“Old, crowded and ostentatious: that’s the feeling I’ve gotten from every Terran world I’ve ever visited. They shove poor people into tiny, cramped buildings, with the rich towering over everything. Then they cover everything in a thin coat of shiny metal paint and pretend it’s new. Stay there long enough, and you’ll forget it’s all lie.”
The League paints the Terran government as an oppressive régime, and there’s certainly some truth to that. The government controls a large number of the facets of daily life. Terran children are given a limited number of choices of future careers, based on aptitude tests; the Terran government maintains a list of approved entertainment, etc. The more cynical of Terrans liken it to oppressive régimes of the past, or from literature. (However, not all Terrans are cynics; some truly believe that, in the interest of the greater good, some personal liberties must be sacrificed. Sometimes, these people end up becoming fanatically, and serve as scapegoats for the League in continuing to justify ‘the Terran threat’.)
Culturally, Terran society is an interesting mixture of Chinese and Western European cultures. They place huge importance on personal honor and responsibility. Personal sacrifice for the greater good is held as a noble ideal. Conformity is prized over individuality, but only when talking about one’s actions or demeanor. Personal appearance, on the other hand, is one of the few ways Terrans have of expressing themselves. Especially among the rich, High Fashion is almost a cultural imperative.
Because the Terran people are such a mixture of cultures and races, there are entire subcultures that maintain an identity associated with a defunct country or region from Earth’s past. The largest of these groups, the Russians, still teach their children Russian as a first language, ensuring that the next generation will ‘have the accent of their fathers’.
There is a large division between the rich and the poor in Terran society. Every city in every colony has its slums; places where thousands of people are crammed tightly into dilapidated buildings. These people almost never leave the planet they’re born on; travel is largely believed to be impossible for someone of low birth. There’s such a cultural stigma surrounding being poor that very few would even consider leaving as an option.
It’s generally from these poor that the closest thing Terrans have to a middle class comes from. There are very few options other than manual labor open to the poor, but one of them is Military Service. Young men and women from poor backgrounds enlist by the millions. Simply being enlisted removes most (but not all) of the stigma surrounding coming from a poor family.
Enlisted men and women have the opportunity to rise as high as non-commissioned officers. Being an officer at any level entitles you to things like private quarters, and a significant increase in pay. Unfortunately, it’s an unspoken rule that non-coms can only rise so high; commissioned officers only come from the rich portions of Terran society.
Because commissioned officers are always of high birth, highly decorated admirals and generals are treated like celebrities and cultural icons. This has lead to the rise of family dynasties, with some Terran families tracing their history of service back to the founding of the People’s Republic. (Some even claim military service in the ancient People’s Republic of China.)
Before the rise of the People’s Republic, English had become the dominant language on the planet. It was the language of technology, and the language of commerce. Despite several attempts to change this at various points in history, English still is the primary language of all of Humanity, not just the Terrans.
Among high society, however, Mandarin is held as the preferred language. Most individuals of high birth speak it, and often Terran movies will be produced entirely in Mandarin. Because all of commerce and technology is in English, however, Mandarin is at most Terran’s second language.
It should be noted, however, that many Terrans ‘collect’ languages; learning ancient, dead languages as a way of expressing themselves.