Saturday, April 27, 2013

‘X’ is for ‘Xenophobia.'



‘X’ is for ‘xenophobia,’ the fear of people or things different from yourself. This is most typically applied to one species’ dislike of another; the hatred humans harbor for the imps that enslaved them an apocalypse ago, or the triclopic disdain for how badly gremlins screwed the world over. While no census has ever been taken, it’s presumed the majority of any given sapient species dislikes automatons, robotic creatures that spend their entire existences consuming and combusting sapient species. It’s undetermined whether automatons are xenophobic of biologicals; their constant chasing and consumption might be considered an unhealthy xenophilia.
Loves you to bits.
Everyone’s felt the pangs toward “the other.” You aren’t my family. You aren’t my species. And you comets, they definitely aren’t from around here, and I wish they’d slow down as they plummet from the sky. How can I trust you?

Fear of the “other” is hardly limited to other species or races. The Human Age alone has wide discontents, its hermits who hide in the frozen south, and tens of thousands of Red Brigade pilgrims who left the secular Empire of Gold and Jade for The Frontier. “Misanthropy” was coined describing human opinions of other humans. There’s a political theory that if any species’ population rises high enough, it’ll divide into groups that will set against each other. Imperial economists are looking into this, to either remedy or monetize conflict.

City-states in The Frontier have self-congratulatory reputations as melting pots, where imps are not judged by their ancestors’ failures, where triclopes will tinker with remains of gremlin technology, and where centaurs and nine-legs set aside feuds so ancient that no other cultures understand them. The anthropologically-inclined believe this has only set up different group practices of segregation; consider how the sick or little-familied in Clemency are often hunted for public entertainment. In the city-state of God’s Lap, home of the world’s last skyscraper, many floors of the grand building have low- or zero-tolerance policies for visitors from any other floor. Intolerance finds a way.

And tolerance isn’t always for the best, either. Consider: of 300 gremlin automobiles ever recovered by triclopes who moved past their loathing of gremlin technology, 288 of them self-detonated. It turns out gremlins did not like “the other” touching their things. They’re dead now, but so are the budding mechanics.

18 comments:

  1. I believe that conflict will be monetised. Empire building is expensive.

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  2. "Intolerance finds a way." --- would be funny if it weren't so true. :)

    Poor budding mechanics... what a nasty surprise that must have been (albeit short-lived)

    Oh, and comets... I don't trust them, either!

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    1. It hurt to write that line, but I kept laughing at it, and thusly had to keep it. And comets, man. They don't even stop off at Customs first.

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  3. You have a deliciously complicated group of Xenophobes on your world, really highlighting the sometimes hidden arenas we have here. And T-Man - I'd love to hear his opinions of your attempt to psychoanalyse him. ;)

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    1. You'd like me to psychoanalyze a Terminator?

      Not that I haven't done weird things before...

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  4. Great post on Xenophobia!
    #1202
    A to Z April Blogging Challenge
    http://mauldinfamily1.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/x-is-for-xerosis/

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  5. Oh, I really loved how that ended - pure genius!

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  6. Did you know that xenos = foreigner in Greek? Therefore the literal translation is 'fear of foreigners'. *spreading linguistic fairy dust*

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    1. I did! But I couldn't use that etymology here because there's no Greece in this world. It's tricky.

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  7. "Intolerance finds a way." Yet another PhD thesis summed up in a sentence there, John. The more I learn about this world you created the more familiar it becomes. Like all great worlds, I guess- you could see yourself in them.

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  8. It's interesting seeing intolerance in other worlds. I've seen it in speculative fiction novels.

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  9. " In the city-state of God’s Lap, home of the world’s last skyscraper, many floors of the grand building have low- or zero-tolerance policies for visitors from any other floor. Intolerance finds a way." Sort of sounds like the office building where I work. I love the gremlin cars detonating, too. You can't have our technology, outsider! Xenophobia makes for an interesting world full of conflict, which is good in stories anyway.

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  10. We had a Gremlin automobile once. It skidded on ice, following a car that did not skid itself, and I put it through a fence. The next summer, my brother rolled it attempting to pass two cars (the other one decided to pass at that moment, running him off the road). So I know how those poor triclopes felt.

    Yup, intolerance finds a way.

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  11. I love this and this was my word last year! You did a way better entry than I did and as always I am in awe of YOU.
    jean ! xox

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  12. I love the idea of either figuring out a way to stop conflict, or monetise it. I love how you're using the extreme setting to look at issues that we really deal with.

    Rinelle Grey

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  13. Intolerance finds a way. It's too bad we can't all just get along.

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  14. Kinda like those Gremlins, there are some kinds of plants that will react to the presence of a pathogen by ordering all the cells around it to die. The leaf develops a little dead spot - the ultimate "contain and control" xenophobia.

    Although, given that the pathogen was there to invade and destroy, it should probably be called xenopathia ("hatred of", not "fear of").

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