It’s really adorable the way you lie about how blatantly corrupt everyone in power is.
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I fail to see the corruption in this.
That whole ‘no, everyone’s totally playing the part they’re supposed to play, acting in good faith. Nobody would ever take advantage of the system for personal gain, manipulate public perception, cover things up’… it’s cute. Really.
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You really must think we’re morons. I honestly, truly cannot believe how you think a civilization that has been in the stars for longer than yours knew how to form complete sentences is a stranger to the concepts of corruption, lying and abuse of power.
We are fully aware that it can and does happen. That is what our religion is for. That is what the culture of honor for good deeds, shame for bad ones and absolute condemnation for heinous ones is for. When that fails, that is what inquisitors are for. If the perpetrator outranks an inquisitor, that is what the Speakers of Truth are for.
And if the perpetrator is out of the reach of even the Speakers, that is what one pissed off pious person with a blunt object is for.
We don’t like to talk about the last option for correcting a corrupt official, but I assure you of this: it is an open secret that if you are considered righteous enough, and the individual you are correcting terrible enough, you will not be blamed for applying holy kinetic energy to their skulls until they are redeemed. You had best be willing to die yourself for the trouble, however. It’s a way of making sure you only do it when it really matters. Ask the Cult of St. Tetrimon what they think of the method. We try not to spread it around so that fools who are not prepared to make the right decisions begin to think that they can kill any social or political superior they want so long as they feel justified enough, but the option is there. It is always there, and has always been there.
One nice thing about believing in an all-knowing God is that you can rest assured that no matter how flawed the laws of men are for a certain circumstance, God will judge you correctly. So if you have a good idea of what God wishes for, how the world around you fails to reflect it, and how to reconcile the two, you are good to go. The issue is that not everyone has the wisdom to know all three with much measure of certainty, but there are a few who do, and they tend to be in the upper echelons of power in the Empire. Those are the ones we place trust in. So, God forbid, if a false ruler ever needs to be struck down, it will be done in the drawing room with the candlestick by the quiet advisor with a plan already in place to shift power over bloodlessly. Not in an open rebellion that brings down the entire house. That is your way. You can have your method that kills billions needlessly; we have ours.
I can already anticipate your new protests; how uncivilized, how brutal and primitive, you are no better than a Minmatar waving a Khuumak. No. The difference between us and you is that we reserve the blunt-force-trauma option as the last one, not the first, and with a calculated precision that keeps our civilization intact. We haven’t survived eight thousand years by being complacent or stupidly trusting when we have had poor leaders at the helm. The Empire’s power structures and mechanisms of control and correction are massive, varied, and intensely personal, with each individual clergy, Holder and Heir and Emperor willing and able to make their own decisions that correct the mistakes of others, up to the point of their own death. We stand for our principles no matter the cost in the end.
We know, Arrendis. We know when something is off. We also know how to keep our mouths shut and hands still until it is right. The point of the discipline we show and enforce in one another is to make sure we only step out of line when it really matters, and it is actually helpful. That is our culture. But when principle is threatened and the time is right, we make the correct choice.
But the key is knowing when the time is right. I know you know this. And I know you and Mizhara purposely try to provoke us to make us falter and jump the gun so we can have our heads lopped off and you can grin smugly to yourselves later, knowing that another enemy of yours was destroyed by some lazy words. But I know not to fall for it, as does any Amarr with half a brain.
Max Singularity jumps the gun. He jumps high enough to have his head taken, yet no one has yet. That is fine. But he is a poor example of how to behave in the Empire. He’d do well to figure out his place, and how to work his motives silently and with care to make sure they are the right ones. But he is his own man and he will not listen to anyone else, even Holders, Heirs and the Empress herself. That is pure hubris on his part, but I cannot do a thing about it. I just pray that he’ll see the error of his ways and stow his arrogance for a correct time.
And I hope that you terrorists shut the hell up already. You are not going to make me budge, nor will you change the minds of anyone else who isn’t already stupid enough to fall on their own. You get what Amarr society is about. You are not up to snuff. Get over it.
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And the people who get to say what God wishes for don’t at all protect themselves from such scrutiny, surely. How often do we hear here that the word of certain people is that of God? How often do we hear about infallibility being part and parcel of certain positions and organizations? Oh gosh, it’s almost as if you’re being utterly internally inconsistent. Much like all theocracies.
Your religion is for control of those below, not those above, and it takes some serious mental gymnastics to try and make it look otherwise, even for zealots. You know this to be true.
No no, this is not about ‘how uncivilized and brutal’, this is about how blatantly dishonest and outright ridiculous it is to on the one hand appeal to ultimate authority and then in the other advocate betrayal and destruction of said authority but keep it hush hush wink wink you know what I mean.
Eh, you’re a capsuleer. They can lop your head off a dozen times and still be beyond their power. I’m not trying to bait or trap you, Aldieboo. I’m just finding great delight in pointing out the hypocrisies and failures of the Empire, and in being a perpetual reminder that there is a debt to be paid and that it will never be forgotten. I know you love it so. Besides, that entire paragraph basically just shouted to the world that you know things are horrifyingly wrong but you won’t actually speak about it, so anyone Inquisitorial already has your name down and at the very same time you fail to have even the slightest decency and courage to actually take a decent stand. Double whammy, oh dear.
Make up your mind, Aldieboo. Either we’re halfway across New Eden and just “talking heads” or we’re terrorists. Can’t be a terrorist if we aren’t inflicting some terror in the relevant places. Besides, you know we’re not trying to budge you. At least I’m not. All this serves is some delightful entertainment, while putting all the chinks in yours and the Empire’s armor on display for New Eden to see.
… also, it’s just delectable to see you get riled up like this.
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Oh, I know you know the concepts. And I know you know it happens.
I also know getting you to admit it is like pulling teeth with pliers. Even then, you’ll insist that it’s just a small minority of those who wield power in the Empire who’re corrupt. It’s not. Let’s face it, the Empire’s built on corruption: ‘I’m getting mine and you’re gonna bleed for it’. The only thing that keeps your society stable is that the top levels know they have to maintain a unified lie to the masses while they all try to screw one another over behind the curtain.
And no, I don’t find your response uncivilized at all. That’s what civilization is, after all. It’s not just the rules that let trillions of people exist without descending into parochial anarchy. It’s also finding the holes, the flaws, chinks in those rules that let people continue to be themselves and continue to push to better their lives—yes, sometimes at the expense of others—even if they’re not ‘supposed’ to be in it for themselves. It’s struggling to stop the abuses of those loopholes, and watching in frustration as new ones open. It’s all of that, in a mad, never-ending circular self-immolation of having to burn down little bits and pieces of things you hold dear in order to try to make things better, to make yourselves better, and all of the pain and joy and triumph and tragedy that comes with it.
And who knows? Maybe some day, you’ll actually get your culture as civilized as the one you tore apart on the Day of Darkness. That’s not my complaint here, though. My complaint is that you ladle this ‘all-knowing God’ nonsense onto everything as an excuse to not run in that hamster wheel of civilization, to not improve things and make yourselves better. That’s the underlying problem with your entire faith, from its beginnings: “God says we’re ok, we need to make you better.”
Piss off. You don’t have the right to try to make me ‘better’. You haven’t even demonstrated that your idea of ‘better’ in any way conforms to the actual meaning of the word. You reserve blunt-force-trauma as the last measure, while we use it as our first, you say.
Funny, I don’t remember even the Amarr history books mentioning any missionaries, any diplomatic overtures, any traders and preachers, before you decided blunt-force-trauma was the way to go.
And while we’re anticipating protests, lemme try it out: ‘That wasn’t us, that was a thousand years ago and that time has ended’. That sound about right?
Children. Grandchildren. Great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren still enslaved over the imagined ‘crime’ of apostasy their ancestors supposedly committed simply by not being Amarr when the slaving raids came through. The children are guilty of the sins of the ancestors, until arbitrarily judged to have atoned by… self-important blowhards with guns.
So, you know, by your standards… yeah. You’re still responsible for what people who’ve been dead for centuries, who you never met, did to us as their first choice.
You’ve survived eight thousand years by being tyrants and abusers, by always insisting on another external enemy to oppose. ‘In the end’, the only principles your Empire stands for is still ‘I got mine, you’ll keep bleeding’.
This may come as a shock to you, Aldrith, but I really don’t want to see you destroyed. I like you. I like your wife. Sure, you’re both stubborn, arrogant jerks, but you know, that’s kinda part of why I like you. Mopey, self-destructive people I like even more than you answer to the two of you in varying capacities. I don’t even want to see the Empire burned down. If it happens, I think it’ll just be the beginnings of a massive era of chaos and death, and idiots like Napkins will dance around the smouldering fires jerking off and claiming to have predicted it (because predicting that everything’s gonna fall apart is never a losing bet, in the long run).
I just want my kin free to have the same limited selections of self-determinant behaviors you get. Or even the same ones a baseliner citizen of the Empire gets. I’m not saying they need to be returned to the Republic—it’d be kinda nice from an anthropological standpoint, sure, but they’re human beings, and I’m sure plenty of them would choose to remain in the Empire because they’ve already assimilated culturally to the point where that’s where they feel like they belong. But that’d be their choice, and if I want them to be able to make those self-determining decisions, then I’d damned well better be ready to honor the decisions of the ones who flip me the bird and tell me they like praying to God and living in the Empire, now hadn’t I?
That’s all I want out of this, Aldrith: I want your people to stop hurting my people for the crime of being my people. I’d love it if your wife would drop the nonsense about ‘they’re not your people anymore, they’re my people’ just because she’s got a piece of paper that says she’s legally entitled to be an abuser. I get that she takes her responsibilities seriously as a caretaker and all, I can actually respect that she considers the people under her care to be both a privilege and obligation that she’s responsible for. But if your children were enslaved and sold to another Holder for some stupid reason—and I’m not saying they should be, as you damned well should know by now—that Holder saying ‘these are my people now’ wouldn’t make them any less your children. But really, I don’t even expect to get a cessation of that little bit of douchebaggery.
As for this lovely little gem…
I’m just gonna point you back to this:
… and then remind you that your entire Empire sat back and did nothing while a Blooder ran the show. That is your culture: Sit back and wait for someone in Authority to fix things, because we’re Not Allowed™. If that’s what it takes to be ‘up to snuff’… sign me up for ‘so glad I’m not’.
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