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Masada: State of Affairs

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Masada: State of Affairs
Post by cthia   » Wed Aug 10, 2022 1:53 am

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I can not wrap my head around the state of affairs of an occupied Masada. I can not get my brain to logically accept such a homicidally religious planet continuing to live indefinitely with occupation by heathens.

wiki wrote:First Grayson-Masadan War

The First Grayson-Masadan War took place in 1868 PD; the Masadan Navy bombarded Grayson with nuclear weapons before being defeated. After that, Masada repeatedly threatened to use nuclear force again. (HH2)


We all know how religious cults think, and Masada is an entire planet full of them. Why don't they self-destruct?

They can simply set off enough dirty nuclear weapons on planet to commit suicide and to make the planet uninhabitable for any other heathenous man.

The author says ixnay on bombarding a planet to ruin because man just doesn't think like that; lest defeat is imminent. But Masada has proven that it does think like that, and they are defeated and occupied by heathens.

At any rate, the author never said a planet couldn't commit mass suicide. The history of man has witnessed religious fanatics committing mass suicide plenty of times.

So, what is the true state of the Masadans?

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Masada: State of Affairs
Post by tlb   » Wed Aug 10, 2022 7:53 am

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cthia wrote:We all know how religious cults think, and Masada is an entire planet full of them. Why don't they self-destruct?

I do NOT know how religious cults "think"; it sometimes appears that they put more effort into believing, than thinking.

I have no insight into suicide, certainly not in mass suicide; but I think that the Masadans have not yet ceased to believe in their religious victory. If they believe in eventual victory, then why deny that outcome by their suicide? What do you think that they would accomplish by that act (particularly if there are ways to scrub the radioactivity away)?

The Jonestown suicides occurred because of the fear that authorities were going to interfere after the congressman was murdered. The "Heaven's Gate" suicides happened because they thought the comet Hale-Bopp (or the flying saucer in its wake) had come to take their souls away.
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Re: Masada: State of Affairs
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Wed Aug 10, 2022 8:12 pm

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Is it all Masadans? Or just the Council of Elders and their immediate male family members?

They'd have indoctrinated all male youth of course, but that doesn't mean those are true believers. Show them a better future with the Galaxy and they may change. Show that their hated enemies the Graysons are reaping the benefits. Or simply remove the indoctrinational propagandist education system and society will slowly drift towards a more open one.

Also, teach the women. They're at least half the population and their opinions didn't count. They owe no allegiance to the Elders and they would likely want nothing more than to take the position opposite than the Elders had, for simply being opposite. And they've never been indoctrinated in the first place, so they're kind of a blank slate.

The two main points being that the population of Masada is not homogeneously zealot against the heathens, and that such zealotry usually requires charismatic leaders and/or the threat of punishment.
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Re: Masada: State of Affairs
Post by tlb   » Wed Aug 10, 2022 8:34 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:Is it all Masadans? Or just the Council of Elders and their immediate male family members?

You present a good plan for changing the culture, however the Council of Elders, etc., rules on the ground; the "occupying" force is all in orbitals, if I remember correctly.
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Re: Masada: State of Affairs
Post by kzt   » Wed Aug 10, 2022 8:57 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:Is it all Masadans? Or just the Council of Elders and their immediate male family members?

They'd have indoctrinated all male youth of course, but that doesn't mean those are true believers. Show them a better future with the Galaxy and they may change. Show that their hated enemies the Graysons are reaping the benefits. Or simply remove the indoctrinational propagandist education system and society will slowly drift towards a more open one.

Also, teach the women. They're at least half the population and their opinions didn't count. They owe no allegiance to the Elders and they would likely want nothing more than to take the position opposite than the Elders had, for simply being opposite. And they've never been indoctrinated in the first place, so they're kind of a blank slate.

The two main points being that the population of Masada is not homogeneously zealot against the heathens, and that such zealotry usually requires charismatic leaders and/or the threat of punishment.

Culture is transmitted by women, not men.
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Re: Masada: State of Affairs
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Wed Aug 10, 2022 9:03 pm

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tlb wrote:You present a good plan for changing the culture, however the Council of Elders, etc., rules on the ground; the "occupying" force is all in orbitals, if I remember correctly.


That's what the RMMC is for. They would have to land and conduct a search for those elders, because they wouldn't surrender when a foreign navy took the orbitals. They'd go to ground to avoid capture.

But in terms of culture change, that's sufficient. If they are cut off from their sources of revenue and the levers of government and Church, they can't continue the propaganda.
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Re: Masada: State of Affairs
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Wed Aug 10, 2022 9:12 pm

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kzt wrote:Culture is transmitted by women, not men.


So... Masada was already doomed? Oppressing those who transmit your culture cannot be healthy.

Seriously, you have a point, but it's incomplete. On Masada, the women would indeed have transmitted culture to other women and to infants, but once the male children got to a certain age, they'd be taken away from those women and indoctrinated by men. And those would be the one who'd retain power, so Masada was effectively two cultures in one location.

So I stand by my assertion that the Manticore occupation of Masada can lead to change, because the majority of the population was not zealot (maybe that was a narrow majority, but still).

We actually have a parallel to that in our current history, which is the transformation of Afghanistan from under the Taleban in 2001 to their state prior to Taleban taking over again earlier this year. The women and the denizens of big cities had their culture effective transformed and wanted a different future for their country. The parallels probably indicate that the Manticore occupation has not ended: it's a generational transformation.

And that parallel probably means we will not hear much about the occupation, so David can avoid current politics.
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Re: Masada: State of Affairs
Post by kzt   » Wed Aug 10, 2022 10:41 pm

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Islam is pretty oppressive to women, at least in the Arab version. It’s also been the culture for something like 1300 years. Women can be vicious in-group to girls or women who don’t conform.
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Re: Masada: State of Affairs
Post by Jonathan_S   » Wed Aug 10, 2022 10:55 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
tlb wrote:You present a good plan for changing the culture, however the Council of Elders, etc., rules on the ground; the "occupying" force is all in orbitals, if I remember correctly.


That's what the RMMC is for. They would have to land and conduct a search for those elders, because they wouldn't surrender when a foreign navy took the orbitals. They'd go to ground to avoid capture.

But in terms of culture change, that's sufficient. If they are cut off from their sources of revenue and the levers of government and Church, they can't continue the propaganda.

Didn't a fair number of the top elders end up getting creatively killed by their "wives" as they were hiding from the Manticoran occupation?

No; now that I look I got things mixed up.
Flag in Exile wrote:"Compared to Graysons, Masadan women are downright scary. They're not even people. They're property . . . and ninety percent of them seem to accept that that's the way it's supposed to be." She shook her head. "Of the few who don't, half aren't sure the occupation's going to last. They're too terrified to do anything about the way they've been treated, but the ones who aren't afraid are almost worse. The homicide rate on Masada doubled in the first six months of the occupation, and something like two-thirds of the extra bodies were 'husbands'-if you can call the pigs that-who'd been murdered by their 'wives.' Some of them were rather artistic, too, like Elder Simonds' wives. The cops never did find all of his body parts."
"Good Lord," Honor murmured, and Mercedes nodded.
"It hasn't just been limited to women getting even with 'husbands,' either. The overwhelming majority of Masadans still believe in their so-called religion, but a lot of those who don't have some pretty nasty personal scores to pay off. A quarter of the church elders were murdered by their parishioners before General Marcel put the others into protective custody . . . and that only started the survivors howling about the 'oppression of the Faith'!

So while Elder Simons got himself real dead it's unclear if the "quarter of the church elders" include any of the rest of their Council of Elders.
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Re: Masada: State of Affairs
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Thu Aug 11, 2022 12:38 am

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Jonathan_S wrote:So while Elder Simons got himself real dead it's unclear if the "quarter of the church elders" include any of the rest of their Council of Elders.


Thanks for the text. It does say though that all the leaders in the church are removed from their position of influence, either because they're in hiding, because they've been murdered, or because they're in protective custody.

However, it does say that most of the population was either made up of true believers or those too traumatised to take action.

But the occupation has been going for 20 years now. It's a full generation that hasn't grown up with the oppression.
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