PJ’s Blog

The 27th century is as far from us than the 14th, where Europe and the middle East were struggling for control of the Holy Lands, printing wasn’t invented yet and the New World was known only to a bunch of Basque fishermen… In most parts of the world governments were monarchies, and universal education was an utopic dream. It is important to keep that sense of perspective in considering the workings of 27th century society.

First, lets look at the various levels of Government:
-Solar System: The League of Worlds, a quasi-governmental organization, overseeing relations, commerce, and war issues between the various human colonies around the solar system. It has it’s seat at New Jaipur on Sumatra, near the Earth’s equator, at the base of the old Clarke space elevator, and the whole island is devoted to the League’s bureaucracy. Officials are named and sent for 10-year terms.
-Organization of the Terran Treaty: A loose organization made of the Moon, the orbiting cities and the Nations of Earth. Mainly devoted to security issues.
-Earth Government: The highest “real” level of government, a “mediocratic” government, with elected officials that are selected through the constant popularity polls that are run on the relevant Media Channels. This gives rise to very variable term length for officials, based on the popularity of their policy decisions.
-Regional governments: based loosely on the nation-states of the 2nd Millennium, regional governments take many shapes. Most are historical democracies, and only a few Old Line hereditary rulers remain in European and Eastern countries. The most powerful nation States are the Black Kahganate that was born from the Ashes of the China War of the 23rd Century, Europa, a direct descendant of the European Union, and the United States of America and Mexico.
-City-States: In the 24th Century, a number of cities in the old nation-states became independant. These were mainly Metropolises of more than 30 million inhabitants. Most are owned by corporations who provide all services to the population. The actual political system of each depends on the Company culture of each corporation, and range from open-source anarchism to totalitarian military and security-oriented regimes.

Religion:
Religions on Earth and in the solar system are very diverse, and freedom of religion is still a fundamental right enforced by the League of Worlds. One of the dominant religions on Earth is the New Temple of Jerusalem. In 2231, Pope John XXVIII convened the leaders of all christian, jewish and muslim faiths in order to end once and for all religious wars. The Council of Jerusalem laid the foundation for the Great Unification, and despite extremist and fundamentalist groups still existing in many parts of the world, the New Temple of Jerusalem, with the actual Temple being re-built in 2368, is now the faith of close to 70% of the Earth’s population.
On other worlds, religion takes more or less importance, and the Temple is far less present, even on the Moon, where Zen-paganism is very prominent.