Case Columbus
The Case Columbus is a concept from sociology and anthropology that was popularised outside of sociological circles by First Contact with the Titanians, and the Tiaunt and Ineryn.
It is named after Columbus, due to the prevalence of information and research done on the post Columbus era of colonisation, when European powers not only militarily and politically, but also culturally took over the Americas, either destroying or 'mutilating' native cultures.
It describes the case of the interaction between two cultures that may lead to the 'stronger' culture replacing the 'weaker' culture either in full or in part, whether it may be intentional or unintentional.
It came into a more public consciousness, as fears that Titanian or other cultures could 'undermine' or replace human cultures surfaced.
Passive Interaction between Cultures¶
Passive forms of interactions between cultures can fall under the Case Columbus as even free and not forced interactions can lead to changes in culture.
Cultural Coexistence¶
Cultural Coexistence is considered to be the best outcome of a Case Columbus, where the two involved cultures find a way to coexist, with only some cultural appropriation happening over time as the cultures continue to evolve over time and retain their cultural identity.
The best example of this is the continued existence of the many different cultures within Local Space.
Cultural Syncretism¶
Cultural Syncretism happens when one culture takes on many characteristics of another culture they are in contact with, while retaining the core cultural concepts of the original culture, and is considered to be the second best outcome of a Case Columbus.
Cultural Absorption¶
Cultural Absorption is the event when a culture is completely absorbed into another culture, with just a few markers of the old culture remaining after absorption. Usually, this happens to a culture that is, for some reason, embedded into another culture.
Usually, this is generally seen as a bad outcome of a Case Columbus.
An example would be how in 19th century America, immigrants would arrive in places like New York and their culture be absorbed by the larger culture of the city, until all that remained is another New Yorker, with a few cultural oddities and baggage.
More recently, the settlements of Ormiold in the Dallas Area of Texas can be seen as an example. Even though attempts are made to preserve Ormiold culture, the second generation of Ormiold born in Texas can be considered to be strangely shaped Texans with a few cultural and dietary quirks.
Active Interaction between Cultures¶
While passive interactions can lead to slow cultural changes in the greater concept of the Case Columbus, active interactions can lead to quicker results and it is usually tried to prevent these active interactions.
Cultural Genocide¶
The concept of cultural genocide is a severe and worst case scenario of the Case Columbus, where the more powerful culture, usually in the form of colonisers, deliberately change and modify a native culture to turn into into a different culture. This is usually accompanied by forceful religious conversion and the suppression and killing of the preexisting cultural elite.
Examples in human history are too numerous to count, with many happening in the Age of Discovery/Colonisation.
Cultural Suicide¶
Cultural Suicide is something of a counterpoint of Cultural Genocide, where the leaders of a culture attempt to incorporate so many concepts of a perceived stronger culture that at the end of the process, the original culture has been all but destroyed, leaving only a copy of the other culture in its place.
Cultural Mutilation¶
Cultural Mutilation can be describes as a 'less' harmful form of Cultural Genocide or Suicide, where an outside culture, either through colonisation, or through internal cultural leaders, force a change in the original culture.
The end result may be seen as positive, but also as negative.
An example would be the British Raj in India, where the British Colonial Office outlawed the practice of Widow Burning, removing it from Indian culture.
Cultural Resistance¶
This case is when the perceived weaker culture actively resists the stronger culture as a whole, strengthening the cultural core concepts as a result. This can be seen as the potentially best outcome of an active interaction in the context of a Case Columbus, with the outcome leading to a Cultural Coexistence.
A successful example would be the Ethiopian resistance against Italian colonisers in the mid 19th century, while an unsuccessful example would be the Chinese Boxer Rebellion in the late 19th century.
Cultural Adaption¶
Cultural Adaption is another reaction of the perceived weaker culture, actively adapting select concepts and values from the stronger culture to strengthen itself and it's core concepts and can be seen as an active form of Cultural Syncretism, and as such is seen as the second best outcome.
An example would be Meiji era Japan, which saw a rapid industrialisation of the country and the Adaption of some European cultural concepts to prevent the colonisation from a Western Power.
Mitigation¶
Current understanding of the concept of the Case Columbus problem, is that there are four preferred outcomes. Cultural Coexistence, Cultural Resistance, Cultural Syncretism and Cultural Adaption, with the overall end goal of Cultural Coexistence.
As such, attempts should be made to bring a Case Columbus situation into either of these four cases and prevent the others.
Recently there have been three successful cases of mitigation into Cultural Coexistence during a Case Columbus, with the mitigation being done on both ends. Though it is believed that the distances and time frames involved, helped to enter the Coexistence phase of the individual Cases.
The first case was the Titanian heptapods and the Titanian Minds. The sheer distance, curated information exchange and at the time physical distance helped to normalise contact between humanity and the Titanians, so that while there have been some cultural appropriations, they happened in the course of normal cultural evolution. It was helped by the aquatic nature of the Titanians and their long time observation of Human radio signals, allowing them to formulate a strategy.
The second case was the contact with the Tiaunt and Ineryn via SETI. While the communication packages exchanged between Sol and Jeratir contained a lot of cultural information, the communication round trip time of over 60 years lessened the impact of that information to manageable levels.
The third and currently final case was contact between Sol, Jeratir and Iwrin and the Quetzal cultures there. Their own long history of Cultural Coexistence and sometimes strange cultures from a human or Tiaunt perspective, allowed to manage the cultural exchange to prevent any form of Cultural Interaction past Coexistence.
Sadly, the first contact with the Ormiold and the Quetzal that hid in cryostasis in the Sol system did not result in Cultural Coexistence, but Cultural Absorption of both groups into the greater cultural landscape of Sol and the local culture of the places they settled down in.
Analysis of the failure of Cultural Resistance incentives for the Ormiold and Quetzal in the Solar System¶
Practically the reasons for this failure have been largely psychological, in the form of massive cases of survivors guilt, PTSD and a failure to connect with their own offspring, who have hatched and grew up in a new world, unable to understand the things their parents went though. Some psychologists have compared their situation with the situation of Holocaust survivors after WWII, or the survivors of Manchurian Death Camps.
The original generation of survivors have seen their home worlds be destroyed and their populations killed. Cultural norms have lost most of their meaning during these times of almost pure survival, even as they helped each other. While the Ormiold were somewhat lucky in originally meant to be an interstellar settlement mission and therefore had a unifying cultural basis, the Quetzal were pure survivors from at least 40 different cultural groups, with little in the way of time or space for cultural elites or artifacts. That some of the cultural groups were opposed to each other did not help either.
And then they found themselves 3000 years in the future after their cryostasis, encountering an unknown group of cultures that already knew about them and what they had gone through. Only some time after they could settle down on Earth of various space settlements, the actual depth of their own problems, both psychological and culturally became apparent. Suicide rates among the survivor generation remained high for several decades.
The stress and the psychological damage of the survivors lead to problems in their child rearing instincts and customs, especially amongst the Quetzal, which lead to almost all the Quetzal younglings having to be brought up by humans, which lead to its own problems, especially in their cultural development, as biases would slip in. By all accounts the original cultures of the surviving Quetzal died with the survivor generation, with the first generation becoming what one sociologist later called 'essentially snake shaped humans with a few psychological quirks and dietary requirements'.
The Ormiold had more luck in this situation. They had a somewhat intact cultural base and elite, thanks to their original settlement mission. However the stress and psychological issues lead to problems with the transfer of their cultural identity to their nestlings and young adults. This incomplete culturalisation allowed their host cultures to slip in, slowly changing the cultural identity of the next generation.
It is expected that a the end of this process, the culture of the Ormiold will largely resemble that of the several of the larger American immigrant groups, with a somewhat core culture that can draw on their original culture, but heavily influenced by their host culture, so that they can be more correctly identified as a member of that host culture, rather then a member of their original culture.