Developing an Alien Culture

Hi, I'm making this thread to get some fresh eyes and ideas on the society and culture of an alien race I've created. In particular I'm interested in how their society may differ from our own and their gender dynamics.

Semi-shamelessly stolen from another of my threads (link down the page) with tweaks, here are salient points to consider:

• Their society is very militaristic; it's not too much of an exaggeration to say that the military is society and society is the military. However, no men can serve in the military.
• The gender ratio is very heavily tilted - 75% of the population is female. As a result they have a matriarchal society.
• Females are larger and much more physically capable than males.
• In the past they were co-opted and genetically modified to act as a hyper-advanced society's soldier-vassals, with women serving on the front lines while men stayed behind to keep things going.
• When said hyper-advanced society disappeared, they were engulfed in a massive civil war that was resolved when one warlord united their race. It took a little more time, but they eventually adopted proper democracy.
• They are canids (so they have very good hearing, fur, an acute sense of smell, etc.).

Something of a companion thread to this - so keep clothing and clothing related chat (such as how much clothing is socially acceptable) there or I'll give you a stern talking to!

edited 27th Nov '15 8:34:51 AM by Flanker66

Can you give us a bigger overview of society than 'matriarchal'? Who makes up high society (eg, retired officers, merchants, or is it simply hereditary)? What is the devolution of power between the high society and common folk? What do families look like at various levels, and what role do they play?

In terms of hierarchy, I was toying with the idea that their equivalent to social classes would be (from highest to lowest) officers (Upper Class) > NCOs (Middle Class) > enlisted (Lower Class), with gradiations depending on rank (so a general would be higher on the scale than a lieutenant). Men would probably have a similar social standing to any female acquaintances (so if he's the son of or married to a sergeant, he's roughly middle class).

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by devolution of power in this context, unfortunately.

As for families, it's a bit strange - I was thinking that due to the greatly distorted gender ratio that they might practice polygamy. I am not quite sure how their families would vary with class, though their society is fairly collectivist as opposed to individualist - you're expected to put the nation first, then your family, then yourself (that isn't to say that there are never people who see it as all about them). Children are normally treated as adults in miniature

edited 27th Nov '15 10:07:50 AM by Flanker66

This sounds like Mass Effect's turians. Especially this :

The turian military is the center of their society. It is not just an armed force; it is an all-encompassing public works organization. The military police are also the civic police. The fire brigades serve the civilian population as well as military facilities. The corps of engineers builds and maintains spaceports, schools, water purification plants, and power stations. The merchant marine ensures that all worlds get needed resources. [1]

Turians have 27 citizenship tiers, beginning with civilians (client races and children). The initial period of military service is the second tier. Formal citizenship is conferred at the third tier, after boot camp. For client races, citizenship is granted after the individual musters out. Higher-ranked citizens are expected to lead and protect subordinates. Lower-ranking citizens are expected to obey and support superiors. Promotion to another tier of citizenship is based on the personal assessment of one's superiors and co-rankers. [2]

They also have the same collectivist bent :

Turians are noted for their strong sense of public service. It is rare to find one who puts his needs ahead of the group...
Turians have a strong inclination toward public service and self-sacrifice...
While turians are individuals with personal desires, their instinct is to equate the self with the group, and to set aside all personal desires for the good of all. Turians are taught to have a strong sense of personal accountability... [3]

If you don't mind that it's already been done, it could be a good starting point.

edited 27th Nov '15 3:35:20 PM by Aetol

That was entirely unintentional (though amusingly, someone I've talked to these guys about before has compared them to the Turians ).

The one example of civilian-military integration I've used for myself is that I've envisaged that their educational institutions might also provide military training to their students, as well as advertisements trumpeting links to the military ("...As used by the armed forces!").

Sorry for double-posting, but a few queries occurred to me:

1. I do want to make it obvious that they're deeply influenced by the military, but I also want to avoid falling into Planet of Hats. How could I achieve this?

2. What do you think their music would be like, taking into account their physiology and culture? I've been kind of assuming they'd use a lot of instruments that we'd classically associate with martial music (for example, snare drums), but that feels a bit simplistic.

3. As I sort of stated in my OP, I'd be interested to see what other people think their gender dynamics would be like.

If they're canine-like in terms of perception, their music would likely be weird by human standards. Remember the differences in hearing between humans and canines.

They are mostly canine-like in terms of perception (they can hear higher and lower frequencies and more clearly than us, and they have a keen sense of smell), though they aren't colour-blind like real canids. Not that olfactory and optical differences matter in music, mind.

The main thing I can think of is that their music might enter ranges that we can't hear and therefore make it sound flat or a little discordant to us poor sods who get subjected to it.

Double-posting again (sorry) because I'm sincerely interested in what people might have to say (that and I don't actually have ideas for some of these things myself, sooo I'd like to get some help with that... >_< ).

I kind of realised one big issue with my "officers/NCOs/enlisted" societal hierarchy - namely, that it doesn't take into account the fact that not everyone can possibly be in the military at the same time - there's bound to be at least someone who's never gone anywhere near a military uniform! Any ideas?

Feel free to comment on anything else that takes your fancy.

Freefall has some interesting ideas with how canine sense of smell would shift perspectives.

As for hearing, humans can actually hear lower octaves than dogs. Not sure if you want this to carry over. Dogs can hear quieter noises than humans, though. Their music would seem unusually high pitched and occasionally seem to cut out entirely.

Art, and by that I mean the visual medium, would be very similar to ours as dogs tend to run on the same vision biases. Sensibilities about space and color should be the same but there's all sorts of cultural connotations to consider.

Thanks for the interesting responses!

That was definitely something rattling around my brain - how would their sense of smell affect things? The most obvious idea was that hygiene would become even more socially important.

I haven't read Freefall, so if you could share any of the strips that touch on that, it'd be very useful!

I didn't know that! Admittedly I might not carry it over, partially because they're not 1:1 with dogs (for example, they're not colourblind).

I can imagine that. Presumably it'd also be quieter due to what you pointed out.

So far as their equivalent to classical music might go, then, I'm sort of imagining music that sounds a bit like the higher pitched woodwind instruments. I can't really think of a good way to describe it except that it might sound like traditional Chinese instruments?

True that. For what it's worth I was toying with the idea that these aliens might have blue coloured blood due to their biology (which people really shouldn't examine too closely unless they want heart attacks...!), so it's possible that blue might pick up some of the connotations red has in our society (i.e. danger).

As I pointed out, the turians are an example of a society that is run like one big, all-encompassing military. You could lift the basic ideas – military ranks corresponding to citizenship tiers, all public service part of the military. (By the way, that last one is something that happens in real life ; for example, the Paris Fire Brigade is part of the French Army).

This might not be (or not only) the reason red is associated with danger. It's also the color that attracts attention the most – possibly because it's scattered by air the least thanks to its longer wavelength. Fire, and hot objects in general, are also red(ish). And it's also probably a cultural and self-sustaining thing (i.e. we associate red with danger because all danger signs are red).

edited 3rd Dec '15 9:04:46 AM by Aetol

True, I just want to avoid being too derivative if I can help it. Interesting fact, by the way.

I suppose one of the big problems is that men can't serve in the armed forces period (not even in logistical roles) due to their relative rarity and cultural taboos/squeamishness about it (it would not go down well at all if there was a story on the evening news about an artillery strike on an ammo dump killing several men and horribly maiming others, for example)^note This does bring up the interesting idea that terrorists in this society might purposefully target men, as an aside. How do you decide if a man is working class, middle class, or upper class?

The simplest solution I can think of is that if they're in a relationship they adopt the social standing of the "highest up" wife. But that's of little use when it comes to situations where he's not already in a relationship.

Fair point, I recall that in China red is considered a lucky colour. Still, it's food for thought!

If they are canines probably perfumes and smells would be much more important for them, and they might have some sort of artistic endeavors base on smell, in a similar way how we have art for the senses of ear (music) and sight (paints and cinema) .

About the issue of militarism, what is exactly considered “military”? for example, if they have the classical three branches (navy, army and air force, or their surrogates for that matter) they might have certain differences among them. I hear there are certain rivalries among marines/soldiers/pilots, but they definitely have different subcultures. You may play with that. Also maybe make other professions base in the military, for example, scientists will be more interested in technology than in theoretical science, law enforcement will be like the Military Police and so on.

On the whole colour thing, someone put together a nice little chart of what various cultures think of various colours.

edited 7th Dec '15 2:15:44 AM by MattII

The whole description reminds me of the Meltrandi, with dog ears. While I'm aware that this comparison dates me, I find it much easier to compare/contrast a thing I've created, against some older thing that I recall from somewhere, and I recommend doing so here. Here, have a video.

(For the young and uninformed, the movie version of events takes the idea of gender dynamics and runs with it, basically splitting the alien race into the male-only Zentredi and female-only Meltrandi. Any reproduction issues are solved with magic space cloning, and the lack of gender differences contributes to their rather dull cultures in what little down-time they have.)

The problem with a military society is, it severely cuts down on time to develop a culture by preventing a larger population from consuming it. To what extent varies with the scale of their enemy to the plot, but since it's the first thing you mention I'm guessing it's their planet-wide Hat as a single monoculture. (Hint, hint, if you're looking to avoid that trope.)

In our world, militaristic societies tend to look heavily to the past as their guide to a greater future. It's possible to argue that such glorification of the past is actually a separate thing, that happens to be an effective means of riling up/pacifying the populace at any time in history, but it comes together with militarism so often that they're practically prerequisites for each other.

A 75% female society wouldn't necessarily be a matriarchal society on numbers alone - there'd need to be a reason for it, especially since they're clearly intelligent. Aside from being the reason more young are birthed, what role do the males play in this society, and how rampant is homosexuality (well, non-binary sexuality anyway) in their race/society?

To put it bluntly, you've given us so little to work with that anything we say about this race's gender dynamics will be projecting.

I don't understand why they'd have music at all. If their society is Military-First, and everything is subservient to the military, the only need for music would be to placate and distract the restless non-combatant population. (Plus, if they're canine-based and have the appropriate hearing, I'd give them an A Capella tradition rather than instruments. 'Whispersong', is what we'd probably call it upon First Contact.)

Splitting this up to make it easier to read:

@Luppercus:

Oh, that's a really interesting idea! I could imagine art pieces that have been specifically scented in order to generate certain feelings in the audience.

That's a good point. In their society, the army is the predominant arm (their air and space forces are simply sub-branches of the army). I have toyed with the idea that among their society infantry are seen similarly to how fighter pilots are seen in ours - impossibly cool and suave. Albeit now that I think about it, I'm not sure such a mystique could last long when there'd probably be far more infantry than pilots, vehicle or starship crews!

There's definitely inter-service rivalry, I imagine. I'm not sure what form that'd take, except that I had the idea that the CBRN gals are universally seen as kind of mysterious and spooky due to how rarely they show up. And they definitely don't make any friends when it comes time to do chemical warfare training.

This is something that did occur to me; for example, their construction workers might be especially good at performing controlled demolitions of condemned buildings or perhaps putting up reasonably solid temporary structures in a hurry.

@Matt:

Nice! I'll need to take a closer look at this later, see if there's anything I can use for inspiration.

@Deus Denuo:

I watched the whole video, but unfortunately I didn't manage to glean much due to my lack of familiarity with Macross and the fact the video was wholly in Japanese. Nevertheless, that part in brackets has helped clear up my confusion, thanks!

I definitely agree that it's something I could stand to improve. For what it's worth, I have tried to rectify this by noting that although on the whole they are a militaristic nation, people from specific nations or planets have certain stereotypes and cultural cues associated with them. For a very basic example, the canids that come from a particular planet known as a manufacturing hub are often stereotyped as salt of the earth "self-made women" who might over-inflate their homeworld's importance in the nation's wars (sort of an interstellar version of America Wins the War).

However that by itself cannot possibly solve the problem; it feels more like a band-aid than solving the root of the issue.

Now this is actually a very, very interesting thing to mention (and 100% correct from what I recall too - the USSR loved to draw upon memories of the Great Patriotic War, for example). I hadn't considered such an idea, but it seems like a reasonable by-product of their society.

Ah, now here's a juicy question that I've tried to answer with only partial success as you may have ascertained. As I think I mentioned earlier, men are markedly physically inferior to their female counterparts. Of course, one could argue that in a highly technological society strength, speed etc. don't count for as much anyway so it could well be a moot point.

Since men are flat out not allowed to participate in the military due to the numbers situation, that could also be argued to have a negative impact on their standing - though that's a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg question since part of the reason they're not allowed in the military is due to cultural taboos. Wow, I'm really not doing well! If anyone has any suggestions for how to have the fact it's a matriarchy make sense, I'd be extremely grateful.

Men are probably seen as caretakers and nurturers; they take care of the home and the children, that sort of thing. So it seems likely that they'd appear frequently in medical and educational positions.

As for homosexuality and suchlike... that's something I've been wrestling with (not least because it's a very thorny issue). Precisely because it is a thorny issue, I should probably preface this just in case by saying that I do not agree with any of the more distasteful options. I've reasoned that any number of outcomes could be logical. For example, they might not like such things period because it represents a "dead end" relationship where no new offspring can result (or in the case of lesbianism they might feel threatened in a similar manner to how some men IRL feel threatened by male homosexuality). They might not give a damn for whatever reason. Or they might even have some sort of really bizarre double standard where they reason that female homosexuality is "less bad" since it means less competition for men but male homosexuality is "wrong" because it takes two perfectly healthy men out of an already small pool.

To enter a plea on my behalf, the reason it's so sparse in detail is simply because I'm finding it difficult myself!

Fair point, they're probably not going to win any arts or cultural awards any time soon. I think I was even going to have it so that what they consider art would probably seem completely bizarre by our standards.

I do like the idea of a capella as a trademark style! At the very least it'd be an interesting departure from the norm.

Thanks a whole lot for your responses, by the by; you're helping me tackle some very difficult questions that I might otherwise have never considered and jarring me out of complacency.

edited 7th Dec '15 12:52:09 PM by Flanker66

To develope upon the homosexuality issue first you should define the sexuality in general.

We have a wide variety of sexual orientations because we are primates. All the big apes have bi and homosexual individual (including lesbians) is easy to theorize that probably all the other homo (no pun intended) like the Homo Habilis and Neanderthal had it too.

But this is because primates in general enjoy sexuality not just used it as a reproductive tool. Yes, homosexuality has been observed among other many animal species, but is something more instinctive.

So if your specie do have sex for pleaser and not just for reproduction, they may have develop alternative sexualities, if they only have sex for reproduction then is unlikely. I develop for a story an alien species that is frog-like, very friendly, but also very alien to us, they have no sexual urges, they only have sex to reproduce, so naturally they have no gay people, nor prostitution, nor porn, etc (it wasn’t a moral standard, I’m not again any of those stuffs, I just wanted to create a very alien culture), and then the rest of the society like the family structure and the way how teens separate from the family nucleus, etc., started to come forward.

I’ll recommend you that if you really want to make them very alien like, try to find something unexpected why their sexuality. Like having “heat” seasons or be very very liberals like the bonobos (maybe some period of Pont Far lol), or the opposite, sex as something kind of taboo, as distant it gets from human society the most interesting.

Oh and also, to judge for our patriarchal society, female homosexuality is more tolerate than male’s, probably because male homosexuality is more a transgression, so maybe a matriarchal society will have the same issue but backwards.

edited 7th Dec '15 3:00:41 PM by Luppercus

Thanks very much for the ideas!

That's probably a wise idea, yeah.

Oh, interesting! I suppose that's something I'm unsure of. On the one hand it might fit well for them to consider sex to be something done purely for reproduction (or more pertinently the next generation of soldiers) - on the other I'm trying to heed Deus Denuo's advice about avoiding monocultures or having everything revolve around the military.

Pont what now?

Anyway, to answer this, I did in fact come up with the idea that they do periodically go into heat, although they produce suppressant pills (and stockpile them) in great quantities for the military since it might be a little inconvenient if someone's on deployment. They are also available commercially. I have a feeling that this would probably have a not insignificant effect, but I am not certain how.

True, it's entirely possible it could be like that as well (curse my indecisiveness!).

edited 8th Dec '15 12:46:14 PM by Flanker66

Pont Far is a Star Trek thing lol (like heat for Vulcans every seven years)

Glad to help, the idea seems cool.

You could avoid the monoculture thing by having the Great War kill off the vast majority of all non-alien races on the planet - not even on purpose, but as a side-effect. (I'm thinking Gundam X here.) This would explain a relatively low population with militaristic aspects, as they need that to rebuild and keep their society together. It also opens the door to exploration/"discovering a lost race"-type plots.

I'd also start thinking about a religion, and if it existed in its current form before the Great War. After all, the warlord who united the Rishrals (just making up a name here) might have had something they believed in, which became law both for minds and spirits. That is, it's state-sanctioned.

For a rough rule of thumb, I'd set the rate of non-binary sexuality (again, including all non-"straight" preferences) at 10%. If there is a bias against that, I'd decide if it's primarily religious or cultural in basis, with the caveat that if it's both it would probably be punishable by death or something.

Cultures tend to split and fray quickly. If you don't maintain a monoculture it'll quickly develop offshoots in no time.

Ah, that's why I didn't get it - I've never watched Star Trek (even though I've been meaning to).

Thanks! As an aside I did consider that perhaps the commercially available suppressant is pretty pricey because the military want to ensure they have ample supplies if for whatever reason their normal supply chain for the pills was disrupted. This too I'm pretty sure would have an effect on how they view relationships. Though I think the chief thing to consider before I think about the impact of suppressants culturally is the effect that going periodically into heat would have.

I'm not particularly sure what you mean by "all non-alien races" - do you mean other sapients native to their home planet? If so, there were none (aside from perhaps any races coming from alien states they managed to control during their vassalage). If you meant animal life, well, it's possible - due to many of the warlords having lax rules of engagement, security and their race's enhanced physiologies it's possible that they were pretty trigger happy with tactical nuclear munitions and biological or chemical weapons.

That last bit interests me; if you could, might you expand a little on what you mean exactly?

Yeah, they do have a (major) religion - it's a pantheistic religion that primarily revolves around a creator goddess and her sister, who became the goddess of death after being the first of this race^note They do have a name, I just don't feel like using it - so feel free to call 'em whatever you want to experience it. She supposedly cursed all of her kind to die. She's petty and sometimes needlessly cruel, but pretty much all of the deities have shades of that - for example, their goddess of wisdom, the hunt, and intelligence once blinded a mortal woman for accidentally seeing the goddess's brother whilst he was undressed. If it's not obvious, I'm taking cues from Greek myth in that the gods are sometimes complete assholes.

Like the race themselves, the vast majority of the deities are female; aside from the aforementioned brother there's the god of love. He was created after the (until then all female) deities complained to the creator goddess. There's also a lot of hero worship; they have a Hercules-like demon slaying figure who's ambiguously a demi-goddess depending on the exact story, and another heroine whom had a curse of an unspecified nature and relied a lot on her wits.

The religion was attempted to be tweaked and suborned by this race's uplifters, but I figured they didn't get very far with that. It's an interesting idea you bring up, however, and one that I'll definitely consider!

I was assuming that it'd be cultural primarily. Out of all the things I set out above, it seems likely that they would consider such relationships a dead end. Not to say that having children is all they care about, mind, but they are keenly aware that their lopsided gender ratio leaves them uniquely vulnerable.

That's definitely true - but I have to admit I'm struggling...

For the avoiding monoculture part, I like better the idea (or I think that was what you implied) that maybe different branches of the military/society develop different cultures or subcultures.

Remember these are not humans, if you want to develop an alien culture it's good to think outside the box. We develop different cultures mainly because of geographical reasons, but I think dogs (that I tend to associate with them) not, if we can say dogs have different "cultures" (i.e. behaviors) is base on the things they are meant to do, for example, Huskies’ cultures will be much more explorer-like, adrenaline-driven and base on excitement like Vikings, while the culture of a Pit Bull will be much more warrior-like kind of the Spartans and the culture of a San Bernardo (I don’t know how they are call in English and I’m too lazy to look for it right now, but is Cujo’s race) will be much more peaceful, quiet and service-oriented kind of like Buddhist monks, and, well I don’t want to think in Chihuahuas culture but you get the idea.

So maybe the cultural differences can be base in professions/branches of military or something similar, not so much (as we) in distances or geography.

edited 10th Dec '15 1:04:32 AM by Luppercus

It's entirely possible - I did indeed mean to imply that the different branches and groups would have different cultures. For example, pretty much everyone who isn't an infantrywoman considers the infantry a bunch of (pardon the pun) glory hounds who love to downplay the importance of other branches in their retelling of battles. And as I mentioned above the CBRN teams are a source of much headscratching and curiosity due to their tight-knit bonds and the fact they tend to stick together wherever they go.

The idea of different breeds having different personalities is interesting, but I don't think it'd quite work here; although this race look like earth canids they aren't actually earth canids. To give a better idea of what I'm envisioning, most of the canids who resembled vulpines originally came from a military superpower that at one time held much the same position as the British Empire did in our history, whilst those who resemble "cold weather" dogs or wolves first originated on a large, particularly frigid landmass that's roughly as big as the Americas or Russia. Incidentally, both of those nations were involved in their cold war (along with a third nation that held significant cultural sway^note That nation is basically the "none of the above" source of all other types of canids).

At any rate, what makes things kind of unusual is that^note (WARNING: NONSENSE BIOLOGY INCOMING) they were modified with a "wildcard" gene to help ensure that the lack of men wouldn't lead to a genetic bottleneck. So after getting uplifted people from the same family might not even resemble each other!

One important thing I forgot to mention earlier is that although men cannot serve in the military, it's A-OK for them to serve in intelligence agencies. A favourite tactic is to use them as a honeytrap for the unwary (although for obvious reasons they restrict this to espionage or assassination attempts against their own kind). Does anyone have any opinions/suggestions on how to flesh this out?

edited 10th Dec '15 5:09:39 AM by Flanker66