Mevwan Culture
Posted: Sun May 22, 2011 6:34 pm
Zaee:
The most distinctively Zaee cultural features one observes when one visits a community of them in Mevwan are the following: their near-complete decoupling of procreation and romance; fostering (or "wing-parenting" or "memetic adoption"); an insistence on the consistent use of full, unadulterated names for all purposes; and their religion, "Zwerise", which has not percolated significantly into human populations.
Zaee marry, exclusively monogamously, but this is a decision made without a view towards whether they are interested in having children with their spouse - accordingly it is not uncommon for marriages to be same-sex, and Zaee are by and large open to the possibility of marrying humans. Childbearing decisions are made independently, by women, who select without particularly privileging their husband (if they have one) a male Zaee, who may or may not be elsewhere married, with whom to attempt to have a child. (In practice, about 1/3 of Zaee are the genetic offspring of a married couple, since the qualities that make someone seem like a good spouse correlate rather well with the qualities that make someone seem like a good father.) The selected male is under no obligation to invest anything other than his genetic material in the process, although it's good form to make contact information for himself and his relatives available for the child's use should it be desired later. Some fathers prefer to be more active in their children's lives, especially if they're married to the mother (this is usually worked out ahead of time if they want anything more than occasional visitation, and fathers have approximately no grounds for complaint if the mothers of their children choose to exclude them). Procreation (by either sex) is the only purpose for which sexual non-exclusivity is widely permitted, but it is permitted with a blandness that can bewilder a human unused to Zaee - the rapidity with which an enraged spouse suspecting infidelity can be calmed by the clarification, "No, you don't understand, I was trying to get (her) pregnant" is the subject of a number of Mevwani jokes circulated among humans. (It is in fact customary to inform one's spouse ahead of time.)
Mothers (and, if participating, fathers) retain custody of their children only until they're about to learn to fly. At this point it is considered morally reprehensible to keep the child, and a foster parent or family must be located. This is often a friend of one of the parents (and may be either gender) but can never be a spouse of either - the fosterage must involve moving the child to a residence that doesn't contain their mother or father. Zaee parents who find themselves without adequate fosterage prospects from among their acquaintances often swap children with others in similar states. It's permissible to reject a request of fosterage, but one is rarely asked if one's acceptance isn't strongly anticipated. After the transfer is made, the new family is solely responsible for the child - even if they die and the child needs a new home, the will of the foster parent(s), not that of the biological parent(s), is used to determine where the kid goes. It is not uncommon for biological siblings to share a foster home, but nor is it particularly normative that they do so. Biological parents typically visit and write regularly, but suspicions of actual cohabitation with their flying children are looked upon with great dismay. One's foster-parent(s), and anyone related (in either fashion) to them, are considered one's memetic relatives or "wing-family" (as are the memetic relatives of one's biological family), whereas biological relatives are reckoned normally and constitute one's "eye-family" (because eye color is highly heritable). Zaee languages have a great many words to quickly convey relationships like "my eye-mother's wife's wing-sister" or "my wing-father's eye-brother". Some of these terms made it into Ekoin as loanwords, but otherwise such relationships are summed as, for instance, "aunt" and "uncle" when brevity is more needed than precision.
Zaee have one name apiece. To use anything other than this exact name in its entirety (a nickname, a shortening, a mispronunciation, etc.) is deeply offensive: one's name is considered the most significant symbol of one's eye-mother's love, and mangling the name is an insult to said mother. Zaee are likely to refer to humans by full name as well, but can eventually be induced to use other appellations if this is greatly desired.
Zaee children are usually educated by a series of temporary apprenticeships/shadowings, wherein they follow experienced practitioners of miscellaneous careers until one of these careers strikes them as something they'd like to go on doing. At that time they would normally be enrolled in a school devoted to that career on a Zaee planet, but their low population in Mevwan means that they often attend human trade schools or continue apprenticeships past the trial period instead.
Humans:
Mevwani humans are - and have been since the invention of the printing press in year -189 - a culture of writers. Specifically, a majority of Mevwani human adults routinely publish articles in one of the thousands of periodicals that circulate throughout the country. Some of these periodicals are local newsletters, some are topic-specific magazines, some are expert summaries of what goes on in consensus-collection meetings, some are packaged presentations of coupons and advertisements by affiliated groups of businesses, some are product catalogs, some are gossip rags or heavily fictionalized tabloids, some are packed with nothing but advice columns, some are distribution mechanisms for fiction or art, some are newspapers on current events in any of several dozen spheres - the proliferation of the format means that they tend to be highly specialized. Most people subscribe to some scores of periodicals, although only a fraction of them put new issues out on a very frequent basis. The most popular of these is in fact a meta-periodical, The Mailings List, which distributes a regularly updated list of what mailings are available in what localities and how to subscribe to them. Many municipal governments (in places that have arranged to have such things) distribute each new Mailings List to each household automatically without requiring them to subscribe. Subscription fees are usually low - enough to cover printing, the editorial staff, and (if any) the staff writers. Few periodicals compensate irregular contributors except with prestige.
The urge to write, print, and spread news required the development of a sophisticated and efficient postal service, which has been part of the impetus behind the development of a nationwide system of railroads, including several tracks that go across bridges between the island and the mainland. (The trains are equipped to run on steam generated by burning agricultural waste, but when possible, it is preferred to have a strong perturber aboard to make them go without expending fuel.) For particularly urgent missives, it is possible to buy access to a Zaee computer and transmit information electronically; over a shorter range, telepaths often provide the service. All the printing that's necessary to get everyone their news requires a great deal of paper. Mevwani make a cheap newsprint out of the pulp of native whitegrass, a cold- and mowing-tolerant plant. They have also recently learned to recycle this paper to make even cheaper newsprint.
The populace of Mevwan, as a rule, places a great emphasis on academic scholarship - as a hobby. It is quite encouraged to learn an obscure dead dialect of Cosash or study the differences between mainland and island poetry from the negative third century, but as a rule people aren't paid to do it and are rarely paid to teach it after they've educated themselves. It's almost, but not quite, as uncommon to be paid to write - it's generally expected that people write because they have things to express and hope to get them to an audience, not because they're hoping to make money out of it. It would not be at all uncharacteristic to meet a Mevwani human who has an unskilled day job at a recycling plant and then goes home to research and write and publish careful articles on contemporary philosophy of religion. Libraries - filled more with back issues of periodicals than with hardbound books, and sometimes equipped with a precious loan of a computer peripheral allowing access to the Koeen - are present in nearly every concentration of human habitation.
Humans have a focus on athletic competitions that baffles their more gracile, cerebral Zaee neighbors. Regional and municipal teams have formed leagues for national favorite sports prel-stik, okta, nishash, eng-mi, and daroatan, among others. The professional players are paid, although only in the form of a cut of ticket prices - individual players are very rarely idolized to the point where they can earn significant money for celebrity appearances or endorsements. Competitions of other skills - music, dance, drawing accurate freehand circles, cultivating oddly-colored flowers or giant squashes, quilting, anything - are also common, but usually have entry fees and small prizes if any. However, the physical products one is judged on (if any) are more likely to find buyers if they have performed well in contests.
In terms of education, there is little nationwide regularity. Many people are self-taught through the mail on the subjects of their choice and have no formal education at all. Others attend trade schools or learn as apprentices. There are a few colleges scattered around the country, where enclaves of full-time academics support themselves through the distribution of high-subscription-fee journals and ludicrously expensive speaking engagements; these take in new, junior members as students.
Mevwani humans have at least two names. One is generally brought into the world with a personal name (most Ekoin names are gender-neutral, although Cosash ones are not) and a family name inherited from either parent (parents' choice, usually based on their relationship with the respective families). One does not take on a spouse's family name, but it is reasonably common for humans to mutually adopt each other as siblings as adults when they form strong friendships, in which case they take on each others' personal names as middle names. (This confers no relationship between the adopted sibling and the other's blood relatives or other adopted siblings as memetic relationships do in Zaee; it's a purely one-to-one connection.) This can be done an arbitrary number of times, but most people perform no more than four or five such adoptions. It is not unheard of for humans to adopt Zaee in this way, especially if they're from mixed families of some kind and were raised as though siblings with a Zaee in the first place, although the Zaee don't alter their names in turn. Zaee usually don't add middle names when addressing humans, as they weren't conferred by the human's mother, but they do use both first and last.
The most distinctively Zaee cultural features one observes when one visits a community of them in Mevwan are the following: their near-complete decoupling of procreation and romance; fostering (or "wing-parenting" or "memetic adoption"); an insistence on the consistent use of full, unadulterated names for all purposes; and their religion, "Zwerise", which has not percolated significantly into human populations.
Zaee marry, exclusively monogamously, but this is a decision made without a view towards whether they are interested in having children with their spouse - accordingly it is not uncommon for marriages to be same-sex, and Zaee are by and large open to the possibility of marrying humans. Childbearing decisions are made independently, by women, who select without particularly privileging their husband (if they have one) a male Zaee, who may or may not be elsewhere married, with whom to attempt to have a child. (In practice, about 1/3 of Zaee are the genetic offspring of a married couple, since the qualities that make someone seem like a good spouse correlate rather well with the qualities that make someone seem like a good father.) The selected male is under no obligation to invest anything other than his genetic material in the process, although it's good form to make contact information for himself and his relatives available for the child's use should it be desired later. Some fathers prefer to be more active in their children's lives, especially if they're married to the mother (this is usually worked out ahead of time if they want anything more than occasional visitation, and fathers have approximately no grounds for complaint if the mothers of their children choose to exclude them). Procreation (by either sex) is the only purpose for which sexual non-exclusivity is widely permitted, but it is permitted with a blandness that can bewilder a human unused to Zaee - the rapidity with which an enraged spouse suspecting infidelity can be calmed by the clarification, "No, you don't understand, I was trying to get (her) pregnant" is the subject of a number of Mevwani jokes circulated among humans. (It is in fact customary to inform one's spouse ahead of time.)
Mothers (and, if participating, fathers) retain custody of their children only until they're about to learn to fly. At this point it is considered morally reprehensible to keep the child, and a foster parent or family must be located. This is often a friend of one of the parents (and may be either gender) but can never be a spouse of either - the fosterage must involve moving the child to a residence that doesn't contain their mother or father. Zaee parents who find themselves without adequate fosterage prospects from among their acquaintances often swap children with others in similar states. It's permissible to reject a request of fosterage, but one is rarely asked if one's acceptance isn't strongly anticipated. After the transfer is made, the new family is solely responsible for the child - even if they die and the child needs a new home, the will of the foster parent(s), not that of the biological parent(s), is used to determine where the kid goes. It is not uncommon for biological siblings to share a foster home, but nor is it particularly normative that they do so. Biological parents typically visit and write regularly, but suspicions of actual cohabitation with their flying children are looked upon with great dismay. One's foster-parent(s), and anyone related (in either fashion) to them, are considered one's memetic relatives or "wing-family" (as are the memetic relatives of one's biological family), whereas biological relatives are reckoned normally and constitute one's "eye-family" (because eye color is highly heritable). Zaee languages have a great many words to quickly convey relationships like "my eye-mother's wife's wing-sister" or "my wing-father's eye-brother". Some of these terms made it into Ekoin as loanwords, but otherwise such relationships are summed as, for instance, "aunt" and "uncle" when brevity is more needed than precision.
Zaee have one name apiece. To use anything other than this exact name in its entirety (a nickname, a shortening, a mispronunciation, etc.) is deeply offensive: one's name is considered the most significant symbol of one's eye-mother's love, and mangling the name is an insult to said mother. Zaee are likely to refer to humans by full name as well, but can eventually be induced to use other appellations if this is greatly desired.
Zaee children are usually educated by a series of temporary apprenticeships/shadowings, wherein they follow experienced practitioners of miscellaneous careers until one of these careers strikes them as something they'd like to go on doing. At that time they would normally be enrolled in a school devoted to that career on a Zaee planet, but their low population in Mevwan means that they often attend human trade schools or continue apprenticeships past the trial period instead.
Humans:
Mevwani humans are - and have been since the invention of the printing press in year -189 - a culture of writers. Specifically, a majority of Mevwani human adults routinely publish articles in one of the thousands of periodicals that circulate throughout the country. Some of these periodicals are local newsletters, some are topic-specific magazines, some are expert summaries of what goes on in consensus-collection meetings, some are packaged presentations of coupons and advertisements by affiliated groups of businesses, some are product catalogs, some are gossip rags or heavily fictionalized tabloids, some are packed with nothing but advice columns, some are distribution mechanisms for fiction or art, some are newspapers on current events in any of several dozen spheres - the proliferation of the format means that they tend to be highly specialized. Most people subscribe to some scores of periodicals, although only a fraction of them put new issues out on a very frequent basis. The most popular of these is in fact a meta-periodical, The Mailings List, which distributes a regularly updated list of what mailings are available in what localities and how to subscribe to them. Many municipal governments (in places that have arranged to have such things) distribute each new Mailings List to each household automatically without requiring them to subscribe. Subscription fees are usually low - enough to cover printing, the editorial staff, and (if any) the staff writers. Few periodicals compensate irregular contributors except with prestige.
The urge to write, print, and spread news required the development of a sophisticated and efficient postal service, which has been part of the impetus behind the development of a nationwide system of railroads, including several tracks that go across bridges between the island and the mainland. (The trains are equipped to run on steam generated by burning agricultural waste, but when possible, it is preferred to have a strong perturber aboard to make them go without expending fuel.) For particularly urgent missives, it is possible to buy access to a Zaee computer and transmit information electronically; over a shorter range, telepaths often provide the service. All the printing that's necessary to get everyone their news requires a great deal of paper. Mevwani make a cheap newsprint out of the pulp of native whitegrass, a cold- and mowing-tolerant plant. They have also recently learned to recycle this paper to make even cheaper newsprint.
The populace of Mevwan, as a rule, places a great emphasis on academic scholarship - as a hobby. It is quite encouraged to learn an obscure dead dialect of Cosash or study the differences between mainland and island poetry from the negative third century, but as a rule people aren't paid to do it and are rarely paid to teach it after they've educated themselves. It's almost, but not quite, as uncommon to be paid to write - it's generally expected that people write because they have things to express and hope to get them to an audience, not because they're hoping to make money out of it. It would not be at all uncharacteristic to meet a Mevwani human who has an unskilled day job at a recycling plant and then goes home to research and write and publish careful articles on contemporary philosophy of religion. Libraries - filled more with back issues of periodicals than with hardbound books, and sometimes equipped with a precious loan of a computer peripheral allowing access to the Koeen - are present in nearly every concentration of human habitation.
Humans have a focus on athletic competitions that baffles their more gracile, cerebral Zaee neighbors. Regional and municipal teams have formed leagues for national favorite sports prel-stik, okta, nishash, eng-mi, and daroatan, among others. The professional players are paid, although only in the form of a cut of ticket prices - individual players are very rarely idolized to the point where they can earn significant money for celebrity appearances or endorsements. Competitions of other skills - music, dance, drawing accurate freehand circles, cultivating oddly-colored flowers or giant squashes, quilting, anything - are also common, but usually have entry fees and small prizes if any. However, the physical products one is judged on (if any) are more likely to find buyers if they have performed well in contests.
In terms of education, there is little nationwide regularity. Many people are self-taught through the mail on the subjects of their choice and have no formal education at all. Others attend trade schools or learn as apprentices. There are a few colleges scattered around the country, where enclaves of full-time academics support themselves through the distribution of high-subscription-fee journals and ludicrously expensive speaking engagements; these take in new, junior members as students.
Mevwani humans have at least two names. One is generally brought into the world with a personal name (most Ekoin names are gender-neutral, although Cosash ones are not) and a family name inherited from either parent (parents' choice, usually based on their relationship with the respective families). One does not take on a spouse's family name, but it is reasonably common for humans to mutually adopt each other as siblings as adults when they form strong friendships, in which case they take on each others' personal names as middle names. (This confers no relationship between the adopted sibling and the other's blood relatives or other adopted siblings as memetic relationships do in Zaee; it's a purely one-to-one connection.) This can be done an arbitrary number of times, but most people perform no more than four or five such adoptions. It is not unheard of for humans to adopt Zaee in this way, especially if they're from mixed families of some kind and were raised as though siblings with a Zaee in the first place, although the Zaee don't alter their names in turn. Zaee usually don't add middle names when addressing humans, as they weren't conferred by the human's mother, but they do use both first and last.