Grittiness, realism, honor, and the life in the middle-ages

[The Marquis de Leech]

Law is the mechanism by which society orders itself. Specifically, it is the set of rules produced by those whom society recognises as having law-making power (e.g. a parliament).

[The Marquis de Leech]

Whole countries of people, apparently - try Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Pakistan, India and (according to Wkipedia) 23 states in the USA as of 2012.

But there are plenty of places that don't legislate against it. That doesn't mean those people consider adultery moral, or even that they condone it. It just means that many people don't consider an adultery ban legally desirable.

[Richard]

The question of whether or not something is moral is completely different from the question of whether something is valid law.

At a purely philosophical level, perhaps (though even there, you will find potential entanglement - is it an immoral act to disobey the law of the land, for example?)

But in the real world and amidst real society................nah

[dietl]

Law is the mechanism by which society orders itself. Specifically, it is the set of rules produced by those whom society recognises as having law-making power (e.g. a parliament).

So you say law comes from those "having law-making power". How do they decide what becomes law and what doesn't?

[Clueless Northman]

There are a few main reasons why people would follow the law:

- they agree with it because it shares their own morals, therefore it's natural to respect it, they'd do it even if it wasn't the law

- the law enforcement apparatus is repressive enough for most people to follow it

- they've been teached to follow the law, more or less blindly, and won't think further

(3rd one being rarer, I'd say)

1st part is the most efficient of course, but the outcome is always the same: the law really works as long as people follow it, and they're more eager to follow it if it coincides with their own beliefs and morals (the more homogeneous the population, the easier it is to correlate law and people's morals).

There's plenty of occurrences of the Church condemning some acts in the Middle-Ages, and people still doing them - thus every decade, for centuries, you have a decree against this sin or this activity.

As for Free Northman's position, I'd say there's a small minority of psychopaths and sociopaths, a small minority of saints and ascetes, a bigger minority of people that have these latent tendencies and could be pushed to the limit, depending on the situation, and a large bulk of people in the middle who just want to live their lifes and not be bothered.

Still, even said vast middle group will have its share of wife-beating and drunks. And history shows that you could have plenty of people ready to do some pogrom, if the situation was bad enough. You definitely have more than 20% of people that would end up doing any of these bad/evil deeds - though most of the time they will stam calm and act like mostly harmless citizens.

I love this article by Daniel Abraham:

http://aidanmoher.com/blog/2012/04/articles/concerning-historical-authenticity-in-fantasy-or-truth-forgives-you-nothing-by-daniel-abraham/

He makes very good points.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to do semi-historical stuff actually set in Earth's real history, you have to follow the people of the time's opinions and biases, so racism and sexism often - at least more than nowadays, overall. Otherwise, it's quite a travesty.

If you have your own fantasy world, you can pick your own rules. That said, I still think you have to stick with the basics, which is that you must be consistent and realistic - depending on the context and how you built your world, you will have to deal with a mostly white, or black world, you will have a strongly racist society, or a sexist one; or you will have a quite open "progressive" society. But how the society is shaped must be consistent with how the world and the society's environment are set up, and there is a part of determinism there depending on resources, technology, workforce and the like. If your world has internal consistency, then people shouldn't be able to attack you as "unhistorical", as "sexist" or as "impossibly liberal".

[Green Gogol]

I would say that law is based on moral. Rather than moral comes from the law.

[Arthmail]

If you are at any point equating modern morality with older morality then you have failed. Even considering how gays and women were treated sixty years ago, as compared to today, you will see a drastic change (though not drastic enough). Take into account several hundred years and the entire equation changes. It is why I have such a tough time judging people of previous eras. Yes, to me some of the excesses that took place are beyond my comprehension, but they were a product of their time. To think that you would have the same morality as a 14th century noble is willfully naïve.

And while I love, love me some Tolkien, he was writing about an ideal. A mythological past that England lost. He drew on his understanding of the classics, which were themselves ideals.

The notion that religion somehow grounded people's morality is honestly fucking stupid. There was a time that people were put to death for trying to translate the bible into English. Let us not forget that the bible is above all else, a disjointed and broken means of social control. It might have a few good points but it is not without fault, and it is certainly not something by which you should set your moral compass, especially if you were unable to read the fucking thing and had to take some priests word on it. And let us consider the fact that it was religion that started the Inquisition. The Inquisition, incidentally, did not fully die out until around 1837. (at least according to one book that I read). Chew on that thought for a bit.

While I do have some problems with Martins world, I've mentioned before that no one is actually a friend with another person, he is pretty spot on about the nobility. And the ideal of knights and nobility worked well for some, but for the majority of the armed forces it was not something they adhered to. If you want to read about those people in warfare, there is an excellent book called God's War by Christopher Tyreman. It is about the Crusades, and while there are some examples of people acting idealistically, for the most part people had to watch out for themselves. The sack of Jerusalem, in particular, gives a proper idea of how baby killing and endless slaughter were easily conducted by the so called flowers of the nobility. They were not maybe so stabby stabby as they are in Martin's books, but they were close enough.

[Richard]

But there are plenty of places that don't legislate against it. That doesn't mean those people consider adultery moral, or even that they condone it. It just means that many people don't consider an adultery ban legally desirable.

But clearly the moral outlook of people in (say) Saudi Arabia and (say) Sweden is significantly different in this context. Again, law and morality inform each other against a background of social norms.

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

There's definitely a feedback mechanism between morality and law, at least in a stable, democratic society.

One one hand, laws mostly get passed because the majority of people agree with them morally. One the other hand, people tend to assume that if a law or rule exists, then there must be some valid moral reason for it. One example was when the FAA was considering removing the rule banning electronic devices on takeoff, people were bending over backwards trying to find some sort of justify it.

ETA: Try listening to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcasts to try and understand just how low humanity is capable of descending. The Wrath of the Khans or Ghosts of the Ostfront series' are great. If you don't have time for that Prophets of Doom is good since it depicts a Christian, slightly post middle ages society.

[Green Gogol]

If you are at any point equating modern morality with older morality then you have failed. Even considering how gays and women were treated sixty years ago, as compared to today, you will see a drastic change (though not drastic enough). Take into account several hundred years and the entire equation changes. It is why I have such a tough time judging people of previous eras. Yes, to me some of the excesses that took place are beyond my comprehension, but they were a product of their time. To think that you would have the same morality as a 14th century noble is willfully naïve.

And while I love, love me some Tolkien, he was writing about an ideal. A mythological past that England lost. He drew on his understanding of the classics, which were themselves ideals.

The notion that religion somehow grounded people's morality is honestly fucking stupid. There was a time that people were put to death for trying to translate the bible into English. Let us not forget that the bible is above all else, a disjointed and broken means of social control. It might have a few good points but it is not without fault, and it is certainly not something by which you should set your moral compass, especially if you were unable to read the fucking thing and had to take some priests word on it. And let us consider the fact that it was religion that started the Inquisition. The Inquisition, incidentally, did not fully die out until around 1837. (at least according to one book that I read). Chew on that thought for a bit.

While I do have some problems with Martins world, I've mentioned before that no one is actually a friend with another person, he is pretty spot on about the nobility. And the ideal of knights and nobility worked well for some, but for the majority of the armed forces it was not something they adhered to. If you want to read about those people in warfare, there is an excellent book called God's War by Christopher Tyreman. It is about the Crusades, and while there are some examples of people acting idealistically, for the most part people had to watch out for themselves. The sack of Jerusalem, in particular, gives a proper idea of how baby killing and endless slaughter were easily conducted by the so called flowers of the nobility. They were not maybe so stabby stabby as they are in Martin's books, but they were close enough.

In interesting quote from the book you recommended:

"A familiar but baneful response to history is to configure the past as comfortingly different from the present day. Previous societies are caricatured as less sophisticated, more primitive, cruder, alien. Such attitudes reveal nothing so much as a collective desire to reassure the modern observer by demeaning the experience of the past."

[Richard]

@ Arthmail

Nicely said - saved me a lengthy post there

@ 'leech

Another intersection of law and morality that you might want to take into consideration is the way in which some immigrant muslim communities in the west have recently voiced a desire to implement sharia law within the community as a substitute for the extant law of the host country (and the extent to which idiot pc liberals have bent over backwards to take it seriously). Here, the very crux of the intersection is in play - the issue of secular vs divine law. (The latter of the two being a perfect mapping of what is moral/immoral onto what is legal/illegal)

[Bolivar]

If you are at any point equating modern morality with older morality then you have failed. Even considering how gays and women were treated sixty years ago, as compared to today, you will see a drastic change (though not drastic enough). Take into account several hundred years and the entire equation changes. It is why I have such a tough time judging people of previous eras. Yes, to me some of the excesses that took place are beyond my comprehension, but they were a product of their time. To think that you would have the same morality as a 14th century noble is willfully naïve.

This post is emblematic of why you need to take historical accounts with a grain of salt. People have a teleological prejudice to believe that history and morals move on a linear timeline, that we climbed down from trees and out of caves and after thousands of years of superstition and savagery, through science and learning were able to inevitably understand that all monogamous couples should have equal tax privileges.

Women in some pre revolutionary colonies had more rights and autonomy than their early 20th century counterparts and so did women in some Greek City states as early as antiquity. Many cultures throughout history viewed homosexuality as a mainstream leisure activity rather than the inherent genetic layout it's argued to be today. Has disenfranchisement and marginalization always occurred throughout history? Of course. But the truth is more sophisticated than that and you do a disservice when you trivialize it (usually in furtherance of another argument).

People in the middle ages undeniably faced unimaginable hardships which in turn gave them a rougher understanding of death, the value of life, and what is fair. But many of them still loved their children, hoped for salvation, and believed in kindness to others.

[Green Gogol]

_{Thanks Bolivar, you seem more knowledgeable than me on the subject. I just have trouble believing that morality is a modern discovery and that before our own fabulous age, life was unimaginably horrible.}

_{And as said before, I find the argument that says your characters rape, kill, steal and the like because it's realistic a weak argument. To say that you wanted your characters to be questionable, horrible characters is okay with me. I'll gladly read your book.}

_{To say that you did so because it has to be because that's how things work is strange for me.}

[SpaceChampion]

And it appears to me that fantasy is the continuation of fantastic stories from the middle age. Stories like Beowulf, Tristan und isolt, King Arthur, etc. They were written in the Middle-ages and thus presented medieval protagonists in a medieval setting. In a way, it seems those story where a knight fighting fantastic creatures seems to represent the triumph of Christianity over Pagan beliefs, the fight to move forward, the fight for progress, the fight to make the world a better place, the fight against backwardness. So for Fantasy to evolve, wouldn't it be logical for it's next step to move it to present time, presenting myths of our own time, and how we have to fight to keep progressing, instead of toward "realism"?

What is fantasy? I think, along with science fiction and horror, these three fantastic genres distinguish themselves from all other genres in that speculative ideas are regularly personified and literalized instead of used as metaphor.

I think generational changes in fantastic literature are not going from one thing to another linearly, but it goes in cycles from heroic to gothic to operatic to transgressive and back to heroic. The "grimdark" trend seems to be transgressive phase. Each phase is a reaction to what came before, and characteristic of the generation that writes it.

What I think Martin is doing with ASOIAF is transcend all those by blending all those phases into his story. I call it a *gothic epic saga with some noir mysteries thrown in.

* epic = heroic phase, family saga = operatic phase, gothic = gothic phase, noir = transgressive phase.

[Green Gogol]

Interesting point of view. I had supposed there was a kind of pendulum movement between 2 extremes, when people get fed up with one extreme, things start to move in the opposite direction. But you seem to know quite a lot on fantasy. Can you point to works in each phase?

Thanks!

[Richard]

I just have trouble believing that morality is a modern discovery

It isn't. It's as old as human civilisation, probably as old as the human race itself. But what it stands for has changed colossally over historical time, so much so that even the morality of our own society a few decades ago appears brutal to our eyes (not to mention the differences still extant in different cultures the world over today). Morality is not shorthand for "good' or "nice" behaviour. It is simply the set of unwritten social assumptions by which humans govern their affairs. Nazi Germany had a morality. The slave-owning Deep South had a morality. The Mongols had a morality. The Crusaders had a morality. It's just that none of their norms bear much relation to what we in the west consider moral today.

and that before our own fabulous age, life was unimaginably horrible.

Well, that's just a failure of imagination on your part, then. Try David E. Stannard's American Holocaust (1992) - he's pretty good on the both the horrors of the Conquest of the Americas and the horrors going on at the same time across the Atlantic. Or try the early chapters of Steven Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature, for some snapshots of inhumanity throughout history.

Which is not to say that the current era is bereft of human horror. There's plenty of it still around. But there is today a quite astonishing degree of liberty and humane concern for others around the globe that no previous era could even dream of applying.

[SpaceChampion]

Interesting point of view. I had supposed there was a kind of pendulum movement between 2 extremes, when people get fed up with one extreme, things start to move in the opposite direction. But you seem to know quite a lot on fantasy. Can you point to works in each phase?

Thanks!

I wouldn't say I know a lot about fantasy; it's rather I'be been obsessively studying and categorizing fiction in order to understand how to write it. Existing "how to write" explanations I've found not quite adequate.

As for examples, i'm headed out at the moment, but wikipedia has a lot. Will try to provide an example later...

[Shryke]

But there are plenty of places that don't legislate against it. That doesn't mean those people consider adultery moral, or even that they condone it. It just means that many people don't consider an adultery ban legally desirable.

You seem to have a serious issue with seperating the argument "Law is morality" (which no one is making) from the argument that "law and morality are related".

[Glaurung]

_{Thanks Bolivar, you seem more knowledgeable than me on the subject. I just have trouble believing that morality is a modern discovery and that before our own fabulous age, life was unimaginably horrible.}

_{And as said before, I find the argument that says your characters rape, kill, steal and the like because it's realistic a weak argument. To say that you wanted your characters to be questionable, horrible characters is okay with me. I'll gladly read your book.}

_{To say that you did so because it has to be because that's how things work is strange for me.}

Morals have existed since the beginning of time. Morals are deeply influenced by culture & experience. If you take 100 people and raise them up in the same culture with the same experiences, sure some will come out with a better moral compass(as we see it today) than others, but for the most part their morals will reflect one another. A person who today may be the biggest supporter of gay rights may have been preaching against the evils of homosexual lifestyle if born into a different time & culture. They are not chronological and are not set to any specific timeframe.

As for Martin portraying his characters as raping, killing, & stealing.....his books are centered around a war-torn world. When countries are ravaged by war, order breaks down. The powerful prey on the weak. It's been proven time and time again throughout history. Rape is very common after battle. This too is proven by history. And...well....after you've killed men in battle, I imagine it comes easier for some people to kill again, so a country littered with soldiers & deserters is going to see higher rates of violent crimes/murders. Martin is just portraying the realities of these types of situations. Sure he may embellish them a bit, but the basis is backed by historical evidence of the real world. I think the reason why you see Martin writing about these things while Tolkien didn't(or rarely did) is because Tolkiens' books always tell the story from the side of good, where as Martin tells the story from ALL sides. It was also more taboo in Tolkien's time to write about such things in a graphic way.

[Darth Richard II]

Gah. Long thread is long.

Basically, everything arthmail said, x3