I thought that one of the unofficial SD rules was that posts have to be in English?
Well, part of it too, is that the Technocracy is a victim of its own success. It’s become institutionalized and a bureaucracy, and so it’s become locked into unhealthy patterns. The different conventions don’t trust each other and sometimes have radically different goals and work against each other. Office politics play a major role within traditions, too, as different programs fight for funding and priority.
I don’t think the point of the Technocracy is stagnation, so much conformity. The Technocracy was set about to work for change, after all, and still does. However, as I mentioned earlier, these changes and policies are decided by committee, and the average Technocrat isn’t a free agent. He works inside a box that’s defined by his convention. This means that he can’t go off and pursue his own projects, but it also means he can tap into a support network. The average technocrat has access to more resources and backup than the average tradition mage.
Part of the Technocracy’s emphasis on conservativism and conformity comes from the the view of the universe as expressed in Mage. The Mage universe is an idealistic one. Things exist because people believe them to. If everyone started believing people can fly, people would be able to fly, for example. In the Mage books, this is the idea behind magic. Some people have enough will, enough mind power, enough of what the system calls “quintessence”, to be able to shape the universe around them to their will, alone.
A mage could, for example, be able to toss a small projectile with enough force that it could go through a person and kill him, because he or she uses the force of their will to do that. However, there’s another way to get a small projectile moving fast enough to kill someone, and that’s by using a gun. A gun, though, unlike the magic, if it’s maintained correctly and not broken, always works, and can work for anyone, because of basic laws of physics. By using this gun, we’ve taken a dynamic reality, where my ability to kill you with a projectile is based on my will, and turned it into a static reality, where my ability to kill you is based on natural laws of physics that work for everyone. The goal of the Technocracy is to make all of reality static. They have the misfortune of being materialists in a world that’s idealist. So, how do you change a world based on ideas and shared conceptions to a world that’s based on natural laws? You get everyone in the world to believe that natural, universal laws determine reality. In a world like that, “quintessence” disappears, and everyone is equally able to manipulate the environment for their benefit.
Seriously. The Tech is made of 5 groups called Conventions.
Iteration X-Are heavily into technology and computers. They build AI's and killer robots. Any mage who joins Iteration X has their frontal lobes(the seat of personality and the part of the brain that is chopped up in a lobotomy) removed and replaced with a Digital Enhancement Implant (or DEI-which is (latin? Italian?Esperanto?) for God).
Void Engineers-These brave explorers search the unknown frontiers. Here on earth, the chart the sea bottom and the remote wilderness. In space, they journey where no mage has gone before. They find aliens, and magical creatures and then exterminate them. VE's are dedicated to making space dead and empty. There WERE jungles on Venus. VE's destroyed the plants and killed all the fauna. The rest of the Tech then set about convincing everyone that Venus was covered in clouds of sulfuric acid, not steam.
Progenitors-These are the doctors and geneticists. They have cured many diseases and helped make modern medicine what it is today. They also assasinate their enemies, and their allies, and replace them with perfect clones. They develop drugs to control people's minds. They are the doctor and know whats best. Sure, they've decided to amputate your disease and injury free arms and legs, but it's for your own good.
Syndicate-
“Money makes the world go round! It makes the world go round.”-Cabaret
They control money. Stockmarkets move according to their plans. They can bankrupt whole countries. Their long term agenda is to make all people into consumers whose only goal in life is to own more things. They want a world where the only things people wish for are in mail-order wishbooks.
New World Order-They control media and information. The Tech has literally rewritten history with their help. They feed people lies. “It’s not that we don’t believe you Dad. It’s just that the TV has spent so much more time raising us than you have.” The TV is your friend. Believe everything it tells you. Do not question the TV. Remember, you don’t have to do or accomplish things. Just sit back, turn on the TV and watch other people do and accomplish things. The NWO also specializes in surveilance. Who needs privacy? A camera in every room of your house is the only way to be truly safe.
And this, fundamentaly, is why the game doesn’t fly with me. In a universe where everything can be defined as magic in some way, I don’t find anything horrible about attempting to create a common definition of ‘magic’ in the form of natural laws and order.
Where the extremely individual Mages of the Traditions don’t seem overly concerned with anyone elses enlightenment and understanding but their own, the Technocracy at least is, in an admittedly warped sort of way, bringing ‘magic’ to the common man. I’ve always felt that Mages of the Traditions, much like Vampires (who have an excuse) and Werewolves (who have an even bigger excuse) and the rest, consider themselves beyond the “herd” of normal humanity. I find it difficult, in my own big government liberal real-life mind, to force myself to role-play that way.
Will Smith’s song “Men In Black”, and the movie itself, are good summaries of the Technocracy’s world view. Here’s the song with lyrics:
http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/meninblk.htm
DocCathode, I’m not saying the Technocracy is a perfect organization. It has a tendency to be paternalistic. It also tends to adopt the “You need to break eggs to make an omlet” approach, and is not always sensitive to the rights of the individual. Internally, it’s often inefficient. The Peter principle holds sway. It’s largely an old-boys club. If you’re a minority, a woman, or gay, or for that matter, outspokenly religious, there are going to be glass ceilings, and you’re going to be held to a higher standard than the average agent. Office politics play a big role, the different conventions don’t usually agree, and there’s a lot of disorganization and covering of ass. That being said, the Technocracy is concerned about the protection of humanity and its advancement.
The Syndicate, for example, isn’t interested so much in making all of humanity consumers. Everyone already is a consumer. It’s more interested in guaranteeing the free flow of wealth around the world, integrating the world economy, and developing an economic model so that large scale market fluctuations won’t happen.
The NWO isn’t as interested in producing mind numbing TV as it is in working towards a world government, monitoring countries for instability, and encouraging countries to develop stable, democratic states with a high standard of living and a social welfare net.
The Technocracy doesn’t want a stupefied apathetic population. They want people to say, “Wow, science is cool.” They want people to be interested in new scientific gadgets. That’s part of the Technocratic mindset…“Science is good, freedom is good, progress is good.”…all that stuff you learned in elementary school civics. They’re the children of the Enlightnment, and have enlightment ideas.
They certainly aren’t nephandi. They don’t go around hurting people for fun. They’re enemies to the traditions, sure, but that’s because they consider the traditions to be prescientific nonsense, and tradition mages to be unstable and dangerous to society.
So I can’t give an exact quote but
‘When the world is empty of hope and individuality, then the Technocracy will have its Ascension.’
Yes the Tradition (cue Fiddler On The Roof) Mages can be self absorbed and irresponsible, but they want freedom for humanity. The Technocracy started out to protect humanity, but soon began to see control of the masses as an end in itself.Posting from work, so my book is also at home. However, I take exception to that statement. Of course the game book, written from the point of view and often in character of the Tradition mages is going to have nasty things to say about the Technocracy. White Wolf’s RPGs are all written “in-character” if you will, where the books make no pretense (like say D&D’s core books) of neutrality in describing the campaign world. For better or worse, they espouse a particular world view in each and every supplement. This makes them more fun to read, by a long shot, however it also means (and this is one of my many problems with non-Vampire WW games) that you need to break out the bullshit filters to figure out what is really going on.
Mage is probably the most personal of the White Wolf RPGs. For the most part free of the grand meta-plots of Vampire and Werewolf, the game explores the personal concept of Ascension from the POV of the Mage characters. The problem with this, from my perspective, is that it requires the characters to be primarily motivated by self interest. The Traditions want freedom for themselves, and the fact that humanity as a whole is also free doesn’t really register on most of their ethical radar.
Humanity is free. Great. Free to starve, free to freeze, free to die of disease. Maybe one in a couple thousand will have the Will to harness some Quintessence of their own and improve their own personal standing. But the rest? Buggrem.
A perfect world, from the point of view of the Traditions presented in the core book, would not be one in which the majority of people would be safe or happy. Free, sure. However, the game presents science (at least in the sense of traditional reductionist thought) in a very negative light. It removes the mystery (and thereby the Quintessence) from the universe and saps the Mages of ther specialness and indivuality. This, to me, is a really unpleasant way to look at the world and not something to be admired at all.
And the thing is, they could have made this a game I wanted to play. All it would take is a single Tradition who was motivated by something approaching altruism. Just to introduce that concept into the game, just to give the characters something to discuss or think about. Just to get them to think about what happens to the rest of the world. Mage, even moreso than V:TM (which I love) strikes me as a very juvenile game, the sort of power fantasy that would appeal to dissaffected teenagers. I haven’t been one of those in a couple years. LOL. 
At the preface to the “Player’s Guide to the Technocracy”, it says something like, “Are you glad we have antibiotics? Do you enjoy living in a warm house, instead of a ditch in the middle of the woods? You’re a technocrat, and don’t even know it.”
I agree with JDemobray. A world where the Traditions win the Ascension War is better for the Traditions, but not really good for humanity.