Fiction:The Spacions/Society

Characteristics In order to fully understand how the Spacion community works, one must first understand what makes the Spacions so different from other beings in the galaxy. Two characteristics in particular have defined Spacion society and history through the ages: their intelligence and their emotions. Intelligence: The Spacions are the most intelligent creatures known in the galaxy, or at the very least in the South Arm, but what does that mean? We do not refer here to the accumulation of knowledge, which is a consequence of intelligence, and not intelligence itself. In the early days of the Spacion Empire, other species had more knowledge then them, yet they stood no chance against the Spacions, because they have an intrisic potential for intelligence that is far superior. Intelligence can be defined in as many ways as it manifests itself: the ability to solve an existing problem, to explain what was previously unknown, to see beyond what is already known and find new questions...In short, intelligence can be seen as the ability to understand, and Spacions have that ability more than anyone else. A mistake would be to see this as simply the ability to think faster, that they learn what everyone learns but just quicker. That is not it at all. Things that normally require long and specific efforts for the mind to conceve come naturaly to the Spacions. For example, many aspects of complex mathematics, physics or philosophy are not even taught to Spacions children because they will develop them on their own as instinctively as they learn to walk and speak. Or to be more precise, they form in their minds the psychological and mathematical tools that allow them to understand these problemes naturaly, opening the way for them to learn deeper and more complex knowledge much harder to access for other beings. And so, from an exterior point of view, it may look as if the Spacions think faster. In fact they simply don't need to think as much because much of what requires hard thinking for everyone is trivial and natural to them. Their minds are just developed to uderstand complex and abstract notions much more easily.

Emotions Before the Isolation, many who encountered Spacions believed they were incapable of emotions, maybe even that they were machines. This misconception is not surprising. Although Spacions are capable of feeling the exact same emotions as everyone else, they are also capable of choosing not to feel them. Indeed, evolution gifted them with a special organ soberly called E.C.O for Emotion Control Organ which, as its name so well indicates, produces a special hormone which inhibits emotions. It is believed this was a defense mechanism developed in creature Stage to avoid panic, but since their Civilization Stage and the development of bio-engineering, Spacions have been able to control this organ at will, allowing them to choose whether or not to feel any emotion when it appeared. This has a massive impact on the mentality of the Spacions and the functioning of their society. Since they are obsessed with knowledge and science, objective logic has become the fundamental basis for any form of reasoning, even outside of scientific domains. The ability to control emotions is for them a guarantee that their decisions are based solely on logic and facts, and not influenced by what they consider to be “polluting emotions” that cloud judgement. If at first only particularly strong emotions such as love and hate were inhibited, nowadays Spacions refuse even the tiniest bit of any emotion, to the point where most of them activate their E.C.O. purely as a reflex whenever the slightest hint of a feeling appears. A social consequence of this is that the open display of an emotion in public, regardless of which one it is, is seen as particularly disrespectful at best, straight up criminal at worst. On the other hand, some rare eccentric individuals see emotions as a form of recreational drug, and amuse themselves in private (that alone shows how eccentric and rare they are) by letting their feelings go uninhibited.