Random plotbunny issues

[herewiss13]

One of the first and most central concepts of my "Darwin Psi-Lord" novel is the idea that while most of the population has evolved under very strong Natural Selection, a portion has retained the trappings of "modern" culture (modern being contemporary with the protagonist...give or take a few decades). It'd be a culture in stasis, due to lack of resources, totally devoted to bringing the "savages" on the mainland up to a level of civilization comparable with their own. Think of it as a Secular Church consciously designed for guiding society through a _veeeery_ long Dark Age.

(this is all a very simplified analogy, mind you).

So the timescale I've been tentatively envisioning is in the 3-5 kya range. Long enough for some very _intense_ selection pressure to work on people to give them "psychic" talents, but short enough that some semblance of "modern" culture, etc. might survive (the Catholic church, going on 2 kya at the moment, is the only real-world comparison I can give. The church at year 0 is pretty different than the church at year 2000, but they've had to deal with world events (the "Secular Church" on Darwin is on an isolated island), with a lack of modern technology and with a lack of understanding of historical forces. In essence, biological evolution is supposed to outstrip cultural evolution by a long shot. This is not how things work...usually. I thought there's _just_ enough uniqueness in the environment and circumstances that I've created to make it _plausible_...but only just.

Then I read an article only about human migrations 60,000 years ago and the subtle mitochondrial mutations that were used to track them and I realized how utterly inadequate my timescales are. I can only think of two recourses.

1) Posit that psychic adaptations require only minute genetic changes to create large transformations in mental abilities (a bit like mental HOX genes, to twist the science about brutally). The brain is just mysterious enough to let this fly. Therefore what would otherwise be _huge_ evolutionary change can be shoehorned into a few millennia...especially when the truly enormous selection pressure of the Darwinian ecosystem is brought to bear. There's also the fact that the small, isolated tribal groups that'd form on the mainland would encourage inbreeding with the dominant (read: most psychic, best surviving) male, thus fixing psychic trait in the gene pool (gene puddles) more rapidly (just read an essay about this concept in mice populations...without the psychic stuff). And maybe, just maybe, we're on the cusp of Godhood and just need the "nudge" to tap the unlimited potential of the mind.

...well, it makes a good line, anyway.

2) The other option I've come up with is to scrap any notion of cultural continuity completely. Strand the colonists 50,000 years in the past and let the island of Landfall (with it's Secular "church") rise and fall with the tides of history. Let the island, with its preserved tech-base and knowledge be abandoned and re=discovered multiple times. So the culture wouldn't be preserved so much as resurrected. It complicates the historical narrative tremendously...but lends a "weight" to the historical background that could be very good for the story

****

There are times when I look back on trains of thought like the one I just outlined and go "wtf"? Truly, I find the inside of my head a far more interesting place to live than the real world. I can only hope that the rest of you find my talking-out-loud, as it were, to be mildly intriguing. It certainly helps to spell out specific issues for me.

Comments

[akiah.livejournal.com]

ooh, i see...you're _trying_ to give your readers migraines.

...

that's not nice...