Worldbuilding without the post-WW/WWII/Cold War glasses (TL, CR etc.)

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I'm not looking for a particular other made up world, but mostly looking at things that we take for granted, treating as an assumed part of TL6+, but which are actually merely the logical outcomes of certain political events in our world. The stuff that a worldbuilder should 'Unlearn'.

My point was that everything that happens is the result of certain events. What if Newton had never lived? Or Einstein? If you just lump their advances into a TL score, then it gets incredibly difficult to separate out the stuff you're looking for. Was the rise of Marxism an inevitable part of that TL, or was that all the result of Marx, you know, having existed? If a non-historical-earth worldbuilder puts down TL 6, then which is it going to be? Marxism or not?

It's a lot easier to do at lower TLs, where everyone had iron spears, than it is with the modern world where one single inventor or thinker can so drastically change everything.

(For the record: Æthereal Sun didn't have a WW/WWII/CW-equivalent, but gun laws vary wildly across the world.)

I don't know what that is.