The Wordsmith's Forge

>>I'm doing my best to present a range of different Friends, from historic figures to fictional ones, across a wide timespan and in diverse contexts.<<

Good solution.

>>*ponder* We really don't have a "city Quaker" yet, the ones with more money and a fancier dress mode.>>
What about setting some stories in Philadelphia or London? Phili would be Quaker-dominant, and probably involve allied Native tribes, while 1600s London would be a more … prejudicial environment. But either would be a good place for a business or bank story in the 1600s.
<<Could sure use a banker! I mean somebody has to think up the money laundering as a nonviolent organized crime.<<

Unfortunately, most of the prompts I can think of would be in the 1700s or 1800s, and I don’t think the timeline is shored up enough yet. Here’s a list of L-Earth businesses to glance at, though : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Quaker_businesses,_organizations_and_charities

>>Point. I do tend to lay out the parameters and then actively search for exceptions to the rules.<<

I think you do a good job – and if you did goof on something, you’d be willing to listen or even try to fix it. I’ve just seen it done badly so often that I’m extra cautious.

>>We're going to have to deal with the pacifism issue and how different Friends interpret it, just because this setting mixes Quakers with organized crime (original prompt) and pirates (where it's trending).<<

For some reason, I find the mixing of 1600s pirates and the slang term ‘trending’ in the same sentence to be hilarious.

>>That means looking at the underlying principles,…<<

A lot of times, outsiders don’t look into underlying values of different cultures. Probably because it’s a lot of work!

But when interacting with – or writing – an other-group character it really helps with understanding.

>>…how individuals or Meetings interpret them, and the effects of context.<<

Like all human societies, we can be really fractal about values, customs, etc. Good for storytelling purposes, though!

>> Dunno how well I'm explaining this... I hope I am making sense. <<
>>You are. Maybe it'll work out, maybe not, but it's an interesting discussion and highly relative to this series, which is really about moral quandaries at the core.<<

In that case, something else to keep in mind will be that (in activism spaces, with Quakers and with life in general) it is important to try and have an idea of your moral framework /before/ dealing with a moral quandary.

For Quakers specifically, that’s one of the reasons our decisions tend to take awhile – we’re considering all angles.

You can probably easily find some resources on the activist side of things.

Anyway, I suspect that aspect will be incorporated into the symbiosis culture. At minimum, it is useful for helping people sort out where they are best suited on the hawk/dove spectrum. It will also probably be useful for advance troubleshooting of risky situations.