There are 3 messages in this issue. Topics in this digest:
1a. TheSilent Race From: Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews 1b. Re: TheSilent Race From: Padraic Brown 1c. Re: TheSilent Race From: Tony Harris Messages ________________________________________________________________________ 1a. TheSilent Race Posted by: "Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews" goldyemo...@gmail.com Date: Tue Aug 6, 2013 10:48 pm ((PDT)) I once had a dream where I was at a place with doors lining a wall. Each door had a country behind it. Two of the countries were talkative vountry and silent country. I just saw an episode of Evil Twins describing the twins know as the Silent Twins due to their selective mutism. My question is could that apply to a race? If so, how would that work? In other words, could it be a natural phenomenon? Mellissa Green @GreenNovelist Messages in this topic (3) ________________________________________________________________________ 1b. Re: TheSilent Race Posted by: "Padraic Brown" elemti...@yahoo.com Date: Wed Aug 7, 2013 6:01 am ((PDT)) > From: Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews <goldyemo...@gmail.com> > > I once had a dream where I was at a place with doors lining a wall. Each > door had a country behind it. In the sawyery of the World, this is called the "rabbithole effect": a place of peculiar dwimmery, often a cave or some other subterranean passage, or even a dusty and little travelled door-lined hall in some very old house, serves as the conduit not only into the realms of Underworld, but also into magical realms outside of normally conceived reality. And therefore, one supposes they must also be understood to be egresses from those same alternate realities and ìnto the Middle World. If one were to go through such a hole, one might wind up in a rather different place quite far from where one expected to go. > Two of the countries were talkative vountry and silent country. I just saw > an episode of Evil Twins describing the twins know as the Silent Twins due > to their selective mutism. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/314349.The_Silent_Twins > My question is could that apply to a race? If so, how would that work? Why not? Given that the girls described were "antisocial" and entirely absorbed in their own private existence, I would suspect that any such race would die out and go extinct before it has a chance to thrive. If we posit a race of people who regularly give birth to twins (or higher sets of multiples) and a large enough number of boy-girl twin sets are born, then it might be possible that such twins could sustain such a population. Am not sure what sort of culture these people would have -- with no one interacting with anyone else, there would be no material culture to speak of, no education, no communal language or story telling, really nothing that we would understand as culture. This race would be little more than pairs of half-wild animals. It might make more sense to make this phenomenon more of a commonplace among an otherwise ordinary race. For example, among the Daine, this kind of intense inter-twin behavior is not at all unheard of. The magnitude of the behavior described in the book is perhaps beyond the behavior of Daine twins -- they will generally communicate with people and interact with the outside world, but they almost always share their own inner world as well. They often times share a secret language, rarely can they stand to be parted from each other, almost never marry or engage in a serious relationship (or when they do, it's with each other). > In other words, could it be a natural phenomenon? It apparently already is; but I haven't been able to convince myself that it could be a wide-spread or pervasive one. Padraic Messages in this topic (3) ________________________________________________________________________ 1c. Re: TheSilent Race Posted by: "Tony Harris" t...@alurhsa.org Date: Wed Aug 7, 2013 6:30 am ((PDT)) On 2013-08-07 09:01, Padraic Brown wrote: > >> My question is could that apply to a race? If so, how would that work? > Why not? Given that the girls described were "antisocial" and entirely > absorbed in their own private existence, I would suspect that any such race > would die out and go extinct before it has a chance to thrive. If we posit a > race of people who regularly give birth to twins (or higher sets of multiples) > and a large enough number of boy-girl twin sets are born, then it might be > possible that such twins could sustain such a population. Am not sure what > sort of culture these people would have -- with no one interacting with > anyone else, there would be no material culture to speak of, no education, no > communal language or story telling, really nothing that we would understand > as culture. This race would be little more than pairs of half-wild animals. > > It might make more sense to make this phenomenon more of a commonplace among > an otherwise ordinary race. For example, among the Daine, this > kind of intense inter-twin behavior is not at all unheard of. The magnitude > of the behavior described in the book is perhaps beyond the behavior of Daine > twins -- they will generally communicate with people and interact with the > outside world, but they almost always share their own inner world as well. > They > often times share a secret language, rarely can they stand to be parted from > each other, almost never marry or engage in a serious relationship (or when > they do, it's with each other). > Just to add another possible path to this, it would also work if the race (species) in question were either asexual or hermaphrodite, such that individuals had very little interaction with one another beyond simple territorial dispute resolution. Isaac Asimov touches this in, I believe, "Foundation and Earth" (or at least one of the Foundation novels that came well after the original trilogy), where he has one character who is from a world of hermaphrodites where everyone lives in virtual isolation, served by robots. That race, which is human, did not, of course, evolve that way, but rather evolved into that state. Whether a race could start off that way, asexual/hermaphrodite and introverted/isolationist to the point of not really interacting with each other, and still develop anything resembling a society or civilization, i.e. not be just living in the wild, in an animal-like state, and operating on pure instinct without conscious thought as we know/envision it, would in my mind still be a question. But one well worth exploring in a conworld or novel. As an aside on this, I replied first and realized (after hitting send) that the Reply-To was set to be directly to Patrick, not to the whole list. That seems odd to me, as the norm has been that you just hit Reply and it goes to the list, not the sender. But that seems only to apply to Patrick's message, as others still work as expected. Interesting. Messages in this topic (3) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/ <*> Your email settings: Digest Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: conlang-nor...@yahoogroups.com conlang-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: conlang-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------