User blog:Cerne/The premise behind my conworld

It's been a week since my last entry exactly and I'm typing something up to help me get into the habit of posting at least something every week instead of letting my blog stagnate. Just getting into the habit so that I keep it up, yadda yadda yadda... Unfortunately I don't have anything of actual significance so for anyone who wants to read anything hardcore conworld-related I would say no sense in reading any further. This entry is just a filler, with some idle conworlding thoughts in it.

Two entries back or so, I'd already described what genre I think my conworld falls into. Well, the more I think about it, the more it (the conworld) seems like some wierd hybrid between alternate history and completely original "SpecFic" setting. That is to say, the setting itself is different - no Earth here - but what happens on it may not be that different. It's like if you took the Assyrian or Nubian or Harappa civilization and transplanted it on another planet, to use a Stargate-ish analogy. Well, sort of. No transplanted human civilizations here, either, I'm afraid. However, the concept of "things happening differently" still manifests itself.

One big reason why I like to create conworlds - and the primary reason why I did it when I was younger - was to invent fictional creatures. If you'd read my profile page, you'd no doubt have read the part where I described how I got the ideas for my "con-creatures." For the most part, they were what are often dubbed as Chimaera. Weird mixes of two or more different animals, or different parts added on to existing animals to make them look different. I remember I called one of my con-creatures a "kangalope" because it basically looked like a kangaroo with the head (or maybe just the horns) of an antelope. And to give it an exotic feel, I made it walk like a therapod dinosaur. Not very original, but then I was only 12 years old. Before then I was too interested in real animals to put any real investment into something fictional. But there might have been a few weird things here and there.

Anyway, as I carried my conworld on through the years, I became interested in different things. One of my interests had always been - and still is - Palaeontology. When I was younger, I only liked dinosaurs and other prehistoric reptillian-like animals such as the Pterasaurs, the Ichthyosaurs and Plesiosaurs, the Dimetrodon, and so on. As I got older, I became interested in other fauna. Particularly the Permian and Late Triassic Synapsids, Devonian tetrapods like Seymourosauria and Anthracosauria, and Palaeozoic arthropods. Macroscopic Precambrian biota fascinated me ever since I heard about them, and they still fascinate me to this day. And, of course, I wanted to put all of this into my conworld somehow. So I did. But I didn't actually change anything, either. I just modified it. The "kangalope" thing now has a parrot-like beak and no longer has horns but it is still bipedal and it can still jump with its large hind legs. I added new creatures, too, through the years. The earlier creatures would be changed to suit the physical/evolutionary resemblance as well as the aesthetic feel of the later creatures, and this continued whenever I came up with something new. Since I was interested in Palaeontology, my con-creatures began to resemble real-life extinct animals more and more, instead of being mixtures of extant animals. And a lot of the time I added my own touch as well. One reptiliomorph species, for instance, has scales that are able to bend sunlight in such a way as to almost become invisible.

Relating all this with a central premise - for me - involves going to and fro between several philosophical stances (or maybe just one) that are involved when it comes to making up fictional animals and plants. First, we have Indeterminism which takes an Existential approach and states that since evolution is internalized and organisms select for traits based on what they happen to be attracted to OR whatever traits happen to be available, you cannot possibly know what kinds of traits will be selected for and hence you cannot predict how an existing organism will evolve and what new kinds of organisms you will get. And then we have Determinism which takes a Reductionist approach and states that since evolution is solely externalized and surrounding conditions dictate exactly what traits will turn up in new species, you can effectively predict how existing organisms will evolve and what new kinds of organisms you will get. The whole premise for Determinism holds that organisms are essentially automated and are subject to some higher order in the universe (see: Antithetical concept of Chaos) though those who don't take a theological approach and don't agree that this sense of order resembles some "divine plan" for life on Earth (or anywhere else for that matter) can take a more Nihilistic approach and say that this biological "automaticity" is merely what organisms do. Chemical reactions, like hydrogen and oxygen to form water, just happen. Likewise, the evolution of an anthropoid body plan just happens, even though we now know that higher intelligence doesn't require it at all.

Of course the whole divide between these stances centers around the argument of Free Will so it is bound to come up in discussions of speculative evolution sooner or later for those who have thought about the matter to some further extent. However, choosing a Determinist stance also provides an excuse to shape the process of speculated evolution in such a way that it conforms with one's own views of how organisms will evolve within a given environmental context. It can provide a superficial sense of authority so that the integrity of the rationale behind one's speculation does not need to be criticized and/or ridiculed. To this I would like to add that regardless of our knowledge, experiences, qualifications, etc., we all have ideals (I.e. what we think should or would happen) and these are in no way any more superior than those of anyone else. I would therefore say that this excuse used by some Determinists is not a very valid one to hold such a stance with. In addition, it has been my experience that when it comes to speculation Determinists typically start out caring about criticism while Indeterminists typically start out not caring; One is prone to peer pressure to some degree, and the other wants to be different. One seeks to impress, and the other is not afraid of being unconventional. My personal opinion is that while a rationalist approach may be useful, speculation often requires a "leap of faith" from time to time. That is, sometimes you need to go with something that hasn't been done before on Earth or in the known universe. Which is why I take an Indeterminist stance to creating con-creatures.

So why is it that I still resort to creating chimaera that are modeled after extinct Terran fauna? Well, I've already explained how it started and partially why I still do it, But rather than deciding to turn around and say I now take a Determinist stance, I am going to say that I still do follow my intended Indeterminist philosophy and that there is still a lot of "exploration into the unknown" as it were. Sure, it may not seem that way, and this is indeed where much of my personal conflict rests. I am even doing something worse by placing Earth-based fauna (and flora) on a planet that is less Earth-like as opposed to the more Earth-like planets abound in the universe of Star Trek and other popular space operas. To rid myself of this conflict, I have had to remind myself why I took an interest in extinct Terran fauna in the first place. I think what intriues just about everyone who is into Palaeontology is the idea that some animals and plants existed here on Earth a long time ago and now no longer exist at all except in a few far-removed descendants like birds and crocodiles. And then there are the "living fossils" - cockroaches, sharks, platypi and such - but I am referring to the countless species that have gone extinct altogether. We ask ourselves "why did these creatures go extinct?" The general answer is Natural Selection with or without drastic climate change, but more specific answers are considerably more difficult to find and/or verify, as probably any Palaeontologist will tell you.

Aside from finding out what these extinct organisms were really like, I personally became interested in Palaeontology to find out why they are no longer around. And I create conworlds in order to speculate on things that have not happened yet (that we know of) but that could happen. There are other people who do this, and their projects can be found in various places online, like here and here, but mostly this involves playing around with chance and circumstance in what is basically the same setting that we all share in real life. I am not only interested in different circumstances, I am interested in different settings. As was typed in my entry titled What's in a genre?, this is what contrasts Alternate History from Speculative Fiction. What I want to do is show how - once the actual environment has changed - some Terran fauna that went extinct on Earth could have survived to spawn multiple descendent species in this new world, while other Terran fauna that are still around today on Earth would never have had a chance. So, yeah, my conworld is a weird blend of Alternate History and Speculative Fiction. If I ever do get around to making any Wikia pages for my conworld, you will probably see what I mean when you start to recognize certain resemblances between the flora and fauna on my conworld and various extinct flora and fauna on Earth.

I have no problem admitting to other Biological Indeterminists that my conworld's biology is lacking in imagination as well as the countless issues in probability that I face. Maybe it is this reconciliation that makes me improve and strive for something more realistic. If you see flaws that go along this line then you are probably right and I look forward to reading your critiques. As for those Determinists out there...I don't really know what to say, other than that this is not my vision of alien life forms I might otherwise have wanted to portray. But now let's look at it this way: if something does happen differently in the evolution of my conworld's biology, what does that tell you about the chances that Terran life had on my conworld to begin with? I'd already admitted that having Earth-like flora and fauna was intentional, and that it preferably would have gone much differently. The only criticism you can make in this regard, then, is that these "con-flora" and "con-fauna" are not Earth-like enough. Which makes no sense, because this world is not Earth. Not in a long shot.

To conclude, I suppose more than anything the conbiology itself is a demonstrative protest of sorts. Not an ideological one, but a demonstration of what I hold to be true about biological evolution in a more general context. Really, though: Determinism, Indeterminism, Existentialism, Reductionism, Theism, Nihilism, etc., these are all ideologies of some sort for the people who agree to and live by them. I deal in speculation, with as minimal empirical and rationalized constraints as can sustain my own suspension of disbelief, and that's about it. My conworld is deliberately an experiment in evolutionary potential; I am not creating truly alien organisms for my conworld that fall short of any imagination whatsoever, I am creating Terran-derived flora and fauna that now need to evolve toward a new set of environmental challenges and will consequently need to be different. So there is still a "what if" scenario going on, no matter whether you want to say I am copying Terran biology or trying to be more original and "exotic."

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I will probably type more entries like this in the future, wherein I explain other core premises of my conworld. Yes, there are others, and they have to do mainly with other philosophical areas. Most notably: politics, social phenomena like religion and warfare, cross-cultural ethics & aesthetics, environmentalism, and the epistemology of belief, among others. Maybe they'll actually wind up in this blog...but don't count 100% on that. This entry ends here.

Thanks for reading.