Cultural Branes

While I was at the Life the Universe and Everything Conference - a convention for fantasy and science fiction writers- I went into a panel on time travel. It wasn’t supposed to go this direction, but the question of how science would allow us to travel came up. We went through wormholes, talked about observeable atoms, and all sorts of new ideas. The moderator was a bit shocked, because the questions were about how to imagine time travel.

You could tell who was a geek and who was a nerd by the comments. The geeks were happy to talk about the coolness of the idea of time travel. The nerds dove into the science a bit too far. It helped that one of the panelists was a physicist.

During this conversation, the topic of Brane Physics came up. I have been doing some research on the matter, and none of it is really working in my head. The basic idea is that the brane is a physical manifistation made by smashing together from other states of reality. The idea is that if we can look, we can see other connected branes to our brane. The reality we live in, is next to others in their own reality. Instead of the physical distance we imagine, it is 10th dimensional space, allowing the two to both be there. We don’t know what the majority of these dimensions do, so I feel a little better.

The reason why it was brought up, was that another brane may have different rules of physics. Thus time is different there, and we can travel into it, and then back to go into other places in time. By going into another reality, we see how our own physics do things.

A few days later, I was sitting in church, listening to comments, and realized we were in a sort of brane as well. The reality in Provo is very different from the reality in Seattle or Spokane. It isn’t a place where gravity has changed, or light reflects differently, but the cultural outlook is so different it is like being in another world.

In anthropology there is a term for this kind of affect. It works well in imagining how things work. I admit, I was a bit shocked when I had to deal with various things. Then there is the thoughts that are taken for granted on either side.

Within Anthropology, we have a term for these branes. It is called Circles of influence, and comes from German cultural studies. As a culture influences others, you can see the circle widen, but also see others unaffected by it. So Rome was very influential, but it’s circle died off in central eurasia. The Mongol empire was much larger, but it wasn’t trying to influence the other cultures as much.

But it also does something else. When you see what is influencing an area, and what it takes to survive there, you also see how the culture forms. Both the Roman and Mongol empires began on trade relations, and then they worked to gain more power on that trade. Rome worked to turn other cultured more roman. Chinghis Khan was more interested in gaining new ideas. You could find Mongols dressed in Chinese scholarly clothes, and others using middle eastern siege weapons.

When you are studying influence, there is a no man’s land where people live, but are not affected by the cultures. So Samoa was never influenced by Rome or the Mongolian empire. The Rus, vikings, and Germans were somewhere in between.

If you were from one world, you wouldn’t know how to respond to the other. The heavily designed roadways, and walls of Rome wouldn’t make any sense to a caravan of mongol traders. A large German warhorse would seem like a tank to the Mongol pony.

While I was at church, I saw a stained glass window. It was purely decorative, with various circles and lines going around to make a nice design. There was no symbolism to it at all, but if you were a Catholic, or a Lutheran, the top circle would have caught you off guard. The circle was holding a cross. Actually the lines going to the circle criss crossed at that point, thus showing a halo effect on what would be a stylized cross.

It had no meaning to me, but I thought about how it might surprise someone who was accustomed to having something like that in the exact same spot. To them, it would be like walking from one reality to another, and trying to figure out how gravity works here. There is a cross, but it isn’t actually there.

The reason why I bring this up isn’t to point out differences in religious beliefs. I have been working in a heavily left leaning area this entire time, and wanted to see how the right views things. I was not expecting the results.

Where I work is the city areas of the Pacific NorthWest. I live a few hours away on the rocky mountain foothills in Cheney. It’s a college town, so many of the same ideas are promoted in the same places. Portland is so bad the traffic report talks about protests, and how to avoid them during your commute.

Over a year ago, I was scared off from literary conventions by attending World Con when they basically destroyed what dignity they had left. It was actually really sad to watch, because many of the people involved were very nice. The big problem I saw was how everyone seemed to be stuck in the past glories of the Hugos. It’s a sci fi convention, so being stuck in the past was really sad to watch.

What I saw at LTUE was a more vibrant outing. There were people from all ages, and several genres covered. I think the most interesting advice I was told was Romance authors should not mix their Sci Fi books with the same author name. Apparently it causes problems among the two fandoms.

The most interesting part for me was how the lefties felt about themselves. They thought they were giving new ideas to a world. To them, the idea that CNN was still a reliable News Station was like admitting you had a drinking problem. They tried to sound authoritative, and felt smart for saying it, but it was obvious few agreed with them.

We had topics on propaganda, and science, and other concepts. Some of the people involved believed the area was in a kind of bubble, and didn’t know how the outside world worked. There were comics not offered in the library, there were ideas not discussed among the people.

It was an odd thing to watch, because I knew for a fact the ideas being talked about from outside the bubble were just as much in a bubble as well. The two smashed together, and created places where they mix.

The panelists making these comments were from another bubble traveling this strange world. It would be like arriving in another reality where gravity has a different acceleration. It all seems normal, but things are off.

As a kid I thought I was a lefty because I lived in a republican bubble. Then I moved to a lefty bubble and found myself unable to accept those ideas as well. The two branes walk around, unable to see the other, or acknowledge it might exist.

Another thing I saw was how much people had moved on from the election in Utah. Some weren’t happy with the results, but they ultimately considered it a thing of the past. Within the areas I work in, the election results are still in the now, and talks about stopping the new president are strong. At the same time, it very rarely came up as a topic within LTUE or conversations with anyone I met.

The two branes have moved along the same timeline, but it appears one has moved further along when it comes to the election than the other. The circle of influence works differently from the two, so we see different ideas, and cultures moving along.

Another interesting bubble was how much being Mormon was part of life. Those rebelling against it are specifically trying to prove they are not Mormon. Since I am accustomed to being a minority, it was kind of weird to watch people talk about things in a very Mormon way without being slightly cautious.

In other words, when the cultures met at Provo, the other brane was being Mormon. It was the connecting brane that let them meet each other. Because of this, the entire culture is Mormon, and doesn’t see the reality outside very often. A decoration on a window may have religious meaning to someone else, but not to the people going to church at the time.

There were problems. I actually walked out of the room because they were using a piece of false doctrine very strongly. You do not choose to be happy. However, it is ok to enjoy being alive. Instead, we were told to choose to be happy, because it was doctrine. Even the manual was saying not to do this.

I thought about this, and then end up chatting with a guy from the other side of Oahu. I didn’t know it very well, even though I lived on the island. A small island had branes, and connecting cultures without anyone thinking about it. To me, this is a fascinating subject, and I would love to talk about it more to those willing.