Question Update
Hey, folks, guess what? Super-busy-development-crunch-time is done, and back to regular development-crunch-time. So while it may not be full-time writing for me, at least I might get some fiction done this month.
Anyway, on to the questions…
Under the heading of “the laws and customs of war”: Do the Associated Worlds have anything analogous (in spirit if not strictly in letter) to the Roerich Pact, or the ideas underpinning it?
(For reference: http://www.roerich.org/roerich-pact.php )
It’s almost certainly covered in the Conventions of Civilized Warfare section of the Ley Accords. That said, there are going to be some very careful allowances of wiggle room in there – the Repository of All Knowledge has its own favorite way of dealing with cultural artifacts people are endangering unduly.
An odd thought I had while reading some of the back catalog: Do the eldrae have a term for, or any “literature” on, the state that could be described as “the incorrigible and ironically irrational belief that you are the only rational person in the room / on the Planet / in the Universe”?
There are almost certainly a variety of terms in the professional lingo, but you might be looking for quor vaníälathdar, which would translate as “total ultracrepidarian”; i.e., one who opines beyond their knowledge on every topic.
(Or, at least, that is the one I presently have the vocabulary handy to express.)
Another approach would be to describe them as failing the eighth and fifth virtues of talcoríëf; caution and argument. The former, which reminds you that it is not rational to fail to anticipate your own errors; and the latter, then, in the sense that those who wish to fail must prevent their friends from helping them – and assuming your own rightness is an excellent way of doing that.
(The Twelve Virtues of Talcoríëf are essentially a culturally-translated equivalent of this. Except that *there*, they teach you this sort of stuff pretty much as soon as you can scrape up two neurons to rub together.)
So the Empire in the modern day has very strong exit rights, but what was situation post unification of Eliéra but pre interstellar colonization? In particular how does a society of consent handle people having children who don’t have the ability to live anywhere other than a polity they didn’t consent to be born into?
Brave New World had its Savage Reservations and its islands; in those days, the Empire had its “Outside”. If you didn’t consent to truth, justice, and the Imperial way, you were perfectly free to go and live on the healthy-sized chunk of land designated “Outside” against exactly that circumstance.
(It’s not like there’s an obligation to provide you with a choice if you don’t like the menu on offer, but who wants to hang on to a bunch of malcontents?)
What exactly is “semislavery”? I’ve seen isolated references to it crop up, and a few ideas suggest themselves from what context is available, but it would be nice to see what the official definition is in Imperial jurisprudence.
Semislavery, or Deprivation of Ability to Consent, is defined thus in the short form:
The crime of editing (deprivation) or building (semislavery) sophont minds in such a manner that they always obey you and cannot conceptualize the notion of not doing so, or form the volition to act upon it.
Or, to put it another way, it’s building sophont minds with imposed false worldviews such that they volunteer to freely act as if they had no free will, and thus always unquestioningly act as you would have them act.
(It’s not technically slavery, in the same sense as the use of say, conscience redactors, pyretic inhibitors, or loyalty compulsions, not to mention more history’s more crude methods – but it’s close enough for there still to be a pyrolysis chamber waiting with your name on it.)