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Description
This piece started with me trying some new techniques for making continents based on some stuff I tried while making the Nlia commission for

This planet is called Cockaigne after the mythological land of medieval legend where the luxuries of life are always available and want does not exist. It is home to an immensely advanced civilization, or so they would have you believe. The cockaignians are an interesting civilization in that they live in a stateless society. They exemplify the ideal anarchist society with no hierarchies or any kind of authority structures. I'm not going to get into the silly argument about law and order in an anarchist society, it's not really necessary for this description and if you want to understand how that works there are tons of books and a wikipedia page about Anarchist Law. In any case this whole process began long ago when the cockaignians were not much more advanced than we are today. Advances in robotics led to an increasingly automated manufacturing sector, and later began to encroach into other parts of the economy such as service and administration. In time their entire global economy became automated through the use of robotics and advanced artificial intelligence. The process became self-sufficient, self-regulating, and self-governing and eventually there was no longer a need for anybody to actually work. Even scientific research and artistic endeavors became subject to automation. By this point the idea of government seemed a bit like a moot point. Everybody was provided for, there was an excess of everything, and there was nothing left to fight over and thus nobody to defend against. Of course it wasn't like everybody just decided over night that government was pointless and immediately switched to a "perfect" anarchist society. It happened slowly, over generations: government became more and more local and had less and less regulatory power until, one day, somebody realized that there was no governing body anymore and nobody had any idea when exactly that had happened.

The cockaignians consider themselves to be a very morally minded people. They neither live in chaos nor decadence. Endless leisure, sure, but not necessarily decadence. Their species was never really territorial, so they've never really grasped the concept of colonizing new worlds even though they have the technology to do so. Likewise they lack any compelling reason to engage in diplomacy with other space faring civilizations, so they don't. They have everything they need and nothing anybody would want. That's not to say they're xenophobes or isolationist by any means: immigration is not allowed but anybody is perfectly capable of visiting their world. One would assume that illegal immigration would be a problem to such a planet, but it's not. For most who get a glimpse of life on Cockaigne the experience is... Disturbing. A life of endless leisure and no responsibility sounds appealing from a distance, but up close it's creepy. It's not that people live their lives without purpose--many cockaignians dedicate their lives to becoming highly educated or pursuing the limits of creativity--but the sheer amount of freedom they have is overwhelming.

There are issues with this society, of course. Nobody is sure how the machines that automate their civilization work or how they come to the decisions that they do. The machines repair themselves, and they design and build new machines for new tasks and improved versions of themselves for tasks already automated. For all the cockaignians know they're not free at all and the machines subtly dictate every aspect of their lives without them ever being aware of it. There are no fail safes in place in case the machines suffer some kind of catastrophic failure: it is assumed the machines have thought of that eventuality and made their own plans accordingly. Without any kind of government they also have no method to engage in diplomatic negotiations or military action of any kind if the need ever arises. Again it is assumed that the machines have solved this problem as well. This trend is part of a larger problem with cockaignian culture: there's no longer a need for problem solving as it is assumed the machines will solve any problems as they arise. In fact some fear that within a few million years time cockaignian society will lead to their evolution into non-sapient creatures who depend upon the illusion of sapient life for their survival. They will live in homes, they will eat prepared meals, and they will engage in forms of entertainment that are only made possible with advanced technology, but they will not be rational, intelligent beings, only animals that appear from a distance to be so.

Description
This piece started with me trying some new techniques for making continents based on some stuff I tried while making the Nlia commission for

This planet is called Cockaigne after the mythological land of medieval legend where the luxuries of life are always available and want does not exist. It is home to an immensely advanced civilization, or so they would have you believe. The cockaignians are an interesting civilization in that they live in a stateless society. They exemplify the ideal anarchist society with no hierarchies or any kind of authority structures. I'm not going to get into the silly argument about law and order in an anarchist society, it's not really necessary for this description and if you want to understand how that works there are tons of books and a wikipedia page about Anarchist Law. In any case this whole process began long ago when the cockaignians were not much more advanced than we are today. Advances in robotics led to an increasingly automated manufacturing sector, and later began to encroach into other parts of the economy such as service and administration. In time their entire global economy became automated through the use of robotics and advanced artificial intelligence. The process became self-sufficient, self-regulating, and self-governing and eventually there was no longer a need for anybody to actually work. Even scientific research and artistic endeavors became subject to automation. By this point the idea of government seemed a bit like a moot point. Everybody was provided for, there was an excess of everything, and there was nothing left to fight over and thus nobody to defend against. Of course it wasn't like everybody just decided over night that government was pointless and immediately switched to a "perfect" anarchist society. It happened slowly, over generations: government became more and more local and had less and less regulatory power until, one day, somebody realized that there was no governing body anymore and nobody had any idea when exactly that had happened.

The cockaignians consider themselves to be a very morally minded people. They neither live in chaos nor decadence. Endless leisure, sure, but not necessarily decadence. Their species was never really territorial, so they've never really grasped the concept of colonizing new worlds even though they have the technology to do so. Likewise they lack any compelling reason to engage in diplomacy with other space faring civilizations, so they don't. They have everything they need and nothing anybody would want. That's not to say they're xenophobes or isolationist by any means: immigration is not allowed but anybody is perfectly capable of visiting their world. One would assume that illegal immigration would be a problem to such a planet, but it's not. For most who get a glimpse of life on Cockaigne the experience is... Disturbing. A life of endless leisure and no responsibility sounds appealing from a distance, but up close it's creepy. It's not that people live their lives without purpose--many cockaignians dedicate their lives to becoming highly educated or pursuing the limits of creativity--but the sheer amount of freedom they have is overwhelming.

There are issues with this society, of course. Nobody is sure how the machines that automate their civilization work or how they come to the decisions that they do. The machines repair themselves, and they design and build new machines for new tasks and improved versions of themselves for tasks already automated. For all the cockaignians know they're not free at all and the machines subtly dictate every aspect of their lives without them ever being aware of it. There are no fail safes in place in case the machines suffer some kind of catastrophic failure: it is assumed the machines have thought of that eventuality and made their own plans accordingly. Without any kind of government they also have no method to engage in diplomatic negotiations or military action of any kind if the need ever arises. Again it is assumed that the machines have solved this problem as well. This trend is part of a larger problem with cockaignian culture: there's no longer a need for problem solving as it is assumed the machines will solve any problems as they arise. In fact some fear that within a few million years time cockaignian society will lead to their evolution into non-sapient creatures who depend upon the illusion of sapient life for their survival. They will live in homes, they will eat prepared meals, and they will engage in forms of entertainment that are only made possible with advanced technology, but they will not be rational, intelligent beings, only animals that appear from a distance to be so.