Symbiosis - The Ecology of Roshar, and why SA might not be a story about Colonialism

[asmodeus Artifabrian]

Making sense of Symbiosis and the ecology of Roshar

Symbiosis is defined as "interaction between two different organisms living in close physical association, typically to the advantage of both."

Now, remove the Humans and Truespren out of the equation, and let's just look at all the various kinds of subspren and known fauna of Roshar. Take... for example, creationspren. Because of the singer forms, we know that when a Singer attracts and form-bonds with a creationspren, it grants them Artform. Singer psychology is influenced heavily by the particular form they are, which basically says that bonding to a spren in that way influences both they way they look and the way they behave. Another way to put it would be that the spren they bond to has a lot of say in both their physical and mental capabilities.

Now, assuming this is true symbiosis, both participants should be getting something out of it. The benefits a form bond grants a Singer are well known and understood, but what do subspren get out of it? Unlike truespren, there is not desire for that spren to get out into the physical and get presence and capability there, because there isn't enough intelligence to them, and they are trapped in a gemheart the whole time anyway.

We do, however, know something about this. Spren are creatures that depend on physical entities to perceive and feel things to even _exist_. When a person gets angry, they attract angerspren, because angerspren pretty much "feed" on the feeling and perception of anger from the person feeling it. This is because sentient beings feeling and perceiving anger as a thing is what _creates_ them in the first place. Creationspren are attracted to creative pursuits, because a living, physical being actively being creativity is what creates creationspren, and is thus also what sustains them. It is the equivalent of "food" for subspren, but it is also, in a way, a means for reproduction (somewhat iffy on this). 

So. What does a creationspren get out of giving artform to a singer?

The answer is existence.

If a Singer bonds a Creationspren to enter Artform, they are taking this literal living idea of creativity and creation into their very soul, which makes the Singer _more_ creative and oriented towards creative pursuits. BUT, as the Singer then makes art, and just becomes more creative in general, and is sort of motivated towards different kinds of creative pursuits, that then sustains and feeds the creationspren. That kind of cognitive activity (ughh, this is not the right phrase) is what gave rise to creationspren in the first place. It may even attract _more_ creationspren and feed more than just one creationspren.

If living creatures in the Physical feeling, perceiving and personifying anger creates angerspren as a "species", and attracts and feeds individual angerspren, then it makes sense for an angerspren to put a Singer in a state of mind that tends towards getting angry, because that Singer getting angry not only feeds that one angerspren, but also potentially creates the conditions for _more_ angerspren to exist. And how can taking the literal living idea of anger into your soul _not_ make you more... "angry"? Your soul now literally has more anger in it.

And voila, Symbiosis. The Singer got something out of it, the spren got something out of it. The singer got capability and tendency, the spren got to feed off that capability and tendency.

Rosharan ecology can then be structured around this very careful balance of give and take between all manner of sentient creatures in the Physical, and all the various kinds of subspren that are given existence by the impact these sentient creatures have on the Cognitive. 

Humans are not Colonists, they're an Invasive Species

So far, I think this was Adonalsium's original vision for the system - symbiotic life of this sort. Now... consider that because the Singers evolved in this ecology, they have certain characteristics because of this history. And every creature, no matter what ecology they grow in, has that. All ecologies are balance in this sense, and so every element of an ecology has advantages and disadvantages that help it maintain this balance. For example, because the Singers have natural access to literal living ideas, they evolved to be these compound creatures, where a Singer soul without the investiture of the spren is... atrophied, or incomplete. And thus, dullform being relatively more dull and stupid. This is a disadvantage of sorts - because the Singers can just "borrow" a lot of different kinds of capabilities from spren, they never needed to evolve these things in themselves, not fully. On the otherhand, it's also an advantage. Any Singer can be an artist, if they so wish. The Singers aren't better or worse as a species, they're just different, owing to how vastly different the ecology the live in functions and how different their evolutionary history would be in this different ecology.

But this ecology is not where Humans evolved. Humans evolved on Ashyn, which - from what they brought over, at least - seems relatively more earthlike. They didn't have easy access to spren, nor did they live on a world with too much excess investiture, nor an easily accessible perpendicularity, not like Roshar. So... they are not a part of this careful balance that exists on Roshar. Moreover, because they didn't co-evolve with spren, their physiologies never relied on them, and so the capabilities that Singers could get from bonding spren had to have been an innate part of human souls and bodies. And this was fine, because in their native environment, this was how they stayed in balance.

Why does this matter?

Because, once the humans came over to Roshar, the balance of its ecology would have broken. Before, a Creationspren would have to hang out around a singer and enter into a form bond with them, getting trapped into their gemheart, for guaranteed sustainance. Now, with the advent of the humans, they no longer require to give Singers anything, they don't _require_ to enter a form bond to sustain themselves and maybe even create the conditions for more creationspren to exist. Nope. Now, with the humans, a creationspren can simply hang out around them, and still get fed. Because of the innate characteristics of the humans because of the conditions they grew up in, they would outclass Singers in their ecology.

Humans, in the ecology of Roshar, would be an invasive species, whose very existence drastically affects the balance of Roshar's ecology.

A Potential Sequence of Events

Now, you might be asking why you should accept this line of reasoning. Well, because it leads to a set of circumstances which explains the God switching before the first desolation.

It seems natural that with the advent of the humans, and Honor and Cultivation helping them, the Singers would feel threatened. Honor may have asked them to give Humans a chance, but Odium may have fed on this fear, and used it to start some sort of aggression, pitting Singer against Human. Honor may have given assurances to the Singers, but it may not have been enough, not with Odium there to stoke some fires.

Moreover, spren are curious. They want to explore this new species, and Humans, despite being warned against it, maybe let them. Another reason for the Singers to feel more threatened.

Not to mention, Roshar is a bit too high-oxygen, so fire is a lot more dangerous to use as a lighting source. So maybe Humans venture outside Shinovar in the early days just to farm some gemstones to use as a light source, nothing much more than that. But... the Singers see this as a further threat, maybe even seeing this as the Humans being out for blood.

And, eventually ... conflict. An Odium influenced faction of Singers is afraid that the existence of humans on Roshar threatens the Singers as a species. Honor stays largely neutral and is pained, but Humans give as well as they get in the conflict. Odium creates the Fused, Humans are on a _real_ backfoot, things are going horribly, and when the Heralds go to Honor, he finally takes pity and facilitates the Oathpact, which, if you consider it, was still the neutral solution - imprisonment of immortal warriors of both sides.

The rest, as they say, is literal history.

TLDR

In the end, the story of Roshar has pretty much no elements of known Colonialism, not in its early history. It, however, can have a lot more in common with the concept of a species suited to one ecology being picked up and put into a new ecology, and _becoming_ an invasive species in its new environment due to the natural advantages it brings over from it's own ecology.

Edited September 27, 2020 by asmodeus

[Honorless Lord Ruler]

That was a great read, and in retrospect it's strange that I never thought of the Rosharan humans as an invasive species on Roshar's ecology. I would note however, that being an invasive species doesn't preclude one from being colonists.

[Frustration Nightwatcher]

29 minutes ago, Honorless said:

That was a great read, and in retrospect it's strange that I never thought of the Rosharan humans as an invasive species on Roshar's ecology. I would note however, that being an invasive species doesn't preclude one from being colonists.

Colonialism was about getting reasorces for the motherland. There is no motherland anymore.

[Honorless Lord Ruler]

2 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Colonialism was about getting reasorces for the motherland. There is no motherland anymore.

Depends on whether or not you only consider Asian and African colonialism or would you also consider American and Australian colonialism

[Frustration Nightwatcher]

2 minutes ago, Honorless said:

Depends on whether or not you only consider Asian and African colonialism or would you also consider American and Australian colonialism

Why where the American colonies not allowed to manufacture anything? Brittan wanted the reasorces. Putting people there was more of a social movement than a political one. And Australia was... I don't know I never studied that beyond it being a prison.

[book.spren Lighteyes]

Quote

Humans fled to Roshar from Ashyn, another planet in the Rosharan system.^[45] They had destroyed the planet using what Honor implied to be the dawnshards.^[53] Honor and Cultivation commanded the singers to take the humans in despite the forbidden powers they had relating to spren and Surges^[52][54], and they were given Shinovar to live in since Shinovar could support the plants and animals they brought.^[53] With the humans came Odium.^[55] The humans, possibly with Odium's influence, grew dissatisfied with what they were given. The conflict between the invading humans and the singers living on Roshar became the First Desolation.^[56]

This is what I found on coppermind.net

It sounds like humans were more like refugees, at least at first, than invaders. It was Honor and Cultivation who forced humanity on the Singers and then Odium encouraged the conflict between humanity and the Singers.

[Honorless Lord Ruler]

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

Why where the American colonies not allowed to manufacture anything? Brittan wanted the reasorces. Putting people there was more of a social movement than a political one. And Australia was... I don't know I never studied that beyond it being a prison.

Your point? 

[ILuvHats Seer]

5 hours ago, Frustration said:

Colonialism was about getting reasorces for the motherland. There is no motherland anymore.

That might be true, but IMO saying that colonialism is a theme of SA is still appropriate. The relevant aspect of colonialism is the conflict it heralds between the natives and the colonists. The economics of colonialism are not the focus of SA, and since I can’t think of a better term (invasive species doesn’t really cover the human aspect of it), I would call colonialism a focus of the series. 

[asmodeus Artifabrian]

22 hours ago, Honorless said:

That was a great read, and in retrospect it's strange that I never thought of the Rosharan humans as an invasive species on Roshar's ecology.

I found the idea to be pretty cool, but I'm not sure how to present it all that well. Hence this mess of a post

22 hours ago, Honorless said:

That was a great read, and in retrospect it's strange that I never thought of the Rosharan humans as an invasive species on Roshar's ecology. I would note however, that being an invasive species doesn't preclude one from being colonists.

22 hours ago, Honorless said:

Depends on whether or not you only consider Asian and African colonialism or would you also consider American and Australian colonialism

From what I can find, every form of Colonialism - and there can be a lot of different kinds, apparently - involves the interest of "some other place" to be involved and be a driving force in things, even for internal colonialism inside one state. So... I'd love to see an argument of someone trying to explore this from a colonial perspective.

16 hours ago, ILuvHats said:

That might be true, but IMO saying that colonialism is a theme of SA is still appropriate. The relevant aspect of colonialism is the conflict it heralds between the natives and the colonists. The economics of colonialism are not the focus of SA, and since I can’t think of a better term (invasive species doesn’t really cover the human aspect of it), I would call colonialism a focus of the series. 

Uhmm... okay, I edited the post to address some of this, but no, very little - if anything at all - in Roshar's history fits what you would call colonialism. It really doesn't. Colonialism is a specific thing, and economics are a central, driving aspect of it. Heck, if you really want to generalise economics into any kind of interest of a "distant" state, it _still_ doesn't fit what happened on Roshar, because there isn't any such "distant state" that could really fit.

Now... can colonial factors have come into play later? Maybe. But again, there's not much in the history of Roshar where you can clearly establish the same kinds of colonial forces that were prevalent in our history, forces that we use to define Colonialism.

We do have some "signs" that make people think that - slavery of Parshmen is a big one of those. In our world slavery is often tied to kinds of Colonialism, so it makes sense for people to see it and think Colonialism. But Roshar got to that stage in a very different way than we did. It's likely that the Radiants knew about some of what the Heralds had done (because of their close ties to spren and even Honor, and also Nale, a Herald, was literally a Skybreaker). If the Radiants were already planning a Recreance, fixing the Parsh, even if they could fix the Parsh, would have been an open question, given there would be no-one to watch over the Human race when those same Parsh were taken over / indoctrinated by the Fused the next time a desolation rolled over, without the Radiants and the Heralds. They would not know of the Everstorm and it's Parsh-fixing capability.

So the enslavement of the Parsh would have come about through a very different sequence of events, driven by very different forces.

Similarly, humanity didn't come to dominate Roshar wanting to exploit the Parsh or have any other sort of interest in greater Roshar - by all accounts, the Fused nearly wiped out humanity first (though, granted, we don't know how the souls that became the Fused died the first time over, but even that is a very small conflict, taking place in a segment of time that is nothing, compared to the vast history of Roshar), and then again every desolation. At that point, distrust of the Parsh as a species is justified (or at least, knowing what we know of Human nature, understandable), given that any living Singer could be sacrificed and taken over by the Fused. And then, when the desolations roll over, it's not like they had much guidance. Even less so after the earlier desolations, when even the Radiants weren't around.

So... yeah. the history of Roshar has more elements in common with a species being introduced to a new ecology, and becoming an invasive species and coming to dominate that new ecology, maybe even drastically changing it, over time. At least, more in common with that narrative than with the traditional Colonial narrative.

Edited September 26, 2020 by asmodeus

[Frustration Nightwatcher]

17 hours ago, ILuvHats said:

That might be true, but IMO saying that colonialism is a theme of SA is still appropriate. The relevant aspect of colonialism is the conflict it heralds between the natives and the colonists. The economics of colonialism are not the focus of SA, and since I can’t think of a better term (invasive species doesn’t really cover the human aspect of it), I would call colonialism a focus of the series. 

You can't take the economic aspect out of an economic ideology and call it the same thing.

What happened way back when on Roashar is exactly what has happened everywhere on earth at every time, one nation conquering another, this is Alexander the Great against Persia, Ceazar against Gual.

[Bzhydack Forger]

41 minutes ago, Frustration said:

 

What happened way back when on Roashar is exactly what has happened everywhere on earth at every time, one nation conquering another, this is Alexander the Great against Persia, Ceazar against Gual.

I think is more like Goths conquer Italy. Those people was forced to abandoned their homes by some force (in this case by other tribe- Huns) and first were refugees inside other country, but after that they used weakness of previos country and take over.

[Gilphon Originator]

So, really, the colonialist aspect of the story isn't the humans coming from Ashyn- at that point they were refugees. The colonialist bit is the human spreading beyond Shinovar, and eventually enslaving the Singers. 

[Frustration Nightwatcher]

2 hours ago, Gilphon said:

So, really, the colonialist aspect of the story isn't the humans coming from Ashyn- at that point they were refugees. The colonialist bit is the human spreading beyond Shinovar, and eventually enslaving the Singers. 

Why that happened is unclear,

And enslavement was 2,000 years later, and completely unintentional.

[Karger Unmade]

It is noteworthy that the listeners talk about the ancient betrayal of the spren.  Possibly this was about more then just surgebinding.

[Gilphon Originator]

Honestly though, my stance is that this is a good theory with some (much shakier) quibbling about the definition of colonialism tacked on and distracting from the actual meat of the theory. Like this is the first time I've seen somebody come up with a plausible reason for the spren to prefer humans to singers, and explanation for why the spren were said to have betrayed the singers. 

[Kingsdaughter613 Prime]

Something else to consider: humans breed exponentially. We don’t see large Parsh families, not even among the slave population, where you would expect it. On the other hand, three to seven surviving children were about average for pre-industrial women. With Rosharan people being more likely to survive childbirth, and traditional childhood illnesses being non-existent, we’re talking seven to thirteen surviving offspring per family - at least until they realized that they didn’t need so many pregnancies to ensure survival.
 

Within a handful of generations Shinovar was no longer capable of sustaining the human population. So they left due to lack of resources... and covered the rest of Roshar.

 

Invasive species is a great metaphor.

[Kon-Tiki Misting]

So, I wonder.

Humans are less an invasive predator, as is normally associated with invasive species, and more an invasive food source, particularly for emotionspren and some of the odder, less easy to classify spren like musicspren or creationspren. I've also suspected for some time that the advent of humans caused non-Odious but still new kinds of spren to appear. Would humans, being able to draw any kind of spren at pretty much any given moment, based only on mood, be drawing spren from across Roshar in a sort of migratory way, making it harder for singers to change forms when they wanted? Possibly. Hadn't thought about it. Seems like a cool theory.

I agree that Stormlight isn't really colonial literature in the sense that humanity weren't really colonists so much as refugees. I have, however, seen it compellingly argued that Stormlight is excellent post-colonial literature, without having a true colonial history. It deals with a lot of the same problems as post-colonialism, only the problems are caused by a source other than actual colonialism.