That’s a complicated, awkward, and actually pretty sad situation, Arrendis, and I don’t think they’re just on Caldari Prime; the “Raata Caldari” have as I understand it quite a few scattered settlements, and they mostly keep to themselves. Adams is neither a good representative nor spokesperson for that community because he shares neither their history nor relative isolation (and accompanying relative neutrality). I get and even slightly appreciate what he’s been trying to do, but his involvement was guaranteed to offend the State-loyal.
(Not that the Raata really have any very visible, appropriate spokesperson. Which is a problem but Adams is a lousy answer.)
I’m not saying he’s at all representative of the Raata. I’m saying the views expressed over there have pretty consistently (other than yours) been ‘they don’t get to call themselves Caldari anymore even though they’re still doing things the old Caldari way because we’re the only Caldari!’
Which would seem to contract the idea that pragmatism and survival-of-the-community is what’s important. Rather, it looks like conformity to the current in-group is what matters.
So-- there’s a distinction to be made here, Arrendis, and I’m not sure everyone responding is making it.
Not all of the ethnic Caldari in the Federation are Raata. The Raata are as I understand it a pretty quiet lot. They keep to themselves, and I think they’re wise to do so. Mr. Adams isn’t very representative of them.
And then you’ve got the other ethnic Caldari community: the defectors who abandoned their Caldari identities for another way of life and the traitors who actively turned against their kin.
Mr. Adams is way more representative of this lot. Not all are full-on traitors, but pretty much all of them are no longer Caldari, having opted out in favor of pursuing other paths. They basically have chosen to be foreign. (This group isn’t unique to the Federation; Caldari leaving their home culture for any other would thereby become that other thing.)
It’s easy, but a mistake, to conflate that community (if that’s the word) with the Raata.
Yes, but the responses I’m talking about were the ones responding to the idea that the Caldari who remained on Home from before the Federation’s formation were also legitimate members of a ‘Caldari culture’.
So the responses were denigrating them, specifically, not State expatriates. Which rather undercuts your characterization of how ‘the Caldari’ view pragmatic efforts aimed at communal survival, if it’s not done their preferred way. Don’t get me wrong, I think the position you’re espousing is one that most Caldari would claim to hold… but their actual responses say otherwise.
My ideals, personally, or is ‘your ideals’ referring to more of a ‘cultural ideals’ thing? Either way, the answer is ‘a lot of them’. But you know, I’m not the one saying that the majority of my people aren’t emotionally-maimed reactionaries who often pay lip service to ideals far greater than the ones they actually hold—myself included.
See, the thing is, Aria, if you’re going to claim ‘X is typical of Caldari views’, then the majority of Caldari who respond to something contradict that… you can’t really say ‘well, that’s just because the majority of a representative sample don’t hold typical Caldari views’.
They’re the representative sample we have. They’re not from any specific bloodline or corporate environment. That means it’s a lot more likely that the wider population holds similar views than it is that we just happened to have gotten an outlier group that all show not just a deviation from the norm, but the exact same deviation.
To insist they’re non-representative just because they contradict your preferred image doesn’t work.
What I’d insist, Arrendis, is that we’re all people over here, and people tend to be disappointing. Pretty much everything’s more complicated than it’s supposed to be, emotions maybe most of all.
But I do stand by my statements. Caldari Prime remains under joint Caldari and Gallente administration as far as I’m aware-- a patchwork of jurisdictions. I don’t think most of the Caldari there are even “Raata” to begin with (Raata tend to live in isolation) but either way I don’t think they merit condemnation just because they don’t wreck their lives setting the whole gravity well ablaze and instead abide by an agreed peace.
And I think most of the State gets that, a few heated remarks by warzone combatants notwithstanding.
Opinion firmly held. Go talk about it a bit further with your “direct evidence.” I wonder if their remarks are really representative of deeply-held views, or more intemperate remarks driven by who they were talking to.
(A loud, obnoxious, straight-up traitor, if that somehow wasn’t clear.)
Except that would be tainting the sample, wouldn’t it?
People speaking when their blood is up, inhibitions lowered, when they’re just reacting, tend to be more forthcoming. Give them time to cool down, time to consider what image they want to project, what image they’re supposed to project, they’re more likely to lie, even to themselves.
And I don’t even see Kim’s posts on these boards, so I wasn’t counting her. She does, however, tend to be one of the most honest Caldari out there, precisely because she doesn’t take time to think about what she should say.
Your vision of how people are when they’re honest makes me think the universe would be best off if we all just glassed each other and put ourselves out of each others’, and everything else’s, misery, Arrendis. It’s a wretched and limited version of the thing.
In my experience the truth of people’s feelings is a many-faceted thing that probably can’t even be modeled in a mere three dimensions. Anger and hate are often sincere, sure. So are more fragile, tentative, or complicated feelings that rarely find expression in a heated exchange. It’s easy to be thoughtful with a cool head; hard with a hot one.
But go on believing those of us who want peace are all such liars. I’m sure it’ll never cause you or things you care about any misery at all.
I mean, generally, yes. But that has no bearing on the fact that people are at their most honest when they’re not filtering their responses through the lens of propriety. But it’s not all about ‘people are mean’, Aria. Only that they’re more honest in the heat of the moment. It’s just as much the person who gets drunk and blurts out ‘I love you’ even though they know that love won’t be returned or even socially acceptable, or gets outraged at cruelty and steps in to intervene despite it making a scene, when in a calmer moment, they’d have sought to effect change in a slower, less socially-fraught way.
Frankly, the fact that you only see the ugly part of it… I think says less about me than it does about you.
Edit: For clarity:
This is not a single condition. This is a pair of different examples of ‘just reacting’, ie: when their blood is up, or their inhibitions lowered. And their blood being up, again, isn’t necessarily a bad or ugly thing. Righteous wrath may be wrath, but it remains righteous.
Forthcoming, maybe. In incomplete ways, though. In my book a partial truth is more of a hazard than a lie.
Anyway this seems like it’ll be a long-running discussion. Let’s let things get back to the matter at hand? There’ll be plenty of other stuff to spar over.
Literally nobody on these forums can give you one. The answer you seek is subject to the whims of Megacorporate powers. Any answer you get here can be completely inaccurate within seconds, so there’s really no point.
If in serious doubt I’d maybe float an offer to NOH to see if they’ll put you on some kind of retainer contract? Squeamishness is so far in their wake they can’t even see it anymore and the controversy alone is probably worth it to them.
Conversely if they tell you to get lost you might have a problem, sir.
Regretfully NOH Internal Watch, much like the rest of PKN, has several entanglements with the RSS and renegade Thukker groups like the Seykal clan. It was a… misunderstanding with the Krusual and Thukker that were responsible for my exile to begin with. So unfortunately what would normally be the first organization to look the other way on my past might well be the last.
Then again. Evidently the Republic is finally looking into Thukker connections to the Deathless smuggling circle publicly. Don’t get me wrong, the Sanmatar’s Circle knew the entire time but now the situation has boiled over enough that they’re forced to cut the dead weight. So maybe we’re all due for a reproachmont.
I’ve got to hand it to you Arrendis, you’re great at dodging having to give answers or provide examples, and instead shutting the conversation in another direction using any little point you can latch on to.
You would be a pretty respected amateur in Federal politics.
It may help to keep in mind that at the high level State megacorporations are essentially entire political jurisdictions if not actual nation-states unto themselves. They don’t really have friends or enemies, and they mostly don’t hold grudges. It’s all pretty cold-blooded.
If you want back in with a tarnished history, your best course is to make a case that you’re useful, that you have special skills or contacts they’d have trouble finding in other places and that make any potential scandal from being associated with you worth the risk. They’re also adept at holding-company shell-games so it’s quite possible you could wind up back in the State and be asked either not to share or even just to not-know which mega is sponsoring you.
(I’d watch my back if that happened. Deniable quite often means disposable.)