Given its different founding conditions and the fact that Meridian Societists only got involved after the fact,
Celestial Societism* is very different from the main TL's Combine strain and draws and synthesizes elements from various tendencies within the broader movement. For one thing, the new
Great and Bountiful Human Empire* doesn't use the Zonal schema, Novalatina, or even the Threefold Eye**.
- Although most of the first generation of the aristocratic class inherited their position, class mobility has been opened up and the system itself has become non-hereditary (outside of a purely ceremonial Emperor***).
- Rather than standardized tests, sorting in the system follows a decidedly Anarchosocietist direction, with a universal basic income paired with universal basic services to allow individuals to rise or fall on their own merits without the risk of crushing poverty.
- Although not democratic, there is a chamber drawn by sortition able to petition the government, with the vast web of ethnicities governed by a larger-scale pseudo-Danubian system, with the goal that it will be eventually phased out once the regime is sufficiently well-established and compulsory education and incentivized population transfers have done their work.
- A Garderista system of creches exists as a prominent pipeline to the civil service and self-defense forces, though it is primarily operated for the sake of orphans, foundlings, and true believers, though the children of rebels are a small portion of the total as well.
- The state religion is a syncretized strain that's Buddhist at its base, though it incorporates a pantheon hearkening back to the Old Eurasian one, suitably conflated with Hindu and Shinto deities.
Given the fact that Celestial Societism is able to adequately balance competing schools of Societism, the GBHE has a much easier time proselytizing than the Combine, able to appeal to the various strains of the global movement as well as traditional and Mentian factions among the nations for a variety of reasons.
*Working title
**Instead the GBHE uses Sanskrit for pragmatic and ideological reasons, since it's both a Hindu/Buddhist liturgical language and an incredibly old offshoot of PIE. The flag of the Empire is a similarly pragmatic black flag with a red swastika.
***Originally a relatively minor Chinese noble with Societist sympathies, imperial matchmaking is done by the Societist bureaucracy to allow buy-in from local elites and the deliberate blending of the royal bloodline. Rather than direct lineal descent that same bureaucracy likewise chooses the next Emperor/ess from the pool of the next generation of royal heirs, with the token input from the sortition chamber.
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