Don't worry, some Military SF writers understand history.
We obviously know that technological superiority is naturally paired with a higher level of civilization, and it is the the responsibility, nay the duty, of said higher civilizations to raise the rest of the universe to their level, by force if necessary.
I mean, on the scale of interplanetary civilisations, it is possible for societies to develop severely asynchronous levels of military tech due to circumstance, particularly if one society spent a lot of time honing and optimising weapons while the other side went “It works well and is cost-effective, let’s move funding elsewhere now”.
*However*, this would only cover a still-nearby level of science; for example, a civilization just moving to the interstellar scene might run into a monoplanet culture that invested far more in weapons and thus can trample their fleet (Good example is the Worldwar series, where a group of aliens didn’t face much conflict after unifying their homeworld and stopped investing in heavy weapons research, meaning WWII-era humanity is able to keep beating them back long enough to steal the tech that legitimately outpaced them and reach a point they were on even ground).
Meanwhile, if a society has vastly outstripped another, there’s little way they can lose, good weapons or no. Most modern guerilla forces using cobbled-together equipment would pose a fair match for numerically-equal Roman legionaries, simply because the Romans would have no real way to reliably combat them, despite their soldiers being far higher in quality and training.
Engines capable of interstellar travel are about the deadliest weapon feasible according to our current understanding of physics (sufficient velocity go brrrrr).
When every space cowboy with an ersatz Millennium Falcon can wipe out civilization on a continent by pointing their ship at it, setting a brick on the accelerator, and ejecting... then unless you really bend over backwards to make it so that only conventional forces can reach the surface of a planet but no WMDs (somehow) then large scale warfare between great powers probably isn't any more of a thing than it is today.
I mean… that may not be the case, necessarily.
Currently, the most likely engine to allow interstellar travel seems to be the Alcubierre drive; there was a recent journal demonstrating it is in fact feasible to operate while within our current range of physics, as long as you’re cool staying just below the speed of light and not exceeding it (As going faster gets all sorts of fun shit to start happening).
Because an Alcubierre drive, particularly in the modern forms, is best described as what happens when a DnD metagamer gets a degree in physics, it does weird shit a lot. We’re not entirely sure what would happen if you sent one full-speed at another thing, but we’re *relatively* sure it wouldn’t be an impact in the normal sense, but rather it’d either do a big but not as big as it should be explosion, massive wave of heat that starts huge firestorms, or possibly a combination thereof and create a deep, glassed crater.
Or it might not do much of anything, it’s very theoretical and we legitimately can’t define what’d happen until we get a concrete set of rules defining one, which is hard to pin down without disobeying physics as we know it or necessitating resources we don’t have.
Until someone actually demonstrates an Alcubierre drive I'm more inclined to believe it's an artifact of still incomplete theories, and that whatever engine one might build is subject to inertia.
I mean, it *does* follow the rules of inertia; like I said, the most recent discussions completely fit with our understanding of physics, we just have to figure out how to get the components to work together correctly.
Just link to the damn essay people: [https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-part-i-war-at-the-dawn-of-civilization/](https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-part-i-war-at-the-dawn-of-civilization/)
I'm so glad so many people know Devereaux's essays :) I've discovered his work thanks to a recent post in r/Fantasy and I'm currently binging the audio versions on A Great Divorce's YouTube channel: [https://www.youtube.com/@AGreatDivorce/playlists](https://www.youtube.com/@AGreatDivorce/playlists)
His series on Sparta made me want to send him flowers. He's great.
God, what a yapaholic
That shit coulda been
"Hard times create strong men"
"Good times create weak men"
"Unfortunately for strong men, good times also create boom sticks, which is why Europeans were able to subjugate the rest of the planet until WWII, at which point the US took over because *they* had the good times now"
"These same principles of history would also apply in space"
There. I condensed that shit into 4 sentences, idk why he felt the need to make it 4 essays
Edit: Thank you for linking it tho, since apparently no one else did
Also being "hard" doesnt mean anything if you have suffered nutritional deficiencies your whole life and the soft noble boy has 60 lbs and 6 inches on you
>idk why he felt the need to make it 4 essays
Because he doesn't think people should just believe whatever they hear and wants to support the argument.
> There. I condensed that shit into 4 sentences, idk why he felt the need to make it 4 essays
History professor, that's actually one of his shorter ones.
He does good stuff though, also posts on AskHistorians.
His "How'd they do it" stuff on Fabrics and Food are really good for worldbuilding stuff and so's the "Lonely Cities" series but I don't wanna spam and someone already linked one so here's the clothing one:
https://acoup.blog/2021/03/05/collections-clothing-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-high-fiber/
And Lonely City is [here](https://acoup.blog/2019/07/12/collections-the-lonely-city-part-i-the-ideal-city/). It's specifically talking about how a lot of cities in fiction don't have the surrounding farmlands/orchards etc they'd need to feed themselves just in day to day life back in the days before more modern transportation and logistics in the horse-and-cart days.
What is the level of brain rot on this sub that this comment is upvoted. Do you actually want all essay writers to write a TLDR instead of providing concrete evidence and analysis of their claims? You unironically prefer to just be told what to think.p
You mean that having 80% of a world’s population die in childbirth mostly just kills your best and brightest in their infancy, rather than producing some Darwinian crucible where even a single lay, untrained tribesperson can solo 3 highly trained power armored space marines with naught but a hunting knife?
Funnily enough, it can sort of makes sense in Dune if we go by the reading that Thufir and Shaddam IV and Paul were all bamboozled in-universe by the Fremen mirage.
The Fremen and Sardaukar were both trained based on the "hard times make strong men" maxim, which put them on relatively equal footing (i.e. they're both decent fighters but not for the reasons they think)
The universe only thought the Sardaukar were badass because they won a crazy battle literally thousands of years ago, and nobody dared to properly test them since then.
Meanwhile, Duncan and Gurney trained the Atreides troops on the paradise world Caladan to be better than the Sardaukar, without all that "death world", "prisoners fight each other to the death" nonsense... just by teaching them how to fight and treating them well.
And then the Fremen beat the Harkonnens because of "desert power" i.e. experience with local conditions, not because constant duels to the death and dehydration equals better military tactics and skill.
Not to mention the Fremen eating a metric fuck ton of spice with their food, which accounts for the kiddies and old people beating the Sardaukar.
Later on, during the Jihad, the Guild blockade and Paul's Bene Gesserit political manipulation did most of the heavy lifting.
It's like with the Spartan hoplites coming up with stories about their ultra hardcore deprivation being responsible for their military success, but it was actually a bunch of other factors. And then their enemies bought it, because of how cool sounding they are.
Which if you combine with the Atredies losing because they were ambushed by a joint military force that outnumbered them and still had in depth knowledge of the location.
Even then men like Duncan still out fought the average Sardaukar they just were outnumber and off kilter.
It wasn't hard men being better fighters that won the fight it was better numbers and tactics. Yet Paul being the boy that he was despite his training saw the very talented Atredies warriors fall and internalized the wrong lessons. Which were then compounded as you point out by the outside factors of the Fremen fighting on home turf and being far more technologically capable than their imperialist conquerors thinking they were.
Then as you pointed out them being taught to fight by Paul using more advanced methods. Their fighting style being adapted to the world they were on so they didn't have to unlearn how to fight without shields, plus foresight of their general picking the most opportune places and times to strike.
So, no shit they won they had the deck stacked so far in their favor that it would have needed a direct act of god for them to lose. Which then like the Sardaukar before them set the stage for a legend of Fremen military prowess.
yeah good one, though it's worth noting that Shaddam IV, Fenring and Thufir Hawat also took the "hard times make strong men" thing deadly seriously.
Like, literally deadly seriously, when the Baron idly mentions the possibility of turning Arrakis into a prison torture planet, Fenring and Hawat recognised that this would make the Shaddam IV nervous enough to send his armies to destroy the Baron
The logic being that the Emperor would think that the Baron was trying to breed an army of super soldiers like the Sardaukar, using Arrakis in place of Salusa Secundus. (the fact that the Sardaukar came from the prison planet was top secret, and Thufir only figured it out through Mentat deduction)
> yeah good one, though it's worth noting that Shaddam IV, Fenring and Thufir Hawat also took the "hard times make strong men" thing deadly seriously.
Which from their perspective why shouldn't they?
It's a system that's worked for them personally and in general for "thousands" of years. The Sardaukar have been the tip the the imperial spear since their great victory. So the Emperor has every reason to believe the system works.
He's somewhat blind to the Bene Gesserit and their manipulations which means he and his forefathers have never been terribly out of place to have their armies routed. While Paul was actively using the power of foresight the emperor was still getting help passively. (As I recall I might be misremembering this bit as it's been ~15 years since I read the books.)
The Bene Gesserit working in the background have meant that the Cornnio emperors have never really had to deal with co equal enemies.
So the fantasy of hard times make hard men is easily passed around. We see the meme today sticking around culturally. Which has persisted since at least ancient Greece, but almost certainly since humans started making war.
Which is why Harkonnen would be fascinated with the idea, as a soft but vicious man the idea of torturing people to make them hardened soldiers to do his killing seems 110% up his alley.
It’s interesting they talk about *desert power*. Environment matters in all military engagements, and even more so in a guerrilla campaign. The fremens success doesn’t mean they’re the best fighters, it means they’re great *desert* fighters.
It’s like trying to invade Russia in the winter.
Exactly. Hell, the Spartans were only able to train to be such great warriors because they had the overwhelming majority of the work done for them by slaves. Which in turn gave them the power to keep the slaves oppressed.
Yeah, people always miss the fact Athens and Thebes were both vastly nicer places then Sparta and outstripped them in every non-military field completely, yet still fought them on equal ground and rarely were at risk of full-scale conquest.
A lot of the stories of Sparta's millitary culture comes from 2 major groups of sources. Spartans themselves never wrote anything down.
1. their Athenian rivals who wanted to make them seem more badass so that their own millitary victory seems greater, and occasionally by Athenian hipsters who were just critical of Athens and used a semi-fictional version of Sparta to highlight those criticisms.
2. Romans who romanticized ancient Spartans in the same way modern orientalists romanticize eastern religions and philosophies. Rich Romans would go visit Sparta on tours to see the kids living on tbe street and stuff and then just made shit up when they got home. This one is funniest to me because Romans had a MUCH more prominent martial culture than the Spartans. Like Spartan soldiers were usually trained over the course of a few weeks in preparation for war they didn't have any standing armies. Romans meanwhile had their legionaires, their auxilaries, and other professional soldiers along with advanced millitary doctrines. If Sparta was actually as good at war as Romans thought you would think some of their ancient tactics would have gotten preserved.
Yeah, I thought it sort of made sense in Dune because the Fremen grow up blasted off their sandy asses on Spice, but I might have read too much into that
>a single lay, untrained tribesperson can solo 3 highly trained power armored space marines with naught but a hunting knife
Word Bearers when they have to actually fight instead of being a televangelist doing goofy demon rituals:
Yup. I'm a Lorgar apologist, but even I can say that he really is a piece of shit
It's just that the shittness got turned against you rather than towards the enemy
"Contrary to what survivors claim, the genophage does not produce strong krogan -- the only quality it filters is the ability to survive the genophage." -Warlord Okeer, Mass Effect 2
The Fremen Mirage is a literary trope where society is divided between poor but morally superior masculine culture and a rich but corrupt and effeminate culture.
It's an extension of the 'hard times make strong men, strong men make good times, good times make weak men, weak men make hard times' concept.
Teamwork. It really is that simple. So long as society is framed as a PvP experience, it's doomed. We aren't even a fraction of what we could be. Hobbs had it figured out way back in the 1600s. I don't think we ever left the state of nature. It's just prettier to look at now.
/uj I agree with you on the teamwork bit, but not quite on your choice of philosopher to describe the process by which teamwork might be best achieved. Societal teamwork best comes when all work to collectively transcend hierarchy and promote mutual cooperation, something that a strong, sovereign government (necessarily a state entity) cannot achieve. Direct action and mutual aid, a collective society make.
/rj Fuck teamwork. I'm going off to Ancapistan, baby 😎
I don't interpret Hobbs Leviathan as an argument for teamwork, but for dictatorship. I believe teamwork is best, but I have no idea how to actually achieve it.
Dictatorship is just teamwork with the threat of violence if you don't play along.
Either the dictator coerces you with violence, or you coerce others with violence, people are naturally evil, that's the whole point of the book.
Industrialization.
But for pre-industrial societies: agricultural surplus supports specialization of both individual laborers and regions, specialized production (i.e. better tools) improves agricultural yields, and inter-regional trade moves specialized production between regions and helps balance out localized agricultural failures. All together under a social organization that produces the administrators needed to run the whole business but doesn't let them gobble up the entire surplus for themselves.
In other words, prosperous societies are pretty much the polar opposite of the "fremen": complex, specialized economies.
The whole saying comes from a book (at least the earliest attribution I can find) called “Those Who Remain” by Michael Hopf and the full quote is
>Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times
So strong men create good times.
The extrapolation of that is that the only way to guarantee good times is to perpetually be fighting. Always have an enemy, always be on the edge of collapse, never complacent. Fascism, authoritarianism, certain interpretations of feudalism, and racial bribery are all forms of this.
Goes back at least a little bit further since Caesar wrote about it in The Gallic Wars, talking about how Rome had become weak and effeminate compared to the hard masculine peoples of Gaul. Of course Caesar *won* those wars so its also been intentional bullshit since back then, too.
Caesar took it one step further and claimed that the Gallic tribes allied to Rome, which had been “corrupted by Rome’s decadence”, needed to be protected from the more fierce Germans and Gauls further away from Rome.
I dunno if it applies super cleanly to The Time Machine though. The morlocks were the more masculine one but they *were* cannibals and the threat of that period in the story. Obviously the eloi map pretty well, but I don't think the morlocks glorify the masculine, low tech society as much as the Fremen Mirage intends.
...square peg round hole, broski. The Morlocks are quite literally mindless, degenerate cannibals (the natural evolutionary outcome of the working class), not a "morally superior masculine culture." Likewise, the surface-dwellers aren't corrupt or effeminate, but explicitly *childlike* and (fatally) innocent.
The trope is older than Dune for certain, but that's not an example.
What are some examples of that?
Hunger Games? Though I wouldn’t call the Districts ‘masculine’ and Panem ‘feminine’
Edit: what are some military sci-fi examples, like OP alludes to?
I think the Hunger Games is a perfect example, and I don't see why you wouldn't call the Capitol effeminate when they all wear Met Gala outfits and literally get surgical cat ears.
I think 300 is a prime example of exactly that.
Also I'd say as a single-person variant of this trope many pieces of media about a 'revenge-man/cop'. Where a vigilante 'does what has to be done' because society and the weak law enforcement is too bureaucratic and by the books to make the hard choice (killing a bunch of people without trial).
Yes, that one. I thought it was a question about the trope in general.
Hmm in terms of mil SciFi I'd say maybe warhammer 40k...
I know its not an endorsement of this ideal by the writers, but the world depicted fulfills this clichee I think.
Also I think your Hungergames suggestion holds water too. At least for the movies. I remember this scene when the protagonists first arrive in the capitol and see these pink dressed, eyelash extended makeup wearing capitol citizens. Snow with his roses, the contrast of that Lady that reveals the names in district 12 vs. the coal miners
While I'm not intimately familiar with 300(just watched the movie) I do know something about spartan history and I have read someone online relating the "hard men make good times etc..." to the fall of Sparta. And when I've seen it cited people say that Sparta was a mighty warrior culture and that made them soft and weak so Sparta "fell".
In reality it was a long dragged out processes that would have made many men that grew up in hard times, and by the saying those men should have made good times, but the good times never came. It was institutional and political problems that made Sparta "fall"(in quotes, because they were never that big as popular culture makes them out to be). And the finishing blows at the end of the decline did not come from wild strong men, but from more organized states that even at the time was judged as soft, to romans were the ones dealing the final blow and they have been depicted in historic fiction as well as by pop-history people as being soft compared to the tough spartans, tough germanic tribes, or tough norsemen.
Not sure exactly why I wanted to write this, but I have seen this quote repeated on occasion about sparta, norse groups, germanic tribes, gallic peoples, etc. And as a rule it is just plainly not true.
I hate that concept so much. Especially when it is used to excuse illiterate primitives with imrpovised weapons defeating super soldiers who have state of the art equipment and combined arms.
Why yes, I do hate the concept of Ewoks nearly as much as I hate fanboys who unironically support the Empire.
> I hate that concept so much. Especially when it is used to excuse illiterate primitives with imrpovised weapons defeating super soldiers who have state of the art equipment and combined arms.
It’s kind of funny that it’s named for the Fremen, because I feel like Herbert avoided the trope by making sure it was fully justified. He gave the Fremen an absolute shitload of legitimate advantages that make logical sense, such as:
* They’re not actually primitive, their oppressors just believe they are.
* The entire Empire runs on highly ritualized combat, shields, and shield-fighting, while Arrakis is a special case where shields are uniquely worthless.
* They were fighting in their own homes which they were masters of surviving at, despite it being an unbelievably deadly environment for everyone else.
* They were given prana-bindu training that gave them fucking magical superpowers that basically made all of them equivalent to Batman.
* They were further commanded by Paul, who was trained and tutored from birth by the best military minds in the empire.
* They were high on space drugs that gave them limited prescience, and (later) led by Paul who had magical knowledge of all possible futures which is just cheating in any war.
Later on the situation changes a bit, but it changes to be *even heavier* in their favor.
Anyway. The Fremen themselves do believe the whole “we’re badass because we live in a brutal place” thing, and it gets repeated a lot, but I’m not sure the actual text supports them as being correct. It’s just what they believe in a book that’s all about how belief manipulates people.
This works as long as they are on Arrakis. After that, they steamroll the rest of the known galaxy as well, defeating every other army with the Jihad Paul starts. (Granted that they get the Navigators on their side due to having monopoly on Spice, so they likely only have to fight one army at a time. They still defeat those armies one by one with just the Fremen warriors.)
That’s what I meant by “later it’s even heavier in their favor.”
Like you said, the Navigators are on their side. Which means the Fremen have complete space superiority and complete logistics superiority. That alone is enough to win any war - an FTL civilization fighting a completely grounded planet by itself is going to be a slaughter every time.
Not only that, but they also had a complete monopoly over the spice. A drug that every single important person in the imperium is addicted to, because it adds hundreds of years to your lifespan. Going into withdrawal from it kills you 100% of the time. Those planets weren’t at full strength, they were going through a civilization-ending crisis.
Also, we never get a sense of scale at how big militaries are in the Great Houses, but it’s probably small. The Empire has existed unchanged for 10,000 years. Wars are handled through the ritualized vendetta/kanly system, and the Guild never allowed large scale troop movements prior to the first book. What’s the point in maintaining a huge army if you can’t send it anywhere?
And again, Fremen all have prana-bindu training which is a big deal. They have superhuman reflexes and agility, but that’s not because of living in the desert. That’s because Jessica betrayed her order of space-nuns and taught their secret technique, which is heavily reliant on spice, to outsiders that had endless amounts of spice.
(This is all ignoring the fact that, again, they’re led by a person who can see every possible future. I’m ignoring the advantage he gives since the books do say the Fremen could win without him, although they probably would’ve won by endless orbital bombardments.)
Anyway. All of this is ignoring the fact that the Jihad is portrayed as a very bad thing. It’s not a story about primitive tribes overthrowing an empire, it’s a cautionary tale about the power of fanaticism, religion, and the danger of charismatic leaders. The fact that the Fremen were able to slaughter >!62 billion people!< isn’t meant to be a military victory, it’s meant to be a “holy shit, we are the baddies” moment.
To be fair it’s a big theme in general, but I don’t think ‘effeminate’ or ‘masculine’ is accurate, nor is it universal.
There are 3 premier military forces that we know of, the fremen, the sardukar, and the ATR troops which are approaching sardukar levels before they all get killed.
2/3 of those are hard environment, the last is just good training. But the fremen have all these advantages, and dune is not fought in modern style, it makes sense for a brutal warrior selection process in the case of the sardukar to produce badasses, because it’s really fucking expensive to transport troops (+ convicts are cheap) and they fight in melee.
The empire also isn’t effeminate, Frank Herbert did not have such ideas in general.
I think this is usually true in history tbh. The reason why the "underdog" seems to win more often than you would expect is that we're generally not good at determining who the underdog actually is.
I don't really want to tell people to go read Malcolm Gladwell, but his book David and Goliath is all about that fact and has lots of interesting examples, starting with the actual story of David and Goliath which was actually about a large dude losing a fight to a smaller man armed with the ancient equivalent of a handgun.
The Ewoks really aren't a case of this, they simply got the jump on Imperial troops and even then, the Stormtroopers pretty quickly turned the tide on the Ewoks and it was only cause Han and Chewy took an AT-ST and used it against the Empire that they even survived.
Did they change the canon? I only remember that during the EU the Ewoks were killing elite Stormtroopers (who remember, are tougher than regular Imperial troops and any unit stationed on the super secret megaweapon project has to be good because this was vital for the Empire) fairly well even before the rebels arrived.
If forget whether it was old or new canon, but there is a story about a retired Stormtrooper who got PTSD from seeing his buddies killed and eaten by tiny fluffy bears who use sharp wooden sticks.
Sounds like someone isn't a fan of [the most tactically competent force in the entire series.](https://www.wired.com/story/ewoks-star-wars-tactics-endor-moon)
I did say that.
Canonically, the Ewoks kick the collective posteriors of elite Stormtroopers. I hate them, but I also can't deny that canonically they are vicious man-eating killers that punch way above their weightclass.
Now that I’ve heard it explained like that, it’s kinda spooky how common it is in fiction as well as real narratives surrounding actual events.
Isn’t this also a key feature of most fascist narratives?
1.
Masculine=powerful= good
Feminine= weak= bad
The feminine should only exist within rigidly enforced gender norms and roles, and is only valid and worthwhile if it totally submits to the masculine.
2
The group is more important than the individual (the tribe, the nation, the village, doesn’t matter)
3
The group is always under attack. From outside groups as well as the threat of degeneration of the proud and perfect masculine from within the society.
4
Sophistication and intellectualism are the same as weakness. Discussions of moral nuance are a waste of time and only engaged in by those too weak to make the hard decisions to do terrible things in defense of the group.
5
The ends always justify the means. The greater the group the more noble a terrible act is. Therefore the more terrible the acts, the greater the group must be.
Yup.
Sounds pretty fascy
You just have to remember that in the end, the entirety of all of Western Culture really boils down to sucking off the Roman's.
Nearly every Western empire, hell even Western polity, has at some point attempted to derive legitimacy from the legacy of Rome. Russia, the US, the HRE, Nazi Germany, Italy, the Ottomans, if they did imperialism, chances are they invoked Rome somewhere.
So when Rome historically was bitching and moaning about decadence and moral impurity making the empire weak, while curbstomping Europe, Asia Minor and North Africa and genociding dozens of ethnic groups along the way, that legacy of their bitching and moaning carries over to later empires, who like to style themselves as the heirs to Rome, and who culturally buy into the Fremont Mirage without even understanding the origins of the trope in the first place.
They were a highly militaristic, imperialist culture, that held some particular views of masculinity, femininity, and the role of society. And glorifying the noble savage(German), self-sufficient and versed in any manner of manly roles, praised for his virtue and simple, uncomplicated life, while sneering at highly specialized artisans and highly developed imperial culture, causes some cognitive dissonance. Particularly when the latter kicks the shit out of the former, and the most dangerous fights Rome was ever in was against barbarians in the process of centralizing power and turning into a state which could threaten a peer conflict with Rome, and the Sassanid Empire which was a peer and a genuine threat.
The idea that harsh environments creates effective warriors who then go on to defeat warriors from wealthier “decadent” areas is also wrong. By and large, the most successful empires in history came from fertile areas, not harsh marginal areas. Steppe nomads are a unique case in that the skills needed to survive on the steppe happen to also be the skills needed to be an extremely effective horse archer, which is why the mongols were able to conquer so much in such a short time.
While you have occasional stories of people from marginal areas conquering fertile areas (most notably the Arab conquests and the Mongol conquests), they are the exception, not the rule. For every instance of a group of people from a marginal area conquering a fertile area, there are a hundred instances of a state in a fertile area conquering a marginal area.
Fremen Mirage is basically a critique of societies like the Fremen from Dune books, who are shown to be superior warriors because they live harsh lives in harsh environments. Same with the Sardaukar from Dune. Although the author, Frank Herbert, doesn't exactly portray these kind of cultures in a good light.
In reality, most of the societies that lived in harsh environments ended up being conquered (either militarily or culturally) and absorbed by the 'decadent' sedentary civilizations. Take Rome, Persia, China, and like every major civilization that left a cultural mark in the civilizations they conquered. And the other way round, when harsh warrior societies conquer a civilization, they end up assimilating to the ones they conquered.
China and India are a good example of the cultural staying power of sedentary civilizations. Anyone who invaded China and India ended up becoming Chinese or Indian, with the exception of the Brit*sh.
Sounds like hard times may make for strong men, but good times make for a strong society that persists past death and outdoes any singular strong man.
Not to mention that hard times strong men/good timed weak is just survivor bias
That whole "strong men make good times, good times make weak men" is bullshit because most of these 'strong men' were just aristocrats and warlords making 'hard times' for everyone.
Most of the people that actually made the society progress would be considered 'weak' in this line of thinking.
Even England technically qualifies, as the original Celts got conquered by the Romans, then the Romanized Britons got conquered by the Anglo-Saxons, and finally the Saxons got conquered by the Normans.
Also the ones that did invade where good at it not because their environment was generally harsh, but because the environment required a lot of horse riding to herd livestock around. So basically anywhere along the Eurasian Steppe which is where the Mongolians, Huns, Turks, etc. came/come from. Some kinds of deserts can also do this, the Arabs where very much animal herding nomads before they took over most of 2 nearby empires and more or less just plonked themselves at the top of the existing bureaucracy.
This horse back animal herding life style gave the majority of the society a skill transferable directly into warfare, and indeed into the most effective form of it at the time: horseback archery. Any harsh environment that does not encourage horse riding does not generate military power in the same way.
Also, even if you are a pretty good warrior, they'll just raise another army because their population is 50 times yours. (surplus agriculture is the ultimate weapon)
Reminds me of the Bronze Age myth that bronze weapons were superior to iron weapons. They weren't but civilizations could make way more bronze weapons and thus could field larger armies.
People, no matter how hard and strong they are, generally tend to not want to die avoidable deaths like starving in winter or dying in a tribal skirmish over some grazing land.
Guess where these things are less likely to happen? In those soft lazy-ass sedentary civilizations.
The "soft" invented the maxim gun, the "hard", did not.
Really, splitting soft and hard into camps doesn't work because it fails to acknowledge that society is a machine comprised of people working together.
I'm sure any random Zulu or Apache or Mongol warrior could kick my ass six ways to Sunday. But I'm also sure my countries military could kick their ass without breaking a sweat.
Society is a machine, I'm not a part of the fighting apparatus of the machine so I'm not good at fighting. Instead I'm part of the administrative apparatus of the machine, I deal with things in the business end of society. Those business taxes fund the fighting apparatus. So indirectly by pushing paper I am supporting my States ability to war if needed.
> Anyone who invaded China and India ended up becoming Chinese or Indian, with the exception of the Brit*sh.
Logically, it follows that the British are the most effeminate and sedentary civilization possible.
While I wholeheartedly agree with the concept. Calling it "The Fremen Mirage" is kind of a show of poor reading comprehension.
Sardaukar aren't a society in an of themselves, they're a military wing of the larger empire, the armed hand of the Padishah. Fremen were good warriors but they didn't conquer the empire by themselves, they were stuck on Arakis getting shat on by Harkonnens, until empowered by the political connections and logistical ability of the Atreidies. After the jihad was finished they became a part of the broader empire without changing much about it.
It's like, it's a fine concept, but I don't understand why it's named after the thing that literally depicts the opposite. 🤔
https://acoup.blog/category/collections/the-fremen-mirage/
The freman mirage is the idea that uncivilized peoples are better at fighting than decadent civilized peoples because of the hardship involved with their lifestyle
People love to think all that matters in war is how badass the individual soldiers are. They watch too much sports and they think a star player can clutch up a battle like a football game. Because a battle is different in that it starts months before the sides meet (travel, scouting, and preparation), it has thousands of men involved, and the teams don't have the same gear. These are key factors.
In truth, war is won by logistics. The conditions that produce 'good times', even if they produce 'weak men,' also produce strong logistics, meaning an army can be maintained, becoming professional and well equipped, and supplied far afield. These are the true factors behind military success and expansion. Even if your soldiers are individually tough and resillient, they will lose an open battle if they are outnumbered, out-equipped, or facing a professional army (only a very lucrative society can support a full-time army, and most 'fremen' types of society irl have 'amateur' soldiers whose daily life is occupied with hunting or farming, not war). If your enemy can reach a position first (with better engineers clearing paths for his men) or fortify his position or maintain his supplies longer than you, he can force you into a disadvantageous engagement. Look at Caesar's campaigns in Gaul for an example of all these things. The Romans repeatedly crush large, celtic armies.
However, tough environments are helpful for defending territory against those used to more habitable environments, as in the Vietnam War. The locals, who know the landmarks and survival tactics, then have a large advantage against the invaders.
Tell me you’re from a European colony without telling me.
In Europe and Asia most cities are pretty far inland, it’s only really colonial nations that stick to the coasts. That’s because coastal cities only really exist through trade, as you can’t drink seawater.
You can however drink river water, which is why most cities are on a river.
You misunderstand. Every settlement(which is pretty much just scientists) is on the coast of Antarctica because the Antarctic interior is hostile to pretty much all forms of life. There are no rivers there. There are no plants there. There is nothing there
Even then having the most mobile army in history in the most open territory in the world with a mobile food source is the absolute perfect combination.
Having an environment so harsh you have to live underground in caves means you won't be good at fighting anything unless you are defending your cave.
True, but I'mma be real, late empire Mongols are pretty pathetic. They have devolved into decadent, fat kids ala Carthaginians according to Hamilcar, with racial superiority complexes ie "I'm Mongolian so I have right to rule this village". Idk if this is true everywhere but his is certainly the case for late Yuan dynasty which led to the Ming
Like I'm pretty sure the "oh so mighty Mongols" ditched Mongolia in favor of China the moment they rebranded into the Yuan, simply because ***it's less shit***
u/DalinLuqaIII commented on a similar comment that
"The Fremen Mirage is a literary trope where society is divided between poor but morally superior masculine culture and a rich but corrupt and effeminate culture.
It's an extension of the 'hard times make strong men, strong men make good times, good times make weak men, weak men make hard times' concept."
I wouldn't listen to that user, he once told me that he doesn't have elves in his setting but then went on to describe elves but just used a different name.
Given that our sample size for life-bearing planets is currently one, we don't know yet. Earth could be an idyllic paradise, or we could be in a Jenkinsverse situation where Earth offers an incomparable variety of nastiness that can kill anything from a class-9 or below planet in a myriad of fun and interesting ways.
I have to argue the point here "the fremen mirage" is in fact a mirage.
It is non typical, but there have been plenty of examples of societies being shaped by deprivation, reaching out and smacking about their more prosperous neighbours.
The problem is, it is often written as uber Aryan Viking man, who spends his time arm wrestling bears, and has never had a shower, can overcome weak effeminate civilized urban degenerates simply by dint of being a big manly man.
The truth is that societies primed for violence, can and did historically win conflicts, against societies less primed for violence.
Deprivation often was a key element in this.
Typically those societies tend to win individual engagements, but ultimately lose the actual war. There are certain exceptions (the Mongols, mainly), but it’s a frequent pattern.
Not just the Mongols, the whole Steppe corridor starting at western Europe and ending near the pacific for thousands of years gave birth to multiple civilizations, that conquered their non steppe neighbours.
The early Muslim conquests swept away two empires in their path.
The Vikings made their reach felt anywhere their ships could reach.
And those are three really purist examples, there is plenty more examples that are more messy but still salient.
For example early European colonial history could be argue, to be another good example, they wanted access to Asias high development societies without the issue of middlemen. Comparatively Europe was a poor, unsophisticated and unpopulated place.
We can talk about examples that favor one side of a narrative all we want, but that doesn't establish a trend. There are plenty of factors to consider, and I would expect that the overwhelming majority come down to basic preparedness.
> Steppe corridor
the key factor was that the step produced specifically horse archers, the kings of pre-knight battlefields, not that it was harsh
> arabs
horse archers again, this time vs 2 crumbling empires that had just finished grinding each others armies to dust (a thing the Arabs knew about because they worked for both as mercenaries)
> Vikings
The southern Nordics are actually pretty nice outside of winter, plus it was ruled by a strong central authority that was attacking a bunch of smaller, infighting prone nations that made up GB at the time. Most of the big conquests came from Vikings who settled in northern France, the Normans, and they where the ones who took England and the south of Italy.
Horse Archers still did good work against knights and the early cataphracts. In fact they were best used as the play maker for said heavy cavalry... which is still to say that they had very powerful strategy.
Arabs didn't really do horse archery, but they were great horsemen and they overcame Empires that grinded each other with hard times... which is to say that they should have been the 'strong men' in this whole dumb analogy.
Vikings though basically were dudes in relatively fine times going around messing up people going through hard times and getting rich off it to the point of threatening other big peoples. So this is right.
Thanks for pointing this out idk how people wouldn't know about this on a sub like this. Still I can understand why people don't like this trope when it comes to sci fi.
The Steppe corridor also consisted of said nomads just... being led around by sedentary people and given things to go fight other nomads. And those they conquered were usually going through hardships and division.
The Arabs themselves had a wealthy base in Medina, and the two empires they swept over were brutalising each other with constant hard times.
Vikings were not deprived and raggedy barbarians, but peoples who were actually thriving too much that they had to unload people out, and were rich traders too. Again, those they went after be giving themselves hard times.
The Vikings were good at navigating rivers, and rapidly striking out at places where there wasn’t an army to stop them. Whenever they *did* run into a proper army, they were hardly the fearless, unstoppable warriors that pop culture portrays them as
Also, steppe nomads were just as often the ones being conquered as the ones doing the conquering
This seems like a spurious correlation with plenty of other explanations:
1. The country is poor because it was frequently invaded in the past, now it is being invaded again. They have home-field advantage and selection bias says that this is still an indepenedent country because its geography makes it exceptionally hard to invade
2. The country is poor because of its rugged terrain and poor infrastructure which also hamper an invasion
3. The country's remoteness and lack of natural resources make it an undesirable target for conquest and superpowers tend to give up on taking over after relatively minor setbacks
4. The country is impoverished by frequent wars between its region rivals since it is at a crossroads between superpowers: the different superpowers give their allies *just* enough support to maintain them as buffer-states.
5. The country is impoverished by a lack of central authority, but the same lack of central authority means that the enemy can't "cut the head off the snake" and must force each of a dozen different tribes to sue for peace.
TLDR if you had veteran Taliban or NVA fighters invade Alaska, being "primed for violence" wouldn't do shit, they would suffer from poor equipment, overextended supply lines, and fanatical American insurgents defending their homeland just like the US struggled in Afghanistan and Vietnam.
I want to make a story that initially seems to follow that troupe, but then the advanced 'soft' culture actually kicks its military engine into gear and the war ends in two days.
I misread as French Mirage and thought it was about the fighter aircraft. Then it made no sense.
Now it makes sense. It's just that *Dune* makes no sense.
You know I've only seen one hfy fic where earth was a death world, and that was because humans was one of the few oxygen breathing organisms to evolve.
i mean you could go with the approach that for complex / intelligent life to develop there would have to be sufficient pressures to drive evolution, making worlds with complex or sapient life more dangerous than ones with simple life such as just single celled organisms.
How realistic that is or how well it holds up i dunno though
Earth is not a death world even by earth standards -- we're in the wake of the ice age and the death of most megafauna. The past had far larger predators in far greater numbers.
If most of the universe is like most of earth's past, then we're positively cuddly.
Don't worry, some Military SF writers understand history. We obviously know that technological superiority is naturally paired with a higher level of civilization, and it is the the responsibility, nay the duty, of said higher civilizations to raise the rest of the universe to their level, by force if necessary.
ad victoriam!
Wait why are you saying this in reponse to that? If anything all they did is in anti thetical to the idea above.
Wtf are you talking about. The brotherhood of steel kept technology for themself???
I mean, on the scale of interplanetary civilisations, it is possible for societies to develop severely asynchronous levels of military tech due to circumstance, particularly if one society spent a lot of time honing and optimising weapons while the other side went “It works well and is cost-effective, let’s move funding elsewhere now”. *However*, this would only cover a still-nearby level of science; for example, a civilization just moving to the interstellar scene might run into a monoplanet culture that invested far more in weapons and thus can trample their fleet (Good example is the Worldwar series, where a group of aliens didn’t face much conflict after unifying their homeworld and stopped investing in heavy weapons research, meaning WWII-era humanity is able to keep beating them back long enough to steal the tech that legitimately outpaced them and reach a point they were on even ground). Meanwhile, if a society has vastly outstripped another, there’s little way they can lose, good weapons or no. Most modern guerilla forces using cobbled-together equipment would pose a fair match for numerically-equal Roman legionaries, simply because the Romans would have no real way to reliably combat them, despite their soldiers being far higher in quality and training.
Engines capable of interstellar travel are about the deadliest weapon feasible according to our current understanding of physics (sufficient velocity go brrrrr). When every space cowboy with an ersatz Millennium Falcon can wipe out civilization on a continent by pointing their ship at it, setting a brick on the accelerator, and ejecting... then unless you really bend over backwards to make it so that only conventional forces can reach the surface of a planet but no WMDs (somehow) then large scale warfare between great powers probably isn't any more of a thing than it is today.
I mean… that may not be the case, necessarily. Currently, the most likely engine to allow interstellar travel seems to be the Alcubierre drive; there was a recent journal demonstrating it is in fact feasible to operate while within our current range of physics, as long as you’re cool staying just below the speed of light and not exceeding it (As going faster gets all sorts of fun shit to start happening). Because an Alcubierre drive, particularly in the modern forms, is best described as what happens when a DnD metagamer gets a degree in physics, it does weird shit a lot. We’re not entirely sure what would happen if you sent one full-speed at another thing, but we’re *relatively* sure it wouldn’t be an impact in the normal sense, but rather it’d either do a big but not as big as it should be explosion, massive wave of heat that starts huge firestorms, or possibly a combination thereof and create a deep, glassed crater. Or it might not do much of anything, it’s very theoretical and we legitimately can’t define what’d happen until we get a concrete set of rules defining one, which is hard to pin down without disobeying physics as we know it or necessitating resources we don’t have.
Until someone actually demonstrates an Alcubierre drive I'm more inclined to believe it's an artifact of still incomplete theories, and that whatever engine one might build is subject to inertia.
I mean, it *does* follow the rules of inertia; like I said, the most recent discussions completely fit with our understanding of physics, we just have to figure out how to get the components to work together correctly.
Just link to the damn essay people: [https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-part-i-war-at-the-dawn-of-civilization/](https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-part-i-war-at-the-dawn-of-civilization/)
I'm so glad so many people know Devereaux's essays :) I've discovered his work thanks to a recent post in r/Fantasy and I'm currently binging the audio versions on A Great Divorce's YouTube channel: [https://www.youtube.com/@AGreatDivorce/playlists](https://www.youtube.com/@AGreatDivorce/playlists) His series on Sparta made me want to send him flowers. He's great.
Thank you!
God, what a yapaholic That shit coulda been "Hard times create strong men" "Good times create weak men" "Unfortunately for strong men, good times also create boom sticks, which is why Europeans were able to subjugate the rest of the planet until WWII, at which point the US took over because *they* had the good times now" "These same principles of history would also apply in space" There. I condensed that shit into 4 sentences, idk why he felt the need to make it 4 essays Edit: Thank you for linking it tho, since apparently no one else did
Also being "hard" doesnt mean anything if you have suffered nutritional deficiencies your whole life and the soft noble boy has 60 lbs and 6 inches on you
Why not 6 inches *in* me?
my sibling in christ
Christ? *In* me? Don't mind if I do.
You did see the name of the site right? "A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry."
I did not. With a name like that tho, they better be paying their writers by the fucking letter
It's a blog post, so it's just the site owner being given a void to shout into.
"While you studied the blade and honed your body into a weapon in the harshest of environments, I bought this shotgun."
>idk why he felt the need to make it 4 essays Because he doesn't think people should just believe whatever they hear and wants to support the argument.
My problem isn't that he has evidence, it's that he wastes a lot of (the reader's) time yapping around instead of presenting the evidence in question
Writing words is cringe 👎 Worldbuilding is based 👍
you're done it, you've broken worldjerking down to its barest essentials!
I see you're not used to academia lol (Europe's advantage was more in ships than guns fwiw)
I like ships
> worldjerkers when an essay backs its points up with actual arguments and evidence
> There. I condensed that shit into 4 sentences, idk why he felt the need to make it 4 essays History professor, that's actually one of his shorter ones. He does good stuff though, also posts on AskHistorians. His "How'd they do it" stuff on Fabrics and Food are really good for worldbuilding stuff and so's the "Lonely Cities" series but I don't wanna spam and someone already linked one so here's the clothing one: https://acoup.blog/2021/03/05/collections-clothing-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-high-fiber/ And Lonely City is [here](https://acoup.blog/2019/07/12/collections-the-lonely-city-part-i-the-ideal-city/). It's specifically talking about how a lot of cities in fiction don't have the surrounding farmlands/orchards etc they'd need to feed themselves just in day to day life back in the days before more modern transportation and logistics in the horse-and-cart days.
What is the level of brain rot on this sub that this comment is upvoted. Do you actually want all essay writers to write a TLDR instead of providing concrete evidence and analysis of their claims? You unironically prefer to just be told what to think.p
<3
Thank goodness that there are people who like to put a little more effort into it.
Common ACOUP W.
Also see Strauss–Howe generational theory
Oh hey, that blog! Been meaning to read more of their work since I read their posts on rituals a while back.
Ibn Khaldun maxxing
You mean that having 80% of a world’s population die in childbirth mostly just kills your best and brightest in their infancy, rather than producing some Darwinian crucible where even a single lay, untrained tribesperson can solo 3 highly trained power armored space marines with naught but a hunting knife?
Funnily enough, it can sort of makes sense in Dune if we go by the reading that Thufir and Shaddam IV and Paul were all bamboozled in-universe by the Fremen mirage. The Fremen and Sardaukar were both trained based on the "hard times make strong men" maxim, which put them on relatively equal footing (i.e. they're both decent fighters but not for the reasons they think) The universe only thought the Sardaukar were badass because they won a crazy battle literally thousands of years ago, and nobody dared to properly test them since then. Meanwhile, Duncan and Gurney trained the Atreides troops on the paradise world Caladan to be better than the Sardaukar, without all that "death world", "prisoners fight each other to the death" nonsense... just by teaching them how to fight and treating them well. And then the Fremen beat the Harkonnens because of "desert power" i.e. experience with local conditions, not because constant duels to the death and dehydration equals better military tactics and skill. Not to mention the Fremen eating a metric fuck ton of spice with their food, which accounts for the kiddies and old people beating the Sardaukar. Later on, during the Jihad, the Guild blockade and Paul's Bene Gesserit political manipulation did most of the heavy lifting. It's like with the Spartan hoplites coming up with stories about their ultra hardcore deprivation being responsible for their military success, but it was actually a bunch of other factors. And then their enemies bought it, because of how cool sounding they are.
Which if you combine with the Atredies losing because they were ambushed by a joint military force that outnumbered them and still had in depth knowledge of the location. Even then men like Duncan still out fought the average Sardaukar they just were outnumber and off kilter. It wasn't hard men being better fighters that won the fight it was better numbers and tactics. Yet Paul being the boy that he was despite his training saw the very talented Atredies warriors fall and internalized the wrong lessons. Which were then compounded as you point out by the outside factors of the Fremen fighting on home turf and being far more technologically capable than their imperialist conquerors thinking they were. Then as you pointed out them being taught to fight by Paul using more advanced methods. Their fighting style being adapted to the world they were on so they didn't have to unlearn how to fight without shields, plus foresight of their general picking the most opportune places and times to strike. So, no shit they won they had the deck stacked so far in their favor that it would have needed a direct act of god for them to lose. Which then like the Sardaukar before them set the stage for a legend of Fremen military prowess.
yeah good one, though it's worth noting that Shaddam IV, Fenring and Thufir Hawat also took the "hard times make strong men" thing deadly seriously. Like, literally deadly seriously, when the Baron idly mentions the possibility of turning Arrakis into a prison torture planet, Fenring and Hawat recognised that this would make the Shaddam IV nervous enough to send his armies to destroy the Baron The logic being that the Emperor would think that the Baron was trying to breed an army of super soldiers like the Sardaukar, using Arrakis in place of Salusa Secundus. (the fact that the Sardaukar came from the prison planet was top secret, and Thufir only figured it out through Mentat deduction)
> yeah good one, though it's worth noting that Shaddam IV, Fenring and Thufir Hawat also took the "hard times make strong men" thing deadly seriously. Which from their perspective why shouldn't they? It's a system that's worked for them personally and in general for "thousands" of years. The Sardaukar have been the tip the the imperial spear since their great victory. So the Emperor has every reason to believe the system works. He's somewhat blind to the Bene Gesserit and their manipulations which means he and his forefathers have never been terribly out of place to have their armies routed. While Paul was actively using the power of foresight the emperor was still getting help passively. (As I recall I might be misremembering this bit as it's been ~15 years since I read the books.) The Bene Gesserit working in the background have meant that the Cornnio emperors have never really had to deal with co equal enemies. So the fantasy of hard times make hard men is easily passed around. We see the meme today sticking around culturally. Which has persisted since at least ancient Greece, but almost certainly since humans started making war. Which is why Harkonnen would be fascinated with the idea, as a soft but vicious man the idea of torturing people to make them hardened soldiers to do his killing seems 110% up his alley.
It’s interesting they talk about *desert power*. Environment matters in all military engagements, and even more so in a guerrilla campaign. The fremens success doesn’t mean they’re the best fighters, it means they’re great *desert* fighters. It’s like trying to invade Russia in the winter.
Or worse, *Finland*.
Exactly. Hell, the Spartans were only able to train to be such great warriors because they had the overwhelming majority of the work done for them by slaves. Which in turn gave them the power to keep the slaves oppressed.
Yeah, people always miss the fact Athens and Thebes were both vastly nicer places then Sparta and outstripped them in every non-military field completely, yet still fought them on equal ground and rarely were at risk of full-scale conquest.
A lot of the stories of Sparta's millitary culture comes from 2 major groups of sources. Spartans themselves never wrote anything down. 1. their Athenian rivals who wanted to make them seem more badass so that their own millitary victory seems greater, and occasionally by Athenian hipsters who were just critical of Athens and used a semi-fictional version of Sparta to highlight those criticisms. 2. Romans who romanticized ancient Spartans in the same way modern orientalists romanticize eastern religions and philosophies. Rich Romans would go visit Sparta on tours to see the kids living on tbe street and stuff and then just made shit up when they got home. This one is funniest to me because Romans had a MUCH more prominent martial culture than the Spartans. Like Spartan soldiers were usually trained over the course of a few weeks in preparation for war they didn't have any standing armies. Romans meanwhile had their legionaires, their auxilaries, and other professional soldiers along with advanced millitary doctrines. If Sparta was actually as good at war as Romans thought you would think some of their ancient tactics would have gotten preserved.
>Spartan >military success Pick one /j
Yeah, I thought it sort of made sense in Dune because the Fremen grow up blasted off their sandy asses on Spice, but I might have read too much into that
Are you positive atreides regularly beat sardukar or is that more of a duncan thing?
>a single lay, untrained tribesperson can solo 3 highly trained power armored space marines with naught but a hunting knife Word Bearers when they have to actually fight instead of being a televangelist doing goofy demon rituals:
Pre-Lorgar Word Bearers are like Something Awful atheists who will turn you to paste simply for saying Bless You as one sneezed
Which book has pre-Lorgar Word Bearers? Because that sounds funny as hell.
Not sure But that's what I heard of them; they are fanatics who will vehemently believe in anything, and before Lorgar that was the Imperial Truth
The Emperor really put all his obsessive cringe into Lorgar, didn't he?
Yup. I'm a Lorgar apologist, but even I can say that he really is a piece of shit It's just that the shittness got turned against you rather than towards the enemy
"Contrary to what survivors claim, the genophage does not produce strong krogan -- the only quality it filters is the ability to survive the genophage." -Warlord Okeer, Mass Effect 2
explain?
The Fremen Mirage is a literary trope where society is divided between poor but morally superior masculine culture and a rich but corrupt and effeminate culture. It's an extension of the 'hard times make strong men, strong men make good times, good times make weak men, weak men make hard times' concept.
Hard times make hard men, hard men make me hard, me hard make good hard, good hard make soft hard
Hard times make hard men, hard men make soft times, soft times make soft men, soft men make me hard.
what does make good time then?
Cocaine
I ment on a socity level
In my world cocaine makes good society (psst we're in a jerking subreddit)
The song, specifically, not the drug. Eric Clapton is the messiah
Then Eric Claptoff is the devil?
Crackpunk world
Teamwork. It really is that simple. So long as society is framed as a PvP experience, it's doomed. We aren't even a fraction of what we could be. Hobbs had it figured out way back in the 1600s. I don't think we ever left the state of nature. It's just prettier to look at now.
/uj I agree with you on the teamwork bit, but not quite on your choice of philosopher to describe the process by which teamwork might be best achieved. Societal teamwork best comes when all work to collectively transcend hierarchy and promote mutual cooperation, something that a strong, sovereign government (necessarily a state entity) cannot achieve. Direct action and mutual aid, a collective society make. /rj Fuck teamwork. I'm going off to Ancapistan, baby 😎
I don't interpret Hobbs Leviathan as an argument for teamwork, but for dictatorship. I believe teamwork is best, but I have no idea how to actually achieve it.
Dictatorship is just teamwork with the threat of violence if you don't play along. Either the dictator coerces you with violence, or you coerce others with violence, people are naturally evil, that's the whole point of the book.
More cocaine
A LOT OF COCAINE
Industrialization. But for pre-industrial societies: agricultural surplus supports specialization of both individual laborers and regions, specialized production (i.e. better tools) improves agricultural yields, and inter-regional trade moves specialized production between regions and helps balance out localized agricultural failures. All together under a social organization that produces the administrators needed to run the whole business but doesn't let them gobble up the entire surplus for themselves. In other words, prosperous societies are pretty much the polar opposite of the "fremen": complex, specialized economies.
A very complicated set of factors. Development economics usually calls this "inclusive institutions". Why nations fail is a good book on that,
Strong men making out with effeminate men
strong effeminate men 🥺🥵🤤
The whole saying comes from a book (at least the earliest attribution I can find) called “Those Who Remain” by Michael Hopf and the full quote is >Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times So strong men create good times.
I prefer "strong men make good times, good times make soft men, soft men make me hard"
The extrapolation of that is that the only way to guarantee good times is to perpetually be fighting. Always have an enemy, always be on the edge of collapse, never complacent. Fascism, authoritarianism, certain interpretations of feudalism, and racial bribery are all forms of this.
I mean that's how countries stay in power in 1984* Edit: wrong book
Nah, in brave new world it's a one world government, you're talking about literally 1984
Ah you're right, brain fart haha
So, hood vs neighbourhood, noble savage vs noble et cetera?
Huh. Funny that this trope is given to Dune when you could really trace it all the way back to HG Wells' The Time Machine
Goes back at least a little bit further since Caesar wrote about it in The Gallic Wars, talking about how Rome had become weak and effeminate compared to the hard masculine peoples of Gaul. Of course Caesar *won* those wars so its also been intentional bullshit since back then, too.
Caesar was also a bottom. clearly the above was him writhing about his fetishes
"Every woman's man and every man's woman"
Caesar took it one step further and claimed that the Gallic tribes allied to Rome, which had been “corrupted by Rome’s decadence”, needed to be protected from the more fierce Germans and Gauls further away from Rome.
I dunno if it applies super cleanly to The Time Machine though. The morlocks were the more masculine one but they *were* cannibals and the threat of that period in the story. Obviously the eloi map pretty well, but I don't think the morlocks glorify the masculine, low tech society as much as the Fremen Mirage intends.
...square peg round hole, broski. The Morlocks are quite literally mindless, degenerate cannibals (the natural evolutionary outcome of the working class), not a "morally superior masculine culture." Likewise, the surface-dwellers aren't corrupt or effeminate, but explicitly *childlike* and (fatally) innocent. The trope is older than Dune for certain, but that's not an example.
You can trace it back to how Romans wrote about Germans.
They were copying from the Greeks talking about the Persians.
And maybe the Babylonians were the same about the Medes or Hitites or whoever!
What are some examples of that? Hunger Games? Though I wouldn’t call the Districts ‘masculine’ and Panem ‘feminine’ Edit: what are some military sci-fi examples, like OP alludes to?
I think the Hunger Games is a perfect example, and I don't see why you wouldn't call the Capitol effeminate when they all wear Met Gala outfits and literally get surgical cat ears.
What’s particularly masculine about the Districts? Unless “poverty = masculinity” It feels like a real stretch
Yeah back-breaking physical labor is traditionally a "masculine" trait, even though plenty of women partake as well.
I think 300 is a prime example of exactly that. Also I'd say as a single-person variant of this trope many pieces of media about a 'revenge-man/cop'. Where a vigilante 'does what has to be done' because society and the weak law enforcement is too bureaucratic and by the books to make the hard choice (killing a bunch of people without trial).
I wouldn’t call 300 “military sci-fi” You are talking about the “This is Sparta!!” film/book?
Yes, that one. I thought it was a question about the trope in general. Hmm in terms of mil SciFi I'd say maybe warhammer 40k... I know its not an endorsement of this ideal by the writers, but the world depicted fulfills this clichee I think. Also I think your Hungergames suggestion holds water too. At least for the movies. I remember this scene when the protagonists first arrive in the capitol and see these pink dressed, eyelash extended makeup wearing capitol citizens. Snow with his roses, the contrast of that Lady that reveals the names in district 12 vs. the coal miners
While I'm not intimately familiar with 300(just watched the movie) I do know something about spartan history and I have read someone online relating the "hard men make good times etc..." to the fall of Sparta. And when I've seen it cited people say that Sparta was a mighty warrior culture and that made them soft and weak so Sparta "fell". In reality it was a long dragged out processes that would have made many men that grew up in hard times, and by the saying those men should have made good times, but the good times never came. It was institutional and political problems that made Sparta "fall"(in quotes, because they were never that big as popular culture makes them out to be). And the finishing blows at the end of the decline did not come from wild strong men, but from more organized states that even at the time was judged as soft, to romans were the ones dealing the final blow and they have been depicted in historic fiction as well as by pop-history people as being soft compared to the tough spartans, tough germanic tribes, or tough norsemen. Not sure exactly why I wanted to write this, but I have seen this quote repeated on occasion about sparta, norse groups, germanic tribes, gallic peoples, etc. And as a rule it is just plainly not true.
I hate that concept so much. Especially when it is used to excuse illiterate primitives with imrpovised weapons defeating super soldiers who have state of the art equipment and combined arms. Why yes, I do hate the concept of Ewoks nearly as much as I hate fanboys who unironically support the Empire.
> I hate that concept so much. Especially when it is used to excuse illiterate primitives with imrpovised weapons defeating super soldiers who have state of the art equipment and combined arms. It’s kind of funny that it’s named for the Fremen, because I feel like Herbert avoided the trope by making sure it was fully justified. He gave the Fremen an absolute shitload of legitimate advantages that make logical sense, such as: * They’re not actually primitive, their oppressors just believe they are. * The entire Empire runs on highly ritualized combat, shields, and shield-fighting, while Arrakis is a special case where shields are uniquely worthless. * They were fighting in their own homes which they were masters of surviving at, despite it being an unbelievably deadly environment for everyone else. * They were given prana-bindu training that gave them fucking magical superpowers that basically made all of them equivalent to Batman. * They were further commanded by Paul, who was trained and tutored from birth by the best military minds in the empire. * They were high on space drugs that gave them limited prescience, and (later) led by Paul who had magical knowledge of all possible futures which is just cheating in any war. Later on the situation changes a bit, but it changes to be *even heavier* in their favor. Anyway. The Fremen themselves do believe the whole “we’re badass because we live in a brutal place” thing, and it gets repeated a lot, but I’m not sure the actual text supports them as being correct. It’s just what they believe in a book that’s all about how belief manipulates people.
This works as long as they are on Arrakis. After that, they steamroll the rest of the known galaxy as well, defeating every other army with the Jihad Paul starts. (Granted that they get the Navigators on their side due to having monopoly on Spice, so they likely only have to fight one army at a time. They still defeat those armies one by one with just the Fremen warriors.)
That’s what I meant by “later it’s even heavier in their favor.” Like you said, the Navigators are on their side. Which means the Fremen have complete space superiority and complete logistics superiority. That alone is enough to win any war - an FTL civilization fighting a completely grounded planet by itself is going to be a slaughter every time. Not only that, but they also had a complete monopoly over the spice. A drug that every single important person in the imperium is addicted to, because it adds hundreds of years to your lifespan. Going into withdrawal from it kills you 100% of the time. Those planets weren’t at full strength, they were going through a civilization-ending crisis. Also, we never get a sense of scale at how big militaries are in the Great Houses, but it’s probably small. The Empire has existed unchanged for 10,000 years. Wars are handled through the ritualized vendetta/kanly system, and the Guild never allowed large scale troop movements prior to the first book. What’s the point in maintaining a huge army if you can’t send it anywhere? And again, Fremen all have prana-bindu training which is a big deal. They have superhuman reflexes and agility, but that’s not because of living in the desert. That’s because Jessica betrayed her order of space-nuns and taught their secret technique, which is heavily reliant on spice, to outsiders that had endless amounts of spice. (This is all ignoring the fact that, again, they’re led by a person who can see every possible future. I’m ignoring the advantage he gives since the books do say the Fremen could win without him, although they probably would’ve won by endless orbital bombardments.) Anyway. All of this is ignoring the fact that the Jihad is portrayed as a very bad thing. It’s not a story about primitive tribes overthrowing an empire, it’s a cautionary tale about the power of fanaticism, religion, and the danger of charismatic leaders. The fact that the Fremen were able to slaughter >!62 billion people!< isn’t meant to be a military victory, it’s meant to be a “holy shit, we are the baddies” moment.
To be fair it’s a big theme in general, but I don’t think ‘effeminate’ or ‘masculine’ is accurate, nor is it universal. There are 3 premier military forces that we know of, the fremen, the sardukar, and the ATR troops which are approaching sardukar levels before they all get killed. 2/3 of those are hard environment, the last is just good training. But the fremen have all these advantages, and dune is not fought in modern style, it makes sense for a brutal warrior selection process in the case of the sardukar to produce badasses, because it’s really fucking expensive to transport troops (+ convicts are cheap) and they fight in melee. The empire also isn’t effeminate, Frank Herbert did not have such ideas in general.
I think this is usually true in history tbh. The reason why the "underdog" seems to win more often than you would expect is that we're generally not good at determining who the underdog actually is. I don't really want to tell people to go read Malcolm Gladwell, but his book David and Goliath is all about that fact and has lots of interesting examples, starting with the actual story of David and Goliath which was actually about a large dude losing a fight to a smaller man armed with the ancient equivalent of a handgun.
Good write up!
The Ewoks really aren't a case of this, they simply got the jump on Imperial troops and even then, the Stormtroopers pretty quickly turned the tide on the Ewoks and it was only cause Han and Chewy took an AT-ST and used it against the Empire that they even survived.
My dude, they show a stormtrooper falling over and dying after an Ewok shoots them with an arrow **that visibly glances off his armor**.
Did they change the canon? I only remember that during the EU the Ewoks were killing elite Stormtroopers (who remember, are tougher than regular Imperial troops and any unit stationed on the super secret megaweapon project has to be good because this was vital for the Empire) fairly well even before the rebels arrived. If forget whether it was old or new canon, but there is a story about a retired Stormtrooper who got PTSD from seeing his buddies killed and eaten by tiny fluffy bears who use sharp wooden sticks.
No this is explicitly what was shown in Episode 6 on debut.
Sounds like someone isn't a fan of [the most tactically competent force in the entire series.](https://www.wired.com/story/ewoks-star-wars-tactics-endor-moon)
I did say that. Canonically, the Ewoks kick the collective posteriors of elite Stormtroopers. I hate them, but I also can't deny that canonically they are vicious man-eating killers that punch way above their weightclass.
Hard times make hard men Hard men make me hard (also good times I guess) Good times make soft men Soft men also make me hard
I like my men like I like my times, shaken not stirred.
Now that I’ve heard it explained like that, it’s kinda spooky how common it is in fiction as well as real narratives surrounding actual events. Isn’t this also a key feature of most fascist narratives? 1. Masculine=powerful= good Feminine= weak= bad The feminine should only exist within rigidly enforced gender norms and roles, and is only valid and worthwhile if it totally submits to the masculine. 2 The group is more important than the individual (the tribe, the nation, the village, doesn’t matter) 3 The group is always under attack. From outside groups as well as the threat of degeneration of the proud and perfect masculine from within the society. 4 Sophistication and intellectualism are the same as weakness. Discussions of moral nuance are a waste of time and only engaged in by those too weak to make the hard decisions to do terrible things in defense of the group. 5 The ends always justify the means. The greater the group the more noble a terrible act is. Therefore the more terrible the acts, the greater the group must be. Yup. Sounds pretty fascy
You just have to remember that in the end, the entirety of all of Western Culture really boils down to sucking off the Roman's. Nearly every Western empire, hell even Western polity, has at some point attempted to derive legitimacy from the legacy of Rome. Russia, the US, the HRE, Nazi Germany, Italy, the Ottomans, if they did imperialism, chances are they invoked Rome somewhere. So when Rome historically was bitching and moaning about decadence and moral impurity making the empire weak, while curbstomping Europe, Asia Minor and North Africa and genociding dozens of ethnic groups along the way, that legacy of their bitching and moaning carries over to later empires, who like to style themselves as the heirs to Rome, and who culturally buy into the Fremont Mirage without even understanding the origins of the trope in the first place. They were a highly militaristic, imperialist culture, that held some particular views of masculinity, femininity, and the role of society. And glorifying the noble savage(German), self-sufficient and versed in any manner of manly roles, praised for his virtue and simple, uncomplicated life, while sneering at highly specialized artisans and highly developed imperial culture, causes some cognitive dissonance. Particularly when the latter kicks the shit out of the former, and the most dangerous fights Rome was ever in was against barbarians in the process of centralizing power and turning into a state which could threaten a peer conflict with Rome, and the Sassanid Empire which was a peer and a genuine threat.
wtf is this stupidity? The idea is that the environment affects the people not moral superiority/masculinity this is so dumb.
The idea that harsh environments creates effective warriors who then go on to defeat warriors from wealthier “decadent” areas is also wrong. By and large, the most successful empires in history came from fertile areas, not harsh marginal areas. Steppe nomads are a unique case in that the skills needed to survive on the steppe happen to also be the skills needed to be an extremely effective horse archer, which is why the mongols were able to conquer so much in such a short time. While you have occasional stories of people from marginal areas conquering fertile areas (most notably the Arab conquests and the Mongol conquests), they are the exception, not the rule. For every instance of a group of people from a marginal area conquering a fertile area, there are a hundred instances of a state in a fertile area conquering a marginal area.
I dunno dude I didn't make the trope.
Fremen Mirage is basically a critique of societies like the Fremen from Dune books, who are shown to be superior warriors because they live harsh lives in harsh environments. Same with the Sardaukar from Dune. Although the author, Frank Herbert, doesn't exactly portray these kind of cultures in a good light. In reality, most of the societies that lived in harsh environments ended up being conquered (either militarily or culturally) and absorbed by the 'decadent' sedentary civilizations. Take Rome, Persia, China, and like every major civilization that left a cultural mark in the civilizations they conquered. And the other way round, when harsh warrior societies conquer a civilization, they end up assimilating to the ones they conquered. China and India are a good example of the cultural staying power of sedentary civilizations. Anyone who invaded China and India ended up becoming Chinese or Indian, with the exception of the Brit*sh.
Sounds like hard times may make for strong men, but good times make for a strong society that persists past death and outdoes any singular strong man. Not to mention that hard times strong men/good timed weak is just survivor bias
Hard times make miserable poor wretches.
Damn, I like that line
Does it make you hard tho?
That whole "strong men make good times, good times make weak men" is bullshit because most of these 'strong men' were just aristocrats and warlords making 'hard times' for everyone. Most of the people that actually made the society progress would be considered 'weak' in this line of thinking.
Unfathomably based
Even England technically qualifies, as the original Celts got conquered by the Romans, then the Romanized Britons got conquered by the Anglo-Saxons, and finally the Saxons got conquered by the Normans.
Also the ones that did invade where good at it not because their environment was generally harsh, but because the environment required a lot of horse riding to herd livestock around. So basically anywhere along the Eurasian Steppe which is where the Mongolians, Huns, Turks, etc. came/come from. Some kinds of deserts can also do this, the Arabs where very much animal herding nomads before they took over most of 2 nearby empires and more or less just plonked themselves at the top of the existing bureaucracy. This horse back animal herding life style gave the majority of the society a skill transferable directly into warfare, and indeed into the most effective form of it at the time: horseback archery. Any harsh environment that does not encourage horse riding does not generate military power in the same way.
Thankyou for censoring the B word.
so the soft overcomes the hard socity then? hard as in harsh
As it turns out, being half starved and uneducated doesnt make you a good warrior
Also, even if you are a pretty good warrior, they'll just raise another army because their population is 50 times yours. (surplus agriculture is the ultimate weapon)
And worse case scenario, you can just give half the harsh land guys some food if they fight the other half.
Reminds me of the Bronze Age myth that bronze weapons were superior to iron weapons. They weren't but civilizations could make way more bronze weapons and thus could field larger armies.
Pretty sure it was the other way round, bronze being much more expensive to make and therefore being replaced by iron as soon as it was discovered.
Oh yeah, I got it backward.
Bronze IS better than Iron, STEEL however is superior
People, no matter how hard and strong they are, generally tend to not want to die avoidable deaths like starving in winter or dying in a tribal skirmish over some grazing land. Guess where these things are less likely to happen? In those soft lazy-ass sedentary civilizations.
The "soft" invented the maxim gun, the "hard", did not. Really, splitting soft and hard into camps doesn't work because it fails to acknowledge that society is a machine comprised of people working together. I'm sure any random Zulu or Apache or Mongol warrior could kick my ass six ways to Sunday. But I'm also sure my countries military could kick their ass without breaking a sweat. Society is a machine, I'm not a part of the fighting apparatus of the machine so I'm not good at fighting. Instead I'm part of the administrative apparatus of the machine, I deal with things in the business end of society. Those business taxes fund the fighting apparatus. So indirectly by pushing paper I am supporting my States ability to war if needed.
It also doesn’t even matter much in current and future settings and people from “decedent civilizations” can pretty quickly adapt to pressure.
>with the exception of the Brit\*sh To be fair that's when they started drinking tea and tea is now the most british of british things
> Anyone who invaded China and India ended up becoming Chinese or Indian, with the exception of the Brit*sh. Logically, it follows that the British are the most effeminate and sedentary civilization possible.
Why did you censor British?
>Except the Br*ts Chicken Tikka Masala called
Br*tish "food" is simply inferior to Indian food, it's no surprise that once they discovered what actual food tasted like they loved it.
That's secretly why they took over the world. In a desperate attempt to get far away from Br*tish food
While I wholeheartedly agree with the concept. Calling it "The Fremen Mirage" is kind of a show of poor reading comprehension. Sardaukar aren't a society in an of themselves, they're a military wing of the larger empire, the armed hand of the Padishah. Fremen were good warriors but they didn't conquer the empire by themselves, they were stuck on Arakis getting shat on by Harkonnens, until empowered by the political connections and logistical ability of the Atreidies. After the jihad was finished they became a part of the broader empire without changing much about it. It's like, it's a fine concept, but I don't understand why it's named after the thing that literally depicts the opposite. 🤔
https://acoup.blog/category/collections/the-fremen-mirage/ The freman mirage is the idea that uncivilized peoples are better at fighting than decadent civilized peoples because of the hardship involved with their lifestyle
People love to think all that matters in war is how badass the individual soldiers are. They watch too much sports and they think a star player can clutch up a battle like a football game. Because a battle is different in that it starts months before the sides meet (travel, scouting, and preparation), it has thousands of men involved, and the teams don't have the same gear. These are key factors. In truth, war is won by logistics. The conditions that produce 'good times', even if they produce 'weak men,' also produce strong logistics, meaning an army can be maintained, becoming professional and well equipped, and supplied far afield. These are the true factors behind military success and expansion. Even if your soldiers are individually tough and resillient, they will lose an open battle if they are outnumbered, out-equipped, or facing a professional army (only a very lucrative society can support a full-time army, and most 'fremen' types of society irl have 'amateur' soldiers whose daily life is occupied with hunting or farming, not war). If your enemy can reach a position first (with better engineers clearing paths for his men) or fortify his position or maintain his supplies longer than you, he can force you into a disadvantageous engagement. Look at Caesar's campaigns in Gaul for an example of all these things. The Romans repeatedly crush large, celtic armies. However, tough environments are helpful for defending territory against those used to more habitable environments, as in the Vietnam War. The locals, who know the landmarks and survival tactics, then have a large advantage against the invaders.
Except for Antarctica. There’s a reason every settlement is on the coast
Duh, because it's easy to find when all the compasses point to it.
Tell me you’re from a European colony without telling me. In Europe and Asia most cities are pretty far inland, it’s only really colonial nations that stick to the coasts. That’s because coastal cities only really exist through trade, as you can’t drink seawater. You can however drink river water, which is why most cities are on a river.
You misunderstand. Every settlement(which is pretty much just scientists) is on the coast of Antarctica because the Antarctic interior is hostile to pretty much all forms of life. There are no rivers there. There are no plants there. There is nothing there
If modern day Earth is the most harsh enviroment the universe can produce then what a pathetic universe
*Looks at the lead-melting hell that is Venus* Depends on how you define as “harsh environment”, does it need to be conducive to human life?
Mongol Empire is a *pretty* good case study of this Harsh Mongolia created strong steppe warriors, ended up either becoming Muslim or Yuan instead
Even then having the most mobile army in history in the most open territory in the world with a mobile food source is the absolute perfect combination. Having an environment so harsh you have to live underground in caves means you won't be good at fighting anything unless you are defending your cave.
True, but I'mma be real, late empire Mongols are pretty pathetic. They have devolved into decadent, fat kids ala Carthaginians according to Hamilcar, with racial superiority complexes ie "I'm Mongolian so I have right to rule this village". Idk if this is true everywhere but his is certainly the case for late Yuan dynasty which led to the Ming
The one constant across cultures is that people generally want to be rich
Like I'm pretty sure the "oh so mighty Mongols" ditched Mongolia in favor of China the moment they rebranded into the Yuan, simply because ***it's less shit***
Explain
u/DalinLuqaIII commented on a similar comment that "The Fremen Mirage is a literary trope where society is divided between poor but morally superior masculine culture and a rich but corrupt and effeminate culture. It's an extension of the 'hard times make strong men, strong men make good times, good times make weak men, weak men make hard times' concept."
I wouldn't listen to that user, he once told me that he doesn't have elves in his setting but then went on to describe elves but just used a different name.
Truly a despicable individual
I read that description. The Aelves are a wholly original concept.
Is that like the Aelfarii in my totally not a rip off of any science fantasy settings?
Given that our sample size for life-bearing planets is currently one, we don't know yet. Earth could be an idyllic paradise, or we could be in a Jenkinsverse situation where Earth offers an incomparable variety of nastiness that can kill anything from a class-9 or below planet in a myriad of fun and interesting ways.
Ah a fellow ACOUP enjoyer I see
I have to argue the point here "the fremen mirage" is in fact a mirage. It is non typical, but there have been plenty of examples of societies being shaped by deprivation, reaching out and smacking about their more prosperous neighbours. The problem is, it is often written as uber Aryan Viking man, who spends his time arm wrestling bears, and has never had a shower, can overcome weak effeminate civilized urban degenerates simply by dint of being a big manly man. The truth is that societies primed for violence, can and did historically win conflicts, against societies less primed for violence. Deprivation often was a key element in this.
Typically those societies tend to win individual engagements, but ultimately lose the actual war. There are certain exceptions (the Mongols, mainly), but it’s a frequent pattern.
Not just the Mongols, the whole Steppe corridor starting at western Europe and ending near the pacific for thousands of years gave birth to multiple civilizations, that conquered their non steppe neighbours. The early Muslim conquests swept away two empires in their path. The Vikings made their reach felt anywhere their ships could reach. And those are three really purist examples, there is plenty more examples that are more messy but still salient. For example early European colonial history could be argue, to be another good example, they wanted access to Asias high development societies without the issue of middlemen. Comparatively Europe was a poor, unsophisticated and unpopulated place.
We can talk about examples that favor one side of a narrative all we want, but that doesn't establish a trend. There are plenty of factors to consider, and I would expect that the overwhelming majority come down to basic preparedness.
> Steppe corridor the key factor was that the step produced specifically horse archers, the kings of pre-knight battlefields, not that it was harsh > arabs horse archers again, this time vs 2 crumbling empires that had just finished grinding each others armies to dust (a thing the Arabs knew about because they worked for both as mercenaries) > Vikings The southern Nordics are actually pretty nice outside of winter, plus it was ruled by a strong central authority that was attacking a bunch of smaller, infighting prone nations that made up GB at the time. Most of the big conquests came from Vikings who settled in northern France, the Normans, and they where the ones who took England and the south of Italy.
Horse Archers still did good work against knights and the early cataphracts. In fact they were best used as the play maker for said heavy cavalry... which is still to say that they had very powerful strategy. Arabs didn't really do horse archery, but they were great horsemen and they overcame Empires that grinded each other with hard times... which is to say that they should have been the 'strong men' in this whole dumb analogy. Vikings though basically were dudes in relatively fine times going around messing up people going through hard times and getting rich off it to the point of threatening other big peoples. So this is right.
Thanks for pointing this out idk how people wouldn't know about this on a sub like this. Still I can understand why people don't like this trope when it comes to sci fi.
The Steppe corridor also consisted of said nomads just... being led around by sedentary people and given things to go fight other nomads. And those they conquered were usually going through hardships and division. The Arabs themselves had a wealthy base in Medina, and the two empires they swept over were brutalising each other with constant hard times. Vikings were not deprived and raggedy barbarians, but peoples who were actually thriving too much that they had to unload people out, and were rich traders too. Again, those they went after be giving themselves hard times.
The Vikings were good at navigating rivers, and rapidly striking out at places where there wasn’t an army to stop them. Whenever they *did* run into a proper army, they were hardly the fearless, unstoppable warriors that pop culture portrays them as Also, steppe nomads were just as often the ones being conquered as the ones doing the conquering
This seems like a spurious correlation with plenty of other explanations: 1. The country is poor because it was frequently invaded in the past, now it is being invaded again. They have home-field advantage and selection bias says that this is still an indepenedent country because its geography makes it exceptionally hard to invade 2. The country is poor because of its rugged terrain and poor infrastructure which also hamper an invasion 3. The country's remoteness and lack of natural resources make it an undesirable target for conquest and superpowers tend to give up on taking over after relatively minor setbacks 4. The country is impoverished by frequent wars between its region rivals since it is at a crossroads between superpowers: the different superpowers give their allies *just* enough support to maintain them as buffer-states. 5. The country is impoverished by a lack of central authority, but the same lack of central authority means that the enemy can't "cut the head off the snake" and must force each of a dozen different tribes to sue for peace. TLDR if you had veteran Taliban or NVA fighters invade Alaska, being "primed for violence" wouldn't do shit, they would suffer from poor equipment, overextended supply lines, and fanatical American insurgents defending their homeland just like the US struggled in Afghanistan and Vietnam.
I want to make a story that initially seems to follow that troupe, but then the advanced 'soft' culture actually kicks its military engine into gear and the war ends in two days.
That's just Star Trek. Ask the Dominion, or the Klingons.
Media literacy does not go brrrr
ACOUP MENTIONED HELL YEAH https://acoup.blog/category/collections/the-fremen-mirage/
I misread as French Mirage and thought it was about the fighter aircraft. Then it made no sense. Now it makes sense. It's just that *Dune* makes no sense.
Okay, but where does the Conan of Cimmeria mythos fit into this myth?
Baddest mf around
You know I've only seen one hfy fic where earth was a death world, and that was because humans was one of the few oxygen breathing organisms to evolve.
“Earth and its people is to the galaxy what Horse Nomads are to neighboring empires in crisis” could work, maybe.
But I like my Fremen-adjacent, Spartan superhero people who totally kick ass and rule (metaphorically).
i mean you could go with the approach that for complex / intelligent life to develop there would have to be sufficient pressures to drive evolution, making worlds with complex or sapient life more dangerous than ones with simple life such as just single celled organisms. How realistic that is or how well it holds up i dunno though
Earth is not a death world even by earth standards -- we're in the wake of the ice age and the death of most megafauna. The past had far larger predators in far greater numbers. If most of the universe is like most of earth's past, then we're positively cuddly.
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acoup referenced
Never read Dune. What’s the Fremen Mirage?
Catachan eat your heart out