On the other hand, imagine if they got a glimpse of what they would accomplish.
The modern world isn't perfect, but it's damn peachy compared to the past of man-eating dragons.
White Wolf's World of Darkness
The modern world isn't perfect, but it's damn peachy compared to the past of man-eating dragons.
AkatsukiL13
An Enlightened Mind
- Location
- New Copernicus Station
Well here's the interesting thing, the Inner Circle and Control, the leadership bodies of the Order of Reason and the Technocracy respectively, were always kept enigmatic and hidden. While the Sorcerer's Crusade Rulebook does list the Maximi that represent each Convention that's about all they really talk about them. MtAs's finale, Ascension, does give us answer on Control, along with a second. Neither of which are compatible with each other.
In the scenario Judgement Control isn't a person or a group of people but rather a force created by the collective subconscious of the Union and the Order of Reason before it that literally absorbs every Daedalean and Technocrat that reached that high end of power and authority which also has wormed its way into the Conditioning of Technocrats. The only ones that managed to escape this was the Void Engineers as they rejected Conditioning. But back to the point, Control is the way it is because that's what the people believe their leaders should be.
On the other hand in the scenario The Revolution Will Be Televised, also known as the Technocrat Civil War, has Control being the original leaders and founders of the Order of Reason. However while mages can achieve immortality they begin to accumulate Paradox because they're living beyond what is the acceptable limit, forcing them to leave Earth for the Umbra so they can keep on living. However that carries the risk of becoming something of spirit rather than flesh. And that's what happened to them, they became Spirits of Reason and eventually withdrew their attention from Earth, over a hundred years ago. So the actions of the Technocracy has been their own doing rather than Control's. It's only the Avatar Storm that drew their attention back to Earth and guess what, they don't support the 'destroy all deviants and control the world' hardliners but rather the moderate faction of the Union that tries to hold to the original ideals of the OoR, protecting and guiding mankind.
Hmm... What does Consensus do to people though?
Uh... By which I mean... Okay, so. If enough people believe a government is corrupt and evil (and arguably it doesn't even have to be the citizens of that nation! After all, couldn't it just happen from the rest of the world believing bad things about a nation?), it could actually become corrupt and evil and shadowy. And this has bad implications for democracy and authoritarianism.
But no, I was thinking on a smaller, personal, scale. An individual scale.
How are individual people affected by Consensus?
For example, do individuals start shifting to meet the expectations of the people who know them? Are people affected by Consensus to the point of being slightly-to-whatever affected by what other people think of them?
Is the whole "People in the Umbra turn into Spirits" simply an extension of the effect of the Consensus upon individuals? That in the Umbra, people are simply more easily turned into archetypes and memetic versions of themselves?
Hell, what does this imply about celebrities and government figures?? Does the President get affected by what his nation, and the world, think of him? Hell, that makes me wonder if cause-and-effect can even be nailed down at the extreme; does a leader fuck things up because of human error and fallibility, or because the Democrats and/or Republicans spent time spreading propaganda?
For that matter, why shouldn't it work on the other end too -- why don't nations that deify their leaders and think they can make no error, result in having leaders that don't fuck things up?
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I mean... If you buy into this idea, then... what would the idea of "coming up with stupid ideas/decisions" even mean?
How would you be able to tell if communism failed horribly because it 'actually' failed horribly, or because more of the world believed it was bad?
Taken to an extreme, this would just make the very idea of "disagreement" complicated and confusing... If somebody says "I don't think your idea will work, because..." is there even a point to him saying that if all it takes is enough people agreeing on things?
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On another note... If collective belief is so important, why were ideas like entropy (i.e. the universe will eventually run out of useable energy and die) and the laws of thermodynamics allowed to propagate -- wouldn't it be better to convince everybody that the universe doesn't have a finite lifespan? That you can't run out of useable energy?
((Actually I guess that's a bit of an unfair question, because I could apply that to pretty much any idea, and the answer would probably work out to be a Doylist one; "because the writers wouldn't have been able to account for every little thing that ought to have been changed, and because at some point you start moving away from 'a world very much like our own' if you start taking away things like the laws of thermodynamics or hell".))
Although, hm, for entropy specifically both the Doylist and Watsonian answers could be "Because this is the World of Darkness; a spiritually stained and wounded world." It has scary/unfortunate ideas because the world was wounded at some point and that wound echoes and remains.
You'd think that more people in-universe would bitch about the laws of thermodynamics though. At the least, the Invisible College/Control and 9 Traditions wouldn't like it. Unless I'm missing something?
Uh... By which I mean... Okay, so. If enough people believe a government is corrupt and evil (and arguably it doesn't even have to be the citizens of that nation! After all, couldn't it just happen from the rest of the world believing bad things about a nation?), it could actually become corrupt and evil and shadowy. And this has bad implications for democracy and authoritarianism.
But no, I was thinking on a smaller, personal, scale. An individual scale.
How are individual people affected by Consensus?
For example, do individuals start shifting to meet the expectations of the people who know them? Are people affected by Consensus to the point of being slightly-to-whatever affected by what other people think of them?
Is the whole "People in the Umbra turn into Spirits" simply an extension of the effect of the Consensus upon individuals? That in the Umbra, people are simply more easily turned into archetypes and memetic versions of themselves?
Hell, what does this imply about celebrities and government figures?? Does the President get affected by what his nation, and the world, think of him? Hell, that makes me wonder if cause-and-effect can even be nailed down at the extreme; does a leader fuck things up because of human error and fallibility, or because the Democrats and/or Republicans spent time spreading propaganda?
For that matter, why shouldn't it work on the other end too -- why don't nations that deify their leaders and think they can make no error, result in having leaders that don't fuck things up?
---------------------------------
I mean... If you buy into this idea, then... what would the idea of "coming up with stupid ideas/decisions" even mean?
How would you be able to tell if communism failed horribly because it 'actually' failed horribly, or because more of the world believed it was bad?
Taken to an extreme, this would just make the very idea of "disagreement" complicated and confusing... If somebody says "I don't think your idea will work, because..." is there even a point to him saying that if all it takes is enough people agreeing on things?
---------------------------------
On another note... If collective belief is so important, why were ideas like entropy (i.e. the universe will eventually run out of useable energy and die) and the laws of thermodynamics allowed to propagate -- wouldn't it be better to convince everybody that the universe doesn't have a finite lifespan? That you can't run out of useable energy?
((Actually I guess that's a bit of an unfair question, because I could apply that to pretty much any idea, and the answer would probably work out to be a Doylist one; "because the writers wouldn't have been able to account for every little thing that ought to have been changed, and because at some point you start moving away from 'a world very much like our own' if you start taking away things like the laws of thermodynamics or hell".))
Although, hm, for entropy specifically both the Doylist and Watsonian answers could be "Because this is the World of Darkness; a spiritually stained and wounded world." It has scary/unfortunate ideas because the world was wounded at some point and that wound echoes and remains.
You'd think that more people in-universe would bitch about the laws of thermodynamics though. At the least, the Invisible College/Control and 9 Traditions wouldn't like it. Unless I'm missing something?
NonSequtur
a body
I don't know, the Euthanatoi are cool with entropy. And I'm pretty sure most people who care (ie. Mages) have their own ways of saying 'Fuck you conservation of energy'. The Wyld may be marginalised, but it is not gone yet.
Or you could blame Nephandi. Fucking Nephandi.
Or you could blame Nephandi. Fucking Nephandi.
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Wakka
Shadow Cabal Man in Black
- Location
- California
No one cares about them. Entropy for the universe is something that'll be a concern in literally several billion years. Human society has changed paradigms in less than a thousand, going from swords & sorcery & fae & monsters everywhere & a spirit world in the sky to, well, the information age. By the time it becomes a problem that's even vaguely on the horizon, the groups with influence over society (E.G. the successors of the successors of the successors.....of the successors of the current groups) can deal with it.
The same can be said for most other long and medium term issues.
At the least, the Laws of Thermodynamics basically mean you can't get free energy; can't get more out of a thing than you put in. Which means that any Technocrat technology that generates energy like that? Is going to be vulgar; they're not going to become Consensual because people believe in the Laws of Thermodynamics.
And the TU always likes being able to make their technology acceptable to the masses.
And besides -- it's much easier to solve a problem like this sooner, before it becomes entrenched to begin with. That's when it's just a matter of manipulating belief.
And there's also the fact that leaving the meme of "the universe will eventually die" has its own effects on what people are more likely to be able to believe and to start thinking about. I imagine that if you're aiming for immortality, it'd probably be useful if you didn't have everybody convinced of the very idea that the universe itself will die. I mean, if even the universe can die of old age, why shouldn't humans?
And the TU always likes being able to make their technology acceptable to the masses.
Why? This is a bad -- unnecessary -- thing in the future. No reason not to just prevent it. Plus it probably fucks with the Consensualness of technology based around free energy.
Or maybe by the time it becomes a problem, it's impossible to solve because the Consensus has accepted it for countless ages; because the very Consensus is that "you can't break the Laws of Thermodynamics".
And besides -- it's much easier to solve a problem like this sooner, before it becomes entrenched to begin with. That's when it's just a matter of manipulating belief.
Why allow a problem to remain? Rather -- why allow a problem to be formed in the first place. It's lazy.
And there's also the fact that leaving the meme of "the universe will eventually die" has its own effects on what people are more likely to be able to believe and to start thinking about. I imagine that if you're aiming for immortality, it'd probably be useful if you didn't have everybody convinced of the very idea that the universe itself will die. I mean, if even the universe can die of old age, why shouldn't humans?
Wakka
Shadow Cabal Man in Black
- Location
- California
1000 years ago there were fae in the woods, vampires in the castles, and magic was used with little, if any, paradox. People went on spirit walks through the aether freely (albeit with a mage beside them). A car would literally not work because metal and fluids did not work that way. It changed. Assume that record keeping gets better, so what? Take 1,000 years (Hi Order of Reason/Technocracy), memory editation (Hello Mind), and targeted assassination (Hello global conspiracy in charge of nations) and you could make civilization believe anything. It'd be a project, for sure, but it's not a problem. Again, they have literally tens of billions of years (orders of magnitude more time than civilization has even existed) before anything even shows itself, assuming they don't end up technobabbling a new energy generation means in.
Hi there NWO, how goes the hyperpsych these days? Very well? Awesomesauce.
AkatsukiL13
An Enlightened Mind
- Location
- New Copernicus Station
The problem is that for all the success of the Order of Reason and the Technocracy they don't actually have control over the Consensus and it has come back to bite them. Their attempts to introduce cloning which could have led to cloning immortality being accepted failed, the runaway success of the Internet and social media caught them completely off guard, the apathy towards things like space exploration, etc. has all hindered them to one degree or another. They are certainly active in guiding/controlling the Masses and by extension the Consensus, the embodiment of that being the Time Table and the various plans connected to it, ranging from One Year Plans to Fifty Year Plans. However as the old saying goes, no plan survives contact with the enemy and just like in real life you can never truly predict how people will react.
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
That whole line of argument would work better if, for example, the Progenitors hadn't saved their Nazi member at the end of World War II, nor let them go on to experiment with the effects of diseases on minorities (most likely a reference to the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, though the timeframe is off).
Likewise it's great to say that harmful thought should be eliminated; many in the traditions would in fact agree (there are two per-generated Euthanatoi with that theme, and whole sub-factions of The Cult of Ecstasy members peruse that goal in a somewhat softer approach). But you need to define what harmful thought is - and considering that Interaction X, for instance, considers empathy a useful trait to eliminate you run into the problem that you aren't actually saving or protecting people when you change them that much.
If you want brutal utilitarian you can find it, but the Technocracy as a whole is about serving the Technocracy; they've become what the Order of Reason decried. Which is intentional. The Order of Reason was made to be sympathetic and human in all the ways the Technocracy is not, it's why the Craftmasons exist, as a symbol of that betray of high ideal, for the questioner to be replaced by the inquisitor.
So the answer to "Why don't they use hyperpsych to solve a small problem, smothering it in the cradle?" is "Because they can wait to use hyperpsych to solve it when it's a big problem instead"?
Wakka
Shadow Cabal Man in Black
- Location
- California
Why don't HITMARK VIs work in Consensus? Because the hyperpsych hasn't made them Consensual yet. You're approaching this from the wrong direction. They need to change the beliefs of people regarding reality to make a non-thermodynamically compliant engine to work in the first place.
Onto an entirely other topic
How do Orphans get dragged into one faction or another and/or become Marauders.
More specifically one who has gone with a Paradigm of "I'm really, really good at doing stuff" not the blatant "I just went to Hogwarts" type
Please note I'm entirely willing to take references to source books as well.
How do Orphans get dragged into one faction or another and/or become Marauders.
More specifically one who has gone with a Paradigm of "I'm really, really good at doing stuff" not the blatant "I just went to Hogwarts" type
Please note I'm entirely willing to take references to source books as well.
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
More fundamentally, while from a Mage perspective it's unclear if the Wyrm, Weaver, and Wyld are 'real' 'entities', for very dubious values of entities, the forces of Stasis and Pattern, Destruction and Renew, and Creation and Change are real fundamental forces. Mages embody them to some extent through their Avatars, even for mages (like Technocrats) who don't believe in Avatars.
For that matter, Avatars remain real despite Sleepers not believing in them and a significant fraction of mages actively disbelieving believing in them. So while Consensus can dress up the forces and make the rules for the boardgame they play on, they remain their own 'real' thing.
So you can't shuffle off Entropy. You can allow for new creation to counteract that, but the Technocracy has been subverted by the principle of Pattern, and so they actively work agaisnt principles of Creation because creation allows new things that don't always fit with the old things, saying tomorrow can't be perfectly planed. Is a force of change.
They would have to accept that into their work if they want to get creation within their paradigm, and they aren't willing, even though that will ultimately destroy the world. Ultimately is probably 'soon,' by the by.
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I should probably rephrase this. The Technocracy aren't good guys. They're idealists with an idea no less valid than the Traditions one. It's just that the world is a pretty terrible place where thoughtcrime can be real, and thus to enforce one world vision and one world order you're going to have to get your hands dirty.
The Craftsmasons were hardcore Ascension Warriors in the way Iteration X in the 80s and 90s were. The Order of Reason is sympathetic because they're the underdogs, much like the Traditions are sympathetic because they're the underdogs. The nature of consensus reality means that if you want to enforce a world order, you're going to very much have to do some pretty shitty things. Even assume a hypothetical Traditions victory. They start singing kumbayah, everyone gets their own place with their own paradigm-and suddenly due to luck or whatever one place starts outcompeting its neighbors. Maybe the guys in Gernsbackville don't require you to kill a chicken every time you want to know what the weather will be tomorrow and Verbenatopia does. Unless you want Verbenatopia to go extinct, you're going to have to force them to stop having a more appealing worldview. The alternative might be to abandon everything to live in the Umbra-but Umbral realms, as the Avatar Storm shows, are quite fragile to catastrophe, and with the ease of isolationism and the lack of free flows of ideas, ironically the 'everyone gets their own goddamn umbral realm' sounds more like Stasis than the hypothetical Technocracy victory.
The reading I use is that the Technocracy isn't stasis. It's paternalism. It's Western hard power and soft power writ large and sometimes it does awful shit and sometimes the people it does awful shit to deserve that awful shit but it's not some kind of static monolith full of corruption. It's well-meaning people trying to make order in a world which has some very uncomfortable underpinnings that make a lot of the stuff its (again, heavily western) agents really don't like.
The question for both sides is always what price victory?
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
All mages are transhumanists, but the Craftsmasons were hardcore humanists more then anything. They brought together a bunch of different factions and built a big tent under the principle that, despite all the possible disagreements, humans are worth it. Let's build them the tools that they can make to go out and create a better society for themselves.
They had their issues, but they represented the heart of the Older of Reason in an almost Mahou Shoujo sense. They were its sense of morality with the theme of 'The Common People' in the same way the High Guild was about business and trade and the Cabal of Pure Thought was about Ideals.
When the Technocracy had it's night of long knives, that was all about removing that element. They stopped being about the people and turned inwards to become about the technocratic elites. It was quite literally putting ideals above the people and their interests.
After that, the order went into a series of intensification and self castigation where people who weren't ideologically pure enough were purged taking their positive traits with them. First it was the Electrodyne Engineers and their can-do spirit and endless enthusiasm, rejected because they wanted to give too much too fast. Afterwords, the Union was left bereft of their spirit of adventure and innovation, that technology would make the world a more exciting and dynamic place. Because, well, the Technocrats ARE a force of stasis, and technology has done much to make the world a more exciting and dynamic place so someone needs that as their paradigm and theme.
Then they purged Virtual Adapts, the groups that sought the ability to connect people, to give them the information and intelligence, to give them those fundamental tools needed to make their own choices. Without them they lost their ability to connect to people outside their own ingroup, the ability to think new thoughts rather then perfect old ones.
I won't lie, I really hate the Virtual Adapt origin story because I feel it does a serious disservice to Alan Turning, but it's what it's about and what the Virtual Adapts are about.
The next group to purge is of course the Void Engineers. They've planted hints, suggestions, and hooks for it all throughout the first two editions, then they dropped it for the 'Technocratic Victory that didn't matter in the slightest' plot in third, but you can find remnants of that plotline all over the place. It would represent the Technocracy losing the ability to go new places, to open new frontiers and horizons.
You can't ignore that they are Stasis, because thematically it guts a huge amount of the setting and setup. Never-mind that rampant human experimentation of the Progenitors, the excision of human potential of Iteration X, the Kleptocracy of the Syndicate, you also lose the what and the why of how they lose two whole conventions to the Traditions over the last hundred years.
More, they Technocracy also just isn't as unilaterally successful as they pretend to be. The civil rights movement belongs to the Cult of Ecstasy more then anyone.
They couldn't make pollution go away no matter how many people didn't believe in it, because dissipate some mages claims, reality is only mostly consensual, and entropy gets to corrupt what order stabilizes. They didn't take proper measures agaisnt it either, because that would hurt big business and the flow of money is literally the flow of power they need to maintain their advantage over the traditions. They can't fix the problem they caused without losing, so they're drowning the world in poison, strengthening the Nephandi year after year in a cycle that has only one conclusion.
The Technocracy simply doesn't work as "Stasis" though. Even if you look in the line itself, they talk about the stasis of the Technocracy, but really...
The Traditions have existed in their current form for 1000+ years outside of the two... ex-Technocratic conventions. The Traditions' leadership is often dating back to the Iron Age, while the Technocracy has had multiple shakeups of its core leadership, from the Inner Lodge of the Order of Reason to the Invisible College to Control.
The Technocracy are literally a pastiche of progressives, not conservatives. The bad things they do that line up with historical events, up to and including their association with fascism, are events that were heavily endorsed by progressive elements. Scientific racism, the White Man's Burden, human experimentation and grave robbing (this was one of the scary ooga booga things way back in the day, how anatomists robbed graves to advance scientific knowledge). The Etherites left the Technocracy because they were unwilling to change. The Technocracy has drastically altered the world in the few centuries it's been active. The Traditions have kept the world mostly the same for thousands of years. Hell, it's even in the name. "Traditions." You know, like traditional. The Traditions have an infinitely better case than the Technocracy for actually being the force for stasis. Fundamentally, the Technocracy being stasis, instead of paternalism, makes the setting all kinds of weird because it means 'stasis' is something other than what most people actually use the term for, i.e. not changing.
In fact, it doesn't even really work in mage's metaphysics. The other two parties which associate with the triatic elements (Entropy, Stasis, Dynamism) have altered Avatars and different game rules. And then you have the Technocracy. Who are just regular mages. Meanwhile, you have Drones, which represent Stasis even more (can't use vulgar magic, don't have a world-changing plan, literally are status quo robots) which are apparently just as Static as the guy who builds all the vulgar plasma cannons and tries to change the world to accept vulgar plasma cannons. The 1e Technocracy could be theoretically associated with Stasis, because they were allied with paradox spirits and existed solely to stamp out imagination and fluffy bunnies and could do all kinds of wacky bullshit without paradox and so on, but we've left that behind and nobody ever calls back to it. Even since 2e, the Technocracy has had a dream of universal Ascension, just like the Traditions, with a massive disagreement on how to create it.
And making the Technocracy about paternalism changes nothing. The Virtual Adepts can still defect because they disagree with the NWO's information control! The Etherites can still get out because they disagree with the idea that something good enough has to be made better and more elegant. It's paternalism versus liberalism. The needs of the many versus the needs of the few. The individual versus the world. Systems versus people.
The Traditions have existed in their current form for 1000+ years outside of the two... ex-Technocratic conventions. The Traditions' leadership is often dating back to the Iron Age, while the Technocracy has had multiple shakeups of its core leadership, from the Inner Lodge of the Order of Reason to the Invisible College to Control.
The Technocracy are literally a pastiche of progressives, not conservatives. The bad things they do that line up with historical events, up to and including their association with fascism, are events that were heavily endorsed by progressive elements. Scientific racism, the White Man's Burden, human experimentation and grave robbing (this was one of the scary ooga booga things way back in the day, how anatomists robbed graves to advance scientific knowledge). The Etherites left the Technocracy because they were unwilling to change. The Technocracy has drastically altered the world in the few centuries it's been active. The Traditions have kept the world mostly the same for thousands of years. Hell, it's even in the name. "Traditions." You know, like traditional. The Traditions have an infinitely better case than the Technocracy for actually being the force for stasis. Fundamentally, the Technocracy being stasis, instead of paternalism, makes the setting all kinds of weird because it means 'stasis' is something other than what most people actually use the term for, i.e. not changing.
In fact, it doesn't even really work in mage's metaphysics. The other two parties which associate with the triatic elements (Entropy, Stasis, Dynamism) have altered Avatars and different game rules. And then you have the Technocracy. Who are just regular mages. Meanwhile, you have Drones, which represent Stasis even more (can't use vulgar magic, don't have a world-changing plan, literally are status quo robots) which are apparently just as Static as the guy who builds all the vulgar plasma cannons and tries to change the world to accept vulgar plasma cannons. The 1e Technocracy could be theoretically associated with Stasis, because they were allied with paradox spirits and existed solely to stamp out imagination and fluffy bunnies and could do all kinds of wacky bullshit without paradox and so on, but we've left that behind and nobody ever calls back to it. Even since 2e, the Technocracy has had a dream of universal Ascension, just like the Traditions, with a massive disagreement on how to create it.
And making the Technocracy about paternalism changes nothing. The Virtual Adepts can still defect because they disagree with the NWO's information control! The Etherites can still get out because they disagree with the idea that something good enough has to be made better and more elegant. It's paternalism versus liberalism. The needs of the many versus the needs of the few. The individual versus the world. Systems versus people.
Well, that is an inevitable thing when you build a faction out of various conspiracy theories and fears about modern society. I mean, just look at the parts that the Technocracy is built up of:
New World Order - the conspiracy theory that "Godless communism", in the form of a state atheistic and bureaucratic collectivist world government, is trying to take over America - or is already running it behind the scenes! Often secretly run by the Jews/Illuminati/Freemasons.
Syndicate - global banking elite secretly controlling things behind the scenes. Also usually pretty anti-Semetic as an idea. Is there something you're not telling us, Traditions?
Progenitors - scary godless amoral scientists are playing God with life, showing no respect for nature. Also, they're forcing our children to learn about evolution and telling us that the world is really old. And they're giving your children autism with vaccines!
Iteration X - they're replacing us with machines - and treating people like they're meat components in a machine!
Void Engineers - I'm in spaaaaaaaaaaace (yeah, the Void Engineers are rather less well-rooted in conspiracy theories and fears)
There's not really anything very surprising about the fact that the Technocracy is as actually depicted a force of liberal interventionism, globalism and collectivism-via-welfare-state-and-foriegn-aid. That's what happens when you build the antagonist group to a large extent out of Right-wing conspiracy theories.
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
Stasis in WoD basically means 'more fixed' and 'less mystical.' It really doesn't mean unchanging, except so far as it is about reaching a 'perfect' state where all further change would be deviation. In innovation, evolutionary change is a force of stasis, while revolutionary change is a force of dynamism. Using them in the colloquial sense just confuses the issue further, which unfortunately several of the writers seemed to regularly do. The overall theme is pretty clear though if you read the Avatar descriptions.
It's why despite their whole wild mad scientist theme, the Etherities themselves tend towards the static every time it's come up.
And the Etherities didn't leave because they though 'good enough is good enough.' They ended up being driven out because they wanted to change things faster then the rest of the conventions. Aether wasn't rejected because Relativity was better, Relativity is better because decades of work has gone into perfecting it and making it a robust theory.
Aether was rejected for two reasons. First, it was somewhat more friendly to some of the Traditions, so they wanted to get rid of it to make Tradition techniques more vulgar. Second, it was a punitive measure against the Electrodyne Engineers for trying to push the boundaries faster then the others conventions approved of. Relativity being fundamentally better certainly is true in the real world, but that has jack to do with anything in the WoD.
And the modern failure of the Time Table can be traced back to these decisions. They have so carefully pruned alternative technological paths, held advancement back until they were ready for it instead of the masses, till peoples hopes and enthusiasm for technology died away and they stopped believing that real revolutionary innovation was possible - hence the cloning failure. Which ties back into their theme as forces of stasis. They can't unleash that kind of change anymore without turning themselves into something different.
Likewise with the Analytical Reckoners. Theirs was a moment of revolutionary change - they saw advanced computing engines, networks, and A.I., and the conventions didn't have any of those things as part of the Time Table, so they tried to kill the whole thing in the cradle. While they have since adapted, the whole computer revelation is blatantly making lemonade out of lemons for the conventions.
The whole Green Technology label is a etherite label; metaphysical that kind of thing works because lots of the damage modern technology is doing comes from not recognizing the world as a whole, living thing, treating it as an inanimate object rather then a living system. when you turn that around you slow, stop, or even reverse the kind of metaphysical pollution that is reflected in the real world as real pollution.
(Also, Lynn Margulis is an Etherite, which means Carl Sagan probably is, though you can put that down to the authors not caring where theories came from. Or not, because Carl Sagan fighting cosmic monsters in the deep umbra is awesome)
Why pattern aligned mages aren't mechanically different then others... is because they are. It's called being a technocrat with the technocratic progression of growing past foci and paradigm. Being a technocrat is less serious then other disorders because mages tend to inherently tip towards Stasis. Paradigms themselves are pretty much fundamentally static phenomena - you have a model of the universe that you perfect by raising your sphere ratings and advancing any skills your Paradigm says is important.
It's pretty notable in that it's the only condition you grow out of. On the other hand, it's pretty notable that becoming more enlightened is fundamentally incompatible with it in a way that it isn't with Marauders and Nephandi.
And the the Technocracy being about collective goods vs. the Traditions individual goods only works until you start realizing that all their future plans are increasingly horrible for the masses at the bottom. Unless you think of the collective as an actual thing (which some technocrats basically do), then you have to remember that the collective is made up of individuals.
Magnasanti is a wonderful endgoal for the syndicate, a society with almost limitless resources to funnel into their personal miracles, because their natural endstate is using the rest of the world like Exalted Prayer Factories.
Iteration X wants to cut out the parts of you that make you able to think for yourself, then network you up and use you as a semi-living automaton. They might call that 'improvement,' but it's only after they were cut off from control that they started making brain implants that left the recipient a whole person still able to make judgement calls and understand morality.
The Progenitors are basically holed up in their ivory towers like the old Order of Hermes, and while their callous mass experimentation is deplorable, they really aren't working towards those kinds of endstates. They still are trying various eugenic schemes aimed at removing deviancy if I remember right, but they're also helping medical science which directly improves quality of life. So they are about as morally complex as some of the more arguable Traditions.
The New World Order... They are doing the whole police state thing, but really the VA, Dreamspeakers, Euthanatoi all do the same. Though the NWO has an agenda they peruse that I find more disagreeable then any of the above, and they reenforce the worst aspects of the rest of the conventions, so they aggravate the situation, though they don't create it.
The Void Engineers are heroic by design.
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Stasis as "less mystical" stops working the moment you look at the Hermetics and the Chinese magi.
Both believe in a world where all things are repeatable, explicable, and follow clear logical rules.
This is not Static despite being literally identical to the core of the Technocracy paradigm because the window dressing is different or something.
And no, saying "other people can pretend their magic works in a Hermetic paradigm" doesn't change that this is valid for the Technocracy one as well.
The Technocracy as stasis does not work metaphysically or thematically.
Both believe in a world where all things are repeatable, explicable, and follow clear logical rules.
This is not Static despite being literally identical to the core of the Technocracy paradigm because the window dressing is different or something.
And no, saying "other people can pretend their magic works in a Hermetic paradigm" doesn't change that this is valid for the Technocracy one as well.
The Technocracy as stasis does not work metaphysically or thematically.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
It's like people are talking about entirely separate interpretations of a loose canon that is presented as deliberately biased...
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
Both recognized spiritual phenomenon, saw the world as being influenced and influencing metaphysical forces, and sought a relationship with the divine. Neither of them saw themselves or humanity as subservient to the divine principles in the way that groups like The Celestial Chorous, Euthanatoi, Dreamspeakers, or Verbena do, but the recognized that such principles exist and dealt with them.
Both of them have well defined magic, but it's still a path of personal development. Every magus did have his own relationship with the mysteries, even though that relationship was built on common shared ground. Paths like the Tree of Life are both mystical and scientific in that sense, balancing Dynamic principles of Mystery, Metamorphosis, and Miracle with Static principles of Discipline, Definition, and Perfection.
The old arguemnt, and the one the Order of Hermes used to make, was that you didn't have time to educate everyone on such issues, so it was better to leave it to a... well, technocratic elite. But then the Technocracy invented universal education, invalidating that arguement. You could actually have a society where everyone is at least minimally enlightened.
The issue with the technocracy isn't 'Technology bad. Learning bad.' Some of the Traditions certainly look at it that way (though the spread of techno-magic to pretty much every tradition shows the weakness of that argument). It's that they are willfully blind to everything but the material, put everything in context of the material, shut out opposing viewpoints before making sure they don't have a point, and ignore cost and externalities that they find inconvenient.
In doing so they lessen themselves and others, poison the world, leave people open to supernatural predation to the point there's fomori ecologies developing in the corporate world, wound the spirit world leaving it vulnerable to Nephandi. They also doable down on their views till they lose the human element, betraying man for their ideal of man - but frankly every Tradition has people who do the same.
It's why it's gray on black not black and white, and many (though not all) of the criticisms of the Conventions can also be laid on the Traditions. Though the Traditions have a tradition of calling each-other out on their bullshit rather then reenforcing it. Though that's as much because the Traditions don't like each-other as because of any moral high-ground.
Right. Are we forgetting that literally everything is "magical phenomena" now? The Hermetics have a closed, internally consistent system that describes how the world works, same with the non-static Chinese alchemists.
This is identical metaphysically to the Technocracy paradigm. So the Technocracy is more dynamic in its internal politics and no more static than the most famous and powerful Tradition in paradigm.
Therefore it is Static because??? You're not making a good case against the Technocracy being Stasis is a old 1eism-because if you look at what is happening this is unsupportable. Even talking about the"differences" in how the Technocracy's rules affect their magic reinforces that.
The special rules for Arete 6 as a technomancer are no different than the special martial arts rules that the Akashics have. Or Hermetic Enochian. They don't compare to the removal or alteration of entire core systems that happens if you become associated with Dynamism or Entropy.
Apparently the triat is actually a cube though. With Dynamism, Entropy, Stasis, and some more Stasis which behaves completely differently from that other Stasis.
This is identical metaphysically to the Technocracy paradigm. So the Technocracy is more dynamic in its internal politics and no more static than the most famous and powerful Tradition in paradigm.
Therefore it is Static because??? You're not making a good case against the Technocracy being Stasis is a old 1eism-because if you look at what is happening this is unsupportable. Even talking about the"differences" in how the Technocracy's rules affect their magic reinforces that.
The special rules for Arete 6 as a technomancer are no different than the special martial arts rules that the Akashics have. Or Hermetic Enochian. They don't compare to the removal or alteration of entire core systems that happens if you become associated with Dynamism or Entropy.
Apparently the triat is actually a cube though. With Dynamism, Entropy, Stasis, and some more Stasis which behaves completely differently from that other Stasis.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Just a note, but as somebody who knows almost nothing about Mage, I find myself leaning towards TheLastOne's interpretation (keeping in mind ChloeSullivan's statement as something of a maxim), just because they're willing to go into detail and provide examples to back up their point. If nothing else, it's a nice education in Mage lore.
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
You just completely ignored everything I said in the last post. Please don't do that. The Hermetic system was a well defined path, but that path lead to the divine, the spiritual, and the mysterious. It left a place for Dynamism. Zeroing in on one part of what I said out of context make your argument weaker, not stronger.
The Technocratic Paradigm denies the spiritual and the divine - and both of them are real distinct things. It focuses on the material denying the mystical. The Hermetic paradigm doesn't do any of those things. It's weakness is elitism to an extent that the Technocracy has only recently managed to close in on, but simply having a system that they work within doesn't make them all the same. You can have a path to the mystical and still have it be a mystical revelation at the end.
AkatsukiL13
An Enlightened Mind
- Location
- New Copernicus Station
All kinds of ways. Some Orphans have brief contact with the Traditions, Conventions or Crafts but decide it isn't for them and leave. The M20 Quickstart has a sample cabal of Orphans with two members have a bit of contact with the Syndicate and the CoX respectively. In fact I'd point to the characters of the M20 Quickstart as an example of Orphan with real Paradigms rather than ripoffs and stereotypes. One character, that has had no contact with the Conventions or Traditions, has very much a Technocrat mindset. Unlike the others she perceives her Avatar as her own genius and works her 'Magic' through science and technology. Another is more of a traditional 'urban' witch akin to the Hollow Ones albeit in a much more ad-hock and bastardized version, minus the Gothic and anti-authority themes. A third is much more physical in their approach to Magic, using meditation, juggling, flame spinning and the like to focus her mind and work her Magic.
There's also the Orphan's Survival Guide which is pretty good but focuses more on the typical 'street Orphans' than the sheer variety of what Orphans can be like which the M20 Quickstart handles better with its five sample characters which each possess their own foci, Paradigm and Avatar.
As a proud Technocrat I will respond to all the back and forth going on about the Technocracy but I don't have enough time to write out all I want to say at the moment.