History Main / LowCultureHighTech

[[folder:Tabletop RPG]]

** Humanity's scientific knowledge peaked several millennia ago in the fabled Dark Age of Technology, and in the modern Imperium, technology is monopolized by the [[MachineWorship Adeptus Mechanicus]], a religious order that turns activating a new engine into a mystic ritual involving incense and chants in Binary. Weapons like a lasrifle can be reliably produced across the galaxy, but more advanced devices like plasma weapons are less understood, and some of the Imperium's oldest technological artifacts are irreplaceable because no one knows how to build them anymore. How much the [=AdMech=] knows about their sacred technology is [[DependingOnTheWriter dependent on the author]] -- in some accounts they're the only humans in the galaxy aware of the scientific method, or are deliberately playing up the rituals to keep laymen from getting involved, while it is generally held that high ranks do know how at least most things work but are too afraid of potential AI rebellion to apply it to anything but special cases. But in general, any technological progress the Imperium makes happens very slowly, and for the most part its tech level is either stagnant or in inexorable decline.\\

* ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'': A few societies are in this boat, most notably the Realm, and to a lesser extent Lookshy in the [[ScavengerWorld Scavenger Lands]]. Both societies have control of significant amounts of technology left over from the Old Realm, but this technology requires a degree of infrastructural sophistication that can't be maintained without the oversight of the Solar Exalted. The Realm embraces this fact, and its power is largely built on ancient [[AncestralWeapon Ancestral Weapons]] while the average peasant grows rice in the fields. Lookshy tries to avert this, and much of their society is organized around maintaining their tech and even building new stuff. To the extent that this trope applies to them, it's because they still have lots of BlackBox technology that they could never hope to replicate -- their culture has adapted to work with ''most'' of the {{Magitek}} that they use.
* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'': In ''TabletopGame/DarkSun'', the civilized halflings have actually lost most of their life-shaping technology (though it is still miraculous to anyone else). They can still replicate life-shaped tools and creatures, but only in a ritualized manner, much like using a cookbook for doing advanced chemistry when you don't know anything about chemistry, but still having it work.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Traveller}}'': The Aslan are a ProudWarriorRace with little social organization above the "clan" level. They somehow developed Jump drive and became a major race, it's been suggested often that they reverse-engineered it from one of the "true" major races.
* ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'': The Successor States don't know how the LostTechnology they rely upon, most notable FasterThanLightTravel, works or how to replicate it. In a twist they're more or less the same civilization that invented them, it's just that most people who knew how it worked died in the first Succession War. In a subversion the Clans have a culture that seems like it would fit bronze age warriors (as opposed to the Successor's [[FeudalFuture feudalism]]) but they know how their technology works (or at least their scientist caste does) and have even improved upon what the Inner Sphere considers "Lostech".
* One of the many Blog/ThingsMrWelchIsNoLongerAllowedToDoInAnRPG is give feuding [=TL1=] tribes [=TL12=] weapons and post the results on Pay Per View.
* This trope is one of the reasons suggested in ''1001 Science Fiction Weapons'' for the OGL system, as a potential explanation for the existence of the many melee weapons in the book created with [[EnhancedArchaicWeapon advanced technology]], from regular swords made from alloys and composite materials far beyond modern technology to warhammers made out of hyperdense materials with a little antigravity motor inside in order to allow the use of little anime-esque schoolgirl characters wielding hammers that weigh five tons or more (they become unusable when the power runs out, as not so many sci-fi settings allow playable races that can lift that.) The idea being that advanced races develop these things for their more primitive hirelings who are more familiar with more primitive weapons but need a technological edge when it is uneconomical to train them with gun-shaped energy weapons, unlikely as that sounds. It also provides the rationale for many of the [[ThrowawayGuns disposable weapons]] in the book; the "idiot guns" series are meant for warlords to issue to their [[ChildSoldiers Child Soldiers]] who can't read with a minimum of training (hence the pictorial instructions on the outside) resulting in not so much a gun as a claymore mine that is held onto, while the Liberator assault shotgun is an automatic shotgun meant to be dropped to rebel and extremist groups who can't be trusted to care for a firearm, for purposes of slaughtering many people as messily as possible, and therefore cannot be reloaded and may as well be tossed out when empty, as it doesn't make a very good club.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'': The savage technologists of Numeria are barbarians, full of rage and violence and living in tribal groups. They're also adept with the alien technology found in Numeria, and often fight with SwordAndGun.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Numenera}}'' is all about this. The game takes place during the ''eigth'' PostPostApocalypse, where everything has regressed to a FeudalFuture but LostTechnology still persists. Many fiefdoms are centered around some ancient artifact that produces massive wealth, but is too complicated to replicate, let alone understand. Warriors, rogues, and wizards fight alongside diplomats, explorers, and combat engineers, and everyone has frequent access to Cyphers, bits of partially working gadgets that each have one charge of their miraculous effects remaining. As such, an adventurer might hack a supercomputer with an omnitool in one round, and then go back to stabbing a horde of dire ferrets in the next.

* In ''LightNovel/TheFamiliarOfZero'' there are caches of weapons from Earth scattered over the continent of Halkeginia, which is a MedievalEuropeanFantasy land. It is the result of a spell that is constantly pulling weapons from Earth for quite some time.

* ''LightNovel/UndefeatedBahamutChronicle'' is a medieval fantasy setting in which knights use suits of MiniMecha known as Drag-Rides. These are salvaged from the ruins of an ancient civilisation that had much more advanced technology. People can repair and maintain Drag-Rides but generally can't improve on them -- Lisha's ability to do so is seen as exceptional.

* ''Series/BlackMirror'': A recurring point is that the human race is this. Nearly every episode presents a scenario where advanced technology is misused by people who are either outright malicious or at least just don't understand what they're doing, with negative ethical or cultural consequences. The plots are very often RippedFromTheHeadlines and the show has often been called prophetic in its predictions. For example, [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything one episode is about an obnoxious cartoon persona, managed by a comedian with zero political experience, running as a candidate in an election; though other politicians and pundits consider the situation utterly farcical, the character gains mass public support through populism and apathy towards political corruption]].
* ''Series/DoctorWho''
** A Sontaran [[GivingRadioToTheRomans gives rifles to a 12th-century English warlord]].

** The [[AudioPlay/BigFinishDoctorWho Big Finish]] audio drama "Spare Parts" reveals that Mondas, homeworld of the the original Cybermen was this. Their technology was centuries ahead of Earth, their society was stuck in TheFifties, and culturally dead. The Doctor notes that the church and movie theatre are boarded up and abandoned, and magnificent golden statues have been left to gather dust, as all resources are devoted to base survival, and nobody cares about things like art and religion anymore.

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'': The PrimeDirective, which bans interfering with the development of less advanced societies, exists to prevent this from happening.
** There's an interesting example with the Talosians from the original pilot episode "The Cage." Their brains are actually significantly more evolved than those of their ancestors, to the point that their powers of illusion essentially (though not technically) make them {{Reality Warper}}s. However, this also caused them to lose any motivation to do anything besides entertain themselves with their fantasies, and their more cerebrally-primitive ancestors' technological knowledge was lost.
** In "A Private Little War," Kirk and [=McCoy=] discover that the Klingons gave flintlock weapons to the natives who didn't have them before. To restore the balance of power, Kirk provides another group (a bunch of cavemen) with them. [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything McCoy compares their situation to the "Brush Wars" of the mid 20th Century]].
*** Also in this episode, Nona steals Kirk's phaser and tries to make a deal with some enemy soldiers. Since she's only seen it used once at a distance and has no experience with pushbutton devices, she has no idea of how to use it and [[RockBeatsLaser gets stabbed to death]] for her troubles.
** The episode "Bread and Circuses" featured a world with 1960s-level tech (television, firearms) but a society that mirrored the UsefulNotes/RomanEmpire, complete with the slow rise of Christianity (albeit 2000 years late).

** The Hirogen from ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' appear to be this, courtesy of being an homage to ''Franchise/{{Predator}}''. From all appearances they are a fully nomadic civilization totally dedicated to the hunt. It's unknown how old their current technology is or how long they've been at it, but if the communications array they claimed was theirs in their first appearance was built by them, it seems to be quite ancient. When Janeway broke The Prime Directive and gave them holodeck technology they lacked the cultural understanding to use it wisely, resulting in massive numbers of deaths in and out of the Hirogen population and creating a new photonic civilization, and also had to task a select few with being its sole maintainers and operators.

* ''Film/{{Idiocracy}}'': A bizarre example. The futuristic technology was built before the human race began its slide into stupidity, so now the descendants of the people who built it have no idea how it works.
* ''Franchise/StarWars'': Several species are pretty undeveloped compared to the galactic norm when they became part of the Republic or are conquered by the Empire. The Tusken Raiders are comparable to Bedouin nomads but have access to blaster rifles, the Gungans have developed force field technology leaps and bounds above the rest of the galaxy but mount the force fields' generators on beasts of burden, etc.

* In ''Film/TheFifthElement'', ArmsDealer Zorg agrees to sell crates of ultra-cutting-edge assault rifles to OmnicidalManiac [[ProudWarriorRace Warrior Race]] the Mangalores in return for their finding him the {{Macguffin}}. And then as soon as he walks out of the room, he deconstructs this trope by pointing out that anyone smart enough to ''use'' the weapon would be smart enough to ''[[TooDumbToLive ask how it works]]''. The Mangalores promptly blow themselves up by accidentally triggering the SelfDestructMechanism.

* ''ComicBook/TheWarlord'': Some of the civilisations of Skartaris have access to advanced Atlantean technology, but no understanding of how it actually works.

* ''Manga/DragonBall'': The Saiyans are a brutal race of violent barbarians with a constantly warring society built entirely on an AsskickingEqualsAuthority political system. They initially lived in stone huts and wore simple fur, but ([[ContinuitySnarl depending on who you listen to]]) they gained high-tech after they reverse engineered the technology of their advanced neighbors after wiping them out, or got it after being recruited into the [[TheEmpire Planet Trade Organization]] as EliteMooks. They have access to technology far beyond their normal capabilities, such as interplanetary spaceships, healing pods and incredibly durable, flexible and lightweight body armor, Scouters capable of reading PowerLevels, as well as an assortment of other high-tech goodies.

[[folder:Film]]

* ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'': [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-2039 SCP-2039]] is a pair of hillbilly FeudingFamilies stuck in a ForeverWar with random weapons, sometimes primitive, sometimes futuristic.

* ''WebOriginal/OrionsArm'': Downplayed. Ultratech is an important and pervasive component of Sephirotic and other important civilizations and ranges from technologies that could potentially be invented by Modosophonts, devices that can only be created and even often operated by beings of an higher singualrity level, to artifacts whose function itself are incomprehensible to non-transapients.

** This is twisted a bit in ''Videogame/Fallout4'', where most of the settlements in the Commonwealth have a comparatively modern and progressive culture, albeit still stuck in a state of scavenging to survive against the monsters and lawless band of raiders roaming the land. The faction that most fits this is, ironically, the East Coast Brotherhood of Steel. While they've mostly abandoned the part about hoarding technology, they still combine vertibirds and PoweredArmor with a system of feudal militarism and techno-religious fundamentalism.

* ''Film/BlackPanther2018'': Wakanda is highly technologically advanced and extremely civilized, but they have a number of cultural practices which are pre-medieval men of noble birth having the right to challenge the reigning king to a fight to the death for the throne.

Related to InsufficientlyAdvancedAlien, which is about a race that's interstellar, but every other tech they have sucks comparatively, ''and'' they probably don't understand it. Compare CrystalSpiresAndTogas. Contrast RockBeatsLaser. The NobleSavage inverts this by being essentially High Culture, Low Tech. See also BambooTechnology, AliensNeverInventedTheWheel, ScavengerWorld, SpaceOrcs, GivingRadioToTheRomans, TechnologyUplift, SchizoTech, and CargoCult. Not to be confused with "[[CyberPunk High Tech and Low Life]]". Compare KlingonScientistsGetNoRespect, when a society undervalues the profession that makes its desired lifestyle possible. Not to be confused with NoTechButHighTech.

[[caption-width-right:350:harold [[EyeScream ded]] lol. [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfNormandy bill]] probs king by xmas. bk home soon cya then k? luv u x]]

* ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'': One SCP is a pair of hillbilly FeudingFamilies stuck in a ForeverWar with random weapons, sometimes primitive, sometimes futuristic.

* ''Literature/{{Uplift}}'': Every single extant alien race was uplifted by another and got their technology from "the Library", several species uplifted as warriors seem downright barbaric to humans who had to develop a near-utopian society through trial and error.

When adding RealLife examples, please try to avoid UnfortunateImplications.

Related to InsufficientlyAdvancedAlien, which is about a race that's interstellar, but every other tech they have sucks comparatively, ''and'' they probably don't understand it. Compare CrystalSpiresAndTogas. Contrast RockBeatsLaser. The NobleSavage inverts this by being essentially High Culture, Low Tech. See also BambooTechnology, AliensNeverInventedTheWheel, ScavengerWorld, GivingRadioToTheRomans, TechnologyUplift, SchizoTech, and CargoCult. Not to be confused with "[[CyberPunk High Tech and Low Life.]]" Compare KlingonScientistsGetNoRespect, when a society undervalues the profession that makes its desired lifestyle possible. Not to be confused with NoTechButHighTech.

* In ''Literature/OldMansWar'' one alien faction was gifted a device by a more advanced species that allowed them to predict exactly when and where ships would be arriving via FTL. This immediately grants them a massive advantage in their war against the humans, who have to come up with an exceedingly risky plan to counteract it.

* In ''Literature/RocannonsWorld'' by Creator/UrsulaKLeGuin the protagonist is attacked and captured by barbarians: savage, primitive nomads who wield explosive heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles. The dissonance is [[JustifiedTrope justified]] because the nomads are being covertly supplied by TheEmpire.
* In ''Literature/{{Uplift}}'' every single extant alien race was uplifted by another and got their technology from "the Library", several species uplifted as warriors seem downright barbaric to humans who had to develop a near-utopian society through trial and error.
* In ''Literature/{{Worldwar}}'' the British, unable to build a lightweight radar unit to install in their planes, cannibalize surviving radar units from the Lizards' planes that they've managed to shoot down, citing this premise in doing so. Similarly, the Nazis develop armor-piercing, discarding-sabot shells based upon shells they've captured from the Lizards.

--> "We won because I brought rifles. I finally found an explosive agent that functions here."

* The ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' novel ''Ishmael'' by Barbara Hambly posits that the Klingons received a sudden technology boost when they were briefly conquered by alien invaders called the Karsids. Being Klingons, they eventually beat the Karsids and retook their world, gaining all the Karsids' technology and weapons in the process, while still being a warlike and feudal society, and thus became a huge threat to all their neighbors. Hence, they are the universe's best object lesson in the importance of the [[AlienNonInterferenceClause Prime Directive.]] Note that the ''Trek'' novels have never been considered official canon, certainly not in [[TheEighties those days,]] and [[CanonDiscontinuity the rest of Trek canon has never supported this idea.]] But it's a nifty notion.

* In ''TabletopGame/{{Traveller}}'', the Aslan are a ProudWarriorRace with little social organization above the "clan" level. They somehow developed Jump drive and became a major race, it's been suggested often that they reverse-engineered it from one of the "true" major races.
* In ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' the Successor States don't know how the LostTechnology they rely upon, most notable FasterThanLightTravel, works or how to replicate it. In a twist they're more or less the same civilization that invented them, it's just that most people who knew how it worked died in the first Succession War. In a subversion the Clans have a culture that seems like it would fit bronze age warriors (as opposed to the Successor's [[FeudalFuture feudalism]]) but they know how their technology works (or at least their scientist caste does) and have even improved upon what the Inner Sphere considers "Lostech".

* In ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'', the savage technologists of Numeria are barbarians, full of rage and violence and living in tribal groups. They're also adept with the alien technology found in Numeria, and often fight with SwordAndGun.

* In ''Videogame/{[Borderlands}}'', the various Bandit and Scav clans are groups of criminals, outlaws, and lunatics who are the broken leftovers of the endless corporate wars and expansions across the galaxy. Most of them are poorly-educated or completely insane and have become obsessed with violence, looting, destruction, torture, and cannibalism, and live in squalor, struggling to feed themselves. Nonetheless, they manage to have access to some highly-advanced technology, which is often the leftovers from various corporate colonization efforts or stolen from established settlements with normal, functional people. They have the capacity to build and maintain advanced firearms, construct vehicles and aircraft, and even make enormous mobile structures like Carnivora, all while living in scrapyard settlements made of rusty metal and adorned with the skulls and bodies of their victims.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* When it was in power, [[ThoseWackyNazis the Third Reich]] was regarded as this trope embodied, by British and Francophone sources on one side and by the educated classes of German society on the other. German society before the Nazis had been very conservative and classist. The Nazis, however, disregarding the British proverb which said "it takes 3 years to build a ship, but 300 years to build a tradition", judged everything by power as the universal medicine. They could build advanced weapons and industrial machinery, motorways, modern architecture, and public TV stations, and for this reason they felt no obligation to listen to anyone else. They could afford to throw any cultural developments not suited to their ideology into the garbage as [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_art "degenerate and Jewish art"]].\\
\\
There was no surprise in the fact they were hated for it and treated like [[SelfDemonstratingArticle primitives suddenly endowed]] with power and technology. The ''nouveau riche'' attitude of the political leadership, with men like Robert Ley, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Weber_%28SS_general%29 Christian Weber]], and Hermann Goering ruling their departments and flaunting their wealth like [[TheDon Mafia bosses]], only made things worse. In more practical terms, the Nazis took the same attitude to Jewish scientists like UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein and rejected their research in favor of promoting hare-brained ideas in physics and other fields simply because non-Jewish Germans came up with them. Among the results of that bigotry were that many of those scientists fled to nations like Britain and the United States, which gave them the advantage of the skilled personnel needed to develop nuclear weapons. The ones remaining were ''forbidden'' to utilize Jewish scientists' work too.
* Global commerce can cause this too, resulting in places like Nigeria, where ''there are more people with cell phones than people with mains power'' -- they rely on charging stations for rent on street markets and wi-fi password hacking.
* Also kind of a hobby of most of the major powers in the Cold War, who were arming their various Third World allies with ultra-modern weaponry in an effort to stymie the other side. Of course, after the Cold War ended most of those alliances fell apart, leaving a [[NiceJobBreakingItHero lot of guns in some rather questionable hands]].
* Political scientist Basam Tibi termed the desire of fundamentalist organizations or societies to gain access to sophisticated technology (especially weaponry) while totally avoiding any social modernization whatsoever "the dream of incomplete modernity".
* The idea that [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters humanity in general]] is Low Culture, High Tech is a common thread of many primitivist and anti-industrial thinkers.
** This was a key part of the ideology of Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber. In his manifesto, he alleged that the behaviors and social organization needed to run a modern industrial society clashed with basic human instincts written by thousands of years of natural selection, producing most of the social ills of the modern world in the process. Therefore, he felt that humanity was biologically unsuited to any mode of organization and technology more advanced than [[NobleSavage hunter-gatherers]], and used this as justification to launch a terrorist campaign aimed at airlines, universities, and industrial and high-tech concerns.
* New weaponry combined with outdated doctrine, training, or strategy can make a war very nasty for both sides. UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar saw the mass-introduction of muzzle-loading rifles in place of smoothbore muskets, made possible by the invention of Minié ball ammunition which was small enough in diameter to easily ram down the barrel, yet could still create a good gas seal and properly engage the barrel rifling because of its expanding skirt. This made the rifles able to fire at the same rate as smoothbores, but with a much better chance of hitting what they were aimed at. When these more accurate weapons were incorporated into old-fashioned formations and movements which had been based on the need for massed vollies in order to hit anything, the result was often swathes of men being mowed down on both sides. The reason for the rather unsophisticated (even for the time) tactics employed in the Civil War was that the armies consisted almost entirely of raw conscripts. Normally a European-style army during that period would consist mostly of thoroughly-drilled line infantry, lots of cavalry, and very effective artillery. Furthermore, the chief mode of employment for line infantry would be to fire one massed volley at the enemy and then charge with bayonets. The point was not to spend much time under the enemy's fire. Because generals on both the Union and Confederate sides had mostly infantry of at-best suspect quality at their disposal (and the low quality and experience of the officers themselves made any coherent movement on the battlefield difficult) this kind of charge was pretty much out of the question; most times it was tried, it ended in complete disaster for the attacker, e.g. Pickett's infamous charge at Gettysburg. So with really no other options, generals in the war were forced to just line their troops up right in the opposing side's fire and hope their own men outlasted the enemy. European officers embedded with the American forces were appalled by what they saw, but there was very little practical advice they could give with the limited resources available.
* UsefulNotes/WorldWarI was a deadly new kind of 20th century war featuring machine guns, rapid-fire artillery, tanks, poison gas, airplanes, submarines, dreadnaught battleships, and more. The belligerents, however, included a bunch of monarchies, empires, and colonial powers whose policies and motivations were still very much carried over from the 19th century. Each went into the war thinking they would crush their rivals, and that victory would help them hold back the tides of socialist, pro-democracy, or pro-independence movements in their realms. Ultimately the Russian Tsar would be overthrown by a socialist revolution, the German militarist government and Kaiser would be defeated and replaced with a new Republic, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires would be broken up into numerous smaller states, and the British and French empires would experience a PyrrhicVictory which contributed to the eventual loss of their colonies.
* Korean (and to a lesser extent, Chinese and Japanese) culture can be considered this when it comes to aviation, with the highly hierarchical "respect your elders" Confucian-influenced culture being in some cases ''lethal'' in airplanes. The co-pilot has to double check everything the captain does and vice versa, yet co-pilots often are afraid to correct their captain's mistakes, as the captain is their elder. This has actually led to ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Cargo_Flight_8509 crashes]]''. Korean Air has acknowledged this and is attempting to fix the problem with new pilot training.
** American ex-military junior pilots sometimes also have this problem. They are among the best in the world technically, but they can occasionally fall back on their conditioning to respect a chain of command.
** Conversely it's sometimes said that the safest co-pilot to have in the cockpit is an Australian, because they are culturally least likely to recognise ''any'' hierarchy except that of professional competence, and are thus more likely than any other nationality to tell an erroneous captain what he's doing wrong.
** This was likely the cause behind the horrific double-Jumbo crash in Tenerife in the 1970s, still the worst in aviation history. The captain responsible was THE public face of KLM as well as being one of the senior flight instructors, and he seems to have bullied the co-pilot (whose job hung in part on his captain's approval) into accepting an airways clearance as a takeoff clearance (when the airport was bedecked in fog and a Pan Am 747 was taxiing up the runway, unseen, in front of him). The rest is history.
* What happens when traditional "sons, not daughters" societies as in the Middle East, India and China gain access to prenatal gender testing and abortion? Despite laws actively trying to prevent it, the birth ratio is as skewed as 100 male to 90 female newborns in some places. If there were no laws against it, the ratio would probably be even worse. China in particular struggles with the demographic fallout, as there is now a whole industry built around human trafficking and forced marriage.
* This is in some ways how Karl Marx defined capitalism. Humanity has developed to universally fulfill needs, but the culture, government, and organization of society had not caught up to the sheer ability to produce and provide for those needs in spite of that. So a revolutionary change must be made in order to bring human society up to the standards that technology and industry make possible. Whether he was right or not is [[FlameBait still under debate]]: though the biggest trial of communism in real life, the [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn Soviet Union]], ultimately failed to achieve communism, Marx never considered Imperial Russia to be a valid location for the revolution, as it lacked the necessary industry for it to be ready - essentially, communism was an idea to be executed in a society that's sufficiently technologically advanced to be post-capitalism and post-industrialism a la ''Franchise/StarTrek'' or ''Literature/TheCulture''.
* The Islamic State has access to modern weaponry (assault rifles, missile launchers, explosives, even some stolen tanks), yet want to reshape Muslim society into TheThemeParkVersion of seventh century Arabia (which results in most of their victims being other Muslims). Reality has also ensued when it comes to how their society worked: children in schools weren't taught math or science, and while their fanaticism and sheer numbers gave them an explosive head start against the fractured and poorly motivated Iraqi Army, that momentum was lost when they were bombarded from the air. A big part of this is that they genuinely believed they were starting the last war, and the world only had a few years before the final apocalyptic battle at Dabiq where Allah would step in and defeat their enemies for them; there simply wasn't any point in planning for the long term.
* India has a space program and is a [[UsefulNotes/TheThirdEyeOfBharat nuclear power]]. Yet, [[http://www.indiaspend.com/cover-story/63-million-indians-without-clean-drinking-water-population-of-australiaswedensri-lankabulgaria-13088 63 million]] of its people don't have access to clean drinking water and [[https://thewire.in/197455/732-million-india-tops-list-number-people-without-access-toilets-report/ 732 million people]] don't have access to toilets.
** On that note, [[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-17362837 more people have cell phones]] than indoor toilets.
* India's neighbor Pakistan has [[UsefulNotes/PakAttack even more nukes than its neighbors India and China]] but is also [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_eradication one of only two countries that still has endemic polio]], the other being war-torn Afghanistan. This MedalOfDishonor is largely thanks to shoddy infrastructure and resistance to vaccination by Islamic fundamentalists.
[[/folder]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}}'': This can often happen due to the [[OneStatToRuleThemAll general universality of science over all other stats]], including culture. This is especially true in VI - scientific technologies and cultural civics have their own [[TechTree trees of development]], and betting on the former is usually more profitable, because the vast majority of military units become available through science, which allows you to quickly defeat those civilizations that [[InvertedTrope invert this trope]] and focus on culture instead. [[UpToEleven In particularly neglected cases]], a certain civilization may know the nuances of robotics and nanotechnology while preparing for interstellar flights, but have no idea about nationalism or even institutions of UsefulNotes/TheEnlightenment.

* The internet. Especially when in the midst of a FlameWar. Lampshaded [[http://www.flamewarriorsguide.com/warriorshtm/howlers.htm here]].

* ''Film/BlackPanther'': Wakanda is highly technologically advanced and extremely civilized, but they have a number of cultural practices which are pre-medieval men of noble birth having the right to challenge the reigning king to a fight to the death for the throne.

* ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}}'': This can often happen due to the [[OneStatToRuleThemAll general universality of science over all other stats]], including culture. This is especially true in VI - scientific technologies and cultural civics have their own trees of development, and betting on the former is usually more profitable, because the vast majority of military units become available through science, which allows you to quickly defeat those civilizations that [[InvertedTrope invert this trope]] and focus on culture instead. [[UpToEleven In particularly neglected cases]], a certain civilization may know the nuances of robotics and nanotechnology while preparing for interstellar flights, but have no idea about nationalism or even institutions of UsefulNotes/TheEnlightenment.

* [[Atlantis]] in DC Comics is usually portrayed this way. They have advanced technology and powerful magic, but they culturally haven't moved since they sank, with all the FantasticRacism, xenophobia, institutional sexism, militarism and rigid class structure that implies. They are ruled by an absolute monarchy with power concentrated in the hands of a small number of nobles and organisations, and every time ComicBook/{{Aquaman}} or Mera try to introduce liberal reforms there's usually a quick and harsh backlash.