Values Dissonance/Literature: Difference between revisions

*** It's mentioned in one book that incompatible human couples with compatible dragons occasionally find someone ''else'' to [[Kissing Under the Influence|mate with under the influence]], and do a kind of 'swap'.

** At least one disability-activist has objected to ''[[The Ship Who Sang]]'' for its premise that those born with severe disabilities might be better off enslaved as cybernetic ships and facilities, rather than accommodated to lead a normal life.

* Pretty much ''anything'' written by [[H.P. Lovecraft|HP Lovecraft]], whose racism went ''far'' beyond what was common even in his day and age. Due to his belief in Britain as the pinnacle of civilization, he would regularly describe other ethnicities with the same revulsion as his [[Cosmic Horror]] beasts. According to his divorced wife, "Whenever we found ourselves in the racially mixed crowds which characterize New York... Howard would become livid with rage. He seemed almost to lose his mind."

** Though he did recant his racist views and admitted that the racial mixing of New York was a good thing.

** A couple of Austen's books have characters marrying or wanting to marry [[Kissing Cousins|their first cousins,]] which was totally acceptable at the time.

* [[Jonathan Swift]]'s ''[[Gulliver's Travels]]'' depicts the Houyhnhnms as a perfect society based on Reason--infinitely superior to the narrator's native humanity anyway--but to a modern reader they're contemptible. Whether Gulliver's value judgments at that point are meant to be taken at face value or [[Unreliable Narrator|not]] may be questionable, but in any case Ted Danson didn't tell us the nice horses had a rigid racial hierarchy (among themselves, based on their coat colors) and were last seen contemplating genocide...

* In-universe example: there are a few places in the [[1632]] series where the values of the "downtimers" and those of the "uptimers" Clash. Noteworthy is the example of ''mutual'' Values Dissonance when modern-day schoolteacher Melissa Mailey is shocked to see refugee-matriarch Gretchen Richter hitting any of her younger siblings who doesn't obey her promptly. Melissa is of course reacting with modern sensibilities towards corporal punishment. Unusually, the author shows Gretchen's reaction as a case of Values Dissonance as well -- what kind of neglectful woman fails to properly discipline children and lets them just run riot? That would ruin them! Amusingly, this tension is resolved when Gretchen sees Melissa ordering around her uptimer students, and comes to the conclusion that Melissa objects to corporal punishment not because she wants to let kids run riot but because she is so personally formidable that she has never ''needed'' to smack a kid to make them listen to her. Which of course is what starts Gretchen on the path of learning that there are other methods of child discipline.

** Also, the "uptimers", whose view of 17th-century people is heavily colored by the image of the prim, uptight Puritan, are quite startled to find out just how frank - and bawdy - "downtimers" can be in discussing sexual topics and using so-called "barnyard" language. On the other hand, the "uptimer" habit of casually taking the Lord's name in vain often causes sticky moments with "downtimers", for which this is a serious no-no.