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[Dean_the_Young]

An oldie but a goodie, about how the power of culture might shape the ME universe in a big way.

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(Limited knowledge of Historical Metaphors required.)

http://social.biowar...3/index/7721586

I'm not sure if it's been mentioned if we're going to Thessia, but if Shepard does it would strike me as an excellent place for one of the more unique Big Decisions of the Mass Effect: just what is the value of a Cultral center?

Not to put too fine a point of it, but culture is actually a rather big deal. In Human history alone, the social and political maps have repeatedly been rewritten with the fall of culture: the loss of knowledge, of history, of identity can't be undstated: when the Library of Alexandria was burned, so too did a pillar of Egyptian identity and knowledge. When the Mongols the contents of the Library of Baghdad into the Dijla River, the did more than turn the river black with the ink of millions of books (millions, remember, at a time there was no printing press): they turned a Global culture center into a relative backwater, even after they left. Even to those with only a sense of history of the past century, the effects of the loss of culture can be telling: compare Warsaw, after being fought over and destroyed in a certain war with tore the heart out of it, to Paris, which was (fortunately) not deliberatly razed to the ground despite orders, it's art and museums and architecture not looted and destroyed. One remains a cultural hum... and the other has never quite recovered.

People can live in a place with or without culture. But the loss of culture can irrevocably change them: oh, it's easy to say 'there are photographs,' or 'there are other books'... but it ignores what was lost, and what isn't where it used to be.

Why do I bring this up? Because Thessia is the heart of Asari space, and the heart of Asari identity and power is Culture. Cultural export and influence is both their primary diplomatic strategy and the basis of their relations with other species. Because Asari political influence is weilded by the Matriarchs, the wise, the experienced, the ones who define culture. Because Asari identity, the enduring Asari pacifism itself, is a product of the culture that creates and sustains it.

As a writer of a 'Big Decision' RPG of a galactic war for survival, how can we pass up a scenario to kick it all over? To the see the Asari changed, forever, as a consequences of what is lost and what was done during the Reaper War?

And all it would take would be an impetus that makes the immediate gains something to consider, something worthwhile. Military consideration. Immediate advantage. The better prospects of immediate survival.

And all at the cost of a Library. A very, very big Library, mind you... but a Library all the same.

Just consider some of the implications it would carry:

-Asari post-war culture: if the Asari survive, will their pacifism survive with them? Their inclination towards compromise? Democracy?

-Asari post-war views of Humanity: What Shepard does reflects on Humanity on a larger scale. Human-Asari ties are already shaped by the Council decision, but think of how they could go further. Are Humans the civilized, cooperative people of the Paragon Council, save the Library? Or are the Barbarians at the Gates, the ones who would make the rivers of Thessia run black? One certainly would allow for post-war Pacifism... and one might spur the Asari into re-militarizing.

-What is the value of Culture? Without it, we are less as a society, but is it all-important? Certainly there have been some, right or wrong, who have argued that had a certain central European state carried out its orders to raze Paris to the ground, that would have been been as severe a war crime as many other atrocities.

Thoughts to Consider.