Raider's Advocate - Is civilization the real enemy?

[CT Phipps]

It occurred to me while thing about New Vegas' plots that there was an assumption which didn't entirely settle right with me. Basically, it was the assumption the Fallout world should try to rebuild civilization. Mister House, Caesar, NCR, and even Benny all seemed to agree on it. Indeed, it's the driving goal of the Master and the Enclave which is a good thing since you have the opportunity to stop them.

However, isn't civilization the problem rather than the solution? The Fallout universe has an unimaginable amount of freedom thanks to the apocalypse and has freed itself from the kings as well as masters of the old world. Many gamers have cried out that the world should be rebuilt in 200 years but is that a good thing? Certainly, there's a beauty to Goodsprings which doesn't exist in the corrupt and venal NCR.

To quote the Dragonborn from Skyrim, "I like this world just the way it is."

Should the opportunity to fight those who would impose order on the wasteland be an option for future games? Certainly, the Lone Wanderer's life was significantly improved by leaving his Vault to explore the wild and untamed Capital Wasteland.

Perhaps Ulysses had a point that "rebuilding" was a mistake as it just repeated the mistakes of the past.

 

[Hassknecht]

Goodsprings is a pocket of rebuilt civilisation, though, not some sort of anarchist dream. Like the other frontier towns in New Vegas. Given time, all these towns would enact more trade and start forming unions and coalitions, and eventually governments. It's a necessity in order to keep control over the growing infrastructure.
And this is a good thing. Infrastructure needs to grow. Humans living in some sort of anarcho-primitivist society is pointless. What distinguishes us humans from animals is that we strive for progress, that we actively work to better ourselves, our living conditions, our understanding of the world.
Rebuilding is what humans do, it's what defines us. But progress has risks, and it does backfire sometimes. The only hope is to learn from past mistakes, and try to make it better. What good is the freedom of the world of Fallout if the world doesn't go anywhere?
A little farmer's town like Goodsprings is nice and could be stable for all eternity, but it will stagnate, and ultimately leave behind nothing. It's just existence without purpose, no goal besides day to day survival.
And raiders are nothing more than animals, trapped by base hedonism. No purpose whatsoever, and no chance of survival as soon as civilisation takes hold.
Sure, the option to push the wasteland into utter anarchy should be an option, but it's certainly not a good option in my book.

 

[Jogre]

Many gamers have cried out that the world should be rebuilt in 200 years but is that a good thing?

Nobody is saying "The Fallout world ought to be rebuilt by now, because civilisation is good"

The arguement is more like "The Fallout world ought to be rebuilt by now, because civilisation is inevitable"

People won't live in small-farm houses being attacked by raiders for eternity. Both the Raiders and the Farmers will get tired of that eventually, and either the raiders will want to seize all the power for themselves, or the farmers will want to create a basic power structure to keep them safe.

Certainly, the Lone Wanderer's life was significantly improved by leaving his Vault to explore the wild and untamed Capital Wasteland.

Only because the Lone Wanderer is a legendary badass.

For your average Vault Dweller, surely it's better to have shelter, food and water provided for you, than it is to constantly struggle for it in the world outside.

Should the opportunity to fight those who would impose order on the wasteland be an option for future games?

That's the fun of Yes Man is it not?

While it's fairly clear that you get control of Vegas under Yes Man, the rest of the Mojave stays as it was. While it could be interpreted as the Courier seeking power for themselves, if your character wanted to fight against imperialists, that could be there reasoning behind choosing Yes Man.

Goodsprings is a pocket of rebuilt civilisation, though, not some sort of anarchist dream.

To be fair, I think many anarchists would be perfectly content with Goodsprings.

Most anarchists, from what I gather, just want a world where communities and individuals solve there own problems, without governments forcing them to follow set laws. I don't think many actually want a world where everyone is doing whatever they want non-stop.

Goodsprings from what I gather, doesn't have a formal government, nor any form of actual laws. Sunny Smiles just defends the town from potential attackers, and leaves everyone to there business.

A little farmer's town like Goodsprings is nice and could be stable for all eternity, but it will stagnate, and ultimately leave behind nothing. It's just existence without purpose, no goal besides day to day survival.

Why's that necessarily a bad thing?

Can't a community just dedicate itself to surviving.

Why does it need to go somewhere or have goals?, If they are happy where they are, let them stay where they are IMO.

 

[Hassknecht]

Why's that necessarily a bad thing?

Can't a community just dedicate itself to surviving.

Why does it need to go somewhere or have goals?, If they are happy where they are, let them stay where they are IMO.

It's not bad, necessarily, but for me, it would be a pointless life and a pointless community. If they're happy, sure, but by destroying larger bodies of government and infrastructure you're forcing this anarcho-primitivist lifestyle on everyone, ultimately reducing humanity to animals. Yeah, animals are happy and content, but I want humanity to do more than just feeding and breeding. Our sentience is wasted on living like cattle with anxiety issues.

 

[naossano]

Even without civilizations (as the settlers saw themselves), there would still be people killing each other.

You can defend another kind of civilization, but if you defend the total lack of societal structure it would only be constant struggle.

 

[CT Phipps]

@Hassknecht @JO'Geran

Eh, I'm not so sure about the idea of civilization being an inevitable axiom of the human race as much of human history is defined by building upward, only for events to tear down and spread. Empire are notable for the fact they inevitably collapse and become smaller states with the ideas of morphing into singular states often being futile. The Hapsburg Empire lasted centuries and then became something almost insignificant. Even the European Union recently had people who wanted out.

In the Fallout world, it might be interesting to imagine that the population doesn't ever want another large-scale government imposing itself on them as that literally destroyed the world last time. Large scale cultural trauma like that could permanently lock society into a suspicon of authority and work toward permanent decentralization.

And that might be a good thing.

A thousand tiny kingdoms might well be a better life than one single one as envisioned by President Tandi.

It's not bad, necessarily, but for me, it would be a pointless life and a pointless community. If they're happy, sure, but by destroying larger bodies of government and infrastructure you're forcing this anarcho-primitivist lifestyle on everyone, ultimately reducing humanity to animals. Yeah, animals are happy and content, but I want humanity to do more than just feeding and breeding. Our sentience is wasted on living like cattle with anxiety issues.

Eh, to paraphrase V, the point of government is not for people to serve it but for it to serve the people.

A idyllic life for its citizens without complex rules and structure is arguably infinitely superior to organization for the purposes of grandiosity that benefits no one but some strange idea of "greatness."

It's why I liked the option of Deus Ex where you could tear down all of the conspiracies.

 

[Risewild]

Eh, I'm not so sure about the idea of civilization being an inevitable axiom of the human race as much of human history is defined by building upward, only for events to tear down and spread. Empire are notable for the fact they inevitably collapse and become smaller states with the ideas of morphing into singular states often being futile. The Hapsburg Empire lasted centuries and then became something almost insignificant. Even the European Union recently had people who wanted out.

Even those who wanted to get out of the European Union do so because they think it will allow them to grow and prosper more and will also grant them better safety, again showing that humans strive to achieve improvement of their situation/lives. Also the European Union is not an empire, it's a union. Empires are homogeneous, follow the same ruler and laws, speak the same base language, etc. European Union is a union of 28 very different countries, many with their own language, culture, laws, constitutions, government types, people, etc. There is no chance to pass as an empire at all.

Even when empires break apart the people still continued to improve, otherwise by now where once was an empire there would be now only savage humans.

Your example shows that humans rebuild and continue to strive to improve, even when their empire fell they continue to prosper and being civilized. Also some empires fell because people thought they weren't improving their lives and conditions and so they revolted, forming their own states/countries/kingdoms, and today there are still descendants of those people living in their own states/countries and even kingdoms and prospering. The ones that are not prospering are the ones that had other powers wage wars and fight against them sometimes for years and years.

Goodsprings is growing though, NCR settlers are still coming to settle in there, it exists because settlers came and started to live there, if those settlers didn't band together they would have vanished already, they only survive because they get organized and each uses their own strengths and skills to help (like we see when they fight the Powder Gangers for example), that is the organization of civilization but only in a smaller scale because it is a small settlement. If someone decides to get feral and start attacking other Goodsprings citizens, they will all attack and kill that person, they protect eachother and if they grow more they will start to need someone to become the central figure, to start barking orders. That is how we humans have always been since we were just nomad tribes following the elder's orders/advice.

If the wasteland is all savage, no one will be alive at the end, humans would disappear because a savage human can't stand against most creatures of the wastes. Even raiders have a hierarchy and have bosses, have base camps and usually they try to get numbers, so even raiders have some kind of civilization going on. If they didn't they would all be dead.

 

[Jogre]

Empire are notable for the fact they inevitably collapse and become smaller states with the ideas of morphing into singular states often being futile. The Hapsburg Empire lasted centuries and then became something almost insignificant. Even the European Union recently had people who wanted out.

Empires collapsing is never replaced with total anarchy though.

People will always flock to smaller factions to try and fill the power vacuum. I highly doubt any end of the world scenario would end with people living in little farms for eternity, while raiders kill everything constantly. Eventually someone is going to get tired of the way things work, and seek to enforce there own structure on the world.

In the Fallout world, it might be interesting to imagine that the population doesn't ever want another large-scale government imposing itself on them as that literally destroyed the world last time. Large scale cultural trauma like that could permanently lock society into a suspicon of authority and work toward permanent decentralization.

"The Romans waged war to gather slaves and wealth. Spain built an empire from its lust for gold and territory. Hitler shaped a battered Germany into an economic superpower. But war never changes." -Fallout 1 intro.

In a franchise so big about war never changing, it would really be against the core themes of the game to not have imperialism. Eventually someone's going to think "Hey, wouldn't it be more beneficial if everyone followed our rules"

A thousand tiny kingdoms might well be a better life than one single one as envisioned by President Tandi.

A fallout with small-scale citystates and nation states, where most people live in communities with relative safety from the outside world would be a good vision of the universe IMO.

I only take issue with Fallout games that take place in near-anarchy 200 years after the bombs fell.

FO1 presented life in some kind of community as the norm, and more nomadic or dangerous lifestyles(Raiding/Scavenging/ECT.) as being fairly fringe. It was a desolate world, but life went on, and times changed. That's the ideal kind of Fallout.

A idyllic life for its citizens without complex rules and structure is arguably infinitely superior to organization for the purposes of grandiosity that benefits no one but some strange idea of "greatness."

Problem is, how can you make sure that an idyllic life without complex rules stays that way?

I mean, eventually disputes are going to happen, and it will be expected for them to be resolved. Without a legal system to decide whose in the right, what happens?, And how could you make sure it didn't end in "mob justice"?

 

[CT Phipps]

Random point before I address the rest but isn't the point of "War never changes" that efforts to civilize and pacify humanity are doomed to FAIL?

Any society which achieves peace will inevitably be torn apart by warring factions and greed.

Because people suck in Fallout.

 

[Hassknecht]

They do, but just giving up and accepting the Dung Ages for all eternity? Nah, "War Never Changes" is also about rising up again, even if failure is inevitable.
"And from the ashes of nuclear devastation, a new civilization would struggle to arise".
Cultural trauma is a thing, and it does have a lasting impact (some say that the Thirty Years War really defined the german mentality until today, the "German Angst" that everything could be over in a minute being a remnant of the chaos of that war that depopulated whole areas), but people will always struggle to get back up. In small tribes at first, but the conglomeration into larger communities is inevitable. Taking that away from Fallout means basically just ending Fallout, because what is there left to tell about? Fallout: Goodsprings would just be Harvest Moon.
Wait, that's basically what Fallout 4 is.

 

[Risewild]

It is also impossible to stop settlements from growing because humans are fertile all year round. We managed to populate the entire world today because of this fact.
Most other animals have specific times when they are fertile so they only reproduce on those times, but humans do it all the time. Humans also enjoy sex, doing it most of the time for pleasure and fun instead of reproduction (which increases again the chance of offspring).

A small settlement will probably grow by itself for a while, because of this. If the settlement doesn't increase it's infrastructures and "government" to accept more children it will fail or people will just move to a bigger settlement so they can improve their kids' lives.
Humans have this ingrained in them, give our kids a better future than we had ourselves, which once again makes for people to try to improve and grow the places they live to provide for their kids.

 

[CT Phipps]

Honestly, the "humans will always grow more complex and urban" is kind of...against all of human history.

Also, not quite the issue whether you should try to keep them down.

 

[Hassknecht]

Honestly, the "humans will always grow more complex and urban" is kind of...against all of human history.

Also, not quite the issue whether you should try to keep them down.

wat
Have we been reading the same human history?
Are you living in a house made of dung right now? Oh wait, you're an english major, you probably are.
Seriously though, human history is nothing but "society grows, collapses, rises up again". Urbanisation is a common motive in all of human history, with all high cultures more or less being defined by the complexity of their cities. Except for a few tribal societies the majority of humankind has always gone for improvement. This improvement more often than not backfired, and more often than not something happened that led to collapse. After the collapse there is usually a period of chaos and regress, but in almost all cases there is restructuring and progress again. Did Europe after the collapse of Rome just go "Eh, I guess the whole decadence and lead poisoning taught us a valuable lesson. Let's not form empires anymore and just be content as farmers"? No, they built shit back up, even if said shit got torn down again. As I mentioned before, the Thirty Years' War over a thousand years after the collapse of Rome seriously devasted the Holy Roman Empire, but even then they didn't go "I guess this war taught us a valuable lesson about trying to govern anything more than a small village", they worked shit out and got back up, finally reaching the Renaissance and the Modern Age.
Of course, there are some external factors. Ancient Egypt collapsed several times and rose back up again, but after it got conquered by the Persian Empire it never had the chance to get back up on its own. The Indus Valley Civilisation just kinda disappeared and nobody knows why (probably climate change in the region). But these are exceptions, not the rule. Now Egypt and Indus both suffered from climate change and lack of fertile ground to keep up their civilisations, and one could argue that the terrible environment in the world of Fallout would lead to a similarly limited population, but the world of Fallout has a significant headstart in terms of technology and knowledge over Egypt and Indus, and we already know from all the games that the land isn't completely barren.

So, again, trying to keep civilisation down before it can even start in the world of Fallout means ending Fallout. War can't never change if you fucking remove it. I get the romantic appeal of a tribal, somewhat anarchistic society, but that's not how the majority of mankind rolls. We are not animals, and to most, even if it's subliminal and subconscious, there is more to life than just eating berries and shitting in the woods.

 

[Prone Squanderer]

Honestly, the "humans will always grow more complex and urban" is kind of...against all of human history.

Hass has already beaten me to it, but what history are you looking at?

So, again, trying to keep civilisation down before it can even start in the world of Fallout means ending Fallout. War can't never change if you fucking remove it. I get the romantic appeal of a tribal, somewhat anarchistic society, but that's not how the majority of mankind rolls. We are not animals, and to most, even if it's subliminal and subconscious, there is more to life than just eating berries and shitting in the woods.

Agreed. What's the point in just surviving if it doesn't accomplish anything? I could live until 100, but if I don't do anything worthwhile in all that time other than stay alive, would it be worth it?

 

[CT Phipps]

wat
Have we been reading the same human history?
Are you living in a house made of dung right now? Oh wait, you're an english major, you probably are.

Don't bet on it. Some of my fellows live in the woods and yet still have laptops/

Basically, history is a frequent collection of civilizations collapsing from people building them up only for them to fall apart and the people leave to go elsewhere. The vast majority of cities and states in history are gone with the organizations they belonged to falling apart. The idea humans cooperate is a weird one since history seems to show that we can't sustainably get along in large groups for long periods.

As you say, society grows but it then falls apart when it gets too large and I don't think it's necessarily the case in Fallout that such organization attempts to move beyond a new anarchy will work.

Basically, the tribal level of sulik and his people may be more sustainable than a nation state with the demands of resources. The majority of the Fallout world, for example, is now very similar to many desert regions where government is limited to local groups because large ones simply can't exist.

You need resources of an IMMENSE scale to build an empire and those may no longer exist.

 

[Risewild]

Honestly, the "humans will always grow more complex and urban" is kind of...against all of human history.

Basically, history is a frequent collection of civilizations collapsing from people building them up only for them to fall apart and the people leave to go elsewhere. The vast majority of cities and states in history are gone with the organizations they belonged to falling apart. The idea humans cooperate is a weird one since history seems to show that we can't sustainably get along in large groups for long periods.

As you say, society grows but it then falls apart when it gets too large and I don't think it's necessarily the case in Fallout that such organization attempts to move beyond a new anarchy will work.

If that was the case we wouldn't be living in these highly advanced societies of today. We would all be still living in caves because apparently it is against human history to grow more complex and urban.

Just because empires fall doesn't mean that civilization falls, it always continues to grow and improve, again if every time an empire fell everyone would return to become a wild animal we wouldn't be this advanced, those empires would be wastelands or unlivable for humans, they would live in a cave and sleep on the ground.

Also do you realize that the vast majority of cities and states in history are not gone... We have entire countries full of cities that are centuries old and still exist. I don't know where you got this idea that old cities disappear all of a sudden. There are ancient cities that fell or got abandoned but usually there are reasons for that, pretty much since medieval times no large city disappeared at all... Rome still exists and was the political capital of one of the largest empires in the world, the empire fell but Rome still stands and it is still the capital of Italy for example.

Don't bet on it. Some of my fellows live in the woods and yet still have laptops/

Why do they use laptops? Oh, because highly advanced societies exist that made possible for laptops to exist, I bet those fellows also use other modern commodities, they aren't running in the woods naked, clawing on rabbits and eating them raw, I bet they live in a house or cottage and use electricity. All of those possible because humanity is always advancing.

Let's face it, just because you prefer a more wild Fallout it doesn't mean that the real world societies work the way you want them to work .

 

[CerberusGate]

Oh... this again.

Well, everyone replying against Phipps has said whatever points I would have raised to counter Phipps' latest argument for mindless anarchy in Fallout ("Yes, Bethesda's fanfic may advocate it but the main games do not, so get over it"). so there's not much for me to add.

I will say that even an anarchial society will develop organisation and some form of hierarchy within them. Over time if these organisations and hierarchies grow powerful enough, the order they set up will become more dominant and develop into something akin to a political structure. In the world of Fallout, Shady Sands started out as a group of people from a Vault that sought to live in a group with like-minded individuals (that did not become raiders) and look how that developed. They became the NCR and until their recent problems of New Vegas, they were doing well. Their problems highlight that organisation will always have problems but even if it collapses, there will some form of order present.

So anarchy still fails since humans will seek out some form of order and organisation which still has the potential to develop into civilization.

I can imagine the existential crisis Phipps may have if one of his 'beloved' raider societies becomes a new nation in a future Fallout game. Then again with how stupid raiders are in Bethesda's fanfic, I doubt they'd survive past the first parliamentary meeting.

isn't the point of "War never changes" that efforts to civilize and pacify humanity are doomed to FAIL?

Didn't Ulysses subvert that quote by noting than man can change through the roads they walk? One way to interpret that line is that it implies that while the nature of conflict may never change, man can subvert their nature and be better than what they tend to be.

 

[Tiny Tim]

I'm sympathetic to anarchism generally, but i think anarchy doesn't work that way, it requires a complicated process and a very strong community as a foundation. One cannot simply deny "civilization" and isolate themselves from human communities to reach anarchy. Because if you go there, the strong will inevitably oppress the weak (for example from the title of your post we get that the "raiders"- people with bigger guns- would inevitably rule over the ones without them. Immediately there would be rulers and "civilization" ).

On the other hand, i agree that there is a certain beauty about goodsprings. The closest thing they have to a ruler seems to be Trudy the bartender, and they seem to have come where they are by mutual understanding.

 

[CerberusGate]

(for example from the title of your post we get that the "raiders"- people with bigger guns- would inevitably rule over the ones without them. Immediately there would be rulers and "civilization" ).

This is probably the main reason why I usually doubt Phipps's point on anarchy being the status quo of Fallout. There will be some form of civilization in their world in that case; it'll only be in a different form.

 

[CT Phipps]

I'm actually not speaking on anarchism in general. Goodsprings is a good example of an anarchist society as are the Followers of the Apocalypse. They reject authority and law but work for the communal good. I also think Tandi's NCR is a perversion of her father's vision for the way forward. He had a highly religious equality-based society which worked well but got suborned into his daughter's bizarre conquest-minded Empire.

More, I'm actually curious if the fact that a largely disorganized Wasteland is better for humanity's survival and that attempts to rebuild. Certainly, the Empire of Caesar is an example of the absolute horror of civilization along with the Enclave. Organizations which are the enemy of the continued survival of humanity by attempting to impose "order" and "control" over the Wasteland's divergent self-sufficient societies.

In general, as a student of history, humanity doesn't organize in the face of chaos or at least in terms of building large stable structures. Instead, human societal structures are a nonstop restructiing mess of conflicting visions, loyalties, and idealogy which are in constant flux. Attempts to bring these to order are doomed to failure but mankind keeps trying.
Even so, this is about the fictional setting of Fallout than the reality.

It occurs to me that much of Fallout seems based around the idea of trying to rebuild the world when the history presented in the setting shows a monstrous totalitarian nightmare of a Pre-War world that had dramatic leaps in technology but only used them to further oppress the locality. Fallout 2 showed the possibility of humanity building a NEW society in the Arryo merging of tribal based society with modern technology--but Fallout: New Vegas shows that effort failed and NCR is now repeating all the mistakes of the Pre-War government.

As bad as Fallout 4 was in its storytelling, it also illustrates the failure of Elder Lyons attempting to bring order to the Wasteland. As soon as he passed on and his daughter died, the Brotherhood of Steel he envisioned as an Arthurian order of protectors was perverted into a conquest-minded organization of Empire builders.

The "order" which Maxson brings is nothing beneficial to the Wasteland, though, because it requires the oppression of the locals and submission of them to ideaology which does not benefit them (technophobia, xenophobia, unchecked militarism). High Arabic Culture for example was totally destroyed by the Mongols and Tamerlane. Ironically, illustrating how the desire to build an empire can end up destroying civilization and almost certainly what would have happened had Caesar triumphed over NCR.

I think it's interesting to speculate over whether the "independent" choices of the setting are better because this is actually a theme in three out of the five Fallout games.
No points for guessing which.

* If the Master's plan COULD have worked, would it have been better to unite all of humanity under One Race, One Nation, One Psychic Godmind?

* Is it better for Vault City to be allowed its independence or crushed under NCR's boot?

* Is the Enclave correct for its desire to purify the United States and rule over one regime once more?

* Is Bishop right that New Reno is better off as part of NCR rather than its own state?

* Is it better for the New Vegas communities to be annexed or remain independent?

* Does the independent but xenophobic Boomer society deserve its freedom?

* Is killing Legate Lanius the right decision? Is it better for there to be order in the Caesar's lands with a barbarian king like him or
the Legion's empire to collapse completely? Is killing Caesar a bad idea or is it better for him to survive and simply be defeated?
These are intriguing questions I can't help but ask myself.

The last one, in particular, I'm wondering if it should have a thread in the New Vegas section. What is more moral? An Evil Order or a Unchecked Chaos?