You just made my list of people to hang out with.
And you’re quite right, Ange—you’ve grown in monumental ways, at least as far as I can tell from your posts here. It takes bravery and heart to allow yourself to consider the opinions and lives of others, or to allow others to challenge and shape your viewpoints. The cluster doesn’t build itself around one person’s ideas, after all.
No amount of howling into the wind that “the Minmatar are backwards, trashy subhumans” will change the fact that we have, and have had for millennia, an advanced, complex, nuanced society founded on the idea of community.
No amount of swearing every 2 hours that “the Federation must be destroyed” will change the fact that the Federation is a political and military powerhouse, albeit flawed, with the most participatory government of the four empires. It’s easy to expect an enemy to think less of us, but any reasoned and principled enemy can—and should—acknowledge their enemy’s strengths.
Besides, even we capsuleers are, at the end of the day, human. I doubt that any of us are simply who we appear to be on this forum.
What does that make me? I’ve spent a fair amount of energy here lately defending my hometown after it was destroyed by a manmade weather event. I also never pass up a chance for the most terrible dad jokes. I suppose that might make me appear rather one-dimensional, perhaps even combative. But to put it rather simply, while I do expect to rebut “stupid” claims like the ones about Minmatar and Gallente when I log on here, I also don’t reflexively log on to announce everything else in my life. Some things are personal, and I hold them very close. Having lost nearly everything, I’m learning to appreciate that everything is ephemeral.
Beyond this space, I’m a psychologist, and also a security contractor. I’ve worked with and made friends with people from nearly every faction (excluding only the blooders and toasters, I think). I’ve visited nearly every region of the cluster. I’m in love with the most spectacular, beautiful, brilliant, badass woman ever, and I get to be her Sprinkle. Aside from having to rebuild my home, I’m happier now than I’ve ever been. That’s what I hold close.
But here, I’m just the empty-rhetoric angry-Gallente guy, I guess. Meh.
I never turn down a good discussion, so long as I don’t feel like I’d be talking at a wall. Aria offered, and she turned out to be deeply insightful, thoughtful, and patient. We did have a good conversation, and I understand much more about how she works and thinks than I did before.
That’s the exchange. If I’m wrong about something, then explain it to me. If you’re just going to run around claiming I’m a closed door when all you’ve ever done since you realized I wasn’t Caldari is claim that I don’t listen to reason that you’ve never offered, then my response is probably going to be sarcasm or a dad joke.
Or, if I can manage it, both.