I think most of that hypocrisy stems from the desire of wanting to divide the world into easily identifiable “good guys” and “bad guys” with themselves being the good guys.
One also has to ask what the essential point of pointing out other people’s hypocrisy might be, but that’s always a personal question I guess. However when doing so, one should at least be aware most people’s response to having their hypocrisy pointed out is to try and force hemlock down the throat of the person who pointed it out.
What I say is this. Everything you do, you do it of your own volition and you only have yourselves to blame. Circumstances happened, one thing led to another and now the ball has rolled into your side of the court. Sure, the events that led to this ball rolling into your side of the court is beyond your control. However, once it gets there, you, and only you, are responsible for whatever consequence results from your action. It is your choice. Nobody else. They can shove a gun into the back of your head and tell you to serve, but that is all they can do. The actual decision to serve is yours and yours alone. Do you serve and propagate the cycle? Do you kick the ball aside and be shot for it? Do you slam the ball into that gunman’s face and divert the flow of events away to some unexpected end? Whatever choice you make, the consequence is yours and you only have yourself to blame for whatever happens next.
Their part in this sequence of event is done the moment the ball rolled up into your side of the court and they will pay the price for their actions in time. Now it’s your turn to decide and choose, and your turn to bear the consequence for whatever choice you make.
Ah, lovely platitudes completely missing the point. The question is not about what is. It is about what might be, and what path of ours might open up new paths to pick and choose from.
We’re not for anything. We’re the by-products of the programs that produce capsuleers in each of empires’ navies. They let us go out into the world knowing that deniable freelancers are probably a cheaper way to let the various corporate divisions out there handle their problems through slush funds and redacted line-item programs than actually needing to duplicate those assets over and over, or having an official paper-trail someplace to request use of shared assets.
And they’re probably right. We provide our own equipment. We spread costs out among more sources, with more efficiency, than any structured plan to disperse those expenditures could. And the damage we could do is largely mitigated by the deterrent of CONCORD reprisals—at least, in the space they give a damn about. And what happens out in null, by and large? We go out into regions overrun by criminals, pay the empires (through CONCORD) for the privilege of planting a flag, and then stroke our egos about everything from getting rich to building empires to being such awesome warriors.
You talk about standing in a doorway to keep evil at bay, and the empires denying us that. Well, you’re right: they have our psych profiles. And they have capsuleers who do exactly that. We didn’t make the cut. Their psych profiles likely say that no, we probably wouldn’t turn our ‘monstrous potential’ to good use. Maybe some of them say ‘this person’s got the genetic compatibility, but they’re not really a fighter, let them go out and crunch rocks’. Maybe some say ‘that one’s too much of a risk of going off-mission, or lacks restraint, better used as a deniable asset’. We weren’t ‘surgically cut off from any kind of purpose [. . .] tied to [our] nations of origin’. We were denied a job. There’s other jobs out there. We could’ve gone and done those.
We cease being who we are every moment of every day. We grow. We change. Usually it’s tiny little ways, but it doesn’t have to be. The issue isn’t about having to ‘cease being who you are’… it’s about who you want to be. Who you choose to be. You can cease being who you are any time you like, all you have to do is choose a different path. But let’s face it: we don’t want to.
Do we? How many capsuleers find employment in the navies of our nations? Do we really outnumber them? Do we outnumber them and the miners? and the industrialists? and the professional pirate-hunters who do freelance work for those nations you say have cut us off from any way to contribute?
There’s what? Maybe 200,000 of us out here in null? Maybe if you look at just the ‘independent capsuleers’, we might be the majority… but we might not. And a lot of us out here fall into the ‘miner/hauler/industrialist/pirate-hunter’ mold a lot more than the ‘I am teh warrior!’ one. They’re just working where the money’s better. Add back in the folks who didn’t wash out, who weren’t found inadequate for the navies’ needs, and I think you’ll find the decent human beings outnumber us by quite a bit.
And we could be part of that. No, we can’t erase what we’ve done, what we’ve helped make happen. We can’t undo a single moment of it. But we could choose to be decent human beings, going forward. We just don’t. And no amount of pointing fingers back at the empires will change that.
‘What might be’, ‘what path of our might open up new paths to pick and choose from’… coming from a person who decries ‘empire building’ as a lie, that’s pretty rich. You have actively spat on anyone who says they want to try to make something better out here than what we’ve already got, who wants to build something that isn’t just endless meaningless war and death… and now you want to get aspirational?
Citation needed. I never applied to any kind of Navy. If you washed out of a boot camp somewhere, that’s your business.
Odd how you never seem to see these vaunted Navy capsuleers much. Given that every military organization known to man seems to live by the mantra of “lowest bidder wins”, perhaps they’re too embarrassed to undock. The claim that these are “decent human beings” falls a bit short, when you never see them out there taking care of the evils of New Eden.
Every time I see something ‘Navy’ or ‘Fleet’ in New Eden, it’s usually getting its arse kicked nine times to sunday, achieving incredibly little.
Perhaps if those people didn’t throw countless rather mortal crew and ships away for… what’s the phrase… “teh lulz”, I’d be less dismissive. Or perhaps, if the ‘empire builders’ didn’t run rampant through the nations’ hi-sec, suicide bombing anything worth enough ISK or being a funny enough target. If harassment wasn’t the standard, perhaps. If unfathomable hypocrisy wasn’t quite so common, feigning injured feelings on the one hand then turning around to go… how did it go “beep beep” something or other?
Tell me, is that not something worth actively spitting upon? You can’t build an empire upon a foundation of sociopaths and monsters. I have no aspirations for such things. I am looking to the nations that already exist, those of our people, and questioning if they truly should be alienating those who quite demonstrably birth stars on a whim.
I wonder how many out there have ended up rejecting their people and nations, as a simple result of having been rejected in turn.
An end to the Pendulum Pretense. Instead of trying to convince capsuleers that this ridiculous bloodsport matters, simply end them and institute new programs of national support and expansion. Instead of planting pretend flags for points on a scoreboard, allow for organizations to set up actual infrastructure and bolster both their nations’ resource exploitation and territory security. In addition, expand such programs to the outer regions. Allow loyalists to be pioneers of Great Wildlands, Curse, Etherium Reach, etc on behalf of the Tribes themselves. Recognize the same in areas like Providence, and of course the Federation and State. To properly solidify and nurture the nigh abandoned lowsec space of the nations themselves. To break new ground in the outer regions, for your nations and people. Real “empires”, rather than pretend sandcastles run by madmen and sociopaths.
Loyalists abandon their nations in droves, because the only paths that are even tenuously connected to their nations are pointless pendulums or mindnumbing drudgery that does nothing to challenge or invigorate them. The state of New Eden today encourages abandoning loyalties, to seek out fame, fortune and wilderness beyond the reach of the nations and their loyalists.
Allowing these people who seek to grow past the meager puddles of what loyalists can be, to both challenge themselves and others for their nations, making a difference for their nations, would in all likelihood both retain new ones and perhaps even pull back some of those who left such things behind.
It should even serve to bridge the gap between the combat focused and the industrialists of a nation, both getting to make a difference for their own people. Not just other capsuleers.
It just sounds to me like you’re really not that much different to some of the people you decry Mizhara. You want to have a purpose, a cause, you want to feel like the things you do accomplish something, that they meant something, that they were worth it – so do they. There is something to be said in that about hope in the face of stark cynicism of what being a capsuleer freelancer is, and the system that we are designed around.
The CEWMPA is a pointless pendulum? Oh my dear you would be mistaken if you think the objective was ever actually about the territory. When it comes to war, professionals study logistics, and the true intent of CEWMPA is about production. In a full scale conflict the side that will win is the side that can best surge into full-scale military-industrial supply. Do you really think a Navy frigate costs the millions of ISK it does in the militia lp stores? It doesn’t, not in terms of actual opportunity costs incurred by the manufacturers. That premium in ISK paid to the suppliers means they can recoup and even profit from maintaining military production lines instead of civilian consumer products.
In that way freelance capsuleers are co-opted into supporting the military-industrial complex of each of the Empires out of their own need for ISK.
The same thing goes with nullsec.
I don’t think the Empires give much of a toss if capsuleers setup Upwell structures because a) they have stakes in Upwell b) As far as they’re concerned you’re putting up all the up front costs for future colonization of those Regions and the moment they think we’re no longer useful they’ll vote in the Assembly to shut us down leaving Trillions of ISK worth of assets ripe for the taking without us.
I don’t think they care much either the amount of damage and destruction wrought by freelance capsuleers against each other out in null so long as those in null still suppress their criminal rivals out of the ISK incentives of the CONCORD bounty system.
As for being a Loyalist? Damn, I came into being a freelancer knowing full well what it would entail. It sure as damn wasn’t going to be all about the gloria and waving the flag while the anthem played. In fact it’s played out as much as I knew it would, with me having done some real nasty work – the destruction of small colonies; assassination; extortion; the dropping off of intelligence assets; the razing of industrial and mining operations; even took out a hospital ship full of wounded just to kill one guy.
And I’m not the only one, and what I did is just the same kind of dubious antics perpetrated in the background by literally everyone. Because while the Empires might not be at war there’s definitely not much goodwill to go around. I became a freelancer because I said to myself, you know what, I can do that real crazy and ■■■■■■ up crap no one wants to talk about because I understand it’s necessary and I’m fine working in obscurity without medals getting pinned to my chest.
But if one’s idea of “Loyalist” is making bold public proclamations about just how loyal you might be, I don’t think the powers that be honestly care all that much. Which is really the game that’s being played here, public disavowal means that responsibility cannot be attributed to a CONCORD signatory and any actions given the standard, “Individual involved was a DED sanctioned non-state actor, and we condemn the heinous acts conducted without our knowledge or approval.”
I cannot really fault some people’s hypocrisy in the pursuit of some kind of hope, some kind of vision for a future that isn’t as morally grinding and soul-crushingly cynical as the life of a freelance capsuleer but in that regard I suppose some people will end up more frustrated than others.
Oh I don’t particularly care for neither medals nor recognition. I do however loathe the complete waste of resources and assets the status quo is. No, I never believed the pendulum pretense was more than bloodsport for the profits of certain entities, but that doesn’t change that it is portrayed as something very different than what it really is, and when that illusion breaks it tends to take loyalties with it.
The point I am trying to get across is that there’s so much that could be done for the benefit of our nations. It’s rather odd that this resource isn’t tapped at all, to the point where there’s building outright resentment towards one’s roots, in some cases.
Yeah, because they’d waste time with applications. It doesn’t take a lot of brains to figure out that you’ve got a limited pool of applicants to start—and they’re the people who’re trying to get through pod school. They’re already undergoing years of training, stress-testing, and physical and psychological fitness evaluations. So then what? Do you waste time with a second application process, or do you target the ones whose profiles demonstrate they’d be a good fit? The evaluations processes are already baked in. Why duplicate the cost and effort?
Until 2 months ago, not a single independent capsuleer in New Eden had seen a Kangite, Moissanite, Polycrase, or Raspite deposit, either. Because the empires didn’t want us seeing it, so CONCORD didn’t let us see them. I know this may be a little surprising to you, but space? It’s pretty big! And a lot of it’s really empty! There’s lots of room to hide stuff in it!
So, yeah. Absence of evidence not equaling evidence of absence, and all that rot, wot?
And hey, here’s a news flash for you: those miners, haulers, and industrialists out here that I mentioned? Generally, they’re not the ones throwing crews away. They’re not the ones going ganking for jollies through high-sec. That gets left to the ‘warriors’. Those terrible people, throwing away the lives of crews who… how did you say it? ‘chose their path and knew the risks’? Exulting in it when it’s people you like, and snidely sneering down your nose at the same behavior when it’s people you don’t. That’s hypocrisy.
I wonder how many people have decided they were rejected by their people just because they don’t like the person they see in the mirror.
I don’t know that the Thukker Tribe wants ‘pioneers’ shitting up their Wildlands.
Or, you know, maybe that’s just why you did. We all have our own reasons for why we are where we are.
I should probably not be surprised by you branching out to twisting the words of others, in addition to your own. If you’re not willing to argue what people are actually saying, is there much point in talking to you at all? Perhaps responding to what people have actually said would be a better idea for conversation?
Please demonstrate where I didn’t argue what you’re actually saying. Was it the bits I quoted? Or was it the bit where I pointed out your conflation of combat pilots with the people out in null who are doing literally everything but engaging in war? xDeath’s renter space is full of them, for example.
Don’t go blaming me when you start the thread off extolling the wonder and majesty of pointless orgies of death and violence and then try to say they’re terrible things later.
The entire thread? I know you like to conflate all manner of things and then try to make it out like people argued against X Y and Z when they were talking about A B and C, but for some I reason I keep forgetting it when I first engage with you, thinking this might be the time you have an ounce of honesty in you.
One day I’ll learn to stop engaging with your sophistry.
Mine was not a moral stance, Miz. I am not saying you should lay down your weapons and go live in luxury and enjoy life’s simple pleasures.
I was reacting to Gesakaarin’s “woe is me for I have no choice” speech, saying merely that she could do so if she so chose. And since she has since then retracted that speech and said it indeed is her choice to continue, the discussion is moot anyway.
EDIT: Pronouns. You’d suppose after ten years in space and a brain full of implants, translation and otherwise, I’d have learned to think in a gendered language but noooo, we can’t have any of that.
Because going further than they have already means they would have already means tacitly condoning freelance capsuleer actions and having those actions directly attributable to governments.
This then presents a scenario where you likely end up with constant incidents like with Kurishal Muritor; like Alexander Noir; like Uriam Kador; pursuing their own individual agendas which are counter to government policy leading to flashpoints and risking turning what is right now essentially a cold war into a hot war.