Skip to main content
Worldbuilding

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

3
  • $\begingroup$ Good point. Any society which lacks laws (or, lacks law enforcement) is technically the world described in the OP; but in reality, actions have reactions even in the absence of laws. Similarly in every animal society. If you hurt someone I care about, you know I will hurt you, and so you don't hurt them in the first place. But this only works so long as there isn't a wide dichotomy of power. Once one group gets all the power and the other is unable to enact retribution, then justice goes out the window. $\endgroup$
    – Dewi Morgan
    Commented Nov 24, 2022 at 6:20
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ Real-world example: Duels of honors. The infamous "see you at dawn" with 2 duelists, each with their assistant/witness, firing pistols in turn or simultaneously. Families grieved the poor lad who should never have asked for/accepted the duel, but that lad had walked into it himself, and thus it was accepted. $\endgroup$
    – Matthieu M.
    Commented Nov 24, 2022 at 9:29
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ real world example: Japan. Even now blood feuds there exist between and inside traditional families that often end with people dead, sometimes a lot of people dead. It's no longer the norm that this leads to open warfare involving hundreds of people fighting it out in the streets and fields, but assassinations are still common because of it and the families involved accept this as normal and live with strict security structures because of it. $\endgroup$
    – jwenting
    Commented Nov 24, 2022 at 11:35