable Patron to overcome the cost of Sense of Duty, without expecting your fellows to act uncharacteristically supportive of you. It needs to be a net Advantage to represent a truly better way of getting along, but it can't be so drastic that you get pod people or hiveminds.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Gef

We seem to be going through something like "racial unity" in the real world, as the banks of the world are so connected, in ways not wholly transparent, that every future recession is likely to be a global recession, according to pundits I hear on APM's Marketplace and BBC's Business Daily. -GEF

I'm trying to think of a way of getting that sense of mutual investment on a personal level. Maybe a time-spanning racial memory that allows sharing of interpersonal memories in the present time?

[malloyd]

How does this mindset differ from a Sense of Duty?

Maybe you want Affliction with aura or emination to aflict a Sense of Duty (The Unity) and the Affliction ability itself.

[daniel_gudman]

This sounds like the Advantage "Claim to Hospitality" where everyone in the over-society is someone you can receive aid from, balanced by "Duty" or "Sense of Duty" to represent everyone in the over-society potentially making the same claims against you.

Since you're talking about changing deep, fundamental behavior in humans, I think it would be extremely difficult to model this as a strong effect with imposing disadvantages and advantages in the 40-point range for each.

Anyway, since what you're basically describing is mass psychic brainwashing, I feel in my gut this is one of those premises that teeters back and forth between utopia and dystopia in every scene.