While much infrastructure in Galactic civilization is provided by Galactic institutes --both great and small --much inter-species power in the Galaxies is located in alliances between various clans. Inter-clan alliances run the gamut from bilateral treaty arrangements --of which the special relationship of Earth and Tymbrim is an example --through small treaty organizations such as the Alliance for Progress, to huge trading alliances, to the very largest alliances of all --the enduring ideological interest blocs like the Abdicators and Obeyers. Terragens are prone to erroneously thinking of these ideological blocs as quasi-religious concordats. In this they are not far wrong. While few O-2 species are prone to "religion" in a theistic sense, there is every indication that they are no more insulated from the passions of totalizing ideologies than are the most rustic Human wolflings.
The Great Ideological Schools tend to have their origins either in the age when the Progenitors ceased to have contact with Main Sequence Galactic Civilization or from the time of the Tarseuh League. All tend to be curiously concerned with respect for, and proper relationship to, those races that existed in the past --often referred to in Anglic as the "predecessors" or "ancestors" --especially the Progenitors. Likewise, all are very concerned with the Traditions inherited from the predecessors, and how contemporary sapients should order their societies in light of the Traditions. Much Galactic ideology seems quite akin to Confucianism --but at the level of the race instead of the individual and lineage. Several of the ideological "alliances" --particularly the more militant ones --are also quite concerned with eschatology. Eschatological preoccupations have on several occasions led to bloody chiliastic wars. A few Inheritor and Obeyer sects are particularly associated with ideologically motivated violence and warfare.
In the eyes of orthodox adherents to any of the Galaxies' great ideologies all members of the Alliance for Progress are libertine, though in varying degrees.
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