a question of anthropological import

[divineshadow]

FORM: Sending crystal
SENDER: The Priest
RECIPIENT: e v e r y o n e
WHAT: your weird cultural practices: explain them
WHEN: waggles hand; pre-Tevinter, perhaps
WHERE: whereveer
NOTES: pre-emptive warning for Priest's weird and offensive opinions about societal organization

Inquisition.

[The voice is hard to place, neither male nor female, lingering oddly over the syllables of the word--considering. An Inquisition, proper noun. What a thing.]

Your cities are infested with beasts. You keep them in comfort and guard jealously their welfare. A caste among you even exists to care for them.

Explain this.

Comments

[thunderproof]

Well, we don't... I mean, I guess you could see it as serving, if you wanted to, but uh... Okay, hold on.

❰ a pause as adalia orders her thoughts. ❱

Okay, so, people keep pets because they give us companionship. Some pets are kept for purpose in addition to being kept for companionship, like a dog could be used to hunt or a cat kept to kill mice, but in order for them to be good at the jobs we give them we have to take care of them in return. It's less servitude and more... symbiosis? Kind of?

And then beasts of burden, we keep them mostly just for purpose. Like a cow gives milk, which we drink, or can be slaughtered for meat, druffalo can pull plows and carts, you ride horses to get there faster, stuff like that. In order for them to do those jobs we have to provide them with food and water and stuff, but that's less servitude, again, than... investment? If you want to get something out of your animal you have to make sure it's in a condition to give it.

Does that make sense?

[divineshadow]

You sacrifice for them. Space and food to keep them comes at cost to their keepers. Servitude is so.

[The Priest's tone is patient; I guess speaks of insecurity in understanding.]

Meat can be had from wild beasts. Horses are fragile and become sick to dying if they are fed wrong. A woman of the worker caste might pull a plow--and should. To put a druffalo in her place insults her purpose.

[thunderproof]

Everything comes at cost, but if the benefits outweigh those costs, people are willing to overlook that.

❰ castes, the fuck... ❱

Isn't it easier to get eat from domesticated animals, though? What we sacrifice in space and food we make up for in energy spent hunting. The domesticated animal is a guarantee, while a hunt may return nothing. Put in the effort to breed horses, and even if one fails you will have another waiting to be used just the same. And as we don't have castes here, no one's purpose is being insulted by getting a stronger animal to do work it can do easier than any person could.

It's about weighing cost and benefit. We've weighed our animals as being more beneficial than costly.

❰ which is all way more heartless than adalia actually feels about animals (two is her nephew and she loves him, best mabari) but it seems an unlikely idea to make sense to... whoever this is. ❱

[divineshadow]

This world is a chaos without well-defined purpose--but women across the face of it have weighed all the cost of keeping beasts and agreed.

[doubt]

[thunderproof]

I don't know all people, but you're the one who noticed the preponderance of beasts about. Have you seen anyone take umbrage with their existence yet?

❰ specific animals, maybe — strays can get in the way, an animal must be corrected if it doesn't listen — but their existence as a whole is more or less an agreed-upon neutral, so far as she's ever seen. ❱

[divineshadow]

No.

That does not make it considered, only accepted without consideration. Much of the same in this world you would not leave lie.

[thunderproof]

Then it must not be an actual problem, if no one's thinking about it.

❰ nnnnnn logical fallacy okay hold on. ❱

In order for the situation to have become what it is, right, someone, somewhere, at one point, must have decided "hey this is a good idea." And then other people most have observed them doing it, agreed that it was a good idea, and continued their practice. And that must have continued for long enough that now that's just how it is, and no one has to think about it. Our ancestors all collectively agreed raising animals was helpful, or we wouldn't be doing it, and enough people must still agree, because we've still got plenty animals around.

[divineshadow]

[with something like amusement,] Or those who object are not found among the Inquisition.

[sample size, and all]

An act that is habit is done without thought or continuous approval: It is done because it has always been done. So mistakes and misplaced effort become habits of a hive, to its woe. Removing such a habit may cost what a queen is unwilling to pay, until a Priest forces matters, so it continues unquestioned.

Custom is not a virtue. Enough people agreed here mages must not be free: Yet you seek to upend it.

[thunderproof]

❰ nnnnngh she has responses to this but it's so much effort, does she care enough about this weird rifter with their hive to keep going. ❱

Comparing keeping pets and systematically imprisoning and traumatizing thousands of people is where this conversation ends, I think.

We're not a hive. We don't do things like bees or ants might, because humanoids are sort of inherently illogical. If that bothers you, you're going to have a lot of trouble here. Have a good day.

[divineshadow]

[snort.

marked and noted.]