Perfect eden - Whence conflict? [closed]

Question

An interstellar convoy of human colonists arrive on a new planet. 500 years later, another convoy arrives, to find the descendants of the original colonists locked in a brutal civil war.

The planet is a literal Eden. Fertile lands, abundance of natural resources, year-long mild weather.

Why would any conflict arise?

What would be the justification/rationale for such conflict? I've been scratching my head looking for one that doesn't stretch credulity.

I've considered Religion-based conflict, but it doesn't sit well - I imagine that a group of colonists would never have selected from among a fundamentalist religious group.

Race-based also doesn't sit well, because the colony is essentially a fresh community - I am under the impression that Race-based conflict arises (or arose) from interaction between different racial communities.

I'll consider race-based or religion-based answers if you can provide an example from human history of conflict arising from similar conditions.

Also, the 500 year time frame is flexible - can go up to 1000 years.

Answer 1

elemtilas has an excellent, but somewhat depressing answer: "Because humans".

That might be true, but one can still wonder what set off the conflict. What were the first two groups to fight?

My suggestion is Crew vs. Colonists. Note: This is not my idea. I am sure read at least one novel or series based on it. Can't name them, though.

In flight, Crew are valuable, Colonists are cargo.

Once they land, Crew are obsolete, Colonists are valuable.

That sudden shift is hard to take for most Crew. They will try to keep in power.

So, why doesn't the Colonists just shrug and move far away? Planets are big.

It turn out that there is one resource that is scarce in the new colony. The ships and their computers. These computers contain lots of valuable information about how to build a colony. And only the Crew can access them.

The Colonists are very knowledgeable about the first generation tasks like making houses and food.

The next tasks, starting mining, smelting and industry was considered less immediate, so the knowledge was shipped in the form of electronic books. That only the Crew can access.

Oh, and they included some weapons in case of dangerous animals. It turns out the only dangerous animal is Homo Sapiens. The Crew controls those weapons.

The Colonists, on the other hand, have numbers on their side.

All in all a classical setup for a noble/peasant society. And since these peasants remember living in a democracy, they are not going to take it. Revolt!

I would expect some Colonists would run away and live in relatively primitive conditions far from the main camp. Others will stand and fight.

Several answers have mentioned that lot can happen in five hundred years. No single civil war is going to last all that time.

You can have many unsuccessful peasant revolts and noble-on-noble wars start, finish and be forgotten by then.

And then there is the successful peasant revolt... Afterwards the revolutionary army moves into the palaces and start living like nobles. Vive la Revolution!

After that, the few remaining Crew nobles ally against the new Colonist nobles to dethrone this "obvious affront to the natural order"

All in all, "Because humans".

Answer 2

The basic observation is that nothing created by imperfect mortal men lasts forever. Not buildings, not machines, not political systems. Buildings, and machines, and political systems need constant maintenance, and it always comes a time when incremental maintenance is no longer feasible and they need to be torn down and replaced.

Oh, and five hundred years is a very long time in history. For example, in the last five hundred years France was (1) the Kingdom of France, (2) the First French Republic, (3) the First French Empire, (4) the Kingdom of France again (restored), (5) the First French Empire again (restored), (6) the Kingdom of France again again (restored), (7) the Second French Republic, (8) the Second French Empire, (9) the Third French Republic, (10) the French State, (11) the Fourth French Republic and finally it is currently (12) the Fifth French Republic.

Examples

1. Love and honor:

   The handsome and brave, but rather silly, Paris Alexander son of King Priamus of Troy seduces the Helen, the Queen of Sparta, the most beautiful woman in the entire world and wife of King Menelaus. When Helen follows Paris to Troy, King Menelaus takes offence, and convinces his brother the Paramount King Agamemnon to assemble all Greek forces and make war on Troy.

2. Perceived need to reform the state:

   The brilliant general and statesman L. Cornelius Sulla realizes that the Roman Republic has engaged onto an unstoppable slide towards populist anarchy. He starts a civil war, and he wins, becoming dictator with no term limit. He reforms the legal framework of the republic, and, shockingly, he actually leaves office and retires to live as a private citizen.

   The brilliant general and statesman C. Julius Caesar realizes that the Roman Republic has become utterly disfunctional, and there was no way to mend it within the normal regular legal framework. He starts a civil war, and in the end he wins, becoming dictator for the very short rest of his life.

   The brilliant general and statesman C. Octavius realizes that his adoptive father C. Julius Caesar, sadly deceased, had been right all along and the Roman Republic needed a thourough rearrangement. He starts a civil war, wins, and introduces a small number of tiny legal changes which enable him to become the first Emperor of Rome.

3. Perceived need to tear down the state and rebuild it from the ground up:

   The French Revolution began as a technical quarrel over whether the votes in the States General ought to be counted as one estate one vote or one delegate one vote. It soon veered into an explicit effort to destroy the Kingdom of France and replace it with a happy citizens' paradise. When the dust settled twenty years later, some 3 million French people had died, about 8% of the population.

   The Great Socialist October Revolution which Took Place in November was explicitly intended to destroy the Russian Empire and replace it with a happy workers' and peasants' paradise. Between 7 and 12 million people had to die.

   The Chinese Communist Party led by the brilliant statesman Mao Zedong started a great civil war with the explicit intention of destroying the Republic of China and replacing it with a happy workers' and peasants' paradise. 7 million people had to die.

4. Plain constitutional crises:

   Many times in the history of the Roman empire there were two or more men who each considered themselves the true emperor. Guess how the concurrent claims were resolved.

   In 1377 when King Edward III died, the Kingdom of England found itself without a clear successor to the crown. Competing noble houses began a civil war which lasted on and off for 32 years. Unsuprisingly, in the end it was neither the Lancasters not the Yorks who emerged victorious, but the Welsh Tudors.

5. Ordinary rebellion:

   The ordinary course of events is that one or more political figures convince part of a country that they really truely want to be independent, and are willing to die for freedom. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose, but quite often a lot of people have to die in order to settle the matter.

   In 1774, some English politicians living in the American colonies convinced part of the population that they really truely wanted to be independent, and were willing to die for freedom. In the expected course of events the rebellion would have been crushed, but it so happened that the Kingdom of France saw it fit to bankrupt itself in support of the rebels. The rebels won and established the United States of America. The Kigdon of France went indeed bankrupt and descended into the bloody French Revolution followed by the Napoleonic Wars.

   In 1861, some American politicians living in certain southern states convinced part of the population that they really truely wanted to be independent, and were willing to die for freedom. The rest of the union objected, and went to war to teach them the error of their ways. About one million Americans had to die in order to confirm that the United States of America is an empire and not a federation of willing states.

A lot of things can happen in five hundred years

The question asks, innocently, why would any conflict arise? In five hundred years! The question is not why would any conflict arise, but rather how many conflict will arise.

Five hundred years ago it was 1524. There was no Germany. There was no Italy. There was no Russian Empire. Denmark and Norway were a single state; so were Sweden and Finland. Greece and most of the Balkan peninsula belonged to the Ottoman Empire. India was ruled by the Mughal Empire. (Yes I know that it was founded in 1526. Close enough.) Spain and Portugal had divided the world between themselves. There was no United States of America, obviously. (North America belonged to Spain, theoretically, although the English did not care about any stinking Papal Bull.) There were no Russians in Siberia and but very few Europeans in select places of sub-Saharan Africa.

Since 1524 up to this day the world went through quite a few major conflicts. Just off the top of my head, the Ottoman conquest of Hungary; the Thirty Years War; the English Civil Wars; the German Peasants' War; the Great and then the Long Turkish War; the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars; the Franco-Prussian War; the Russian Civil War; etc. etc. ending with the First and Second World Wars.

Answer 3

Human Colonists

You answered your own query. Humans are broken creatures. Almost by nature, it seems. They are contrary, restless, easily gruntled, and even more easily disgruntled. You can give a human a lifetime supply of chocolate and he'll turn around and complain that it isn't Cadburys. Or if it is, that it isn't British recipe.

This isn't a religion based perspective, but it can be seen through that lens: that is, humans are a fallen race. Even a child knows, in his heart, that life is inherently "unfair" or that some tragic event "shouldn't happen". Even adults know this: psychologists call it denial ("this can't be happening!"), but what it really is is the recognition that this is not how the world is supposed to be. Our hearts yearn for perfection: the true good, the true beautiful and the true truth. Here, in this world, we never get it. And conflict is the result.

Thus, assuming a universe like our own, the answer is that conflict arises in a perfect locale simply because you're introduced broken, conflict-prone humans into the mix. You don't need religions. You don't need race. You don't need politics. You just need one or more humans in order to yield three or more conflicting attitudes!

For the purposes of your story, you can pick anything you like to base the civil war on. But regardless of the plot element you choose, it always arises from the first principle.

The image portrayed is classic, from Star Trek: Let That Be Your Final Battlefield. In this episode, the Enterprise discovers exactly what your second convoy does: two peoples locked in a deathly, yet utterly vain struggle over something that makes no difference. As the two antagonists continue their multi-millennia long struggle to annihilate each other, as their entire races had annihilated each other in war, we can see exactly whence conflict arises within an otherwise (nearly) perfect eden: the human factor.

Answer 4

Selfishness

As you are talking about Eden, let me draw a comparison with the Biblical account of what happened in the Garden of Eden. Coincidentally (or not), this is what most, or even all, of the answers boil down to.

Fertile lands, abundance of natural resources, year-long mild weather.

All of this and much more - peace and joy - was present in the Garden of Eden. So what happened? Adam and Even were selfish: they wanted something that was good for themselves (at least in their own eyes) but which neglected the need or best interest of others (in this case, God).

God gave a few commandments like do not envy, do not kill, do not lie, do not lust etc. These commandments are thought to ensure a peaceful and happy living together, but all of them are broken by humans all the time.

So, to summarize:

• Peace may overthrown because some king lusts for the wife of some other king.
• Peace may overthrown because some king is envious of some other king because his kingdom is larger.
• Peace may overthrown because people lie to each other because they promise themselves gaining more resources. Or more money. Or whatever else. Even if they already have enough.
• Peace may be overthrown because you don't like your neighbor because of how he spoke to you once (but only beacuse he has had a bad day) and you began to despise him slowly, more and more, because you think you are better than him.
• etc. pp.

All of this comes from the same root cause: selfishness. Or, as the Bible would put it, disobedience against God.

Luckily, the Bible doesn't stop here but God showed His mercy and forgiveness for our transgressions, but that's for another story...

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(This isn't a religion-based answer, it's just a comparison with the Garden of Eden that OP was referencing with the conclusion that this was a well-chosen reference.)

Answer 5

Economic Change

At the beginning of the settlement, there were lots of economic benefits from being near the point of landing, because that was the highest concentration of labor, useable materials, and capital. Lack of transportation helped. Government was set up there.

As the years wound on, people settled further and further away. Transportation was built. Lucky strikes meant that regions were growing richer than the original settlement.

The laws still favor the original settlement, starting with not adjusting for local conditions and going on to laws that simply favored it because they were passed when most people were there. Plus the taxes are collected everywhere, and chiefly spent in the original settlement because the government structure is chiefly there.

Whether a demand for full-blown secession, or for more local control, or for laws to handle realities, tensions could easily rise and erupt in war in a few centuries.

Answer 6

Let's look at actual Eden.

You say:

The planet is a literal Eden. ... Why would any conflict arise?

Have you read the story of Eden? Adam and Eve are placed in the Garden in chapter 2 of the book of Genesis. The do a tiny bit of animal-naming and then and in Chapter 3 conflict arises. Now you can say "that's religious" but it fundamentally isn't. Fundamentally it's because in any paradise there have to be "rules" - things you have to do to avoid turning paradise into hell. Adam and Eve get convinced that they can do better for themselves if they break the rules of Eden.

In your Eden maybe the "rules" about preserving the paradisical nature of the plant - no strip mining, no polluting, no destroying wildlife habitat. They don't have to be actual rules imposed on people - they can be standards of behaviour that everybody agrees are necessary to preserve the planet paradise. But somebody wants to break those rules - they want huge cities, space flight, colonising other worlds. They prefer big industry and power instead of a perfect habitat.

And don't forget that you don't have to be brought up to think about this stuff, just like you don't only get to be a "fundamentalist religious" if your parents were. Sometime people have ides of their own and they like them and work hard to get what they want instead of what the people around them think is best.

By the way, this is really only a variation on "because humans" with a bit more specificity.

Answer 7

Your answer lies in what the world they left looks like more than what the world they landed on looks like. A similar but different piece of world building would be the vaults in the fallout series, they are touted as a perfect utopia, and they potentially could be. However the company who made them designed them as a large scale experiment which caused them all to more or less collapse.

Why would any conflict arise? Because it was always intended to arise

Answer 8

Just an option that I find personally compelling: You could have a conflict arise from a perceived crime committed by a member of the colony, perhaps one colonist takes the life of another, but the colonist who did the act claims they were justified, or that it was an accident, or something along those lines, and the rest of the colony forms into camps based on who believes the "attacker" and who doesn't, or over what punishment, if any. It might seem difficult to imagine this extending into a centuries-long conflict, but Family feuds would often start with a single event, and extend for generations, and if there are people in the colony that are strongly connected to the conflict, i.e. family of the wronged/deceased, strong rifts can form. This could also simply be the first action that causes the initial conflict, and it snowballs into a series of disagreements... Just a thought.

Answer 9

Ideology clash

Hello ye olde SMAC, which actually described how humans can war endlessly about some hand-waved dogmas or ethical principles. Your planet is a lot more friendly to humans than Chiron, allowing any dissidents to just wander away and build their own "perfect" society elsewhere, then grow to a reasonable power level to declare independence or just oppose the initial colonial government militarily.

"Untermensch" concept

Aka slavery or any other system of denying some people some rights by any kind of segregation. No system based on slavery is stable, so eventually it'll go boom one way or another; from the top or from the bottom (either Spartacus rebelling, or Julius Caesar demanding some more slaves). However, there will always be those that rule and those that work, so at least some initial segregation will always take place. It might evolve differently, depending on initial and lasting threats encountered on that planet; since it's fertile, numerous threats of all scales could attack the emerging colony, from diseases to wild animals to plastic-eating fungus.

Energy collapse

As the colony grows, it demands more energy to remain stable, and if someone would always be left without enough energy, stuff would happen. Speaking in terms of modern society, if someone would be smart enough to disable or outright destroy the entire set of power plants on Earth, or at least lower the electricity supply enough, the current state of humanity would deteriorate pretty rapidly. Imagine the colony's central fusion reactor going down beyond repair - in a matter of a week, all power-demanding facilities would stop, and only rudimentary peripheral installations that run off solar power might still retain some capacity. The core of the colony, left without power, would cause humans to scatter, also leaving them vulnerable to outside threats, whoever would survive would likely lose technological levels down to somewhere medieval, or below if metals are not available without expending a lot of energy to retrieve.

Any society that would retain solar power and enough technology to at least replicate early technology of controlling and collecting power would start small and remain small for a period long enough to be found by "barbarians" left from the initial collapse, who would grow by virtue of changing the proliferation model, and if spared, could be a target for potential invasions from other parties, representing an irreplenishable resource of technologies and means to actually employ them. There might be several such enclaves, depending on how long has passed between the planetfall and the collapse, each eventually being coltrolled by a separate community, causing wars for resources to get off the ground.

In fact, there is a LOT that could happen within 500 years, from power usurpation to destructive mutation spreading around the populace causing inherent division. The modern history contains no less than 20 wars within the last century, and as other answers mention, the governments change sometimes even faster, and when that happens, whoever loses power would likely go on the warpath. Depending on actual geopolitics, the war might as well encompass the entire ecumene on that planet.

Answer 10

Since the dawn of agriculture and the end of hunter gathering, humans have been tied to specific areas of land for farming purposes. Farming under ideal conditions can lead to a great abundance of food, labor and produce. As has happened repeatedly through human history (for example the ancient Maya Preclassic and Classic civilizations) this has led to the formation of unstable elites who want to exploit that abundance for their own ends and the stratification of society. Multiple elites will lead to rivalry and in some cases open hostility.

Regardless of apparent plenty, There will always be things in short supply. For example locations for building homes with the most magnificent views, entry to the best schools and universities, access to the top leadership roles, ability to build the most impressive temples, pools, towers, cities, bridges and opportunities for the elites to show off. Access to the most beautiful / desirable women etc.

It's basically human nature to want more. It's also in human nature to classify other people as friend or foe, local tribe or foreigner and humans ability to refrain from doing very bad things to foreigners in the interests of the local tribe is limited as we have seen repeatedly throughout history from Troy to Palestine.

Answer 11

There will be conflict over resources. While an Eden may have plentiful resources, they are still limited. And to make matters worse, a society is limited not by the sum total of resources, but by the one resource that happens to be in shortest supply. (If for example steel requires iron and coal and you have very little coal, then you will also have very little steel even if you have plenty of iron.) Once the supply of that one resource can no longer be secured by colonising new lands, conflict over control of the existing deposits will follow. It will not be race- or religion-based at its root but of course both can be used to explain just why the other guys do not deserve to own the deposits.

Answer 12

Love. Similar to the story of Helen of Troy. You've got a guy that is just so perfect and beautiful that every woman wants to have his babies. When he finally chooses a mate it turns out to be someone from a different faction as hiw own family. This stirs up strong feelings of bitterness and jealousy among his birth faction and various others. These feelings spark minor aggressions that grow into violence and eventually full on conflict.

Answer 13

As others have said: because humans.

In the first instance, no matter how much of an "Eden" the planet is, there will still be resources that are limited. And that generally leads to jealousy and conflicts.

Secondly (and to broadly generalise) humans are a herd animal, and tend towards forming groups and cliques. My family, my friends, my town, my football team, my county, my country.

And we also tend towards being competitive, selfish and lazy - for all that the latter two tend to be viewed negatively, they're also pretty strong (if primitive) survival traits. Competition also tends to lead towards the formation of cliques - look at how much time, effort and money is spent by people trying to reach some perceived ideal of beauty. Or to look at it another way, take the highly stratified societies of the past, such as found in China and India, and how those layers of stratification basically dictated everything from your job to your clothing.

It'd honestly be harder to come up with a way for a society to remain stable and happy for 500 years...