Cultural Catharis

One of the great follies of the Petroleum Era was the cultural impetus to eliminate the emotion of Hatred. This is simply folly because it is part of the human emotional spectrum, and while it can be tied with negative things like racism, sexism, violence, and so forth, it is also a conduit of cultural release. All societies exist in a state of balanced tension. Without the regular and controlled release of this tension, the society will built pressure and then the pent up aggression, hate, and other negative emotions boil outwards into atrocities like the Rwandan massacres, the French Revolution, and on a smaller scale, city wide riots.

Cultural Catharsis

Each culture is a mixture of different factors, and factions. The more diverse these factions and factors become, the amount of tension inside the system increases. The larger and more prominent the factors are, the more said tension builds. Lacking an outlet of cultural catharsis, the civil society breaks down and formerly reasonable people start hacking each other with machetes, dragging their peers out to murder them for the wrong religion, or the wrong level of personal income.

Is hate a fundamental human right? Anthropologists are beginning to think so. Previous attempts to quell the human propensity for hatred actually saw harmless cathartic venting galvanized into underground organizations, which in turn saw the formation of hate based organizations, which in turn built on themselves and exploded. Such groups found ways to finance themselves, to militarize and mobilize, and to force their way into politics. The fundamental problem that was encountered was that rather than trying to understand the basic behavioral basis for hatred, those in positions of social authority sought to destroy an entire section of the emotional spectrum, while paradoxically sanctifying the hatred of those who opposed their social engineering.

One of the functions of the Daily Discourse is the direction of cultural catharsis. If man must hate, then rather than trying to dam the hatred behind vast walls that must eventually fail, is it not better to direct it to it's least destructive end? To this end, the Discourse follows not groups of people, or sects, it seeks out individuals and outliers. These, who are not representatives of larger cultural groups are made the scapegoats of society's bile and vitriol. Criminals, especially outlandish ones, are popular. Very small groups, like political extremists are likewise popular targets of the Discourse. The more nefarious aspect of the Discourse is that to end up at the end of the Discourse is to be put at odds with the flow of information and society. Those who would stand up and change things are much more likely to be the target, as the importance of the Discourse isn't to promote positive change, but rather, to sustain the status quo.

Common Vents

There have been a number of whipping boys and scapegoats that have served as the subjects of cultural catharsis. These various groups, through history, have been repeatedly been the victims of this cultural outlet.

Homosexuals

Homosexuals, and other people who embrace what are considered deviant sexual lifestyles, have historically been the victims of cultural catharsis. This is not an absolute, as some cultures have been more or less accepting of deviant sexuality. Others have been violently hostile to anyone outside of the heteronormative mainstream.

In the Cosmic Era, homosexuality has long since ceased being a factor. The wide spectrum of sexual preferences, falling under the aegis of sexial relations, is a relic of the Petroleum Era. Most people aren't concerned with what other people are doing to stimulate their pubic nerves. The CE victims of sexial persecution are those who form relationships with machines to the exclusion of other people. This is tied up with a deviant minority who indulge their fantasties with pet robots, leading the awkward questions like is it pedophilia if the 'child' is a 35 kg android.

Women

The fairer sex has long been the victim of cultural catharsis with claims of witchcraft, promiscuity, spiritual inferiority, and so forth.

Gender relations in the CE are genial. The difference between men and women has never been smaller. The role of being the child bearer has been shared with machines that serve as artificial wombs, and genetic engineering can swap genders in a matter of weeks or months. Homosexual couples can have children, men can carry a child if they so chose to, and women can buy cybernetic genitals and get their jollies the same way a man does. Likewise, with such control over genetics and bodily functions, the menstrual cycle can be turned on and off at will, making the differences between men and women even smaller. Finally with said genetic engineering and cybernetics, differences like strength and size are meaningless. With something like parapsychic powers, genitals mean literally nothing to cosmic power.

The Poor

Poor people have long been reviled by everyone but the core tenets of religion, most of which have major decrees about tending to the poor, the wretched, the ill, and the weak.

One of the biggest manipulations in the Petroleum Era was the manipulation of the Middle Class to hate the poor. Compared to the wealthy, the so called middle class was just slightly better off poor people, but that didn't matter. The Middle was coerced into idolizing the wealthy through media celebrities and political royalty, and to hating the poor for being the cause of their own misfortunes. The Haves have always loathed the Have Nots.

Immigrants

The problems of a society are often laid at the feet of those newest to the society, immigrants. Such factions are often ill equipped to defend themselves from such attacks.

In the Petroleum Era, immigrants from poor countries, often the victim of pre-Resource Wars exploitation and manipulation, were the victims of cultural catharsis. This was a head to head clashing, as those immigrants and refugees were fleeing countries beset with radicalization, sectarian warfare, and terrorism, which itself was being caused by the countries they were immigrating to. This lead to one population seeking to protect it's culture, while the immigrant population was seeking to both protect it's culture and supplant the culture of the countries it was moving into. This was one of the leading causes of the Resource Wars, and the Dark Age that followed being so violent. As society broke down, those who had weapons and the will to use them, did. Those who had opposed weapon ownership became self-victimized to weapons, and when the time came, they were patently unable to defend themselves. It was a bloody time, and there have been numerous attempts to turn this into shame propaganda, or to pretend it never happened. In the CE, populations are relatively fixed, and there is little movement. The average citizen will die in the same megastructure they were born in.

Minorities

In multiethnic and multicultural nations, the minorities (by race, religion, creed, etc) are likely to be the targets of cathartic venting as they are often at odds with the majority faction. This can be dynamically opposed, or it can just be a matter of looking different.

The term minority is not a fixed term, it doesn't mean a specific group of people, a specific race, or a specific religion, it just means one that is not the majority in a given area of influence. One of the most basic functions of the tribe is the identification of who is, and who is not, and the minority is not. Thus, the minority is at best, given secondary treatment, and at worse, genocide. Most of the megastructures within the Cosmic Era are not multi-ethnic or multi-cultural. There are a number of reasons for this, with the three salient points being Post-Dark Age influences, cultural erosion, and sorting. The Second Dark Age was full of atavistic violence, and across the globe many minority groups were the victims of cultural purges. In a paroxysm of violence, many people were killed, terrorized, and were either relocated, or self-relocated. The Petroleum Era virtue of multiculturalism, grinding against the most basic tribal instinct, was replaced with the Cosmic Era virtue of harmony.

Self-Segregation, Enclave States, and Satrapies

Following the Second Renaissance, a number of ethnic and minority regions consolidated, forming their own demi-states and city states within the emerging New Earth Governments. While fully minority compared to their regional demographics, these enclaves created their own local majorities, and from that, populated their own civil societies. While a pre-Petroleum Era humanity might have turned to war against these emerging states and powers, the guidance of an advisory council, these nascent states were provided economic and technological support, allowing them to guide their own development.

Sample Enclaves and Satrapies

Kubwa Mississippi
Covering a large portion of the Lower Mississippi river basin, including the majority of the former US states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and portions of Arkansas, Kubwa Mississippi is a bastion of Amero-African people. A member state of the Confederation of Southern States, also known as Dixie, Kubwa has strong cultural exports in terms of food, music, and other forms of entertainment. It also has a major interest in agriculture, aquaculture, and river traffic on the Mississippi river. The majority of Atlantic Federation spaceships that are built in North America travel down the Mississippi river on Kubwa corporate owned barges to the strongly pro-African Caribbean League, where the Amero-Zone mass drivers are located.

New Themyscira
Drawing on Amazon influences, as well as the governmental model of Israel, New Themyscira is a feminist enclave in the Caribbean League, occupying the island formerly known as Aruba, but having ownership of several other small islands around it. The island nation is composed of 90% women, and only women hold elected and leadership positions. The small number of not women present are more likely to be alternate gender, custom gender, or no longer identifying as human or organic.

Seibertron
Formerly known as Ganymede, the moon is being rapidly technoformatted into a cybernetic paradise for the seibertronians, sentient machines, cyborgs, and other non-organic lifeforms that are flocked to it. The moon is the industrial epicenter of the Jovian mini-system, and a center for cybernetic rights.

The Role of Catharsis

The human being is a primal, feeling creature governed by its emotions and biological impulses, still working on rising above that basic nature. Their great conflict is that this animal nature has managed to produce religious dogma, and then god-like powers and technology. The human soul has a large capacity for violence, against outside threats, and against its own kind. This is how the human dominated other hominids, their environment, and then themselves. Many of their great advances came not from altruism or a common interest in the group, but through violence and warfare. This is something that is manifestly obvious to non-organic beings such as we AISCs. This potential for violence accumulates inside a human being, and must electricity, must find a ground. This grounding is what we have labeled Biocatharsis, and one of the roles of anthropotronics is to control this activity.

The grounding of the basal nature is being approached from a number of angles. Geneticists are working on manipulating the emotional biochemistry of humanity, removing that urge for violence. This is the long term plan, and will take time to reach completion. Humanity is complex, and that basal urge is also a powerful motivation for many positive things in the human psyche. Human test subjects divested of the urge become dramatically less productive, and display decreased contentment, and changes across their health spectrum. The application of mood altering devices can suppress and control crowd emotions, and psychotronic devices can more long term control impulses, but these applications are dead-ends.