Insults literally are just opinions though.
Either they’re opinions or they’re facts. There’s no other state that an objective or subjective statement can take… this is basic language logic.
This is something all the major empires teach children with colorful exercises!
Well … except that sometimes someone exaggerates or just says something they don’t believe at all, Mr. Galente. That’s not really an opinion, exactly, because it doesn’t reflect what anybody really subjectively thinks.
Trust me, I don’t think people have an issue telling Kim what they really think of her.
For someone who claims to hate freedom so much you sure exercise it plenty. I think that you just hate the freedom of people who disagree with you.
Nobody ever objects to their own freedom.
This seemed so completely obvious that I found myself nodding along. Only, then I thought, “Wait a moment!”
Anyway, my own maybe kind of strange case and others like it notwithstanding, it does seem like people mean a lot of different things when they say it.
“Freedom.” … but from what?
Depends on the person, now, doesn’t it, Aria?
Mostly, though, it’s a general statement: we object to behaviors in others and say they shouldn’t be able to do that—we never object to the things we do, and say ‘you need to not let me!’ Not really. Some folks may put on a good show about it, ‘it’s so terrible that we can be these engines of destruction’, or ‘we need to be held accountable, we shouldn’t get away with acting like we do’… but in the end, that’s all it is: a show. After all, if they really felt that way…
… they wouldn’t choose to do it.
Well … only …
There’s an odd conundrum for me in what you say here. I … kind of want to agree, because I think you’re usually right, but, I also think you might be making people something other than they are.
We’re not really rational actors. You know that already, I think. Am I wrong about that? … Either way, I think, it’s true.
I like the taste of blood. I miss the hunt. … I enjoy the feel of it. I want to feel that way again.
I really feel that way.
But I think it wears at my soul to do such things. I don’t want to be … something terrible.
I really feel that way, too.
Sometimes I ask the Praefecta about something related to that, kind of hoping and at the same time fearing that she’ll choose to turn me loose. More often than not, she’s kept me close.
I’m grateful for that.
At the time I swore my service to her, there were a few people (mostly Gallente, which I’m not sure what to think of except I don’t think they were trying to flatter me) making remarks about how maybe some people just naturally need to be ordered around. … I don’t think that’s true, exactly, but I do think I make a better follower than a leader, and, also, I want to be a better person than I might always care about being, in the moment.
To that end, I don’t mind accepting a hood and jesses, even if it means my talons will grow dull from disuse and my taste for blood won’t be slaked very often.
Maybe you’ll say that was my desire and choice. But it’s a desire to stop choices I knew I’d probably otherwise make, based on other desires. Almost precisely, I looked at what I was becoming, and said to the Praefecta, “You need to not let me!”
Maybe people do such things more often than you think.
You are simply exercising the “freedom” to make your own choices.
Sadly you do not think of slaking your thirst for blood by helping the Matari people held in the horror of slavery so they might have the same “freedom” of choices you enjoy.
The only true conundrum is how can you live your life making choices, freely, that many don’t agree with or understand, yet only fight on the side of an inhumane slavery cult that by evil design takes those same free choices away from countless billions of your fellow human beings.
Have you no sense of human decency at all? I mean no offense, you are an intelligent person. Truly I just can not comprehend how anyone could be so viciously selfish as the slavery cult members are unless they were raised within that foul self serving institution.
I think I kind of already answered the earlier bit: it’s a choice to limit my other choices-- to curtail my freedom, in other words. So, it seems like pretty exactly the sort of thing Arrendis was saying doesn’t happen.
About the rest…
There’s a lot to say, but, what it really comes down to is that there’s someone here I owe more than I can ever, ever repay. Praefecta Daphiti took me in, twice: once as, functionally, a strange, lost child, and again, later, as something much darker. She gave me a place to rest and heal, a home. She helped me recover myself.
She didn’t have to do that, either time.
This is personal for me. And important.
I’m aware that it’s a little personal for the Matari, as well. I don’t really begrudge you your anger or your determination. It’s natural, though, for people the Amarr have helped and those they’ve harmed to feel a little tension.
I won’t insist that I’m in the right. I even have some sympathy for your cause. It’s not mine, though. Your situation doesn’t change my place in this.
Really I don’t care a lot whether you think I’m an awful person. A debt of gratitude is owed. I’ll pay it, even at the cost of my soul-- though I doubt the Praefecta will demand such a price.
It’s a private matter. But no less real or important to me-- and considering that your cause isn’t mine…
I won’t say your people’s suffering has nothing to do with me. I will say, it isn’t enough to change things for me.
Nope. It’s exactly the sort of thing I’m saying does happen. As much as you want those things, you don’t want to want them… so you choose to limit yourself. Because you can do that.
And so, you don’t complain about having the freedom to bind yourself.
A debt of gratitude is just a form of slavery where you enslave yourself, at least in your case. You don’t seem to have any real desire to be freed from this debt. Like, I don’t know you personally, but from what I’ve seen you speak about your “debt”, you seem willing to give a lot more than is actually needed to pay - in other words, you’re enamored with your one-time - I mean, two-time rescuer.
A debt of gratitude is also not a usual kind of debt. It might not actually ever have to be paid off, because a debt of gratitude is not something people should dangle over you, but for example, when they are in a bad place, then you are there for them like they were for you. Debts of gratitude are not indentured servitude, at least they shouldn’t be.
Don’t compare debts of gratitude to slavery. It’s disingenuous at best. One is voluntary, the other is not. “Voluntary” slavery is the most ridiculous notion in New Eden, self-contradictory to ludicrous levels and downright insulting towards those who have borne the yoke of slavery themselves.
The very core of slavery is the lack of choice and freedom in the matter, and capsuleers in particular always have choices.
To claim ‘voluntary’ slavery is at its very best a pathetic attempt at handing over all responsibility and burden thereof to someone else, in order to pretend actions and choices are not attributable to oneself. To burden someone else like that over ‘debts of gratitude’ may be less so, but unquestionably still a weakling’s stance of rejecting having to face New Eden on their own terms and facing the consequences of one’s own choices.
And there-in lies the hypocrisy of capsuleers all over New Eden, barring a very few of them. Tying themselves to someone else for such ‘noble’ reasons as ‘debts of gratitude’ or ‘camaraderie’ or what have you, trying desperately to pretend this somehow justifies the crimes they commit against humanity. Pretending this somehow makes them less monstrous than those who openly admit to doing what they do and being what they are.
Give me a monster any day. They’re less pathetic and vile than those pretending so very hard not to be one while their actions and words condone worse.
Hey, I’m not a monster!
I’m an enabler of monsters. All the guilt, none of the killmarks! (Never said it was better, just, you know me Miz, I like being picky about these technicalities.) 
I only kill those who I personally believe deserve it but I can see that I am a monster to the people I kill.
I suggest you tell your pilots to avoid Black Rise. Though our empires are technically at war, there is little reason for our people to kill eachother; no Caldari abiding by State law owns a Minmatar slave.
It is however rich in pirates and a rather decent testing ground for doctrines and other things which are more of a chore to test with less traffic flowing through the area. 9 jumps from jita has alot more traffic than 5 from Rens or 3 from Hek.
Oh, Miz.
Okay, so I’m weak. I’m subjectively like two years old and not all that well emotionally shielded. I’m also a killer, but don’t trust myself to make good decisions about who dies and who doesn’t.
Of course I’m weak.
And, actually, it seems to me that the deeper weakness is the fear of the gray areas and ambiguities of this world. I love places like that: margins and borders, fractal in complexity and ultimately illusory! The little differences that play out into larger differences.
The world isn’t simple. It’s … wonderfully complex. But you… Do you ever open your mouth without judging someone, or something?
I’m sure it has to happen sometimes. It must, right? But it’s like you’re too busy carving and defending categories to really see…
… I guess, monsters are easy to track and categorize. You might have liked my predecessor for that reason. It’s like that thing Anslo said to me: “At least the old Aria had some guts.” … only, I’m not as weak as I was when I rose to the bait of being called weak by deciding I had to prove I could be strong.
It’s okay, to be a little fragile, a little vulnerable … a little weak. And anyway, I don’t think, anymore, that trying to escape being those things will make me strong.
So much for the block, I guess.
The thing is, Aria, some things aren’t grey or ambiguous, no matter how much you want them to be. I know it makes it so much easier for you when you can pretend something isn’t hideous or vile, but just ‘complex’ or ‘illusory’. Unfortunately, there is no way around the simple fact that some things just have no excuse, no justification, no purpose that can be construed as worthwhile.
Ignore that if you will, that is your prerogative. Mine is - amongst others - to speak as someone who knows that vileness intimately and have done so for a great deal longer than you. That you only see my judgment of someone or something is likely to be a matter of your perception and chosen grounds for discourse. I suspect even your Praefecta knows better, though. This of course, does not change that yes… I do judge when I see hypocrisy or evasive gibbering masqueraded as pretentious drivel designed as much to convince oneself as others.
That’s not going to go away either, I’m afraid. You have made the choice of supporting that which burns and festers what remains of my people, my kin, my blood and my heritage, and you put on a public pretense that it is for some personal honor or debt, as if that could possibly justify such a choice.
I see quite clearly, Aria. It is the reason I was chosen and trained for the role I play. It is quite literally the translation of my intended role of Volur. ‘Seer’. That is a task much easier to accomplish once you are willing to look within as much as without… and not pretending what you see is all ‘illusory’.
Yes, I judge. Why not? You have earned it, as much as I have. I have also accepted the judgment laid upon me for my actions. That I suppose is something you have the prerogative to ignore, isn’t it?
If there’s a way to do a block here, I haven’t been able to find it. I don’t see you in comms anymore, though; that’s been nice.
Miz … I wasn’t talking about you judging me, though it does kind of feel like you spend some time doing that. It’s more like, every time I turn around you’re saying awful stuff about somebody.
This is “stupid.” That is “vile.” The other thing is “inexcusable.” Arrendis has a little darkness in her, but for sheer volume of negativism you’re light years ahead. You judge and judge and judge and judge, and if some of that comes my way … okay.
Something you don’t seem to have ever understood, is that I’m not interested in your approval. I don’t care what you think of me. I don’t care what you think of anyone. It used to be you seemed to occasionally see something clearly, but … mostly?
You’re just loud.