Advice

Way With Worlds: Worldbuilding With Real Religions

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Temple Japan Religion

[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum, MuseHack, and Ongoing Worlds]

So you’re world building, but the world is basically like ours, or like a given historical place and time. You’d start building religions, but . . . you’re dealing with real religions that people practice and live right now (or the ancestors or descendants of those religions). You’re not so much creating them, but asking where they fit into your setting, what’s “real” and what you have to write.

There’s more “about” than “building.”  Sounds easy, right?  Not when you realize that when it comes to religion you have to . . .

  1. Treat as a functioning part of your setting.
  2. Know what you’re writing about.
  3. Write/describe/handle it in a realistic way (or a way that seems realistic).
  4. Deal with annoying people.

So you’ve got to design your “real” world, but also deal with ‘real” religions.  How do you handle these challenges?

Let’s address them one by one . . .

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Way With Worlds: Worldbuilding Religion, General Advice

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Bible Book Church

[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum, MuseHack, and Ongoing Worlds]

(As noted in my past columns, this discussion of religion is focusing on the with some metaphysical or theological elements).

When I worldbuild, I confess building religions and so on are some of my favorite things to do. This of course is part of my own inclinations and interests in people, psychology, culture, and religious experiences. Not everyone shares my enthusiasm.

Fortunately, as I have such enthusiasm, I’ve got plenty of advice to share. Here’s a few things I’ve found help in doing religious world building.

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Geek As Citizen: What We Don’t Know

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Wrong Way Sign

A few weeks ago there was a story bouncing around the internet about a Google employee who had started a petition to replace the US government, basically, with Google CEO Eric Schmidt.  This was apparently not done with any form of approval from Mr. Schmidt, and you can read more about the person behind this at Quartz.  If you heard about this, it’ll give you some idea of the person behind the petition, Justine Turney.

To put it politely, I find Ms. Turney’s idea to be ill-thought out and lacking a sense of the larger picture, as well as impolite about Mr. Schmidt’s lack of free time.  It felt like a Deep Geek idea, to reference my previous theories, disconnected from reality.

As I discussed it among the gang, something came to the surface  how many times we run into political theorizing that doesn’t seem to involve an understanding of how the world actually works?  It’s a problem whose distribution may vary among people, political groups, and such, but it’s a problem you find everywhere.

We don’t know what we don’t know.  Which may qualify you if your career is to be “random pundit who yells a lot,” but really doesn’t help solve problems.  It is, in fact quite good for creating them, as anyone who has ever worked on a project that was poorly defined without repercussions knows.  I’m guessing that’s all of us.

Now as much as I’d like to see a lot more people address this lack of knowledge about lack of knowledge, it’s something we geek citizens should also address in ourselves.

In fact, I’d say we need to be extra responsible.

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