Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Carl on December 20, 2001, 07:54:00 pm
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what kind of holidays do you think the vasudans have? they probably celebrate some of the same ones the terrans do that involve the 2nd great war(Battle of Deneb Day ect.)
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vasudans... do they have holydays?
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i doubt they work 365 days a year(or how ever many days long a Vasudan year is).
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Originally posted by venom2506:
vasudans... do they have holydays?
Look at it this way: is there any culture on earth that doesn't hold some days out of the year as signifigant or sacred? I can't think of any. I suspect that there aren't any. I think that Vasudans must have holidays, secular and religious.
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--Mik
http://www.404error.com
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Fishcake Tuesday?
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Ace should know.
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Vasudans know that Terran holidays are simply excuses for merchants from semi-tropical climes to sell their surplus of co-fee beans to those in Northern regions and those in the southern hemisphere attempting to mimic such behaviors by making their holiday icons in "summer clothes."
Since Vasudans do not have inferior co-fee, such holidays are not required. (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/drevil.gif)
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Vasudans know that Terran holidays are simply excuses for merchants from semi-tropical climes to sell their surplus of co-fee beans to those in Northern regions and those in the southern hemisphere attempting to mimic such behaviors by making their holiday icons in "summer clothes."
Since Vasudans do not have inferior co-fee, such holidays are not required.
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Ace
Staff member FreeSpace Watch
http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/ ("http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/")
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Originally posted by mikhael:
Look at it this way: is there any culture on earth that doesn't hold some days out of the year as signifigant or sacred? I can't think of any. I suspect that there aren't any. I think that Vasudans must have holidays, secular and religious.
ants and bees?
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They'll probably 'celebrate' -rather remember- the destruction of Vasuda Prime.
Ascension day looks like a possible one too (the day when the current emperor ascended the throne)
A dynastic Celebration will probably exist too.
The emperors birthday?
Some celebrations having to do with the old myths about that 'mysterious race'
The starting of the New Year? Which could possible co-incide with the ending or beginning of summer (their world being a hot one).
Colonisation day? The day when the first offworld colony was established...
Edit: How could I forget this one:
Headz-day! Every young Vasudan gets his first Headz at a certain age celebrating the trasition from sibling to full citizen. (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif)
[This message has been edited by Crazy_Ivan80 (edited 12-21-2001).]
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Originally posted by venom2506:
ants and bees?
Last I checked, ants and bees hadn't developed religion, literature, sciences, arts, etc. I wouldn't call them a 'culture' in the same sense that humanity has various cultures.
Ants and bees have a hierarchical 'social' structure and we refer to it as a 'social structure' because we like to anthropomorphise things. They aren't 'social' nor do they have 'culture'.
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--Mik http://www.404error.com ("http://www.404error.com")
[This message has been edited by mikhael (edited 12-21-2001).]
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Originally posted by mikhael:
anthropomorphise
thats a big word (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/wink.gif) (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif) (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif) (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif) (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif)
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"We have a responsibility to the coming generations"
"What responsibility???"
"To keep track of the mistakes we made as a species."
"We need to remember to spread the word,and that's what keeps me alive."
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Originally posted by mikhael:
Last I checked, ants and bees hadn't developed religion, literature, sciences, arts, etc. I wouldn't call them a 'culture' in the same sense that humanity has various cultures.
Ants and bees have a hierarchical 'social' structure and we refer to it as a 'social structure' because we like to anthropomorphise things. They aren't 'social' nor do they have 'culture'.
ants have a very developped sense of science, they keep creating things. religion doesn't make a culture, hopefully (anyway, who knows if they don't have that?). aAnts have a fairly developped sense of individualism: the hive sake comes first, but an ant on her own will be able to make decisions, and will always try to find the best way to avoid or fix a pb. I didn't gave much credits to ants before, then I've read the trilpgy by Bernard Werber, I was impressed, so I took a closer look at those little beasts. They steal "technologies" from other species, create others when they need to, have a much more developped communication system, and are everywhere. they're much smarter than we think, are the only species doing war like us (between cities or against other species). They have political goals (they won't fight only for territory, but also to control resources and stuff like that). They're building cities, corporations between cities (cooperation between different social groups, if that's not advanced culture, I don't know what will convince you). They can settle in the most hostile environments( find a single human bieng that never saw an ant), from human cities to deserts and and even Groenland. They can adapt, that's what led us to be the dominant earth species. But what would happen if they decided to cooperate not opnly between some hives, but on a planet scale? I wonder what would be the most dominant species. You kill some ants with insecticides, most will die, but the surviving ones will be completly immunized to it.
For me, ants are equal to us on a civilisation-wise scale. And they have an exponential expansion, w/o even altering their environment.
End of rant (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/tongue.gif)
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Originally posted by venom2506:
ants have a very developped sense of science, they keep creating things. religion doesn't make a culture, hopefully (anyway, who knows if they don't have that?). aAnts have a fairly developped sense of individualism: the hive sake comes first, but an ant on her own will be able to make decisions, and will always try to find the best way to avoid or fix a pb. I didn't gave much credits to ants before, then I've read the trilpgy by Bernard Werber, I was impressed, so I took a closer look at those little beasts. They steal "technologies" from other species, create others when they need to, have a much more developped communication system, and are everywhere. they're much smarter than we think, are the only species doing war like us (between cities or against other species). They have political goals (they won't fight only for territory, but also to control resources and stuff like that). They're building cities, corporations between cities (cooperation between different social groups, if that's not advanced culture, I don't know what will convince you). They can settle in the most hostile environments( find a single human bieng that never saw an ant), from human cities to deserts and and even Groenland. They can adapt, that's what led us to be the dominant earth species. But what would happen if they decided to cooperate not opnly between some hives, but on a planet scale? I wonder what would be the most dominant species. You kill some ants with insecticides, most will die, but the surviving ones will be completly immunized to it.
For me, ants are equal to us on a civilisation-wise scale. And they have an exponential expansion, w/o even altering their environment.
End of rant (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/tongue.gif)
I agree with all of your points, but draw a different conclusion: ants are not a full blown, self-aware, intelligent culture, yet. They have the potential. I do not believe that potential will ever be realised because they have become superspecialised to their niche by the forces of natural selection.
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--Mik
http://www.404error.com
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I agree with all of your points, but draw a different conclusion: ants are not a full blown, self-aware, intelligent culture, yet. They have the potential. I do not believe that potential will ever be realised because they have become superspecialised to their niche by the forces of natural selection.
Maybe they're playing dumb, waiting for the day when they can annihilate the humans and claim dominance Mwuhahahaha....
The reason they won't become a 'civilized' species is because of us. Eventually some stupid **** will spill soemthing like Agent Orange and everything will die. Also, being the dominant species, I don't think we'd ever let another species (terrestrial or otherwise) be as or more powerful as/than us. The only chance they'd have is if the human race were wiped out and anything that coudl wipe us out would undoubtedly kill everything else along with us.
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that's what be tend to be to: education leads people to specialize themselves in a single track. Jobs are more and more focused on a single point of a total job, for exemple, at the begining of the last centurey, a little group could, on his own, build an entire car, each one able to help the other if a prob;lem occurs. Now you have a complete staff focused only to, say, supervized the paint process (which means looking at the computers if nothing goes wrong). you have specialized "castes", like the cilvil servants. It works exactly the same way for the ants. They have warriors, they have scouting parties, they have nurses, they even have varieties that are used as doors to block paths to the queen's room in times of war (they have a very broad head that can obturate a corridor). And they don't birth (sp?) as what they will become (at the exception of sexued/unsexued individuals), they all began has ants able to do everything, then they specializes themselves according to what's needed, their evolution appears through different foods and pheromonal exchanges. It's just another sort of educational, physic rather than pshychic, as ours is.
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This reminds me of that Rammstein video (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif)
Links 2-3-4
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The GTVA might have declared the days on which certain epic battles or big events occured to be galactic holidays. (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/wink.gif) I would think that the holidays would include the day on which Vasuda Prime was destroyed, the day on which the Lucifer was destroyed (and Earth was cut off from itc colonies), and maybe the day of the Capella supernova.
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This thread got from Vasudan holidays/culture to ants.
(http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif) (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif) (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif)HOW DID YOU MAKE THE TRANSISTION???? (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif) (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif) (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif)
By the way, ants are highly intelligent. Like stated by him [the other guy], ants do build glorious civilizations. They specialize in work and they farm their resources (grow a fungus on leaves) when natural forages have been depleted. They even specialize within their own species. (The queen has an egg sac, the drone has wings, the soldiers are usually the bigger ones, and of course the rest 97% of the colony are those pests you see on your lawn.) God didn't just create us to be the superior being. (He did say that we have control of this rock and we do indeed.) Ants dominate the subterranean worlds. They do indeed steal technologies from other colonies or other species. (Leafcutters can change their diet to match those of the honeydew ants.) And did you know that when different colonies wage intercolonial war, their armies are more organized that the Redcoats. And did I mention trade? There are several species of ants who trade with a different colony their extra surpluses of whatever for whatever the other colony has that the colony needs.
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Christ
Redeems
All
People
God is Life
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Originally posted by Rampage:
This thread got from Vasudan holidays/culture to ants.
(http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif) (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif) (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif)HOW DID YOU MAKE THE TRANSISTION???? (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif) (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif) (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif)
By the way, ants are highly intelligent. Like stated by him [the other guy], ants do build glorious civilizations. They specialize in work and they farm their resources (grow a fungus on leaves) when natural forages have been depleted. They even specialize within their own species. (The queen has an egg sac, the drone has wings, the soldiers are usually the bigger ones, and of course the rest 97% of the colony are those pests you see on your lawn.) God didn't just create us to be the superior being. (He did say that we have control of this rock and we do indeed.) Ants dominate the subterranean worlds. They do indeed steal technologies from other colonies or other species. (Leafcutters can change their diet to match those of the honeydew ants.) And did you know that when different colonies wage intercolonial war, their armies are more organized that the Redcoats. And did I mention trade? There are several species of ants who trade with a different colony their extra surpluses of whatever for whatever the other colony has that the colony needs.
I will preface by saying I do not mean to offend.
By including omniscient, omnipotent powers in your stance, you render the discussion moot. There's no logical divide between ant and man except the whim of some superbeing. Pass.
I guess what makes the distinction between sentient races (human, vasudan, shivan, Ancients) and the nonsentient (ants, bees) is the ability to change their basic responses based on things that are not hard coded or forced by environment. Ants don't build things. They don't create or innovate new ideas, tools or methods. They don't build rafts to take them across oceans or ships to cross the stars. They don't have aesthetics response. They don't have 'culture' or 'society'. Sentient races do all of those things (or work toward them). They have the ability to create things that are not directly related to survival and to appreciate those things in a way that is seperate from their immediate concerns.
Venom, you point out that humanity specializes just like ants. I point out that they do, but they don't have too. A soldier can leave the army and become a farmer. A computer programmer can become an artist. A politician can become an sailor. A soldier ant will live and die a soldier, and will never go out to cut leaves. The queen will always be the queen. She can't just give it all up and become a regular ant. We specialize by choice, not by necessity.
Ants are awesome, but they aren't sentient and do not have culture.
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--Mik
http://www.404error.com
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Ants do have a culture, they all work together for the greater good.
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Originally posted by Zeronet:
Ants do have a culture, they all work together for the greater good.
So do wolf packs. That's not culture. Culture allows for individuals that can ignore the common good for ideals and goals that may run contrary to the needs of the herd.
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--Mik
http://www.404error.com
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Originally posted by mikhael:
I will preface by saying I do not mean to offend.
By including omniscient, omnipotent powers in your stance, you render the discussion moot. There's no logical divide between ant and man except the whim of some superbeing. Pass.
I guess what makes the distinction between sentient races (human, vasudan, shivan, Ancients) and the nonsentient (ants, bees) is the ability to change their basic responses based on things that are not hard coded or forced by environment. Ants don't build things. They don't create or innovate new ideas, tools or methods. They don't build rafts to take them across oceans or ships to cross the stars. They don't have aesthetics response. They don't have 'culture' or 'society'. Sentient races do all of those things (or work toward them). They have the ability to create things that are not directly related to survival and to appreciate those things in a way that is seperate from their immediate concerns.
Venom, you point out that humanity specializes just like ants. I point out that they do, but they don't have too. A soldier can leave the army and become a farmer. A computer programmer can become an artist. A politician can become an sailor. A soldier ant will live and die a soldier, and will never go out to cut leaves. The queen will always be the queen. She can't just give it all up and become a regular ant. We specialize by choice, not by necessity.
Ants are awesome, but they aren't sentient and do not have culture.
no offense taken, but you're wrong:
Ants create and uses tools: it has been witnessed ants trying to push leaves in water in order to cross a waterpoint. They grow other insects for their own use, like cattle. And they build their hives (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/wink.gif) and unlike spider webs, all the hives are differents, they will use usefull stuff if they find it (a dead tree for exemple). And warriors d not live only for war: ants aren't always at war after all (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif) warriors can do drone stuff too, and they carry stuff just like regular ants when they have nothing else to do (they will cut leaves (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/wink.gif) ).
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You attack my every point, sir, and well.
I will still maintain, however, that this discussion of ants does not give them culture, just structure. They are still not sentient, and thus do not qualify for the discussion. (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/wink.gif)
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--Mik
http://www.404error.com
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They don't build rafts to take them across oceans or ships to cross the stars
Fire ants. On their travels, if they encounter a river or water barrier the entire colony forms an immense (and deadly might I add) raft that floats across the water. They kinda sting and mame anything they come in contact with and at present are probably the single greatest natural threat to human habitation in parts of the world.
Also, ants come in many species that are adapted to their regions eg Meat ants in Australia strip dead animal carcasses, the fire ants form rafts because water is a frequent problem. This could be compared to traits in humans such as black skin to survive more sun and the inability of many arid countrys inhabitants to swim.
To summarise: HA! They don't need to build no stinkin' boats coz any that need to cross water can naturally swim/float.
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or ships to cross the stars
Neither do humans.
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Originally posted by an0n:
Fire ants. On their travels, if they encounter a river or water barrier the entire colony forms an immense (and deadly might I add) raft that floats across the water. They kinda sting and mame anything they come in contact with and at present are probably the single greatest natural threat to human habitation in parts of the world.
Also, ants come in many species that are adapted to their regions eg Meat ants in Australia strip dead animal carcasses, the fire ants form rafts because water is a frequent problem. This could be compared to traits in humans such as black skin to survive more sun and the inability of many arid countrys inhabitants to swim.
To summarise: HA! They don't need to build no stinkin' boats coz any that need to cross water can naturally swim/float.
In what way does that qualify them as having culture? Beetles come in all shapes and sizes and perform all sorts of tasks and activities too. They just do it more or less in a solitary manner. They aren't sentient and neither are ants. There's no culture involved, just instinct.
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--Mik
http://www.404error.com
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ahem, Vasudan holidays?
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Originally posted by an0n:
Neither do humans.
We're discussing Vasudan holidays in a notional future in which man has done precisely that. And in which ants and bees still have not. Humans have holidays, so must Vasudans--and Shivans.
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--Mik
http://www.404error.com
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Originally posted by mikhael:
In what way does that qualify them as having culture? Beetles come in all shapes and sizes and perform all sorts of tasks and activities too. They just do it more or less in a solitary manner. They aren't sentient and neither are ants. There's no culture involved, just instinct.
Well, my best answer here is their communication system, even more devolpped than us: it's faster and more acurrate. And if normal ants lacks that, sexued individuals have very developed abstract feelings. They even have what scientits calls total communication, they put their antennas together and, basically, the memories and thoughts of the other ant will be available to the first one just like it was her owns. And ants can do TC in groups: imagine a kind of telepathic chat in a room, between a dozen of people, you could remember what your neighbour did 5 years ago for exemple.
And instinct is not the only way of behaving fot ants. From the little I know, apart from humans, there's only two species in the world that could find the way to open a plastic bottle: octopus and ants. Apes have to be educated to find how to do that. An ant put with some food in a bottle (small enough for her of course) was able to find how to open it in 32 days... Instincts won't teach you that.
Anyway, you're right, I should stop talking about ants, but they fscinate me...
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Ok, this is off to HL.... there's not much FS content here.