A Critique of historical Imperial Reclaiming Policy

Fiction Portal Intergalactic Summit
142

Expedience and Pragmatism are not the same thing, even if they look similar.

Expedience is doing what is convenient and Pragmatism is doing what is necessary. The Empire can be persuaded to give up Slavery over time, I believe, through necessity. It cannot be persuaded to destroy itself to give up Slavery over a short time - nor should any sane and reasonable individual expect this to be so.

I’ll tell you what I think evil is. Evil is talking casually about the butchery of trillions over something as artificial as an ideology. And that can be ascribed to both parties, here, in my opinion. So, I honestly am not impressed by discussions of morality or ethics or justice or salvation. Salvation does not excuse slavery and Justice does not excuse genocide. Both sides need to recognise this, or they are on the path to becoming an extinct race.

I, personally, would miss both the Republic and the Empire, should they go the way of the Jove, and I think Aria makes a good point when she says that the vacuum would likely be filled by powers such as the Cartel, Syndicate, Nation or the Blood Raiders. It’s hard to see how this makes the cluster a more moral and ethical place, isn’t it?

Miz, I’ll be honest, I think you’re certifiably insane. You’re talking about the destruction of your own people, the people you’re talking about freeing and the people of the Empire. And then you talk about right and wrong - and I think you’re so far past right and wrong in that scenario that you couldn’t see it with an observatory on a clear night.

Aria, Slavery is wrong when the Cartel does it. It’s wrong when Nation does it. It’s wrong when mad warlords in wormholes or nullspace do it. It doesn’t become right when the Empire does it, even if they’ve constructed an ethical framework to make it acceptable in their culture. Now, I’m Caldari enough that I’m willing to shrug, because I subscribe to normative morals, myself. I don’t agree with aspects of Republic, Empire OR Gallente moral norms - but generally I tell myself that I respect their morals in their space and they need to respect my morals in mine.

I can do business with these people, I can even have friendships with them, and not subscribe to their morals. I’ve taken the Empire’s money for years, as an example, but it hasn’t changed my opinion on slavery an iota - nor has my sympathy for the Republic’s issue with that slavery lessened my willingness to kill Matari when that’s been necessary.

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143

Hmm … well … that’s your context, after all, Pieter. … And there’s a lot of it I’m inclined to agree with as part of my own. If I were an Angel (and I guess I used to be), I might feel differently, though, you know?

What I do know is that what we did, our line of work, was eating away at my soul. Good or evil, right or wrong … it was hurting me. Praefecta Daphiti gave me a place to heal. That’s something I didn’t know anywhere else to find (I know you kind of offered, and thank you for that).

More than most, the Amarr are interested in spiritual health.

I’m not saying that where I am would be the right place for everyone (for a stack of reasons, I’d be both floored and shocked if Miz came over and started working for the Amarr, or even an Amarrian). I’m saying this is my place in this world. … It doesn’t need to be right for anyone else, and, actually, I might kind of resent the competition.

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144

Mmm, I wish I could be surprised by this, but I suppose it’s only to be expected that a ‘moral relativist’ would retreat into ‘oh logical arguments are null and void because reasons’ and thus not have to actually argue in favor or against their standpoint. Merely say “oh I believe X” as if it justifies the standpoint.

Unless the painful part is suffered by those not within your immediate vicinity, then it’s perfectly fine.

If the Empire had even the slightest capability to destroy my people, they already would have. I’m arguing for denying them the time needed to utterly destroy the ones they already have, by applying as much military power as is needed to make the price for their actions too costly. Even if they had the power to do it, they couldn’t even afford a total victory at this point. It’d shred their Empire to pieces.

As you say, they are not going to do something that’d destroy themselves, and if their choices are reduced to ending slavery or a total war they can’t survive, they’d take the survivable option. Especially if there’s an offer to replace the beating stick with the carrot of aid in the transition into an agricultural and economically sensible system, and a locked down agreement of military aid and protection from all three other nations during the period of adjustment.

Give them time to fortify and make total war a survivable option for them, and only one choice will remain viable and your State will suffer as badly as the rest of New Eden when that comes around.

Since when? They’re interested in spiritual and mental domination. Spiritual health is far more prevalent among the Matari, some of the Federation cultures and even the State’s Achur. I’ve seen and studied the Rite’s idea of ‘spiritual health’ my entire life, and been part of that faith for a good chunk of it. There’s nothing healthy about it.

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145

Oooh, now this is an interesting little snippet.

Are you suggesting that the Empire be demilitarised and deindustrialised and changed into a primarily agricultural economy ?

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146

It might be hard to see a building with your nose pressed against a dirty restroom wall (I’ll leave it at “wall” for the sake of keeping this metaphor relatively polite). I can’t deny that said wall is part of the building, of course.

This is a huge place, Miz. Your experience doesn’t deny mine. … though I obviously haven’t seen everything, either.

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147

No.

I’ve been watching and studying Imperial faith, the Rite, my entire life. From within. From without. As a believer. As someone rejecting it entirely. Then as someone looking specifically for redeeming features. All the while exploring the spirituality and beliefs of my own people and kin.

Trust me when I say my judgment on this subject is not one of pointless rejection simply due to my rejection of slavery and my enemy. When you say “More than most, the Amarr are interested in spiritual health”, I’m sure there’s examples where it’d look like you’re right… but look further afield. Look at the reality of society beneath the lofty perches of capsuleers and nobility.

Spiritual health takes a back seat to control.

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148

Maybe so. But what if I’m comfortable with that, too?

As I’ve indicated, I don’t regard human beings as rational animals, Miz. We’re rationalizers, shaping reason to suit answers already decided upon. At best, reason in practice is a tiebreaker when no decision’s yet be made on other grounds. At worst, it’s a means of justifying whatever we’ve already decided we’re going to do.

Does a species like that deserve to be “free?” … could we really survive, and be happy, if we were?-- not in the sense of the alternative being slavery and abuse, but in the sense of the alternative being careful hierarchical control, with systemic checks in play to keep the elite leadership class, however it is formed, from managing things strictly for their own benefit. The desire to control humans’ more destructive tendencies is something I have a good bit of sympathy for, along with the difficulties of actually doing such a thing.

I come from an oligarchical society deeply skeptical of democracy, and of individual “freedom.” If I have trouble making my home there again, it’s natural that I’d find a comparable alternative comforting. Of course “control” is necessarily part of the package. The idea of a life spent in service isn’t troubling to me.

Stuff like the Federation has some attraction, mind, but it’s the sort of thing that will probably work best with an actually rational, reasoning population (as opposed to one that can pass for it at a distance in bad lighting). I hope it’s more durable than I’m afraid it probably is, but, frankly, it’s pretty alien.

Also, I’m a villain there. Probably even more than to you.

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150

I wonder how true that would be if you had ever lived the kind of life your chosen society forces upon countless men, women and children.

Then sing its praises, but don’t misrepresent it as a focus on ‘spiritual health’ when it isn’t.

Careful. This is fairly antithetical to the very society you have chosen to prop up. There are no checks in play. That would have torn down Amarr society a very long time ago.

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151

Ummm … in the eyes of Miz, Arrendis, and apparently even Pieter, probably stand up for the Amarr in even a somewhat limited way?

(Bwahahaha?)

More seriously though, I’m something they’d find even harder to understand than the Amarr do: someone who can kill casually for no reason they’d probably recognize. In the end, I’m with the Amarr because the Praefecta is; my loyalty’s personal. Lord Consort Newelle might find me tolerable because I’m sworn to someone he approves of, but, I don’t have a lot of reason to think he approves of me personally.

I don’t have anything against Arrendis or Ms. Rella (though stuff with Miz gets a little personal sometimes), and I don’t even really dislike their cause. It’s … been a while since I’ve really fought against them. That’s likely changing, though.

When I do, it won’t be for faith or high principle, just a sincerely-held personal loyalty. That’s the only reason I need. It doesn’t make me a villain in my own eyes (though I don’t like what killing does to me), but, not everyone sees things the same way.

The Gallente seem to like to see themselves in heroic or at least blameless terms, so…

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152

Miz, if my experience had been different, likely my context would be, too.

It wasn’t.

No care needed; this is kind of what I mean when I say you’ve had your nose pressed to a wall, Miz.

The Empire has checks and devices for limiting power all over the place, from lowest to highest. Usually that “check” comes in the form of a liege responsible for (and being judged on) the behavior of vassals, but there are others, too: the Speakers of Truth; the Theology Council; the MIO; the Trials and sathol’syn; the doctrine of Sacred Flesh; the limits on who can own slaves; the slow social progression of families (slowest near the top)-- all set up to forestall the darkest and most destabilizing outcomes.

There’s variety in individual outcomes, but the net result has been four thousand years of continuous civilization. It’s a little hard to argue with that kind of result. Maybe it looks different if you just read it as four thousand years of entrenched evil. Evil farmers, evil bakers, evil bazaars full of evil hawkers of evil trinkets…

You still don’t get that kind of outcome without checks.

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153

And yet, they do. Others suffer because you—and the ‘good person’ you serve—do not act to end their suffering. Where’s your ‘courtesy’ toward them?

In my experience, the Amarr idea of “spiritual health” is ‘submit to my god who, coincidentally, says I will always get to keep my boot on your throat’.

But the larger pattern here, the one that keeps on repeating, Aria, is you lecturing people about how terrible it is that they’re willing to kill or die for others, while using your claim of ‘virtues’ to justify passivity, inaction, and laziness. Are people suffering? How terrible, let me ignore them unless they’re right in front of me, or Napkins is rubbing my nose in it.

Daphiti didn’t give you a place to heal. She gave you a place to be comfortable, to be all safely nestled in your pillow fort and not have to worry about actually being accountable to anyone outside. And all you keep advocating is ‘don’t disturb my pillow fort. I only pay attention to the things inside it’.

I’m sorry, Aria, but you were probably a better human being when you were a monster.

Maybe so. But what if I’m comfortable with that, too?

And there it is. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it, Aria? Being ‘comfortable’. Well, that’s not what living is. Living is what happens when you’re not.

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154

Not where it counts, Aria. There are no checks in place to protect those who don’t have the power to protect themselves. I am living proof of this. Quite literally an arm and a leg was the price to pay for that rather essential lesson.

More importantly, four thousand years of suffering does not speak of any quality beyond ability to survive. This is hardly a quality absent from any of the other nations of New Eden, nor is it one that justifies the atrocities committed during that lifespan. From what we can tell, none of our nations were the wellspring from which the rest emerged and thus literally every nation in New Eden has the participation award you’re touting as somehow unique to the Empire. That the Empire forged that through millennia of atrocity and subjugation is not a point in its favor.

What exactly is the result you speak of, then? A failed attempt at eradicating a technologically and numerically lesser nation during its first tentative steps out into New Eden, causing an animosity and a political and cultural situation that has significant potential to burn one or both to the ground? A spawning ground of religious nutcases and psychopaths forming cults and mass murdering organizations that has easily survived every attempt at eradication or pacification? A society sustaining itself almost entirely on the suffering of those they can enslave?

The darkest outcomes have come and gone, Aria. Destabilization would be progress.

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155

… so, Arrendis? Can you be a little more specific in what you’re talking about with me lecturing people?

It’s possible that I do, and it’s possible that it’s problematic, but I’d like to be sure I know just what you’re talking about.

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156

Start around reply #99 in this topic, and you should get a pretty good idea.

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157

You’re right, it is. So clearly, the Amarr should abandon their culture and adopt the Caldari model. After all, they’ve had 4,000 years of continuous culture.

Then again, so have the Gallente. And the Intaki. And the Matari. Huh. It’s almost like everyone experienced the collapse of the EVE Gate at the same time, and all of these cultures are roughly the same age. What are the odds, I wonder?

Hang on, my bookie says the probability’s around… 1.

Well, based on your irrefutable logic then, I suppose the Empress will be abolishing slavery and petitioning the Sanmatar for membership in the Tribal Council soon?

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158

In response to the original posting and to the Minmatar detractors to the Empire, the first attempt to reclaim the Minmatar was indeed a spectacular failure that we are still learning from today. There is no shame in admitting that failure so long as we work to learn from it and improve ourselves. Flatly put, we have done the two thirds of today’s Minmatar an unjust disservice that likely has driven them further from the light of God than simply leaving them be would have. But we will change our ways and find the best path forward from here, for all peoples of the cluster.

However, until then, attempting to have a discussion with the embittered people left in the wake of our initial attempt only serves to reopen old wounds and further barricade the doors we wish to unlock with the Matari. Critique and reflection of our mistakes should happen between those of the Faith, not instigated in the open by heretics and not with a public invitation to the ignorant and irrational.

One day the Empire will rule over humanity in its entirety, at last reuniting us under God’s rule in everlasting peace. That future may lie in the next millennium, or it may lie in the next tens of thousands of millennium. With the assurance we will meet that goal, we are yet unsure how to arrive at it. While this may displease some ears in my adoptive House, it needn’t happen with blood and chains, even if we yet reserve those methods for now. I believe we can find a way that even the Minmatar could be willing to accept. Judgement and punishment have had their turn; patience and compassion should have theirs as well.

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159

You’ll pardon me if I don’t believe you while you continue to employ the methods you claim were a ‘spectacular failure’. You’re not ‘learning from’ it, you’re perpetuating it.

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160

You do somewhat have trouble discerning my motives, this is true.

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161

… That’s what you’re talking about? I thought it was going to be like someplace where I’d expressed a little discomfort with killing everybody standing in a certain cubic kilometer or something.

I’m not lecturing you on your willingness to kill or die for others, Arrendis. I’m pretty happy to do the same (just, for different people).

I was telling you your plan was awful.

About the “4000 years” thing … um. What?

Everybody except maybe the Jove went through a dark age. The Caldari were kind of in another one after the fall of the Raata Empire when someone worked out how to build a radio.

Assuming the “gate” theory is correct, 4k years is not, I believe, when it went kaboom. That’s a bit farther back. … uh. Actually a lot farther back.

… Hm. Okay, so, counting the whole history of the Amarr since the crowning of the first Emperor, that’s … seven thousand years? … and finished conquering Athra about three thousand years ago …

(Where did I first hear four thousand? Someplace wrong, apparently. Hm.)

… it looks like they’ve been building stargates for about two thousand years. Contact with the Matari about a thousand years ago …

(For reference the Caldari and Gallente got spacebourne just in the last thousand years. The Raata empire was truly ancient, though-- it goes back about as far as the Amarr. Just, way less continuous.)

Neat! Thank you for the poke, Arrendis!

… Um. It looks like if the gate theory is correct (which I gather there might still be a little debate about), it would have been around … fifteen thousand years ago? So no, not the cultural starting line for everybody. I mean, my own people had just got as far as an iron-age empire by the time the Caldari showed up.

I wonder what would have happened if we’d been more isolated?.. Oh well.

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162

Nobody said the Empire learns quickly, only that it does.

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