Foreigner 5. Not a human thing. (updated)
It was kind of a toss-up to figure out which aspect of the Foriegner universe to tackle next - worldbuilding abstractions, which I find personally cool as an archeology/sf junkie; sociological commentary, which always rocks when done well; or personal/political conflicts which mesh the two of them? Backstory or plot advancements? Kabiu & culture clashes, gender-neutral feudal/socialist societies, or 'shippiness?
Worldbuilding first, emotional gratification after, then, left up to me. Deal with the thing that drives Cameron, and by extension all humans, up the wall the most - Kabiu, that social code of "fittingness," sort of corresponding to "dulce et decorum" without any of the political rest of the saying, in a way that a Roman would understand the words that we translate as "sweet and proper" which isn't a proper translation at all--
Kabiu is and isn't - feng shui, kosher/halal, Classical piety aka hosiotês - but has aspects of all of them, in a way that makes sense ultimately, but not on the surface - only when considered wholistically. Kabiu governs the rules for interpersonal address, what readers of older books will recognize as the distinction between "You" and "Thou", only vastly more complicated, not simply when is it proper to say Sie and with whom one may appropriately use Du - but also maintaining the magical/ritual relationships of numbers and avoiding the ones which are infelicitous or unlucky in a given situation, the way some words in some languages are never used to or of humans, unless you want to be insulting, like fressen for essen; or the imperative Lyag! in Russian.
More obviously, it rules things like home decorating, as in the passage quoted earlier, the gracious arts of floral arrangement and gardening, which make it seem altogether Asian - but then, the "language of flowers" and color/number/entity symbolism was well-developed when the Unicorn Tapestries were woven, in the West, too - if with different assignments. Royal Purple, the meaning of an Oak Branch versus an Ivy Leaf, three fishes carved on a baptismal font, the perfect harmonics versus Ars Nova - heraldry and magic and mysticism are part of our heritage too...but the heirs of Edinburgh and Ecole de Paris and Carfax today hardly remember them, as they ride the buses on either side of the Pond, do we? --Unless we are Scadians, or other history junkies.
It encompasses the Confucian admonishment to only eat foods when in season, which is not merely a gourmet fastidiousness, but itself involves a whole theory of economics and personal ethics as well, not mere asceticism but the measured avoidance of wastefulness and extravagance, as well as putting your food service people to trouble. What this translates to is rules governing what food may served when, particularly meats - because the ethics of the atevi, of most atevi ethne at least, do not allow domestic animals for slaughter. For dairy, yes, for beasts of burden, for eggs - all of these are part of the farming landscape just as here (although the "fowl" are not exactly what we would instinctively think of, evolution having taken a different path: eggs come from things that also have scales there) but to kill "that which never ran free" - is an abomination, to most atevi, and to preserve meat out of season a temptation to forget the natural order of the seasons and the lifecycles of the biosphere.
Which is, to people who take seriously their religious role as stewards of the cosmos, a blasphemy.
So huntsmen, like the old Jaegermeisters of earth, are a crucial part of the economy of their world, still. (I wouldn't be surprised if there were some equivalent atevi folk-story about a Marksman and a cursed gun, given not by the Devil but by a vengeful ghost - or updated, one of the shadow-folk...) And wide-open spaces, and unbroken woodlands, where herd animals can run and breed and feed, are equally crucial. Thus the non-consumption of all their petrochemicals in an "orgy of private transport" serves not only the environment as some sort of abstraction posited as an opposition to human sentient needs, but keeps civilization going as it has, without need of intensive meat-agriculture and the attendant logistics and economic problems all that creates.
How does all this have anything to do with number? Well, it is part of the broader picture, the idea of harmony and balance, of not taking more than you need.
And yet - it isn't as cut and dried as that. There's the problem of course of cultural contamination from the invaders - humans, who have all the tech answers, don't bother with kabiu, they raise fish on farms and eat hot dogs, and no natural disasters have overtaken them for their conveniences - but this is complicated by the fact that not all atevi interpret kabiu the same way, let alone follow it as strictly. Some gens have their own traditions, within even the Ragi there are different sects and schools and then the pressure of humans with their alternate lifestyles, has made others more fastidious and rigorous, by way of reaction - visible ways of standing up for Tradition, you see.
--Which, of course, makes other people snarky and cynical, in their own reactions...Reciprocally, there'd never been anything an aiji of Tabini's house had asked that humans hadn't done, or given, or tried to comply with, since the war of the Landing itself, right down to his current paper regarding processed meat, which tried...tried to explain to Mospheira that commercialization of meat production was deeply offensive to Ragi, no matter that Nisebi saw nothing wrong with it and were willing to sell. That cultural adaptation went both ways, and Mospheria ought to rely on the sea, and fish, which had no season, and thereby show their hosts on the planet that they had an effort to change themselves to conform to atevi sensibilities, the way atevi had changed their behaviors towards humans...
Part of this may just be Bren's own resentment that he has to eat whatever's in season, whether he likes it or not, of course - the Foreign Office and University experts back home don't have to put up with egg salad and tuna fish sandwiches if they don't want to eat alligator or venison or whatever it is this month! But it is a real concern, particularly when you take the very un-Middle American perspective of thinking about where food comes from and how it gets there, once you get past the pat obvious and false answers of "from stores" and "on trucks"--
Of course, that's not someplace we really like going, as a people: we think of it as most definitely not appropriate, sausage and politics together.
Which may explain a good deal about the situation we currently find ourselves in, in the Primary World, too.These are the peaceful things that are radically different from the way-of-life familiar to a bunch of 22nd century Middle Americans (and doubtless some bourgeois Europeans, for good UN measure) recreating Suburbia on another planet. Now, for the less-pacific aspects of life in the Western Association--
Tabini called the secretary, who brought an uncommonly elaborate paper, burdened with the red and black ribbons of high nobility.
"A filing of Intent," Tabini said, rising, and startling the aides and assembled witnesses, and the secretary held up the document and read: "Tabini-aiji against persons unknown, who, without filing Intent, invaded the peace of my house and brought a threat of harm against the person of the paidhi-aiji, Bren Cameron. If harm results henceforth to any guest or person of my household by this agency or by any other agency intending harm to the paidhi-aiji, I personally declare Intent to file feud, because of the offense to the safety of my house, with Banichi of Dajoshu township of Talidi province as my registered and licensed agent. I publish it and cause it to be published, and place it in public records with its seals and sigils."
Bren was thoroughly shocked...
I know that man'chi is the mystery that everyone wants explained in the Cherryh fandom, but it's something that really can't be - you have to figure it out for yourself. I think I've got it reckoned, I think I can even explain it...but not baldly, shorn of context. You'll see when we get there - or not. Essence & existence, amici. These are not simple things. (No, I can't avoid philosophical wordplay. I've tried. Sorry--) It's the same answer to the Other Big Question, too, btw. Really.
No, what needs to be sorted out is the differing attitudes towards life, death, and violence in the dominant atevi society. We saw a little of that, with hunting for the table considered proper, and mere butchery considered indecent, and even immoral; but what about when it comes to sentient life? We know that fighting, even to the death, is culturally permitted; we know that even in this modern era, the existence of a ritual caste, or Order, or something, of people legally permitted to kill is sanctioned, and even embraced, on the eastern side of the straights; we know this is deeply troubling, even terrifying, to the human colonists in their safe cantonment, and frightening in a somewhat more personal way to their ambassador abroad.But when they walked into the untrafficked hall that led toward the garden apartments, Banichi gave him two keys. "These are the only valid ones," Banichi said. "Kindly don't mix them up with your old ones. The old ones work. They just don't turn off the wires."
He gave Banichi a disturbed stare - which, also, Banichi didn't seem to notice. "Can't you just shock the bastard? Scare him? He's not a professional. There's been no notice..."
"I'm within my license," Banichi said. "The Intent is filed. Didn't you say so? The intruder would be very foolish to try again."
A queasy feeling was in his stomach. "Banichi, damn it..."
"I've advised the servants. Honest and wise servants, capable of serving in this house, will request admission henceforth. Your apartment is no different than mine now. Or Jago's. I change my own sheets."
As well as he knew Banichi and Jago, he had no idea of such hazards in their quarters. It made sense in their case or Tabini's. It didn't, in his.
"I trust," Banichi said, "you've no duplicate keys circulating. No ladies. No - hem - other connections. You've not been gambling, have you?"
"No!"
Not to give too much away, but Bren's impression that "nobody knows" what's going through the minds of those who decide on assassination, that it's some kind of irrational process, or that it's a mere transaction, impersonal, secret, hand over the money and we guarantee a body sort of thing - are all wrong. How wrong, and how complicated the role of the Guild in atevi society is, doesn't become clear until much later on, and in every book more comes clearer, as he learns things that he would have known all his life, had he grown up on the other side of the water, for one (avoiding spoilers here) but the reason they have an Assassins Guild, and the reason that their laws and customs are the way they are - is because atevi have a vastly greater respect for all life than 20th century humans do, and consider war a much greater evil than we do. --Than we do, btw, not that that's how we like to think of ourselves as being - but we do denial very, very well as a species.
They have a Guild of Assassins - that is to say, impartial (or striving to be) agents of justice who serve the common good by providing a way for anyone, lord or liege, to have access to the kind of power of force that otherwise would only belong to the rich, in our world - and thereby providing a check on the ambitions of tyrants both large and small.
The Assassins exist to stop feudal lords' territorial squabbles from turning into the Warring States, in short.
They are both heirarchical and democratic, and although they cannot get away from the fact that Assassins are individuals with individual's family and birth attachments to places and persons, and therefore bias, they strive to get beyond that, and succeed to a great measure, to work for the good of everyone not just their own small association or sub-association, parliamentary faction or province.
And that everyone - includes people whose ancestors weren't even conceived on the planet, share nothing of that earth's DNA or hereditary systems.
But for typical civilian Middle Americans, getting past the sexy-scary-turn-on-turn-off of killers! weapons! is as difficult as getting past the notion of Servants=people who get bossed around...
Which, when you get those humans in the mix who are less ethical and self-denying than Cameron, becomes a serious political as well as personal problem...
Worldbuilding first, emotional gratification after, then, left up to me. Deal with the thing that drives Cameron, and by extension all humans, up the wall the most - Kabiu, that social code of "fittingness," sort of corresponding to "dulce et decorum" without any of the political rest of the saying, in a way that a Roman would understand the words that we translate as "sweet and proper" which isn't a proper translation at all--
Kabiu is and isn't - feng shui, kosher/halal, Classical piety aka hosiotês - but has aspects of all of them, in a way that makes sense ultimately, but not on the surface - only when considered wholistically. Kabiu governs the rules for interpersonal address, what readers of older books will recognize as the distinction between "You" and "Thou", only vastly more complicated, not simply when is it proper to say Sie and with whom one may appropriately use Du - but also maintaining the magical/ritual relationships of numbers and avoiding the ones which are infelicitous or unlucky in a given situation, the way some words in some languages are never used to or of humans, unless you want to be insulting, like fressen for essen; or the imperative Lyag! in Russian.
More obviously, it rules things like home decorating, as in the passage quoted earlier, the gracious arts of floral arrangement and gardening, which make it seem altogether Asian - but then, the "language of flowers" and color/number/entity symbolism was well-developed when the Unicorn Tapestries were woven, in the West, too - if with different assignments. Royal Purple, the meaning of an Oak Branch versus an Ivy Leaf, three fishes carved on a baptismal font, the perfect harmonics versus Ars Nova - heraldry and magic and mysticism are part of our heritage too...but the heirs of Edinburgh and Ecole de Paris and Carfax today hardly remember them, as they ride the buses on either side of the Pond, do we? --Unless we are Scadians, or other history junkies.
It encompasses the Confucian admonishment to only eat foods when in season, which is not merely a gourmet fastidiousness, but itself involves a whole theory of economics and personal ethics as well, not mere asceticism but the measured avoidance of wastefulness and extravagance, as well as putting your food service people to trouble. What this translates to is rules governing what food may served when, particularly meats - because the ethics of the atevi, of most atevi ethne at least, do not allow domestic animals for slaughter. For dairy, yes, for beasts of burden, for eggs - all of these are part of the farming landscape just as here (although the "fowl" are not exactly what we would instinctively think of, evolution having taken a different path: eggs come from things that also have scales there) but to kill "that which never ran free" - is an abomination, to most atevi, and to preserve meat out of season a temptation to forget the natural order of the seasons and the lifecycles of the biosphere.
Which is, to people who take seriously their religious role as stewards of the cosmos, a blasphemy.
So huntsmen, like the old Jaegermeisters of earth, are a crucial part of the economy of their world, still. (I wouldn't be surprised if there were some equivalent atevi folk-story about a Marksman and a cursed gun, given not by the Devil but by a vengeful ghost - or updated, one of the shadow-folk...) And wide-open spaces, and unbroken woodlands, where herd animals can run and breed and feed, are equally crucial. Thus the non-consumption of all their petrochemicals in an "orgy of private transport" serves not only the environment as some sort of abstraction posited as an opposition to human sentient needs, but keeps civilization going as it has, without need of intensive meat-agriculture and the attendant logistics and economic problems all that creates.
How does all this have anything to do with number? Well, it is part of the broader picture, the idea of harmony and balance, of not taking more than you need.
And yet - it isn't as cut and dried as that. There's the problem of course of cultural contamination from the invaders - humans, who have all the tech answers, don't bother with kabiu, they raise fish on farms and eat hot dogs, and no natural disasters have overtaken them for their conveniences - but this is complicated by the fact that not all atevi interpret kabiu the same way, let alone follow it as strictly. Some gens have their own traditions, within even the Ragi there are different sects and schools and then the pressure of humans with their alternate lifestyles, has made others more fastidious and rigorous, by way of reaction - visible ways of standing up for Tradition, you see.
--Which, of course, makes other people snarky and cynical, in their own reactions...Reciprocally, there'd never been anything an aiji of Tabini's house had asked that humans hadn't done, or given, or tried to comply with, since the war of the Landing itself, right down to his current paper regarding processed meat, which tried...tried to explain to Mospheira that commercialization of meat production was deeply offensive to Ragi, no matter that Nisebi saw nothing wrong with it and were willing to sell. That cultural adaptation went both ways, and Mospheria ought to rely on the sea, and fish, which had no season, and thereby show their hosts on the planet that they had an effort to change themselves to conform to atevi sensibilities, the way atevi had changed their behaviors towards humans...
Part of this may just be Bren's own resentment that he has to eat whatever's in season, whether he likes it or not, of course - the Foreign Office and University experts back home don't have to put up with egg salad and tuna fish sandwiches if they don't want to eat alligator or venison or whatever it is this month! But it is a real concern, particularly when you take the very un-Middle American perspective of thinking about where food comes from and how it gets there, once you get past the pat obvious and false answers of "from stores" and "on trucks"--
Of course, that's not someplace we really like going, as a people: we think of it as most definitely not appropriate, sausage and politics together.
Which may explain a good deal about the situation we currently find ourselves in, in the Primary World, too.These are the peaceful things that are radically different from the way-of-life familiar to a bunch of 22nd century Middle Americans (and doubtless some bourgeois Europeans, for good UN measure) recreating Suburbia on another planet. Now, for the less-pacific aspects of life in the Western Association--
Tabini called the secretary, who brought an uncommonly elaborate paper, burdened with the red and black ribbons of high nobility.
"A filing of Intent," Tabini said, rising, and startling the aides and assembled witnesses, and the secretary held up the document and read: "Tabini-aiji against persons unknown, who, without filing Intent, invaded the peace of my house and brought a threat of harm against the person of the paidhi-aiji, Bren Cameron. If harm results henceforth to any guest or person of my household by this agency or by any other agency intending harm to the paidhi-aiji, I personally declare Intent to file feud, because of the offense to the safety of my house, with Banichi of Dajoshu township of Talidi province as my registered and licensed agent. I publish it and cause it to be published, and place it in public records with its seals and sigils."
Bren was thoroughly shocked...
I know that man'chi is the mystery that everyone wants explained in the Cherryh fandom, but it's something that really can't be - you have to figure it out for yourself. I think I've got it reckoned, I think I can even explain it...but not baldly, shorn of context. You'll see when we get there - or not. Essence & existence, amici. These are not simple things. (No, I can't avoid philosophical wordplay. I've tried. Sorry--) It's the same answer to the Other Big Question, too, btw. Really.
No, what needs to be sorted out is the differing attitudes towards life, death, and violence in the dominant atevi society. We saw a little of that, with hunting for the table considered proper, and mere butchery considered indecent, and even immoral; but what about when it comes to sentient life? We know that fighting, even to the death, is culturally permitted; we know that even in this modern era, the existence of a ritual caste, or Order, or something, of people legally permitted to kill is sanctioned, and even embraced, on the eastern side of the straights; we know this is deeply troubling, even terrifying, to the human colonists in their safe cantonment, and frightening in a somewhat more personal way to their ambassador abroad.But when they walked into the untrafficked hall that led toward the garden apartments, Banichi gave him two keys. "These are the only valid ones," Banichi said. "Kindly don't mix them up with your old ones. The old ones work. They just don't turn off the wires."
He gave Banichi a disturbed stare - which, also, Banichi didn't seem to notice. "Can't you just shock the bastard? Scare him? He's not a professional. There's been no notice..."
"I'm within my license," Banichi said. "The Intent is filed. Didn't you say so? The intruder would be very foolish to try again."
A queasy feeling was in his stomach. "Banichi, damn it..."
"I've advised the servants. Honest and wise servants, capable of serving in this house, will request admission henceforth. Your apartment is no different than mine now. Or Jago's. I change my own sheets."
As well as he knew Banichi and Jago, he had no idea of such hazards in their quarters. It made sense in their case or Tabini's. It didn't, in his.
"I trust," Banichi said, "you've no duplicate keys circulating. No ladies. No - hem - other connections. You've not been gambling, have you?"
"No!"
Not to give too much away, but Bren's impression that "nobody knows" what's going through the minds of those who decide on assassination, that it's some kind of irrational process, or that it's a mere transaction, impersonal, secret, hand over the money and we guarantee a body sort of thing - are all wrong. How wrong, and how complicated the role of the Guild in atevi society is, doesn't become clear until much later on, and in every book more comes clearer, as he learns things that he would have known all his life, had he grown up on the other side of the water, for one (avoiding spoilers here) but the reason they have an Assassins Guild, and the reason that their laws and customs are the way they are - is because atevi have a vastly greater respect for all life than 20th century humans do, and consider war a much greater evil than we do. --Than we do, btw, not that that's how we like to think of ourselves as being - but we do denial very, very well as a species.
They have a Guild of Assassins - that is to say, impartial (or striving to be) agents of justice who serve the common good by providing a way for anyone, lord or liege, to have access to the kind of power of force that otherwise would only belong to the rich, in our world - and thereby providing a check on the ambitions of tyrants both large and small.
The Assassins exist to stop feudal lords' territorial squabbles from turning into the Warring States, in short.
They are both heirarchical and democratic, and although they cannot get away from the fact that Assassins are individuals with individual's family and birth attachments to places and persons, and therefore bias, they strive to get beyond that, and succeed to a great measure, to work for the good of everyone not just their own small association or sub-association, parliamentary faction or province.
And that everyone - includes people whose ancestors weren't even conceived on the planet, share nothing of that earth's DNA or hereditary systems.
But for typical civilian Middle Americans, getting past the sexy-scary-turn-on-turn-off of killers! weapons! is as difficult as getting past the notion of Servants=people who get bossed around...
Which, when you get those humans in the mix who are less ethical and self-denying than Cameron, becomes a serious political as well as personal problem...