The Parable of the Monkeys
Mar. 26th, 2010 11:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jamesqI was talking to JD yesterday and he recounted an experiment (with a description that verges on urban legend status) involving cruelty to monkeys:
JD related this story to me because he was interested in changing the rules of how tournament fighting occurs in the SCA. His suggestions would produce a more interesting, dynamic tournament. It would have less interruptions and would reduce the incidence of chronic knee injuries in the society.
How do you do this? Eliminate going down on your knees after a leg shot. Basically shots to the vitals would still kill you, but you could get a technical kill with two shots to any extremity. However the fighters do not have to "play act" the first extremity hit. You don't go to your knees after a leg shot, you don't drop a shield or switch a sword to your off hand with an arm shot. Someone who receives a shot would simply announce that it was good and continue fighting without further interruption.
More simply, you kill your opponent by accumulating two points against them. Head and torso shots are worth two points and extremity shots are worth one point each. Shots are still gaged exactly the same. Everything that was legal before would be legal afterward. Best of all, you've not engaging in a grueling athletic activity on your kneecaps.
The main objection he's received so far is that dropping to the knees is how we've always done it. It's not the only objection, but it is the most common.
I told him I thought it was a good idea that was worth pursuing. I also told him that the Powers That Be in the SCA are remarkably hidebound and he wasn't going to get anywhere (citing tradition as the reason). As a well-known tilter-at-windmills, I'm fine with people fighting the good fight despite the results be a foregone conclusion. Good luck JD.
Is the SCA particularly hidebound? I suspect so. As a reenactment group, we do self-select for people who like things the way they were done in the past. OTOH The SCA is the group I'm most familiar with so I'm getting a close-up warts-and-all view of it. An objective outsider comparing it to (for example) SF fandom or cat fanciers might decide we're no more or less conservative then other hobby groups.
On the gripping hand, we do have a board of directors dedicated to preserving the status quo of the society and that's something a lot of other hobby groups lack.
My view? The upper levels of the society and the "ruling class" are hidebound. They've reached the pinnacle of a group they like. These people are partially self-selected for enjoying exactly what the society is now and have to some extent also shaped it to what it is now. Below them are two groups - a large group that isn't so much hidebound as it is not caring. They participate, have fun, but can take it or leave it. This is the vast majority of the SCA (or really, any hobby group). There's also a small vocal group of innovators. Being innovators, not all of their innovations are necessarily good ideas, but a lot of them are (for example, JD's idea above).
Innovators can go one of three ways:
Initially, the SCA filled a need - people who wanted to play in the middle ages, but had no outlet to do so. It rapidly grew across North America and grabbed people from all demographics. But that was the low-lying fruit. Nowadays, people who want to play in the middle-ages are either already in the SCA, or have a personal objection to being in the SCA specifically (those people join the smaller groups or find another outlet for their talents - cosplay for example. I can think of at least three people in my f-list who are in this category). It's not like they're simply unaware of it's existence (caveat: there are still people who live under rocks and don't know, but they're a vanishing minority). Most new members are now, by necessity youths and young adults.
The SCA is now in an odd quandary. They will need to evolve to stay relevant to the people who will ultimately replace them. If they don't, the Society will slowly shrink. There's a few possibilities:
This needs to be a systemic change - the ruling class needs to not reflexively poo-poo new ideas simply because that's what we've always done. This is risky - not all ideas are good and some could fail spectacularly, but the alternative is a society that shrinks to irrelevancy.
Put a bunch of monkeys in a large cage with a metal floor. In the middle of the room is a pedestal with a banana on it. Whenever one of the monkeys tries to eat the banana, you electrify the floor. Naturally this hurts like hell and the monkeys don't like it one bit.The monkeys give a beating for grabbing the pedestal banana because that's what we've always done.
Being reasonably clever, they quickly connect making a grab for the pedestal banana with getting their extremities zapped. They stop going for the pedestal banana.
The next step is to replace one of the original monkeys with a new monkey. This new monkey has no idea about the pedestal banana == pain connection, so naturally it goes for the free lunch. And the rest of the monkeys - who know what's coming - jump him and beat him up. Every-time he goes for that pedestal, he gets a beating from the rest of the troop.
Now keep replacing the original monkeys with new monkeys. Eventually you'll have a troop consisting entirely of monkeys that a) have never experienced an electrical shock, but b) gang up on any individual monkey that tried to grab the banana off the pedestal.
JD related this story to me because he was interested in changing the rules of how tournament fighting occurs in the SCA. His suggestions would produce a more interesting, dynamic tournament. It would have less interruptions and would reduce the incidence of chronic knee injuries in the society.
How do you do this? Eliminate going down on your knees after a leg shot. Basically shots to the vitals would still kill you, but you could get a technical kill with two shots to any extremity. However the fighters do not have to "play act" the first extremity hit. You don't go to your knees after a leg shot, you don't drop a shield or switch a sword to your off hand with an arm shot. Someone who receives a shot would simply announce that it was good and continue fighting without further interruption.
More simply, you kill your opponent by accumulating two points against them. Head and torso shots are worth two points and extremity shots are worth one point each. Shots are still gaged exactly the same. Everything that was legal before would be legal afterward. Best of all, you've not engaging in a grueling athletic activity on your kneecaps.
The main objection he's received so far is that dropping to the knees is how we've always done it. It's not the only objection, but it is the most common.
I told him I thought it was a good idea that was worth pursuing. I also told him that the Powers That Be in the SCA are remarkably hidebound and he wasn't going to get anywhere (citing tradition as the reason). As a well-known tilter-at-windmills, I'm fine with people fighting the good fight despite the results be a foregone conclusion. Good luck JD.
Is the SCA particularly hidebound? I suspect so. As a reenactment group, we do self-select for people who like things the way they were done in the past. OTOH The SCA is the group I'm most familiar with so I'm getting a close-up warts-and-all view of it. An objective outsider comparing it to (for example) SF fandom or cat fanciers might decide we're no more or less conservative then other hobby groups.
On the gripping hand, we do have a board of directors dedicated to preserving the status quo of the society and that's something a lot of other hobby groups lack.
My view? The upper levels of the society and the "ruling class" are hidebound. They've reached the pinnacle of a group they like. These people are partially self-selected for enjoying exactly what the society is now and have to some extent also shaped it to what it is now. Below them are two groups - a large group that isn't so much hidebound as it is not caring. They participate, have fun, but can take it or leave it. This is the vast majority of the SCA (or really, any hobby group). There's also a small vocal group of innovators. Being innovators, not all of their innovations are necessarily good ideas, but a lot of them are (for example, JD's idea above).
Innovators can go one of three ways:
- They might succeed, making a change to the Society at large.
- They might give up and leave. Sometimes they leave with very negative ideas about the Society. This explains why a lot of the other re-enactment groups gripe about the SCA.
- They "burn out". They remain in the Society, but they throttle back on the work they put into it because they don't feel appreciated.
"What's your persona?"The point of that nasty little example is that the SCA is not in any way "realistic". It needs to stay fun and relevant to a membership that was raised and lives in the modern world.
"Oh, I died of the plague when I was 4. How about you?"
"I was raped and killed when my village was overrun by an army."
"Bummer."
Initially, the SCA filled a need - people who wanted to play in the middle ages, but had no outlet to do so. It rapidly grew across North America and grabbed people from all demographics. But that was the low-lying fruit. Nowadays, people who want to play in the middle-ages are either already in the SCA, or have a personal objection to being in the SCA specifically (those people join the smaller groups or find another outlet for their talents - cosplay for example. I can think of at least three people in my f-list who are in this category). It's not like they're simply unaware of it's existence (caveat: there are still people who live under rocks and don't know, but they're a vanishing minority). Most new members are now, by necessity youths and young adults.
The SCA is now in an odd quandary. They will need to evolve to stay relevant to the people who will ultimately replace them. If they don't, the Society will slowly shrink. There's a few possibilities:
- The society shrinks and levels off at some sustainable level. I suspect this number is in the neighborhood of 10K-20K sustained memberships and represents a Board of Directors that can make legal decisions and still pay for our liability insurance.
- The society shrinks below this level and the BoD disbands. This doesn't mean the end of the SCA, but it does mean that maintaining branches becomes harder (they all have to pay for their own insurance) and raises the possibility of branches not recognizing other branches' peers and royals because "They're not really the SCA like we are."
- Like above, except infighting causes the Society to Balkanize. This is the effective "death" of the SCA, albeit not the death of medieval re-enactment as a hobby.
- The Society stays roughly where it is. Not much different from the way we are now.
- The Society grows slowly and levels off at a point where we are grabbing all potential members and making them actual members and this rate equals the number of people leaving the Society.
This needs to be a systemic change - the ruling class needs to not reflexively poo-poo new ideas simply because that's what we've always done. This is risky - not all ideas are good and some could fail spectacularly, but the alternative is a society that shrinks to irrelevancy.
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no subject
Date: 2010-03-26 05:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-26 05:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-26 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-26 06:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-26 06:04 pm (UTC)That and knee injuries do not - in my experience - represent the predominant injury. Most old fighters/knights predominantly suffer from bad elbows and shoulders over knees. If we were making a change for health and safety of fighters, I would argue we need to look at scaling down the force of the blows we require to be "good" and use lighter swords.
But about the knee thing, I am quite comfortable fighting from my knees - I do it alot - and the change in elvation caused by this in fact greatly chages the dynamic of the fight - as a smaller stature fighter often to my advantage as I now present a smaller target.
I am not sure that staying standing actually improves the fight.From a fighter and a spectator's standpoint, I like that if something of me is hit it ceases to be useful - arm - leg - head or body : )
BTW other swordpaly groups use a point systems and I have heard very mixed reviews about how that works and how much clarity there is in the acknowledgement/tracking of points and blows. It is easy for people to forget if they are hit - if you are kneeling or only have one arm, it is darned hard to forget ; )
Just my two cents.
About your other stuff. I agree though that people vote with their feet and there are things about the SCA that do need to evolve.
That being said a no doesn't intrinsicly mean that the idea was poo-poo'ed and that people aren't considering change or weighing the proposals. It may simply mean they don't agree : )
And as you and I have discussed many times - some elements are intrinsic to the SCA and personally I like it that way. If I wanted live steel or counted blows or only Norse-y, I'd join a group that offered that - they all exist.
Two more cents ; )
Interesting post James - as always
no subject
Date: 2010-03-26 06:50 pm (UTC)I was more using this as an example of something that should be examined that's not getting traction (yet. He can be very persuasive) because of "tradition".
Tradition is one of those buzz words (like "We can't do that, it's policy") that's used to halt communication rather then promote it. Which is to say, if an idea has been properly weighed and considered,you should be doing more then simply saying "no" - you should be giving reasons why the answer is no.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-26 06:52 pm (UTC)I bet you asked your mum "Why not?" alot hey ?
: )
no subject
Date: 2010-03-26 07:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-26 06:14 pm (UTC)Cause I know tons of "ruling class" folks and they don't see eye to eye with the BoD on... well lots of things and frankly dont' see eye to eye with each other much either.
The heavy fighters and consorts who compose the "ruling class" - if you examine how the majority of the society functions talking not about court and awards but about how the laws and rules and gears of the thing go - actually have precious little "power" over that functioning and are funcitonally largely ceremonial and cheerleader-y. Ask me how I know : )
In some ways it might be easier if the BoD and the "ruling class" actually a) agreed - together and /or amongst themselves
b) actually had a plan
But we don't. Man we probalby couldn't agree enough to sucessfully order pizza.... I wish we were so organized and agreeable to conspire... ; )
no subject
Date: 2010-03-26 07:01 pm (UTC)Then, the dynamic would change - no longer was it I'm going to thump my brother, now it was someone just dissed my brother. The unlucky spectator now faced the unified threat of my father and my uncle defending the family honour.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that in-groups don't need to have agreement all or even some of the time to defend themselves against perceived outsider threats.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-26 07:18 pm (UTC)The BoD and the "ruling" class are frankly more likely to each to identify the other as the other or the threat.
Seriously.
Just because you see these groups as "in" does not mean they are in cahoots. The SCA is really is composed of a whole whack of interest groups and not a one of them works with all of the other groups the same way or well at all for that matter and every "other" surely would make their own list of those who are uses and thems. And don't even get me started on the internal messes. You look at any peerage - you may see "unified against all comers" but I can tell you of the crazy divisions/factions and niches within each. Unified my butt.
It is the reality of social groups. We have to socialize and for social creatures, we are fair rubbishy at it sometimes. And we love to define as us and them.
I try to strive for an us model - we do afterall have collectively an awful lot in common. We're a great heap of geeks if nothing else ; )
no subject
Date: 2010-03-29 04:58 am (UTC)