What could be a reason why a more developed civilization isn't helping a less developed one to advance? [closed]

Question

The idea is that there are multiple really small, undeveloped villages and then there is a separate, to villagers non accessible place (a city), where a higher society has developed. This city has it's own government, but also has it's own internal conflicts. The villagers regard these people as "higher beings".

There is common evil. Higher beings are at war with this evil. This evil also attacks the villages, that are not able to protect themselves. The higher beings are protecting the villages, but otherwise their interaction is minimal. The higher beings are warmly welcomed in the villages, but are not worshiped.

The higher beings are reborn villagers, but they are unrecognizable by the villagers that knew them. Also the regular villagers cannot enter the higher being city because the living conditions are harmful for them. - This is meant as a reason why villagers cannot be brought to the city of higher beings, which is needed for the plot, but some answers have stated, this can be used also as a reason, but not necessarily.

What could be plausible reasons why the higher beings are protecting the villages, but not helping them otherwise.

Is there a reason that could support following limitations:

1. If no religion is involved.
2. The villagers are not used as a workforce.
3. Not all villagers get to reincarnate
4. Reincarnation for other reasons is not considered to be good.

Answer 1

You seem to have answered the question yourself;

Also the regular villagers cannot enter the higher being city because the living conditions are harmful for them.

So presumably the higher beings couldn't uplift them to their own level because doing so would be harmful to them. They can't improve their lives in that way, so instead they protect them from the evil as best they can.

You could take it further and say that the two races (assuming they are distinct races) are harmful to each other (possibly something to do with how their reincarnation works?) and can only spend so long in each others presence. So the higher beings can only visit the villages briefly or risk making themselves and the villagers ill.

Answer 2

As said, you already seem to have answered it yourself.

You could increase the stakes: The higher beings already know the village life is not the end of life, that there is an afterlife (the one they are living). So add something from that perspective: They know the village life is a test of character, and if they interfere in that test their own descendants may not even GET to the city.

So, like children that must suffer the many things they hate (going to school, eating vegetables instead of candy, drinking fruit juice instead of soda, etc), the higher beings know the villagers must struggle through "first life" on their own and be tested. They can prevent them from being killed by evil, and that does not have to be something so easy to discard as noblesse oblige, they do that out of love. But too much interference could actually endanger the souls of those they love; they don't get the easy city life if they don't pay for it; just like the kids don't ever get to be Doctors if they don't do well in school.

The lessons in the village are orders of magnitude harsher than what we force children to go through; but the analogy is the same: Village life is preparatory; even if you are crippled "for life" the higher beings see that as just a temporary hardship; you will get over it.

Other than the protections against pure evil; the higher beings have minimized their interference out of love for the villagers which are their children and grandchildren, not inattention or lack of caring. I'd make that noblesse oblige an excuse they use with villagers to help them keep their secret, which they do to protect the villagers: The higher beings believe that if the villagers knew reincarnation was for real, then far fewer villagers would get reincarnated! Because certainty of an afterlife could breed sloth and carelessness in their present life.

Answer 3

I have a few ideas

• The higher beings have major flaws in society and they don't want the villages to turn out the same way.

• The higher beings somehow benefit from having a non developed workforce.

• If you say that they are "reborn villagers" than maybe there is a religious motive for not wanting to help them develop (maybe the rebirth wont work anymore)

Answer 4

Star Trek has a few stories along this line. There is the The original series (TOS) story that was paralleling the Vietnam war with Kirk standing in for America and the Klingons were the Soviet Union and both were arming different sides in a civil war. This is especially useful in situations where the higher beings and the evil beings are powerful enough to wipe each other out in open conflict and was one of the ways the US and USSR could go to war with each other during the cold war without the nukes flying. Arm the guys who want to kill the guys the advasary is arming (not the enemy... in the US military at least, the true enemy is the Navy.). The "Prime Directive" episodes also dealt with Federation law which prohibited the heroes from with directly interfering with a species that had not yet developed Warp Drives (reasoning that the species that does would have to deal with aliens anyway, and offering species stuff they hadn't earned would pollute their own culture) OR taking a side in a developed nations internal politics. The Next Generation era (TNG, and includes Deep Space Nine (DS9) and Voyager (Voy)) were alot more strict about this rule than Kirk era was, which allowed conflicts with what happened if the primitive race was polluted. Look for a list of episodes that have this as a direct conflict (TNG's First Contact is a personal favorite and flips perspective of the "Alien Infiltrator" stories in fiction.).

Alternatively, higher beings do not have the resources to help the villagers... they are only there because evil is there and once evil leaves, they have no stake in the reconstruction. Since the logistics (supplies and shipping them) are often neglected in fiction, this would provide some realism and isn't a political parallel.

Alternatively, the higher beings are consumed by their will to fight the evil race that they are obsessed. Helping the villagers would slow down the defeat of evil... perhaps even allow them to regroup and strengthen. Whether the threat of that is real enough to justify this is perfectly fluid. Lack of a real threat means more obsession. Actual threat means that the highers do have a point.

A treaty between the evil and highers that puts directly helping the primitives in anyway beyond assisting in battle. Of course, like all good treaties, cheating will happen (don't believe me, look at the Washington Naval treaty, which governs classifications and limits Naval power among modern countries (it's post WWI, so it's old, but Naval warfare changes very little). Then look at all the fun ways the countries cheat. Most of it is illegal but Nation A won't call foul on Nation B because Nation A is just as guilty of creative interpretation. Alot of it is insestent terms i.e. the United States only operates 11 Aircraft Carriers. Those 20 other ships that launch and recover aircraft that just so happen to look like Aircraft Carriers the rest of the world uses? Those are Amphibious Assault ships, not Aircraft Carriers.). Can be further complicated if the Evil race is blatantly cheating but the higher race is moral enough to still play by the rules.

A neutral third party (NTP) that is just as, if not more, powerful than the highers and the evils decreed no helping the villagers. Said NTP should be a sleeping giant and either due to the ongoing war or just naturally so, they are more powerful than the Highers and Evils. As much as the two powers hate each other, NTP entering would be bad news so they comply.

The Villagers are non-particularly loyal to the Higher Beings... this would mirror recent American intervention in Syria which boiled down to a fight between a regime most voters did not carefor verses a rebellion group that was infiltrated by Al Quada (sp) by the time the US government decided to try and get involved. No one was thrilled with the prospect that arming rebels would result in arming an organization that wants to kill Americans as part of it's major mission statement. More historically, America was none to thrilled to enter both world wars because that was Europes Problem, not ours... even after Pearl Harbor, Americans were content to prosecte only the Pacific theater... it was Hitler declaring war on the United States that triggered the European Theater participation. Either way, the attitude boils down to "why are we sending our troops to die for their problems" as a popular political element in the Higher Powers.

Again, this also depends on which side in the conflict is your POV character. If this is about the Higher Power, than a "Prime Directive" is something you want to go with. The Highers treat it as near sacred doctrine and it's hyped as a sign of their enlightenment, but it's flawed in that it inheritly puts value on lesser beings.

If the Villagers are POV, you want to hype that the Highers are nice to have on your side, but are jerks.

All this said, I like the idea that this conflict has some politics to it. It's easy to say one is the purely pure good and one is the dastardly evil... it's a lot more complicated to say that the good guys and the bad guys are not black in white. One of my favorite series as a kid (animorphs) had this as a rule. The evil empire was governed by a democratic elected body and the head of the government's only true power was to cast tie breaking votes (if there was no tie, he didn't get to vote) and was never publicized for the dual purpose of security and power limitation purposes (it's hard to have a cult of personality for a leader when he or she is unnamed.). Meanwhile the good governmnet was controled by a xenophobic military command that at least twice enacted genocide policies to try and deprive the evil empire of resources and had a very censored media because they did not want their own people to find out about some of their war crimes (we learn pretty late that civvies in their society were much nicer people... but our heroes had the misfortune of dealing with the military more than the civvilians).

Answer 5

You could look at the history of China, Afghanistan, or Africa. Why did we not "help them advance?" Use those reasons, but only if you don't mind your "higher beings" seeming much less high.

You'll probably have philosophical difficulties defending the high/low distinction anyway. For instance, how did the distinction arise in the first place?

Answer 6

How about:

The "evil ones" are basically the same as the "higher beings". Both are the reincarnation of villagers, with full memory of life in the villages. The "evil" ones don't actually see themselves as evil, but from the view of a "higher being", they surely are.

Being a "higher being" is not such a great deal. It is full of responsibility, perhaps without much pleasure. One is constantly vigilant against the "evil". Higher beings die, with no understanding that there is something else, and it is commonly known that this is the end.

The villagers are the children and subsequent generations of both the evil ones and the higher beings, so both sides have an interest in "protecting" their offspring. The difference is in their priorities, and from what they are protecting their offspring.

It is often a painful and difficult process to die and reincarnate, although not everyone's experience is the same. Neither the higher beings nor the evil ones look back fondly at the experience. Once reincarnated, they have unpleasant responsibilities, disturbing new knowledge, and probably lose other things they each passionately remember, such as love and sex.

Of course, not everyone's experience of reincarnation is the same, and this also colors each individual's perceptions.

How a village person is reincarnated depends on what they know at their time of villager-death. One who is aware of the future conflicts is more likely to become an evil one. This is another mystery, but there are documented cases which strongly hint so. "Higher beings" have a self-protection reason to keep the village peoples uninformed.

For more nuance, it can certainly be the case that the city depends on the labor (perhaps for food production, or mineral extraction) or the lives (perhaps for maintaining the "dream energy" of many people dreaming and living together) of the villagers.

I wish you well with the world you are creating.

Answer 7

The Higher Beings may treat the Villagers with admiration or wonder, as they are conserving a natural way of life that may long be lost in the City life. In order to protect ancient culture and traditions, the Higher Beings take care not to try to elevate the Villagers into their modern lifestyle - possibly out of respect, religious reasons, or for research purposes.

Answer 8

Well, there could be lot of reasons for that e.g.

• religious prohibition or taboo
• law prohibition
• political conflicts (this can be connected to law )
• business reasons (some of citizens benefit from some kind of monopol, that could be broken if viliges were developed)

Answer 9

Perhaps the villagers are intentionally excluded, in order to see what technology they will invent. If the higher beings give tech to the villagers, then the villagers will progress along the same path as the higher beings did. On the other hand, by letting them struggle on their own, it may result in different discoveries than had happened in the higher beings' development.

This is not without historical precedent. China produced far better pottery/porcelain than Europe, and therefore had no need to develop better glass. Europe relied on glass instead, and so there was a supply of people who knew how to work glass. This meant that refractive lenses could be developed, and microscopes/telescopes could be invented.