In recognition of the deep time of culture on country, lutruwita, and acknowledgement of the Muwinina and Palawa, as peoples worlding a nourishing landscape, even in the little places near nipaluna.
A large part of my response to the question ¿what is the ethical response to morality? is that we have an moral urge, if not an instinct, to world-build, which in English we can also phrase as as why we should. The details do not matter so much, until we go off worldbuilding ourselves, as much as that we actually should about something, anything…
—generally, we inherit the world, and practice that reality, as we should.
The term worldbuilding arises in the twentieth century, especially in regards to J. R. R. Tolkien who build a whole world in order to supply details for a fancy he had as a philologist. Basically, entirely consistent stories were built in an integrated and historic fashion within a cosmological scale of detail and name. As if they were an archaeologist uncovering entire civilisations coming and going, along with all of their mythical and homely figures that lived in those fantastic realms.
Tolkien is often held up as the most important example of worldbuilding (alongside Frank Herbert for SF), in scope, in dedication, in success and in general influence in the marketplace of culture, with many fans and channelers today (PDF).
That is why when I think of world-building I think of Tolkien and high fantasy as the main example. Worldbuilding is important to franchising merchandise (see stuff like star wars). (Interestingly what passed for fantasy before this worldbuilding technology came about, has now been rediscovered… —where stories takes place in our own world with a twist, one example is slipstream.)
When I wonder about worldbuilding outside of high fantasy and modern culture I think of my limited experience and exposure to the life lived over millennia on country.
Adventure from wukalina (Mt William National Park) to larapuna (Bay of Fires) across cultural homelands of the Palawa. Hike through bushland and coastal heathland and along beaches learning about traditional and contemporary practices.
I live in Hobart, Tasmania, a place built in recent colonial settlement of world trading origins, built over what is recovered of nipaluna, lutruwita.
It’s possible that modern humans lived and maintained a world for many tens of thousands of years before the Martians arrived. An immense period of time that is easy from the point of view of a human lifetime to be felt to be close to forever. While it was not hermetically sealed off from the rest of the world, the maintenance and survival across several ice-ages and interglacial periods of a continental-scale culture of such success that the lessons to be learned are innumerable and deep.
It’s an especially famous runestone because it differs from the others. In short, the runestone captures a funeral’s solace, not just in memoriam like the other runestones, but in providing the bigger picture to effort and loss, within the everyday cycle of day and night moving into millennia and myth, and that those lost to us did in fact live their lives fully in the world, where we live on. And they live on in virtue.
Rök Runestone
It’s not that they did their part as duty called, although they may have experienced it like that, nor that we merely remember them for it, as we do, but that the world lives on and is worthy of us.
The world, in after-life, in dream, on country, the virtue, the law/lore, the moral order survives us, despite us. Regardless of our careers and success, irrespective of our empires and teamwork.
The world hopes us, that’s why we “build” it.
Life goes on.
Also last night, I have begun reading Alasdair MacIntyre’s Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, Ind: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1988 ISBN 0268019440).
In the preface Alasdair describes himself as an Augustinian christian, which is a worry, but so far I am enjoying rediscovering the discussion of the ancient Greek world where the mythic role of the world itself is not something one builds but one inhabits, in which excellence is how well you live the roles assigned to you… —despite idiosyncrasies you have in your thumos, and despite what the gods instruct into your heart, or gut, or whatever organ synedoche-ly refers to you/me/us each as we are.
Greek thought is not important because it is Western, but because it captures in transcription the moment, when/where we write down the pre-Homeric world of oral tradition even as it is lost.
Homer’s epics do so in more detail than a runestone, and does so where/when the world becomes a city, and people/s individuate within a complex (by comparison) economy, a city or two in which people/s inhabit a specialisation in trade and discover themselves, but fear a singularity of rule. From this time on from when bronze and iron clash, empires and the poor are always with us. (Currently Russia best exemplifies the poverty of empire.)
The pre-world before the city and its imperial individual states of mind, before there were rights and responsibilities, the roles assigned are ancient and arrived fully formed as we are born, the world is something then we practice… —despite ourselves, despite blaming the gods. Giving credit where blame is due.
The world is greater than the gods created in our image as teenager-ed superheros, or as some god-king as sole-ruler of empire. Creation never happened. We have always been here. We world-build everyday into the future, that is our role now. This moral urge is also called hope, and hope builds on empathy.
The moral worldbuilding urge does not care about any of the detail, true or false, in that last paragraph. It’s an evolutionary thing, “it” just cares that some organisation is happening, not that it is perfect, or rational, or reasonable, or even just/Good.
Some is better than none because none is nothing and nothing is extinction.
And ‘practice’ does not require belief/faith/individual—attention-intention. It “just” requires survival, and in empathy our children will world on without us. Life goes on. Even if we lose the children, we hope. And when we let ourselves go, the sun rises.
That is power, world-building power. (Belief does nothing except provide excuses for power-seekers.)
Rök Runestone, it was part of the church for centuries, then moved to the cemetery, then outside the cemetery’s stone wall.
In recognition of the deep time of culture on country, lutruwita, and acknowledgement of the Muwinina and Palawa, as peoples worlding a nourishing landscape, even in the little places near nipaluna, near us, for us all.
The moral worldbuilding urge does not care about any of the detail, true or false, in that last paragraph. It’s an evolutionary thing, “it” just "cares" that some organisation is happening, not that it is perfect, or rational, or reasonable, or even just/Good.
Something is better than none because none is nothing and nothing is extinction. Something done and wrong can be corrected, learned from, lessoned. At least it is something.
And ‘practice’ does not require belief/faith/individual—attention-intention. It “just” requires survival, and in empathy our children will world on without us while holding us within. Life goes on. Even if we lose the children, we hope. And when we let ourselves go, the sun rises.
revised version at https://whyweshould.loofs-samorzewski.com/worldbuilding-101.html
The moral worldbuilding urge does not care about any of the detail, true or false, in that last paragraph. It’s an evolutionary thing, “it” just "cares" that some organisation is happening, not that it is perfect, or rational, or reasonable, or even just/Good.
Something is better than none because none is nothing and nothing is extinction. Something done and wrong can be corrected, learned from, lessoned. At least it is something.
And ‘practice’ does not require belief/faith/individual—attention-intention. It “just” requires survival, and in empathy our children will world on without us while holding us within. Life goes on. Even if we lose the children, we hope. And when we let ourselves go, the sun rises.
That is power, world-building power.
https://www.amazon.com.au/before-Country-meika-loofs-samorzewski/dp/1847539181
https://meika.loofs-samorzewski.com/beforecountry.html
update Algorithms For Flowers [PDF] https://meika.loofs-samorzewski.com/writing.html