are green, bald, tailed, oxygen-breathing bipeds;
sit on their tails;
ride the horned gwydh;
eat gwydh-milk cheese;
drink Terran-descended tea and a beer called telloch;
do not chatter but celebrate noisily;
touch tails as an amicable gesture;
separate "civilian" and "military" differently and less clearly than Terrans;
have a shorter history of industrialization and planetary unification;
thus, retain several unintegrated local cultures and languages;
are austere and traditionalist;
instinctively enjoy combat;
are dynamic when Terra is decadent;
value the Race above individuals or organizational forms;
recognize a rank of aristocrats who lead enterprises to expand the Race's frontier in any direction - scientific, economic, territorial etc;
placated elemental forces, then developed an intolerant monotheism.
3 comments:
Hi, Paul!
I would not say the religion of the dominant culture of Merseia from around the Wilwidh Sea was intolerantly monotheistic. The truly offensive idea to be found in the Roidhunate was its xenophobic racism, the belief that Merseians are superior to all other races. And one logical extrapolation of that belief was the idea that any non Merseian races which dared to resist the Roidhunate could "rightly" be exterminated.
Thank you, for all its faults, I far prefer the Terran Empire!
Sean
Sean,
I was not quite happy with "intolerant" and considered something like "exclusivist." Theirs is a God of the Race, not of all beings.
Paul.
Hi, Paul!
Yes, I think "exclusivist" makes more sense in describing the dominant religion of Merseia. Better than "intolerant."
And as we have seen Jerusalem Catholicism (which you believe is the Catholic Church where the Papacy moved to Jerusalem) accepted NON human converts. I discussed in my "God and Alien" essay how it could be argued that Christianity could be proposed or offered to non humans. That would make Christianity genuinely UNIVERSAL whereas Merseia's religion was exclusivist.
Makes me wonder how the Roidhunate treated Christians within its dominions. Badly, I would not be surprised to find out!
Sean
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