Is civ 6 PC

[Noble Zarkon]

Charlemagne is not "French" enough to be considered a leader for France. His capital isn't even in actual France now. He was as much a leader for Germany than France

As we learned in History 401 (also known as Civ IV) Charlemagne was the leader of the Holy Roman Empire .

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

I agree with this, although as I've somewhat tangentially noted previously, maybe in another thread, there's a spectrum of familiarity which people find "interesting." The more conservative-thinking a person is (generally, not politically), the more comfort and interest they find in reinforcement of the familiar. The more progressive-thinking a person is, the more excitement and interest they find in refining what exists into new and hopefully improved forms. Everyone has aspects of both, but most people's thinking is dominated by one or the other, and in different areas. (I would argue that American culture as a whole in the past few decades leans conservative, based off of much tentpole media strives to avoid challenging viewers--I'm not talking indie darlings, but the big studio stuff that even casual moderates thoughtlessly throw their excess income at).

So really, whether it is received as "interesting" is the true balance to be hit. Because conservatives will find rote traditionalism and fan favorites "interesting," and progressives will find overlooked or recontextualized contexts "interesting," and the game really can't be purely one or the other. Hence, the "one third old, one third new, one third improved" model I think was one of several very deliberate design decisions to accomplish precisely that. (also, the soft 6 male, 3 female leader rule is, imo, a heavily conceded or calculated measure to increase diversity without actually rocking the conservative boat, given that it still roughly valued men twice as much--given that all of the female choices were quite flavorful and thoughtful choices, I don't think anyone has a right to be complaining that there is too much woman in the game. Not when we have Alexander, Robert, Laurier, Curtain, and Ambiorix, but still many extremely strong women choices like Diyha, Nur Jahan, Margaret I, Irene, who were still passed over because it just wasn't in the numbers for them. The gender balance is fine; it did about as much as progressives could reasonably hope for VI, and it still gave conservatives much of what they wanted.)



I think basing one's values on sweeping heuristics is a very slippery slope...

That's true. there is a spectrum of familiarity which people find interesting, the same way there is a spectrum of dishes that people find tasty. But this is an objective fact and reference for devs when it comes to certain choices. I also think it is a simplification saying that conservative-thinking people like traditional Civs they are familiar with, and progressive-thinking people like less known ones. No one is 100% conservative and 100% progressive. You are always somehow on a scale between 0 and 100 here That's why I enjoy equally Mapuche and Germany in the game. But still, personally prefer Inca over Mapuche or Mali over Sweden. It is subjective, obviously. Is it describing me as a conservative or progressive person? I don't think so. Civilizations, leaders you find "interesting" are always subjective. But there are way more factors than just conservative or progressive attitude here I think.

 

[Duke William of Normandy]

That's true. there is a spectrum of familiarity which people find interesting, the same way there is a spectrum of dishes that people find tasty. But this is an objective fact and reference for devs when it comes to certain choices. I also think it is a simplification saying that conservative-thinking people like traditional Civs they are familiar with, and progressive-thinking people like less known ones. No one is 100% conservative and 100% progressive. You are always somehow on a scale between 0 and 100 here That's why I enjoy equally Mapuche and Germany in the game. But still, personally prefer Inca over Mapuche or Mali over Sweden. It is subjective, obviously. Is it describing me as a conservative or progressive person? I don't think so. Civilizations, leaders you find "interesting" are always subjective. But there are way more factors than just conservative or progressive attitude here I think.

You've hit the nail with the hammer here. While your personal ideology might affect which Civilizations and Leader you may or may not want in Civilization, it isn't the only factor that can be applied, just to parrot your statement.

 

[Aristos]

And the one and the main thing that destroys everything, including creativity is dogmatism. No matter left or right-sided

True. But isn't PC a strong dogmatic component of at least one "ideology"?

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

True. But isn't PC a strong dogmatic component of at least one "ideology"?

If you consider PC as a just general rule to be kind to people and respect their feelings then it is not.
If you consider PC as a blind key-word hammer then, yes it is

While your personal ideology might affect which Civilizations and Leader you may or may not want in Civilization, it isn't the only factor that can be applied

The problem starts when a personal ideology is the main thing that decides what Civ someone wants in a game. And I think this is the best summary we can get from this topic

 

[Republic of San Montuoso]

2. The game content is not infinite, so the inclusion of less known features usually means the exclusion of the others. If we have Catharine for France we will not have Napoleon. And then go to point 1 dilemma

If it allows us to get rid of Napoléon I see this as a good point

 

[PhoenicianGold]

As we learned in History 401 (also known as Civ IV) Charlemagne was the leader of the Holy Roman Empire .

What we know as "France" used to be called "Francia," and before that was "West Francia" as split off from Middle Francia and East Francia, i.e. the Carolingian empire. Also the name "Charlemagne" is freaking French (as opposed to the lesser used "Karl der Große" or "Carolus Magnus"). He is definitely part of the French legacy.

(although, if I had my druthers, Charlemagne actually would be leading Germany and Italy rather than Germany and France. He was king of the Franks and king of the Lombards, and had two capitals in Aachen and Rome. I also think it would fit very well with having an Italian leading France and a French leading England).

That's true. there is a spectrum of familiarity which people find interesting, the same way there is a spectrum of dishes that people find tasty. But this is an objective fact and reference for devs when it comes to certain choices. I also think it is a simplification saying that conservative-thinking people like traditional Civs they are familiar with, and progressive-thinking people like less known ones. No one is 100% conservative and 100% progressive. You are always somehow on a scale between 0 and 100 here That's why I enjoy equally Mapuche and Germany in the game. But still, personally prefer Inca over Mapuche or Mali over Sweden. It is subjective, obviously. Is it describing me as a conservative or progressive person? I don't think so. Civilizations, leaders you find "interesting" are always subjective. But there are way more factors than just conservative or progressive attitude here I think.

I believe I said in that very post that although every person contains a conflict of progressive and conservative values, they tend to preferentially lean one way or the other. A leaning which becomes even clearer and more pronounced in specific areas of thought where a) a stronger opinion is often encouraged and b) it is easier to compartmentalize said area of thought from the rest of one's worldview.

Again, I'm not using the terms in a political sense but in a general ideological sense. And I think people by default tend to lean more conservative than liberal. We are all unfortunately born into a very small, self-centered sphere of total ignorance, and our entire lives are a process of being assaulted with new experiences and information that disturb our comfortable little bubble of the familiar. Over time our bubble is forced to grow, but the world is massive and if left to assimilate knowledge by chance we still remain fairly ignorant of a lot of things. And many of us don't realize there is a decision that we all make at some point when confronted with the vastness of it all. Do we accept that change, the constant bombarding of new information and emergent consequences, is inevitable and decide to adapt alongside it, actively grow our bubble to try to see as much of the world clearly and mitigate the repeated trauma of surprise? Or do we view it as an endless, infinite, relentless tide that we will never overcome, and put the energy we could have otherwise spent growing our bubble into reinforcing it against novelty and trying to ignore how much we don't know?

I think most people softly choose to adapt/invite or resist/ignore, and they make this decision in isolation with respect to many facets of their life. Some people choose to learn more about one thing (say, history or art, or football or fashion) and try to pretend like others (math, socio-economics, badminton) don't exist, or exist in a very nebulous, oversimplified state that they don't have to consider or think about. But, we can often point, with respect to a particular area of knowledge, whether someone's attitude toward it leans more progressive or conservative. I think we can also summarize whether a person approaches more facets of their lives with one attitude or the other as to whether they are habitually progressive or conservative. And, to get to my final point, I don't think it is wrong to speculate that if people are essentially born into the familiarity of conservativism, that the breadth of the universe and human knowledge of it is magnitudes more than an individual is expected to learn in a lifetime, and that each of us only have a limited amount of leisure to devote to understanding countless facets of our existence...we will tend to, if not always default, to choosing to only selectively learn about a limited subset of facets and sweepingly dismiss the rest as unknowable/unimportant to our lives. If most of, if not all of us, only ever invest in knowing a small subset out our existence and resort, if not by choice then by necessity, to oversimplifying and dismissing the other facets of human knowledge...then we all--unexamined and without conscious choice against it--naturally trend conservative and dismissive of new information.

Of course, just because that may be the reality of things, I do not see it as an excuse to be defeatist and retain a conservative attitude toward everything. Progressivism, as the name implies, is what advances human society on all fronts. And, on a fundamental level, time is always moving forward and always unidirectional; change is inevitable and irreversible, and the idea that any human construct can or should remain constant in the world will always, inevitably, be proven fallacious.

True. But isn't PC a strong dogmatic component of at least one "ideology"?

Sure, there are newly discovered, militant fanatics of any rational methodology. After spending an entire childhood being intellectually repressed by actual dogma, it's quite common for opinions to violently swing the other direction out of sheer, pent up frustration when you discover there is an even bigger world of discoverable, verifiable, socially beneficial truth that had been hidden from you.

But that doesn't make good, rational modes of thinking any less rational or any more dogmatic, certainly not in comparison to rote traditionalism. Just because I was a militant atheist a decade ago doesn't mean atheism itself is dogmatic, that I am presently dogmatic, or even that I was particularly dogmatic ten years ago when it was new to me.

 

[Aristos]

If you consider PC as a blind key-word hammer then, yes it is

And if others use it as a hammer to silence me? Or as a hammer to distort some part of history, even if in a game, therefore compromising my chance to learn from the past?

 

[PhoenicianGold]

And if other use it as a hammer to silence me? Or as a hammer to distort some part of history, even if in a game, therefore compromising my chance to learn from the past?

I seriously don't think Civ VI comes anywhere close to distorting history to the point of compromising our ability to learn from the past, at least as far as distorting things for "political correctness." If anything, it has educated people more about lesser known parts of world history, and only casually, indiscriminately distorts it because the devs don't always do their homework.

As for silencing...many people don't realize it but every freedom we have is impliedly balanced by a duty not to abuse it to the detriment of the public. People may be free to speak all they want, but if most of it is uninformed, or misrepresentative, or gibberish, or otherwise generally damaging to social cooperation more than it benefits any single person; and if it is supposed to be allowed to go unchallenged, uncorrected, unmoderated under the thin guise of "freedom," is freedom of speech actually doing anyone any good?

No system of laws will perfectly protect society. They may provide a framework, but it is up to the rest of society to fill in the gaps with good judgment and respect for the greater social organism.

 

[Guynemer]

And if others use it as a hammer to silence me? Or as a hammer to distort some part of history, even if in a game, therefore compromising my chance to learn from the past?

Criticism is not silencing.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

If it allows us to get rid of Napoléon I see this as a good point

Well we aren't rid of him entirely because he's a Great General.

What we know as "France" used to be called "Francia," and before that was "West Francia" as split off from Middle Francia and East Francia, i.e. the Carolingian empire. Also the name "Charlemagne" is freaking French (as opposed to the lesser used "Karl der Große" or "Carolus Magnus"). He is definitely part of the French legacy.

(although, if I had my druthers, Charlemagne actually would be leading Germany and Italy rather than Germany and France. He was king of the Franks and king of the Lombards, and had two capitals in Aachen and Rome. I also think it would fit very well with having an Italian leading France and a French leading England).

Well Charlemagne as a separate leader for Italy to me is a stretch. In that case they should have just done that with Frederick Barbarossa right now.
I see him similar to Alexander as he possibly could lead France and Germany, while at the same time have his own separate civ, but I don't see him leading any iteration of Italy at all. I think that any separate Italian civ would need a leader after the independence from the German HRE, in my opinion.

 

[Amrunril]

Indeed. And it should be resisted everywhere, and anywhere. Because it destroys everything, including creativity, and history. "Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it"... remember? How can you learn from the past if you erase it for "political" reasons?

This is a very bold claim with, so far as I can tell, no evidence offered in support. To bring this back to arguments that come up in a civ context, there's likely more creativity to be found in incorporating a civ new to the franchise than in repeating a familiar one. And bringing historical atrocities that sometimes get swept under the rug into discussions of whether and how to depict certain leaders is, I would argue, the opposite of erasing history.

First, 'political correctness' is itself an Oxymoron (that's when your brain doesn't get enough oxygen so you do and say stupid things: another definition of Politics), since Politics and either Correctness or Truth aren't even in the same book, let alone belong in the same phrase. Politics is about getting what you want, by any legal or semi-legal method. Correctness is or should be about doing what is right, but that's not what PC means at all, it means getting what you want and what you want is 'recognition' of your Specialness.

Politics is the process we use to resolve important and/or contentious societal issues. It's usually messy, and not infrequently exploited for corrupt or malicious ends. However, the other way humans deal with these issues is war, which has these same faults with a much higher body count.

Third, PC speech tends towards the cumbersome and inaccurate, and so it will be adopted only artificially and temporarily, and usually under coercion. For Example:
"Visually challenged" - does that mean they can't see very well or that they are hard to look at?
"Gender neutral" - show me one human being between the ages of 15 and 70 not in a coma that is neutral about their gender.
- And so on.

As others have pointed out, visually challenged isn't actually a preferred term, so this is at best an unintentional strawman. And there a plenty of human beings who are neutral about their gender, sometimes in the sense of just not caring very much, sometimes in the sense of specifically having a neutral or nonbinary identity.

 

[PhoenicianGold]

Well Charlemagne as a separate leader for Italy to me is a stretch. In that case they should have just done that with Frederick Barbarossa right now.
I see him similar to Alexander as he possibly could lead France and Germany, while at the same time have his own separate civ, but I don't see him leading any iteration of Italy at all. I think that any separate Italian civ would need a leader after the independence from the German HRE, in my opinion.

I don't disagree with any of your points, particularly that Italy really deserves a proper Italian leader.

I'm just observing that if the soft rule set by Eleanor and Kublai is that they needed to lead two kingdoms that were contemporaneously separate and involved moving from one to the other in some context...then Charlemagne can't really move between Germany and France because they were one and the same (maybe between East/Central and West Francia, even though that would be post mortum?). But he could move between Aachen and Rome and that would be wholly consistent with it. Especially if we made Rome the Papal States (which technically weren't under his rule, but emphasize the strong Catholic power behind the HRE in an interesting way I think). Iunno, thoughts.

 

[Zaarin]

As for silencing...many people don't realize it but every freedom we have is impliedly balanced by a duty not to abuse it to the detriment of the public. People may be free to speak all they want, but if most of it is uninformed, or misrepresentative, or gibberish, or otherwise generally damaging to social cooperation more than it benefits any single person; and if it is supposed to be allowed to go unchallenged, uncorrected, unmoderated under the thin guise of "freedom," is freedom of speech actually doing anyone any good?

Strongly disagree. All views, no matter how offensive or distasteful, have a right to be expressed and published; it's the task of the educated person to read what is good. Otherwise you have tyranny of the majority, and the majority is capricious. Such a system is particularly dangerous to religious minorities, whose views are often unpopular. If society decides that Quakers are dangerous, does society have the right to ban the publication of Quaker literature or shout down Quaker meetings? This isn't a hypothetical question because exactly that has happened in the past. American law was set up specifically to prevent that from happening; meanwhile, the past hundred years have seen a steady erosion of freedom of conscience. Worth noting that the American Revolution was undergirded by the assumption that rights belong to the individual, while the French Revolution (with its horrific aftermath) was based on the assumption that rights belong to society; America has gradually been switching over to the French way of thinking, and in my opinion that is extremely dangerous to any and all nonconformists. Sincerely, A Concerned Nonconformist

 

[BuchiTaton]

Lets make a more practical exercise.

Leaders like Stalin and Mao were on previous CIV games, but they are not more. It is that because Firaxis turn to be PC?

Hitler never was in. So Firaxis allways was PC?

Genghis Khan and Alexander (and many others) that caused maybe millions of deaths are still on game, so Firaxis is not PC?

The WW2 is certainly a popular, interesting and significative period for world's history, so the recent CIV games trying to evade represent this conflict is PC?

 

[Evie]

As the old saying goes, your right to swing your arms (that's the right to freedom of movement) ends where my right not to be punched in the nose (that's the right to physical integrity and right to safety) begins.

Your exercise of your rights must always be constrained, not by the needs of society, but by the rights of other individuals around you.

 

[PhoenicianGold]

Strongly disagree. All views, no matter how offensive or distasteful, have a right to be expressed and published; it's the task of the educated person to read what is good. Otherwise you have tyranny of the majority, and the majority is capricious. Such a system is particularly dangerous to religious minorities, whose views are often unpopular. If society decides that Quakers are dangerous, does society have the right to ban the publication of Quaker literature or shout down Quaker meetings? This isn't a hypothetical question because exactly that has happened in the past. American law was set up specifically to prevent that from happening; meanwhile, the past hundred years have seen a steady erosion of freedom of conscience. Worth noting that the American Revolution was undergirded by the assumption that rights belong to the individual, while the French Revolution (with its horrific aftermath) was based on the assumption that rights belong to society; America has gradually been switching over to the French way of thinking, and in my opinion that is extremely dangerous to any and all nonconformists. Sincerely, A Concerned Nonconformist

This is vaguely elitist. The majority of people (at most scales) are in the lower class and do not have the resources to become highly educated, nor the leisure to investigate the truth value of published statements. As the internet has made all too clear: put the means of distribution in the hands of everyone and the labor class is inundated with misinformation. Yes, this would be less of an issue if access to education were more normalized, but part of the problem is that distractions and misinformation are rampant, obscuring access to and disincentivizing education. It's becoming a self-reinforcing cycle. The masses can't discern truth value because they aren't educated, and they aren't educated because their free time is being appropriated by useless or wrong information outlets. In a totally unregulated free market (as opposed to a fair market) of information in the digital age, people's attention spans are exploited more than they are enriched.

I am not saying that people should not be encouraged to speak or engage in discourse. What I am saying is that our historical idea of freedom of speech is outdated and did not contemplate a world where misinformation was so easily propagated. At minimum, we need to figure out some way to encourage more social and intellectual responsibility behind public statements, because at this point we have some 30-40 percent of Americans on the conservative side of the spectrum practically admitting that they no longer believe in objective fact, and quite likely a comparable minority of progressives with a similarly stunted ability to discern factual truth.

Also, don't talk to me about Quakers. I spent an entire summer driving the most entitled quaker family back and forth for work. They owned a Bobcat., so they could have easily had a car. They would still go into town and take commercial planes to visit family. As long as someone else's time and money was being wasted, as long as someone else was being inconvenienced, they didn't care what modern comforts they indulged in as long as they had plausible deniability as to owning it themselves. Freedom of religion is another freedom I take huge issue with; just because it has been kept separate from the state doesn't mean it is above reason and social responsibility. Plenty of religious "beliefs" have been invalidated, not just by science, but as harmful to society--particularly those that are discriminatory and oppressive--and those parts of religion are decidedly not free to practice.

Conscience is just the sum of one's impression of fact, and the ethical paradigms they have constructed by which they operate within those facts. Like literally any other aspect of a persons beliefs, behavior, and character, it is very heavily influenced by the environmental information received, the methods of reason used to interpret the information, and the truth value of the beliefs distilled. And it will only ever be as good as the accuracy and honesty with which someone absorbs and processes reality. Consciences can be and often are wrong, and wrong consciences should--at least ideally in theory--not be encouraged to splay themselves wantonly in the public consciousness and contribute to the loud informational static and chaos. There needs to be moderation of some sort, and if it isn't coming from within the individuals themselves, and they aren't actively seeking to self-improve and educate, then naturally there needs to be some sort of structural reformation on the societal level.

 

[Zaarin]

As the old saying goes, your right to swing your arms (that's the right to freedom of movement) ends where my right not to be punched in the nose (that's the right to physical integrity and right to safety) begins.

Your exercise of your rights must always be constrained, not by the needs of society, but by the rights of other individuals around you.

Indeed, but that also has to be followed up with the caveat that no one can be constrained to act against their conscience.

This is vaguely elitist.

Bull.

The majority of people (at most scales) are in the lower class and do not have the resources to become highly educated, nor the leisure to investigate the truth value of published statements. As the internet has made all too clear: put the means of distribution in the hands of everyone and the labor class is inundated with misinformation. Yes, this would be less of an issue if access to education were more normalized, but part of the problem is that distractions and misinformation are rampant, obscuring access to and disincentivizing education. It's becoming a self-reinforcing cycle. The masses can't discern truth value because they aren't educated, and they aren't educated because their free time is being appropriated by useless or wrong information outlets. In a totally unregulated free market (as opposed to a fair market) of information in the digital age, people's attention spans are exploited more than they are enriched.

You want to talk about vaguely elitist, you just said the masses need their betters to explain the truth to them.

Also, don't talk to me about Quakers. I spent an entire summer driving the most entitled quaker family back and forth for work. They owned a Bobcat., so they could have easily had a car. They would still go into town and take commercial planes to visit family.

Quakers were simply an example because Quakers have been persecuted in America. Quakers had their property stolen by the government, were in some cases beaten, tortured, and murdered, and faced other hardships during every American war for their peace testimony. I'm not a Quaker, but that's historical fact and it can happen to any religious minority.

Plenty of religious "beliefs" have been invalidated, not just by science, but as harmful to society

That's not for you to decide. Again, you're being an elitist materialist. You're saying that your unbelief is more valuable than others' beliefs.

Conscience is just the sum of one's impression of fact and ethical paradigms. Like literally any other aspect of a persons beliefs, behavior, and character, it is very heavily influenced by the environmental information received and the truth value of the beliefs distilled. And it will only ever be as good as the accuracy and honesty with which someone absorbs and processes reality. Consciences can be and often are wrong, and wrong consciences should--at least ideally in theory--not be encouraged to splay themselves wantonly in the public consciousness and contribute to the loud informational static and chaos. There needs to be moderation of some sort, and if it isn't coming from within the individuals themselves, and they aren't actively seeking to self-improve and educate, then naturally there needs to be some sort of structural reformation on the societal level.

Wow, that's the most horrifying, elitist, and unethical thing I've read in quite some time. I'm horrified at the number of people that think they have a right to dictate proper belief to others like you do, often in the name of nonbelief paired with arrogant sanctimony. As the saying goes, "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."

 

[DogeEnricoDandolo]

This is vaguely elitist. The majority of people (at most scales) are in the lower class and do not have the resources to become highly educated, nor the leisure to investigate the truth value of published statements.

To be honest, right from the get-go I refused to debate a person who bases his entire thesis on this "Political correctness is a process everyone should be striving for and engaging in." However, I find this opening amusingly ironic. "The majority is uneducated; therefore I have to dictate for them what is true and what isn't." I guess this is the crux of American neoliberalism. "Liberal," as I recollect from a very distant past, used to mean "free" and "open to new ideas," btw.

 

[AsH2]

.. There's a point where political correctness crosses the line into intellectual dishonesty. I think Western culture has drifted to a place where being honest is offensive.
..

What's PC in "Western culture" is most likely not PC in "Eastern culture". Still "being honest" is often considered an "offensive" thing "over there".