Ways to encourage high levels of conformity without mind control?

[PhoenixPhyre]

So there's this entity (in-universe he's a god, but not exactly what most consider gods to be). He finds it rather disgusting and tragic that there's so much disagreement among mortals. Why can't everyone just cooperate, agree on what everyone's going to do, and then just work efficiently? His favorite animals are the eusocial insects, because there's order. Everyone has a role, and everyone does their role. Very efficient.

So he wants to encourage this behavior among mortals. His power is large for any allowed action, but he's got some very strong limitations on his means.

Limit 1: if he's caught/called out (by another Power) for taking away free will (ie through domination, mind control, or other compulsions), he will lose his standing and will likely be destroyed. There's a mechanism in place to enforce that, but it only triggers actively, so someone has to catch him.
Limit 2: he can only safely act through mortals (ie clerics or other agents), and only in response/proportion to their faith. So he can't proactively reach down and meddle, he has to get his clerics to ask for support before he can directly act. He can commission other astral agents to act, but that's limited. Here, "safe" means "without risk to his position". If he takes avatar form or meddles directly, he's as vulnerable as any other mortal would be, and not much more powerful.
Limit 3: A subset of #2--communications with clerics are reactive, not proactive. And have to be cryptic. This one's inherent--the communications channel is lossy. No one in the world (or at least no one relevant) has the power to go planeshifting to talk in person. Besides, even if they did, that would count as direct interference.

So what actions can/should this entity take to make the world a better place (as he defines it)?

So far, he (and the other Powers he's tricked, convinced, etc. to go along) has set up a theocracy over about 50 years. It's a communistic theocracy, small-c communism. As in, communities make decisions collectively, and violating consensus is a crime. But communities have been trained to listen to their priests (not all of whom are clerics), who listen to their hierarchy's collective will. But that's limited to a single nation, and expansion is slow.

[sandmote]

I imagine such an entity's goal would be helped by engineering a form of shunning where someone who breaks ranks loses their entire social and safety network; the further this can spread the stronger a threat it is.

Perhaps particular communities are encouraged to have slight differences, and someone more comfortable in a particular version of a role moves to the community that best fits them. Rather than trying to force a role on each individual, care is taken to shuffle people to a fulfilling role as efficiently as possible. Sort of like how not each hive of eusocial insects works the exact same way as every other hive.

Contrast a caste system, in which people are born to a job. In this case, it can be very difficult (if even possible) to maintain small-c communism.

[noob]

Encourage interaction with creatures of pure order so that people will progressively contact those more and more and start integrating them in the society: "this guy never lies and say their best intention is grouping people in an organisation as much efficient as possible" can be a good publicity if clerics have been already preaching the virtues of order.
Since messages are cryptic just try to mention orderly creatures more or less directly when people asks for solutions.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I imagine such an entity's goal would be helped by engineering a form of shunning where someone who breaks ranks loses their entire social and safety network; the further this can spread the stronger a threat it is.

Perhaps particular communities are encouraged to have slight differences, and someone more comfortable in a particular version of a role moves to the community that best fits them. Rather than trying to force a role on each individual, care is taken to shuffle people to a fulfilling role as efficiently as possible. Sort of like how not each hive of eusocial insects works the exact same way as every other hive.

Contrast a caste system, in which people are born to a job. In this case, it can be very difficult (if even possible) to maintain small-c communism.

That's good. I'd had that on the menu to a degree.

Basically, if you can't "conform" to your community, there are outlets to see if you can conform to a different community's consensus. Criminal penalties (mainly exile/shunning) happen for those who insist on being individualistic/contrarian and not listening to consensus. And even those who are useful and contrarian have a place--out on the frontier, where being in a small team/individual can work.

The idea is that people grow up in the consensus and then, when they reach the age of apprenticeship, their community decides on their place in society. If they don't have one that fits well (and this is usually known well in advance), the priests have coordinated a different place looking for someone like that. Yes, this relies on significant record-keeping and surveillance/snitching, and everyone's trained to share their concerns with the priests, who send it up the chain if they can't handle it.

Edit: and @noob--there really aren't creatures of pure order in this setting. Everyone (including angels, etc) has free will. Angels have their duty, but they do not play well with mortals, being much more of the Angel With Flaming Sword type than the cherub/protector type in the main. And the "gods" don't command the angels. No modrons (as such), etc. Very different planar underpinnings.

Plus, that would count as "direct involvement" if not handled extremely carefully and kept to a bare minimum with strong pretextual reasons.

[Mechalich]

But that's limited to a single nation, and expansion is slow.

It would seem ideal to find a means to expand faster, probably through conquest, and then impose 'order' through control of an extremely loyal and highly disciplined military class. Also, an entity interested in this kind of oppressive conformity has probably dialed up the ethnic cleansing agenda to maximum - after all, eusocial insects fight each other all the time, they just do so primarily at the colony level - with the intent of creating a single monotypic polity in the manner of an argentine ant supercolony.

This would suggest the deity is continually pushing his priests to develop some sort of military technology breakthrough that can be effectively mass produced and mass deployed. For example, there's some evidence that the ability of the armies of Qinshihuang to unify China depended upon advances in crossbow technology. Universal conscription, even in peacetime, also seems like a major pro-conformity measure that could be instituted.

[Tvtyrant]

So there's this entity (in-universe he's a god, but not exactly what most consider gods to be). He finds it rather disgusting and tragic that there's so much disagreement among mortals. Why can't everyone just cooperate, agree on what everyone's going to do, and then just work efficiently? His favorite animals are the eusocial insects, because there's order. Everyone has a role, and everyone does their role. Very efficient.

So he wants to encourage this behavior among mortals. His power is large for any allowed action, but he's got some very strong limitations on his means.

Limit 1: if he's caught/called out (by another Power) for taking away free will (ie through domination, mind control, or other compulsions), he will lose his standing and will likely be destroyed. There's a mechanism in place to enforce that, but it only triggers actively, so someone has to catch him.
Limit 2: he can only safely act through mortals (ie clerics or other agents), and only in response/proportion to their faith. So he can't proactively reach down and meddle, he has to get his clerics to ask for support before he can directly act. He can commission other astral agents to act, but that's limited. Here, "safe" means "without risk to his position". If he takes avatar form or meddles directly, he's as vulnerable as any other mortal would be, and not much more powerful.
Limit 3: A subset of #2--communications with clerics are reactive, not proactive. And have to be cryptic. This one's inherent--the communications channel is lossy. No one in the world (or at least no one relevant) has the power to go planeshifting to talk in person. Besides, even if they did, that would count as direct interference.

So what actions can/should this entity take to make the world a better place (as he defines it)?

So far, he (and the other Powers he's tricked, convinced, etc. to go along) has set up a theocracy over about 50 years. It's a communistic theocracy, small-c communism. As in, communities make decisions collectively, and violating consensus is a crime. But communities have been trained to listen to their priests (not all of whom are clerics), who listen to their hierarchy's collective will. But that's limited to a single nation, and expansion is slow.

Don't take away free will, get people to give it away. Make a hivemind effect that people can tap into, giving their body to the collective during worship and as their faith gets stronger during everyday life. Tapping into it feels euphoric and you can talk to the other minds in the hivemind; the more you give up control of your body into a drone the more blissful it feels. It becomes like a combination of drug and religion.

[Accelerator]

Don't take away free will, get people to give it away. Make a hivemind effect that people can tap into, giving their body to the collective during worship and as their faith gets stronger during everyday life. Tapping into it feels euphoric and you can talk to the other minds in the hivemind; the more you give up control of your body into a drone the more blissful it feels. It becomes like a combination of drug and religion.

I agree with this one. Get a large-scale blessing and.... this actually gives me vibes of a Theion homebrew I once saw.

Give large-scale blessings to people who act in conformity and act as one unit. Things like work getting done faster, faster reaction to attacks and change, and increased effectiveness with coordination. If someone doesn't act in conformity, his priests have the power to figure out who was the one that didn't conform and could have doomed them all. That'll help with the shunning.

Also, bless those who conform. Especially those who conform loudly and believe in your ideals. Give them very obvious markers of your favour. And also superpowers. Increased stats, better ability to do things, spell like abilities... make them be the very top of society. Even if there are dissidents who don't want to conform, they'll be greatly weakened, becase they'll be shunned, disliked, and the ruling powers won't listen to them.

[sandmote]

Also, bless those who conform. Especially those who conform loudly and believe in your ideals. Give them very obvious markers of your favour. And also superpowers. Increased stats, better ability to do things, spell like abilities... make them be the very top of society. Even if there are dissidents who don't want to conform, they'll be greatly weakened, becase they'll be shunned, disliked, and the ruling powers won't listen to them.

I'm not sure this description works with the described manner in which deities work within the setting.

But this does remind me of Amonkhet from magic that gathering. Or, more accurately, the plane shift write up they made for it here (note: I have no idea how phones react to the pdf; they might download it).

Although note in that example you get order because all of the gods are working together, which doesn't seem to be the case for this setting.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm not sure this description works with the described manner in which deities work within the setting.

But this does remind me of Amonkhet from magic that gathering. Or, more accurately, the plane shift write up they made for it here (note: I have no idea how phones react to the pdf; they might download it).

Although note in that example you get order because all of the gods are working together, which doesn't seem to be the case for this setting.

Yeah. Those sorts of things would definitely cause red flags with the other gods as being direct interference. The gods can't directly affect anyone unless in answer to a prayer for assistance, and their effects have to be channeled through one of their agents.

And I should note that this particular god doesn't care what the consensus is, just that there is one. He'd be fine with each community being different, as long as they cooperated with each other and had internal consensus. So he's not really a totalitarian/dictator type--he doesn't want to be in charge of making the decisions. And he considers himself the good guy here and would be disgusted by any form of blatant manipulation or conversion-via-sword. Plus, he has to keep his fellow helpers blind to the real goal here. Especially his wife (the goddess of mercy, winter, and natural death). The other two helpers (his son-in-law, the god of the sun, summer, and honorable "combat"[1] and his daughter, the empty-headed goddess of spring, growth, and cute little bunnies[2]) aren't (in his opinion) smart enough to see through his plans. He's wrong about their intelligence, but so far they've not acted as he's stayed in bounds.

[1] and other struggles/competition.
[2] well, technically all the young cute things, but bunnies are a particular favorite.

[noob]

That's good. I'd had that on the menu to a degree.

Basically, if you can't "conform" to your community, there are outlets to see if you can conform to a different community's consensus. Criminal penalties (mainly exile/shunning) happen for those who insist on being individualistic/contrarian and not listening to consensus. And even those who are useful and contrarian have a place--out on the frontier, where being in a small team/individual can work.

The idea is that people grow up in the consensus and then, when they reach the age of apprenticeship, their community decides on their place in society. If they don't have one that fits well (and this is usually known well in advance), the priests have coordinated a different place looking for someone like that. Yes, this relies on significant record-keeping and surveillance/snitching, and everyone's trained to share their concerns with the priests, who send it up the chain if they can't handle it.

Edit: and @noob--there really aren't creatures of pure order in this setting. Everyone (including angels, etc) has free will. Angels have their duty, but they do not play well with mortals, being much more of the Angel With Flaming Sword type than the cherub/protector type in the main. And the "gods" don't command the angels. No modrons (as such), etc. Very different planar underpinnings.

Plus, that would count as "direct involvement" if not handled extremely carefully and kept to a bare minimum with strong pretextual reasons.

The point was not to command the orderly creatures: only to make that when asked questions like "how to solve x" it would make cryptic references that can be interpreted as "contact an orderly creature".
Since there is no particularly orderly creatures it is simply impossible.
Even if those did exist there would be the risk of that backfiring horribly.
Example: murder cleric the mighty and murderous did climb up in rank in your religion through the use of mass murder, hate speeches and general mayhem.
Then murder cleric at some point have problems and communes with you and then they hear "square square" then the muder cleric thinks "obviously it means I am supposed to kill an orderly creature or a square or destroy all the squares in the world since it is how I interact with stuff so it means my god have chaotic intents and that we should make our society be based on never having anything orderly and killing anything that forms any sort of order and also destroy all the squares just to be sure"

(At no point in the rules is the god allowed to strip a cleric of its powers (since it is a non cryptic way to communicate that the cleric have ideals that do not align with the ones of the god and thus a forbidden communication) so nothing prevents from clerics opposing the cause of that god to form the entirety of the clergy of that god which can be really hard to manage since at no point you can communicate you are discontent with your available clergy(since it is non cryptic))

[Galithar]

The point was not to command the orderly creatures: only to make that when asked questions like "how to solve x" it would make cryptic references that can be interpreted as "contact an orderly creature".
Since there is no particularly orderly creatures it is simply impossible.
Even if those did exist there would be the risk of that backfiring horribly.
Example: murder cleric the mighty and murderous did climb up in rank in your religion through the use of mass murder, hate speeches and general mayhem.
Then murder cleric at some point have problems and communes with you and then they hear "square square" then the muder cleric thinks "obviously it means I am supposed to kill an orderly creature or a square or destroy all the squares in the world since it is how I interact with stuff so it means my god have chaotic intents and that we should make our society be based on never having anything orderly and killing anything that forms any sort of order and also destroy all the squares just to be sure"

(At no point in the rules is the god allowed to strip a cleric of its powers (since it is a non cryptic way to communicate that the cleric have ideals that do not align with the ones of the god and thus a forbidden communication) so nothing prevents from clerics opposing the cause of that god to form the entirety of the clergy of that god which can be really hard to manage since at no point you can communicate you are discontent with your available clergy(since it is non cryptic))

Does the God not have the knowledge available to choose whether to send a message or not?

For your example couldn't they simply choose to not send the message to THAT cleric that is likely to misinterpret, but wait for a different one that he sees as likely to understand the cryptic message?

[Bohandas]

He'd create something similar to any mainstream religion from any part of history (and/or any cult where all the adherents killed themselves), and you can take your pick which one because most of them are big on conformity and repetition.

[Galithar]

He'd create something similar to any mainstream religion from any part of history (and/or any cult where all the adherents killed themselves), and you can take your pick which one because most of them are big on conformity and repetition.

They also tend to use some pretty direct intervention in order to cultivate that level of brainwashing. The first thing Cults do is cut you off from the rest of the world and convince you to give up anything and everything that make you, well you. I don't think that the god in this scenario could "get away with" brainwashing followers. He would essentially need to back and support by whatever means available existing cults.

[sandmote]

The point was not to command the orderly creatures: only to make that when asked questions like "how to solve x" it would make cryptic references ...
Example: murder cleric the mighty and murderous did climb up in rank in your religion through the use of mass murder, hate speeches and general mayhem.
...
(At no point in the rules is the god allowed to strip a cleric of its powers (since it is a non cryptic way to communicate that the cleric have ideals that do not align with the ones of the god and thus a forbidden communication) so nothing prevents from clerics opposing the cause of that god to form the entirety of the clergy of that god which can be really hard to manage since at no point you can communicate you are discontent with your available clergy(since it is non cryptic))

See the initial comment, where the god can work through clerics "in response/proportion to their faith." I suspect this god would become unable to provide power to murder cleric at some point before they become a cleric of that god. "Cryptic," in this case probably means the god can't send a message explaining to the cleric the exact reasons their holy power dried up.

Does the God not have the knowledge available to choose whether to send a message or not?

For your example couldn't they simply choose to not send the message to THAT cleric that is likely to misinterpret, but wait for a different one that he sees as likely to understand the cryptic message?

Note that is the channel is lossy, the god might not be able to control the final message.

That said, I hope a god would be clever enough to start saying "help them to live," after the "not," in "do not kill them," gets lost enough times.

[noob]

I think it is probably horribly frustrating for that god to be unable to communicate properly.
A priest asks "should I do X" they want to say "I care about you priest please do not do such a foolish thing" then the priest understand nothing and then they do X.

[ParasocialTroop]

I'd take inspiration from IRL cults and pyramid schemes (modern day "Multi-Level Marketing companies). It doesn't take a huge amount of direction to get these going, humans seem to be attracted all by themselves. A key is a common goal and if the deity wants it to be global, then I'd suggest that resisting a gobal threat would be a good goal. And this could be achieved with cryptic warnings to the clerics, start with broad warnings and let them come up with what the threat is. To spread, the deity would want to engineer a manifestation of that threat (though it could be carried out by their mortal servants) to show others that the threat is real and serious. This could be a threat that is ethereal and difficult to disprove in nature. For example, it could be a claim about the afterlife, and the clerics could pretend to be mediums telling people that their loved deceased ones are giving them warnings from beyond the grave and they must join the cult to... prevent the same fate befalling them, save the souls of their loved ones, ect. (This example doesn't work well if other clerics can use magic to contact the afterlife.)

I imagine such an entity's goal would be helped by engineering a form of shunning where someone who breaks ranks loses their entire social and safety network; the further this can spread the stronger a threat it is.

This is one of the ways a cult can maintain power over those inside and prevent them from leaving. If the deity cannot directly cut off those who break ranks then they've got to encourage that sort of punishment to be community driven.

One thing the deity would need to worry about is mortals trying to use the cult to their own political gain, shunning those who are political rivals and claiming apostate. But I don't know if the deity really cares much about that. Also, it could be a good way to spread the faith, have the clerics let political up-commers in the neighboring areas in on their secrets. Then the political up-commers convert their followers and use the cult-power of the faith to come to political power in their own realms and it spreads from there. That is the pyramid scheme aspect, a real or imagined promise that bringing in others and policing their conformity will increase one's own power/standing.

[Draconi Redfir]

Two words: Enforce Capitalism.


Everyone is going to do what they need to do if doing what they need to do is the only way to pay off the "Being alive" tax.

might take a few centuries to get to that point, but he's a god. he has time.

[Galithar]

Two words: Enforce Capitalism.


Everyone is going to do what they need to do if doing what they need to do is the only way to pay off the "Being alive" tax.

might take a few centuries to get to that point, but he's a god. he has time.

I would agree if the most capitalist countries in world weren't equally chaotic to all noncapitalist countries.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Two words: Enforce Capitalism.

Everyone is going to do what they need to do if doing what they need to do is the only way to pay off the "Being alive" tax.

might take a few centuries to get to that point, but he's a god. he has time.

I would agree if the most capitalist countries in world weren't equally chaotic to all noncapitalist countries.

Warning about approaching RL/politics way too closely for comfort.

------------

In this entity's ideal world, there would be no disagreement. Diversity, but only because situations are diverse. Any two people in the same circumstances would make exactly the same decisions--people would be interchangeable widgets in the greater whole. And happy being so. He doesn't want people thinking "what's in it for me" or even "what should I do to make the world better"--he wants people to just plain know the answers (to the second question) and do it without thinking.

Of course, in-universe, he's wrong that this would be best. And he's swimming against the stream and his dream not only will not succeed, but cannot succeed, and even if it did succeed, it would break everything horribly. Good intentions don't immunize you against bad outcomes. But the knock-on effects in the world should be interesting for players to encounter.

[Draconi Redfir]

very strict, very rigid, very close-minded schooling system maybe? Spend serval generations just teaching people "this is what you do. this is how you do it. This is how it's done." And any dissent from that or outside influence is strongly opposed.

the "United Citizen Federation" from Starship Troopers might be a good place to look too for inspiration. think they might have something akin to what your looking for.

[Grek]

Limit 2: he can only safely act through mortals (ie clerics or other agents), and only in response/proportion to their faith. So he can't proactively reach down and meddle, he has to get his clerics to ask for support before he can directly act. He can commission other astral agents to act, but that's limited. Here, "safe" means "without risk to his position". If he takes avatar form or meddles directly, he's as vulnerable as any other mortal would be, and not much more powerful.

Make a personal list of accepted roles in the community, then exhibit extreme favoritism in proportion to people's conformity to these roles. You don't need to publish the list, as people will eventually notice that the god has a soft sport for hard working craftsman, dutiful children, democratically elected leaders, people who tend to graveyards, etc. Give people powers which support their role and ideally do so in such a way that it prompts a social transition to a blessing-sustained way of life. A farmer in the desert who has been blessed with the ability to create water for his crops will think twice about angering the god who makes the waters come, for example. Sharply and abruptly withdraw support whenever a transgression is noticed, but make it a personal policy to always grant any request made by a cleric for the purpose of smiting nonconformists. If someone in the community is being bad, only requests for investigation and combat magic should be granted. Finally, shower rewards endlessly on anyone who attempts to establish consensus-based communities abroad, whether they are successful or not.

[KineticDiplomat]

Well, let’s see if I recall the basic conditions that mostly cause metric-based compliance (which doesn’t always end WELL, but it does get conformity):

1) Centralized
2) Hierarchical
3) Idealist
4) Authoritarian

Pretty soon he’s going to hit the scaling issue of communal/communist living, and wonder where he has to go to actually make this work on the level he wants.

Assuming your people act like humans, the above four items are consistent enough that they’re regarded as academically sound (in so far as any soft science can be).

If you want everyone to go up the right side of the escalator or plant wheat instead of potatoes, that system will do it. The centralization prevents divergence of ideas, the hierarchy self reinforces through careerism and the fact that “good reasons to not do the thing that we’re all measuring as good” rarely translate two layers up, the idealism justifies lots of actions inherently and allows for divergence from self-interestedly optimal outcomes, and the authoritarianism is your final check on any getting uppity about it or having a better idea.

Pretty quickly the organizational system will self mold to obsessively pursue those goals set out for it, and value doing so in a manner that can be presented in simplified terms.

We’ve seen that outcome in everything from 19th century German forestry to social programming.

So...set up his religion along those lines, and promise a better life to the down trodden.

[MoiMagnus]

Harry Potter's House system and Sorting Hat is a very efficient way to encourage conformity.
(1) Peoples are put with like minded peoples, reducing contrarian ideologies within each Houses
(2) Partisanship and "team spirit" is one of the strongest way to unify humans. Every houses have values idealised that the children want to conform to in order to truly be "part of the House".

I can totally see some kind of "sorting ceremony" where the children coming to age get put in contact with the deity through a priest, that gives to them an animal, a colour, or a symbol of some sort corresponding to his/her personality, and then the society organising itself according to those animals/colours/symbols.

[Slipjig]

I think within his nation, it's pretty straightforward: make the priests responsible for arranging all marriages. Troublemakers (AND their families) can expect to have even their most promising offspring paired up with people who are unattractive, dumb, or just have no prospects. This would exert a HUGE amount of pressure to keep people in line, and it would enlist the family members of potential troublemakers in keeping them in line.