So, to prevent to make the title too long, this would be as whole. What would the view of an average human being be at life when they're living among humans with significant increased life span, ranging from 110-3000 years vs 90-110 years. It's a world where magic is all existing and more of a science, and the more gifted you are the longer it prolongs your life. Where 3000 years is mainly an exception, 600 is quite common. Average human lives 90-110 years because magic can also be used for healing, and few people die of diseases/complications. Now you are part of the majority, the ungifted, you are not allowed to reproduce as you need be at least 100 years old (unless you're male and are able to find a gifted woman that's willing to date your old ass). You are living in a high society where crime barely exists, have a stable income, spare time and money for hobbies, but you know you only live relatively in to the adolescence of another. You'll never be able to make a serious income as you don't live long enough to produce a strong capital, on the exception of a few ofcourse. Would this affect your happiness? Would the majority be always in a depression or have disregards for life, or would they just not care and move on? How large of an affect would have the no children part be. On the other side, how would you be if you know you've got hundreds/thousands of years to go? Would this make you calm/ laid back? Or even generally lazy? Would you make it to old age or end it prematurely? Your life prolongs the more your body is able to endure magic. Babies and young children all grow at a similar rate. Teenagers start to notice a small difference. And once mastered, the difference is significant and optimal. Meaning you stay in your 20's for decades to hundreds of years.
Speaking personally, I'd think the "not being able to have children" thing would be a bigger deal than the lifespan thing. There are already all sorts of inequalities that people get used to, I'd think they could adjust to the idea of "my life is pretty good" (sufficient standard of living, 'normal' lifespan of 90-100 years), and not care too much that others are living for 3000 years or whatever. To my mind, the big question is: if only the long-lived minority is able to reproduce, then what's keeping the population from becoming much smaller? I mean, they'd all have to be having lots of kids to keep repopulating the non-magical majority, wouldn't they? I rather think it would vary by individual, but over a span of thousands of years even the same individual is going to go through some extreme phases. For a couple decades they may be super ambitious, then spend a couple decades wondering why they even bother, etc. As always, the question is not "how would the average person behave", it's "how would this specific character I'm writing behave, in a way that is plausibly consistent with the rules of this universe"
I completely agree with this. People will learn to live with their lifespan. I think of it as, if they are the majority, then this is normal for the masses. The minority are the exception, there may be some individuals that are envious, but the masses will just live their lives. I agree with Robert, write to the character. Let the character run their course, as long as you stay within the rules of the universe you create no one will bat an eye.
As you both agree on the same thing, see this reply to you both. I agree, but I think I need to know how the average person would behave to have a plausible culture or universe the character would conform to. In order to make those rules of the universe psychology plays a large part too. As I will have fundamental underlying questions that are relevant to our own society. I might try to do things that are over my head and make it I will never be able to finish but I do feel this foundation is necessary. Part on the no children might be too harsh indeed. I will have to address it or might leave it out completely.
I'm not sure how they would plan on reinforcing the no children part. Would they go around sterilizing the ungifted or do they go around cleaning up all of the accidents? If they do, I wouldn't call that a very high society. Given the age differences, it would make sense that romances would stay within classes. Since you said that the ungifted are the majority, for simplicities sake, lets say they're 75% of the population. That means that just to maintain a population, a gifted person would have to have four children every generation. Or, if you lived 3000 years, you would have to have 120 children, just to keep the population where it's at.
If the ungifted are totally childless (as you say, how enforceable is that?) and make up 75% of the population (I'd think it would be much higher, possibly as high as 98% - think of the number of millionaires in the prosperous parts of the world) and the gifted live for on average 600 years, each gifted individual would have to produce not only the one child to replace themselves, but also ALL the children to replace the ungifted who die, so at least a further 3 per century = 18. BUT That's going to mean that the ungifted working classes will die out in one generation, and the world will be overrun with the gifted. When everybody is a king, anarchy rules. We keep getting told how hard the "wealth-creators" work, but who's going to produce that wealth when there's nobody to lift that barge or tote that bale?
That's something I didn't think about and you're absolutely right about. A way of reinforcing it would be similar to China's one child policy, also where the idea comes from. Enforcing abortions and even sterilisation in order to prevent population growth booming. I have given any figures on how large of the population would be ungifted. I was thinking it would be less than 75%, so for current arguments sake 60%. 20% makes it to 300, another 10% to 600, 5% 800 and last 5% 800+. So quite a large percentage does make it quite old. And for this reason I do think that world would need birth control. The ability to use magic isn't hereditary, but the ability to understand is. With these numbers someone making it to 600 needs to have around 5 children, 1 every 130 years, in order to maintain a same population. If the ungifted population would have a 1 child policy the would increase the population by 15% per 100 years which isn't really that much either. I'm open for suggestions on your idea in terms of population deviation.
I'm glad you agree, but what would you've done if you're king/emperor? If the population rises too quickly you will make you society tumble, that's the only fact you do know.
Personally? I would expand territory in order to increase resources and the wars would be a good way to check the population. Not only would the actual dying help, but having men in combat away from their families would also reduce birth rates.
Yeah, but when those men get back...Where do you think us boomers came from? (My brother was born 9 months after VE day. I was born 9 months after the coldest winter on record.)
That's what extended engagements are for. Ongoing militaristic actions are also a good (politically if not great morally) way to solidify your leadership. If the Emperor falls, then the enemies win, right, and most populations would rather deal with a dictator they know than be under foreign rule and find out that all the vilifying propaganda you've been feeding then may be true.
As I previously stated that growth would be ones undoing. Any growth would have the maximum capacity break and nature would resolve in to a slow decaying status. When you live hundreds of years one might think about the future, perhaps? Little more depths, there isn't any military anymore, there are no countries, kind of an utopia. However, the age differences is only a tip of the ice berg in power differences. Meaning a single person can create a lot of terror. Kind of going off topic now though, back to inequality and birth prevention.
Well, I can't remember where I picked it up from, but there's a theory I'm going to call the 90/10 theory. Why? Because I'm super creative. But basically it says that for any class to hold true dominion over a population, then the governing minority need to be roughly 10 percent of the total population, but hold 90 percent of the wealth. Why? Because wealth equals power. If your controlling group is too large, then there's not enough wealth per individual to hold reach any kind of political consensus. The same if there's too much wealth in the majority. If the majority holds too little power, then you get uprisings and revolts, because even though they don't hold a lot of power, they still hold some power and with small political victories, they get the feeling that they can resolve their conflicts politically even though the minority doesn't actually allow that to happen. I'm not actually explaining this to it's full extent, but I'm sure you can find this somewhere that will do it justice. Point I'm trying to make is, people are going to fight against the forced sterilization and murder of their children that's going on. You do something that goes against the basic human biological imperative and you've got a fight and either lose your throne or you lose your subjugated class. You lose your class and you'll have to fill it with people from your own class who will probably resent becoming second class citizens which again sows the seeds for revolution. So, other than letting Malthus take care of your population problems and blame it on god, I don't see a simple way you can effectively keep a power structure like that, but I'd really love to see how you figure it out.
This explains HOW you keep the ungifted from having children, but you still haven't said WHY. I suspect it's so obvious to you that it doesn't feel as if it needs saying, like "salt is salty", but I really don't get WHY.
Great work, really. With ease I can google to similar options that the top owns more than the fast majority. I feel I have to continuously need to explain more. So, the richest of the richest are only so because of their ability to use magic. Their entire world is dependant on it and its abilities. The best comparison I have is the computer. Over half of the world population has no access to a computer, using one is in our first world country a necessity. Whether it are microchips in your bank cards or even the information you need to access. Now imagine you are unable to access any of this, you will lose already such a wide variety in job markets and are forced to pick something more, humble, I'd say. Descendants of the most powerful but yet are ungifted are straight away second rank citizens. Also don't forget, your entire welfare is dependent on the gifted. If you would revolt against this (which would be an absolute one sided game anyway) you have only to lose more of it than you could gain. One thing I like to point out when mass sterilisation happens is that it won't necessarily resolve in to a revolution or of the sort. Besides China, India and other Asian countries have been using mass sterilisations on the poor and people that aren't listening to their absolute rule. In the USA it even happened. Annually around 100k got sterilised in order to not lose their benefits, back in 1974. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/contraception/mass_birth_control_1.shtml Sorry for misunderstanding, why is to prevent humanity depleting their world. Currently humans are rapidly using every resource we can get our hands on with any disregards for the future. I believe this is mainly because most people won't survive long enough before the real shit comes (if we continue this path). If you've lived a thousand years you personally see all the changes as time passes. Imagine how the world looked like in 1700, how many people were alive and how that completely exploded to our current state. If you saw this happening you would need to take action now before it will tumble your society, right? Especially if people would be able to get far more kids if the lives 6 to 30 times as long. Or would you take different steps?
But wouldn't it make more sense to let the short-lived people multiply? If the concern is about overpopulation, why would you want to breed for longevity?
The thing I don't like about this is that it is such flawed logic. Overpopulation isn't due to increased longevity. Or I wouldn't consider it a notable reason. And a no breeding law for 60% of the population is extreme. If the 600 yeah people breed once or several times is the factor. Not if they live to 600. I can see the practicalness of needing to control the population. And I can see the value of hurting the poor by this means. Drama! But think of the scene your painting. For one. This rule would have to be recent. Or the poor would have been bread to Extinction already. Unless the long lived are giving them babies. But why? Unless the goal to breed those who are not long lived. Which sure bit this is a different goal than population control. This hurts the feel of the world because if the underprivileged is meant to fight! They have nothing to fight for if they have no children! Okay not completely true but a starving child is one heck of a reason to fight. And unless as stated this policy just started. They shouldn't have children. Right?
Is it too far fetched that first rank citizens, the gifted, produce children that aren't and those are therefor seen as second rank? I would like to break a rule where only money/ancesteral gives the majority of influences. The only way a peasant could break this in our history was by either getting influences via the church or as soldier having done something heroic. In my world you are either a peasant or you're gifted. The better you are the more influence you have. I see however, that I have trouble getting my idea across. I might need to rework this entirely, so thank you for your support I really appreciate this all.
Leaving aside the eugenics, one problem that even the gifted class is going to have is a youth underclass. In the modern world, if you're reasonably competent at your job, you will, over time, gather new skills and progress to some sort of supervisory or trainer position as your supervisors/trainers retire and then die. With a working lifespan of 40-45 years (20 years old to 65 years old), you've got certain benchmarks that you're going to hit (or not) in your life, but what happens when the office manager, Mr. Simmons, has been in the position since he was ninety, and at a hundred and fifty is showing no signs of slowing down? Here you are at fifty-five, you know everything you need to to run the place, but there are two generations of people above you waiting for that promotion. Society is going to stagnate, because Simmons was born in 2017 and his attitudes, both social and technological, were formed and fixed before 2050. Spoiler: Where I got this idea I wish I could say I was bright enough to have figured this out by myself, but it's from the Mars Trilogy (again) by Kim Stanley Robinson. People get a treatment that enables them to remain vigorous and able past one hundred years old, which provides a giant cork on society as the next generation ages through their "natural" lifespans with no prospect of moving into position of authority. Kasei is in his seventies when he's killed trying to shoot down the space elevator with a shoulder-fired missile.
