Hee. I’d have said almost exactly the opposite, though I don’t think our basic perspectives differ all that much.
Mr. Egivand? If you’re listening, the answer to your question probably has a lot to do with this.
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At certain points in my life, I might have even agreed. Don’t worry, Aria. You’ll get here.
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Hope not.
Maybe you’ll get here, instead?
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Why don’t you meet in the middle?
With some wine.
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Hee. Well, the middle’s kind of an ambiguous sea of middling gray. I’d be more positive about it if there seemed to be more … there. Also, being positive about it kind of moves the observer in my direction.
Also, Arrendis and I do talk kind of on the regular. Just. Um. Not … quite like I think you might be suggesting.
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I had said so many things that I don’t quite remember exactly what you meant. Care to remind me?
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That.
(To be clear, it’s the “can’t really get that” that implies a question, instead of a straight criticism.)
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I won’t accept that sort of “argument”, unless you’ll write me a 3000-word essay about how everyone flying for famous goon fleet commanders should be accused in flying not for goons.
Uh … only, it’s not really you she’s talking to, Ms. Firestorm. You’re not being persuaded; you’re under attack.
Whether you accept her reasoning is less important than whether others will.
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I think for the rest it’s pretty enough to just imagine that essay to decide where they could accept her… 
“reasoning”
Well, do as seems appropriate to you…
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It’s a statement that I can’t comprehend how you think.
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If you can’t understand something, do you not want to?
I guess not everybody thinks of curiosity as a virtue, but…
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That’s really, really funny. 3000 words?
DID YOU FORGET WHO YOU WERE TALKING TO, FOOL?
<-- Click it. I threw in an extra 171 words for ya.
Often in life, we are confronted with challenges to our ideas and beliefs. Sometimes, we’re even confronted with challenges to our notions of identity, and our notions of our place in the world. Who are we? What are we doing here? Why are we choosing to be here? Am I really devoted to the group I associate with, or are my loyalties more to a singular figure who commands my personal devotion?
These questions seem to challenge our ideals, and they often seem to have their roots in ‘what do I truly believe in?’ Fundamentally, though, this is a flawed way to address the issue. Instead of seeking to identify belief structures that define us, or searching for ideologies and associations of label to point to and say ‘I do it because I’m with them’, I posit instead that the inverse is true: an individual’s actions, not their associations, define who they are, and where their devotions lie.
A useful example of this kind of behavior can be found in the case study of the Goonswarm Special Interest Group (SIG) known as the European Goonion, or EG. The group’s nomenclature speaks to common points of origin, an early reason for association, but one that ultimately proved insufficient to actually bind the group into a unified, cohesive whole. Instead, that impetus was found in the group’s de facto leader, Mister Vee.
Mister Vee, or simply “Vee”, is something of a legend in nullsec warfare, and one of a vanishingly small number of fleet commanders often held to be ‘perfect’. The other name most commonly held in this regard is Shadoo, of Pandemic Legion’s North Eastern Swat corporation.
Both FCs have become figures largely of folklore and legend at this point, despite having been active combatants less than a decade before. In this, there lies a similarity to be found to many of the legendary warriors of New Eden’s various cultures. How this perfection is attained varies from one mythic figure to the next. In some cases, the warrior undergoes many trials. In others, perfection is a gift bestowed by divine agency. In the case of Mister Vee, his skills as an FC were developed through years of hard work and study, working to understand everything he could about all facets of capsuleer combat and ship performance specifications. Ultimately, though, the means of attaining the attributed perfection is less important than the results.
In addition to the resulting combat performance, individuals of this stature share other similarities in their personal arcs. Upon attaining perfection in their chosen form of the art of warfare, the “perfect warrior” often turns their attention to other pursuits, and fades from the public eye, into the realm of myth.
Vee, however, is quite definitely real, and many of those who flew with him remain active throughout the wars of New Eden. Quite a few remain active within Goonswarm, and the alliances of the former ■■■■■■■■■■■ Coalition. Some of these alliances, of course, have collapsed since their departure from the Imperium, such as Spacemonkey’s Alliance and now Circle-of-Two. Some, as in the case of RAZOR, have shifted to renting space, rather than holding it themselves. Others remain strong, independent FCONs who don’t need no landlord. But are the pilots from EG in their original alliances? Did they stay where they were because of their associations with the larger groups?
Sadly, in many cases the answer is no. Many members of Vee’s own corporation, Magellanic, have migrated to other alliances, including enemies such as Pandemic Legion and Northern Coalition., as Vee’s absence has lengthened. So what happened? Why did they leave organizations they were devoted to for years? There has been no great shift in the mindset of Goonswarm in the last two years, no cataclysmic undermining of the alliance’s goals or methods, and yet, they’ve still departed. The answer is Vee, of course. Some of these pilots had originally come into Goonswarm from other alliances, specifically for Mister Vee.
One example is an individual who was a fixture as the primary logistics anchor of the CFC for years, first as a member of FCON, and later in Goonswarm. While I fully acknowledge that this individual is not difficult to identify if you know the personalities in nullsec over the last decade or so, in the interests of privacy, I’m not going to state their name. After the Fountain War of YC115, this individual’s activity in the main line combat fleets tapered off, directly in proportion to Vee’s. They remained active within EG, however, performing a number of roles, but most significantly flying as Vee’s personal logistics adjunct. Even other Fleet Commanders within EG didn’t often receive such attention. As Vee’s absences lengthened, so to did this individual’s activity taper off.
Attempts were made to encourage more activity, to find other avenues to let her use her leadership experience and expertise. She was offered—never ordered, mind—leadership positions, including the directorship of one of the Alliance’s most critical strategic arms. Despite voluntarily taking on these roles, she continued to become progressively more withdrawn and distant, eventually refusing to work or even talk with others even within her own arm of the organization. Eventually, she left to join another alliance. On its own, this might have been nothing, but the alliance in question was Pandemic Legion, a long-term rival and enemy of Goonswarm.
Someone who feels any loyalty at all to the membership, to the ‘people’, as it were, doesn’t go over to the enemy. Many others within EG followed a similar route of disinterest, isolation, withdrawal, and eventual defection. Still others have gone inactive themselves, retiring from the swarm’s activities and space to pursue alternative career paths of their own in low key, understated planetside or station-based environments.
Even before Vee’s long absence, members of EG held themselves apart. They routinely did not participate in strategic activities unless EG was forming a separate fleet. Some held ‘mainfleet’ in open contempt. While it is certainly valid for highly-skilled professionals to maintain an air of detachment, and to recognize their greater skill, openly denigrating others simply for not being part of their elite organization demonstrates a distinct lack of social bonds. Individuals in that position aren’t performing their duties for the common good, and they aren’t performing them out of loyalty to the whole. The trend is not unique.
Another example can be found in the case of Shutupandshave, usually shortened to Suas. A long-time FC for Goonswarm and the CFC, Suas ran the intermittently-successful SIG Space Violence for a number of years. During Suas’s tenure, Space Violence, or SV, was often most active in and around the Syndicate region of New Eden, a region where Suas himself controlled many of the valuable ‘money moons’. Whenever Suas allowed his other concerns to take his attention away from activities within the alliance, the activity level of his corporation, Black Omega Security, fell as well. This is relevant because while personal activity levels are not tracked by the alliance, corporate activity levels are, and at the time in question, the activity levels tracked were primarily contributions to alliance- and coalition-oriented fleets. Notably, activity within Space Violence counted as part of this activity metric.
During one of these periods of inactivity, BOS fell below the required threshold. Normally, this is not a matter of significant concern. Corporations are not ejected the moment they underperform, but are given an extended period of time to address the issues, usually at least three months. BOS was given significantly more latitude than normal, largely because of Suas. When Black Omega Security did finally separate from Goonswarm, Suas moved the corporation back into the Omega Security Syndicate. As the alliance is one Suas has long controlled and held dormant in trust when it was not needed, this was hardly surprising.
Once again, as with the example of EG, as Suas became inactive, SV became inactive. When Suas, and BOS, struck out on their own, members of SV followed suit. Entire corporations, such as the Deadly Shadow Clan, moved from their alliances (in this case, Executive Outcomes) into OSS because their leaders were members of Space Violence, even if the line members were not.
A third example comes in the form of third-shift FC, Fawlty7. For many years, Fawlty was a known, and popular fixture in Goonswarm, as much a cultural touchstone as Vee, Suas, or even Dagrid ‘DBRB’ Boat. The head of Arsehole Squad, Fawlty developed a reputation for aggressive, hell-if-I-care tactics and liberal use of the squad’s dreadnoughts. As one of the primary FCs in his activity window, he was well-known by the line, and he drew a devoted following.
After the Halloween War, though, Fawlty began to burn out on the massive supercapital engagements that the large-bloc coalitions were trending toward. He wanted to pursue smaller, more focused career options, and departed the coalition to form his own organization, Tactical Supremacy. Once again, in these events the pattern repeats itself: many of the members of Arsehold Squad, including some of its lesser FCs who had expressed no personal dissatisfaction with the Coalition, its goals, or its methods, depart to follow the charismatic leader. Many even express regret that Fawlty has decided to do this. They still follow him as he does it, though.
Singularly, these are isolated events. Someone gets annoyed or find something else to do, and the people who stuck around for that person slowly get tired of waiting. Or they go with them in search of greener pastures. Or they simply go, because there’s nothing left to hold them where they are.
Taken together, though, these three cases highlight a danger of the ‘charismatic FC’. It’s not limited to Fleet Commanders, of course. Cults of personality can develop around any figure who carries with them a significant personal presence. With Fleet Commanders, however, these cults of personality present a particular issue to group cohesion. By virtue of their singular nature and respected command status, FCs interact with the line members more often, and more directly, than alliance leaders do. As a result, when an individual FC becomes the focus of a particular pilot’s loyalty, the absence of that FC can result in diminished social bonds between those pilots and the larger group.
In each of these cases, the sub-organization headed by these FCs has proven unable to endure without them. The regular line-member pilots weren’t flying ‘for the group’, be it EG, SV, Arsehole Squad, their individual alliances, or the coalition as a whole. They were flying specifically for ‘their’ FC. Without that FC, the social bonds fail. Members of each of these groups have attempted to get back into Goonswarm. A few have even managed to be accepted. But none have really been trusted the way they were. They may never be.
The list is by no means exhaustive. Red Crown, Lyris Nairn, and of course, DBRB himself have all had devotees and fanatics, people who would forsake the larger community to fly with their preferred FC. Fortunately, these FCs have not been divisive figures themselves, but rather remained engaged in the surrounding alliance community, remained ‘of the people’.
Nor is this phenomenon limited to Goonswarm. Black Legion, Atlas Alliance, even Circle-of-Two, can all be seen as exemplars of the danger of a cult of personality.
Counter-examples of this phenomenon exist, as well, demonstrating personal loyalties beyond a singular, charismatic leader.
Consider the case of Lemba, a well-known individual in nullsec politics, especially during YC117-118. An active FC, and leader of the corporation I’m Fine and You? (DOKDO), Lemba occupied a place similar to Fawlty7, as primarily active between second and third-shift, with a sizeable group of individuals who appeared to be fairly devoted to his leadership. Lemba’s pilots, though, were far more focused on the common good, rather than their own goals.
In early-to-mid YC117, Lemba became irritated with the ‘Viceroy’ idea being floated around the upper echelons of Goonswarm leadership. His own confessional after-the-fact manifesto lays out how he felt that the policy would generate more of a backlash than the rest of leadership envisioned, and felt ignored and disrespected by their disagreement. As it turns out, he was right about the scale of the response, a fact many of the policy’s proponents have acknowledged.
Lemba, however, was not happy. He began using his position to arrange fights. In and of itself, this is no great sin. Lemba took things a step further, though, and began leaking intelligence onto public fora under false identities. He grew to crave the affection and approval of the faceless masses who, in truth, didn’t really care who or what he was about, as long as he was doing something to screw over Goons.
It’s hardly an unpopular position; for a great many capsuleers, an action is justifiable based entirely on how it affects their enemies. No act of bravery or selflessness is applauded if it benefits “The Bads”, and no act of treachery or cowardice is condemned, so long as it hurts those the individual hates. Often, these individuals don’t even recognize this tendency in themselves. But the mob loves a good backstab and juicy gossip, and so Lemba’s ego was fed and stoked.
Eventually, though, as inevitably happens to everyone in such conditions, he slipped up, and was exposed, resulting in his removal from the directorate. As he was the CEO of his corporation, the entire corporation was removed from Goonswarm. Even before that was done, however, a landing corp, “I’m Fine And You Aren’t” (D0KDO) was formed, with members of Lemba’s corporation welcomed in immediately.
Lemba claimed his actions were primarily motivated by ‘providing fights’ and ‘looking after the line guys’. He spun grand tales to exonerate himself and cast his position as one of honorable dissent. Many members of the Imperium were concerned, fearing a third exodus in a relatively short amount of time. In this, a distinction should be made between these incidents and Mister Vee’s retreat from public life. Vee’s absence never produced a singular exodus, but rather a slow decay that consumed EG and reduced a powerful combat SIG to nothing but a small social group.
The members of DOKDO surprised the doubters, though. Quickly, and almost unanimously, Lemba’s people opted to remain within Goonswarm, rather than follow their traitorous leader into banishment and exile. In return, Goonswarm’s leaders and membership welcomed them with open arms. None of DOKDO’s pilots were held in any way responsible for the actions of their leadership.
Quietly, the new leadership of D0KDO inquired as to why. Rather than the expected answers of ‘good ratting space’ or ‘mining space’, the reasons cited were more often that the pilots simply didn’t feel right, abandoning their friends during a war. They were committed to the larger whole, to the social bonds they’d formed among the alliance and the coalition. They flew with Lemba, and they flew under Lemba, but the majority of D0KDO’s pilots flew for Goonswarm, not for Lemba.
One key difference is that while the DOKDO pilots flew under Lemba in the original corporation, they also flew under a number of other FCs. Lemba’s personal appeal was never strong enough, and his pilots never self-segregated or isolated enough, that he became the only focus for their loyalty. Their bonds within the smaller group never superseded and replaced their bonds to the larger social group they worked within. As a result, their loyalty to the larger organization, which had given their corporation a home, a direction, and financial and other support both direct and indirect, was never eroded by a current of feeling personally committed to one FC. They never saw themselves as a group apart from the larger whole, and by the actions, demonstrated that sense of who they really were.
The distinction is important. Most people attempt to define themselves by an ideology, by principles, or as part of a specific group. The criteria aren’t mutually-exclusive, not by any means. Loyalty to a group, the ideal of ‘never betray a friend’, all forms and combinations of abstractions like these can go into someone’s self-image. But they remain abstractions. As a result, usually, self-images like these are sadly fictitious. The fiction isn’t malicious, of course, but rather is a form of hopeful self-deception, or delusion. Instead of being an image of who that person is, they are aspirational, an image of who the person wants to be.
All too often people fall short of these aspirational self-images. They screw up, lash out in a moment of anger, or give in to a moment of weakness. There are a million different small ways that people can fail to meet their expectations for themselves. Usually, these incidents are rationalized away, justified with excuses that apply ‘just this once’. Other times, a person’s natural defensive impulses create a blind spot. In these cases, the failure may simply not be recognized as a failure to live up to the person’s self-image.
It’s hardly surprising. Self-image can be extremely important to people. Often, people who have experienced one of these failures to live up to their own idea of themselves will resist attempts to get them to see the truth of themselves. In this, self-image is necessarily subjective, fallible, and unreliable.
Actions, on the other hand, either happen, or they don’t. Actions may not represent how an individual thinks they’ll behave, but they invariably, inevitably, represent how that person does behave. The idea of claiming that self-image, divorced from actual actions, is a clear and unambiguous representation of a person’s true nature is silly. It’s akin to claiming that a specific capsuleer would never engage in the mass murder of innocents while that capsuleer is in the middle of ordering an orbital bombardment on a neo-natale ward or nursery. At that point, there’s no point in debating what they would do, or what they might do—they are in the middle of doing it! They have already done it! So clearly, that sort of action is inescapably the sort of thing they do. They are, undeniably, the kind of person who does that sort of thing. An individual’s actions reveal who that individual is and what they really believe, above and beyond what they’d like to believe.
This includes revealing where an individual’s loyalties lie. The pilot who is truly loyal to the larger group will not hesitate to fly with the group, regardless of the presence or absence of any particular leader, commander, or participant. Those who will not, those who consistently, exclusively fly with a particular individual, demonstrate by their actions that their loyalties lie with that individual, not the larger societal group. This is true regardless of the size of the larger group, or the identity of the singular individual whose loyalty is compromised. Goon, pubbie, null-bear, militia pilot, CODE pilot, or devotee of Bob, that remains true: actions, not words, not principles claimed, show who a pilot truly is. Pilots who fly exclusively with one particular person aren’t flying for the group. They’re flying for their favored cult-figure.
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A statement is a statement is a statement. You are reading into this too much. I suppose I should also add that into my criticism about you.
But really, if I stick around you (or anyone else for the matter) long enough, I will eventually have a grasp on how you tick. It worked with my wife, some of my staff, etc.
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Wow, just…wow.
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So, yeah, turns out the new IGS isn’t actually that bad for long-form writing.
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Seems that way, I’m just surprised you actually took the time to either write or recycle that. Didn’t seem like it’d be worth it. Nice read btw.
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Eh, it didn’t take long, and really, it was kinda fun to examine the issue.
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Probably would be honestly, it is an interesting subject.
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