Lore Escape plan

Firstly, The Borg. On the one hand they are a hive mind, not individuals with free will. However they also have the Borg Queen, a directing individual that makes the Borg as a whole nothing more than an extension of her will. They aren't an example of a society of free individuals without a leader.

The Organians? What do we actually know about their leadeship or society?

The Founders seem to operate on consensus. The Great Link allows them to operate as an absolute democracy, but their situation is unique.

I do not believe we have ever seen a society of free individuals that operates without a structured leadership, be it democratic or dictatorial people desire (and perhapse require) leaders.

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Originally Posted by ZeroArmour

Firstly, The Borg. On the one hand they are a hive mind, not individuals with free will.

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You are a collection of neurons and non-concurrent memory retrievals, and whether or not you have 'free will,' or whether your self-identity as a single, undivided essence reflects something beyond circular neural programming (I see myself as one mind because my mind is designed to clump things into units) is an open question for metaphysics, neurology and cosmology.

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However they also have the Borg Queen, a directing individual that makes the Borg as a whole nothing more than an extension of her will. They aren't an example of a society of free individuals without a leader.

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Again, you're taking human prejudices–that something which appears to be an individual, talking like an individual, must be internally or cognitively similar to a human being (same part of your brain that makes you read : ( as a face). She states she is the collective; a mask put on by a superhuman intelligence to interact with humanoids who expect or desire hierarchy.

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The Organians? What do we actually know about their leadeship or society?

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In their humanoid pretense, they had a council of 'elders,' who occupied an advisory role, although who knows what 'elders' means to noncorporeal lifeforms. I recall a line about them not having leaders, but I can't remember which part it was to find it on YouTube.

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The Founders seem to operate on consensus. The Great Link allows them to operate as an absolute democracy, but their situation is unique.

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You're assuming a conception of personhood which they've explicitly rejected–"The ocean becomes a drop... the drop becomes the ocean." It might be closer to the way human minds edit memories to construct self-consistent narratives.

So, your arguing that no matter what I'm wrong.

Great, good talk.

Well, I mean... look, PKD said it best:

"The SF writer sees not just possibilities but wild possibilities. It's not just 'What if' - it's 'My God; what if' - in frenzy and hysteria. The Martians are always coming."

So saying things like 'such and such always happens'–well, that's the part where the SF element comes in, because SF is about finding the places where the rules are different, and running with it. It's the imperative of speculative fiction to speculate.

Sure, but to speculate wildly, with no hook of reality to start from?

That's what you're doing.

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Originally Posted by ZeroArmour

Sure, but to speculate wildly, with no hook of reality to start from?

That's what you're doing.

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Which reality is it that you think is lacking?

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Originally Posted by The Tatterdemalion King

Which reality is it that you think is lacking?

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You're trying to prove to me that you can have an advanced society without a leadership structure. Your examples aren't really examples at all and on the point of the Organians you seem to be "just making stuff up".

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Originally Posted by ZeroArmour

You're trying to prove to me that you can have an advanced society without a leadership structure.

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I suspect you'd object to my critiques and objections to the idea of 'advanced societies' as well...

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Your examples aren't really examples at all and on the point of the Organians you seem to be "just making stuff up".

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We didn't really get a rundown on Organian society other than 'We don't have leaders.'

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I suspect you'd object to my critiques and objections to the idea of 'advanced societies' as well...

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Where I'm from, we'd call that a cheap shot. How do you know what I'd object to?

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We didn't really get a rundown on Organian society other than 'We don't have leaders.'

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But what does that actually mean? If we assume a collective/gestalt consciousness then "yes" there are no leaders in a traditional sense, but. You'd have to also assume that in any debate within the group mind there are those who take point on certain possitions. These people might not be considered leaders, but they certainly would be opinion shapers, and that by any definition suggests individuals who fit the mold of leaders.

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Originally Posted by ZeroArmour

Where I'm from, we'd call that a cheap shot. How do you know what I'd object to?

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Well, I'm Canadian, and backhanded sarcasm is pretty much all we speak.

Well, here's where we diverge into the Real Life Politics discussion, because 'advanced' is a cultural identifier tied up in the justification of political or economic domination by one group over another, and has no framework for defining advanced versus non-advanced without bringing in the question of domination. Since you started this with a rejection of the validity of anarchism or non-hierarchal societies as valid social organizations, I'd put money on that coming from someone who's not into postcolonial critiques in general.

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But what does that actually mean? If we assume a collective/gestalt consciousness then "yes" there are no leaders in a traditional sense, but. You'd have to also assume that in any debate within the group mind there are those who take point on certain possitions. These people might not be considered leaders, but they certainly would be opinion shapers, and that by any definition suggests individuals who fit the mold of leaders.

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You're kind of not engaging with the actual point I'm trying to get at about this though, and it has to do with what the 'those' are, and who gets to decide that. This is another thread that's verging on Real World Politics (as any actual sf discussion will become, eventually). It's also pretty complicated if you're not sure what exactly I'm objecting to here already. The easiest way to introduce it (that I know of) is with Dissociative Identity Disorder...

Play nice with each other, please.

This is veering off into what I call WTF?! territory.

Feel free to flame me. Means less than nothing to me. I've never met you. You've never met me. We could at least try to display a little maturity here...

I (mistakenly) thought this thread was to prompt ideas - NOT to set off sniping attacks on people.

Yeah, consider me out. I've got no time for this kind of attitude.

TTK, this could have been a nice friendly discussion.

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Originally Posted by ZeroArmour

Yeah, consider me out. I've got no time for this kind of attitude.

TTK, this could have been a nice friendly discussion.

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It still can be, depending on whether or not you're cool with discussing politics and the semantics of personhood.

FWIW, the exact quote from Errand of Mercy is "We don't have anybody in authority." If that isn't a statement against the Organians having a social hierarchy, I don't know what is.

Essentially, what I'm saying is that since any human concept of a 'leader' depends on human contexts of personhood (and Western, post-industrial concepts of the 'individual') beings like the Borg, or the Founders, or the Organians, since they don't have (and have no evolutionary pressures to develop) human concepts of personhood (or the biological basis for assumptions of an individual's essential unity) any apparently political social structuring they have cannot be thought of as being the same as human political social structures. It's like asking whether a mollusk is left-handed; the biological context renders the question a non sequitur.