Maybe you really are being serious this time. Maybe not. It’s hard to know for sure.
Here’s the thing, though, Arrendis: I don’t believe you. I can’t trust you. You’re predatory, self-consciously, proudly predatory, and intellectually dishonest, and in a clever person that’s a real problem.
For a long time I felt like it was worth it anyway. But I’m tired, Arrendis. I’m tired of gamely taking on whatever fictitious challenge you feel like tossing out, as though the game we were playing was the same-- as though you were really looking for the truth.
I’m tired of wasting hundreds and thousands of words on a contest that was only rarely about anything any deeper than your delight in exercising your wit.
That entire post is you telling me what I’m thinking. Again. You retreat into this every time you’re shown to be wrong, and act like your refusal to accept your own error is somehow me treating you like a ‘plaything’. And then you go into the ‘I’m tired’ and ‘it’s exhausting’ line.
So here’s my suggestion to you:
Stop.
If it exhausts you so much to actually have to support your statements and not be taken as an unquestionable font of wisdom, to be expected to actually discuss the things you claim you’re raising in a discussion, rather than simply spouting off and have everyone defer to you, right or wrong… then stop.
Don’t respond to this. Don’t respond to me. Put me on ignore, no time limit.
Because, really, this song and dance where as soon as what I’m saying becomes something that actually demonstrates you’re wrong, you play the ‘you’re being insincere’ card, and accuse me of playing a game because I’m pointing out the things that contradict you? The schtick where you tell people you know what they’re thinking better than they do?
It really makes me feel like maybe you’re the one who’s not being sincere, and maybe never was.
So if you’re tired of the game only you seem to believe is being played? Stop playing. You’re the only one who is.
And for the record: that’s not being mean either. Just blunt.
State ideology itself is virtually the exact antithesis of Gallente values.
That is no coincidence.
I feel that modern Caldari thought was influenced somewhat in it’s early days by a sense of contrarianism towards early Federal “cultural projection”.
Of course the harshness of Caldari Prime led us down a certain path to collectivism, but who can say what form it would have taken had the Raata been left to their own devices?
Admittedly I allow myself to attribute certain facets of Caldari society I dislike to this contrary reaction while adhering to the brighter aspects as the legacy of the ancient tribes.
In many ways, sure, and that’s hardly surprising. The contrarian impulse you describe is a perfectly normal response, especially from a people used to needing to put the community’s welfare ahead of any individual benefit.
This is actually kinda what I mean: that entire post is me telling you what I’M thinking, about you. After all, I don’t really know what you’re thinking.
Here’s what I had to say about what you, right now, are thinking:
Gray. Uncertain.
And that’s obvious, certainly to someone as clever and incisive as you are.
You’ve given me a certain amount of experience in how you approach this stuff. The above is just one of dozens of examples. You don’t play nice and you don’t play fair. I could tolerate the first as long as I thought I could coax you into sometimes treating the truth as a goal, our conversations as discussions instead of battles.
But I don’t believe that any more.
I don’t know what you’re thinking, Arrendis. Maybe you’re even low-key proud that I’m confronting you like this; you’ve done that a time or two. But the impression you’ve left, true or not, is that to you good faith is a weakness to take advantage of-- that when I give you my trust, in return I’ll receive the back of your hand.
Oh Joy of Joys, It’s time for another damn round of “LETS STICK THE ALIEN ARTIFACT IN OUR BRAIN” from all the idiot capsuleers with more guns than brain cells.
Of bloody course the majority of them will pick the options that give them “OOO NEW SHIPS AND WEAPONS” that promise the ability to violence each other in ways that are 5% more violent than current methodologies, even when huffing drugs made from some other banal method involving oh I don’t know, distilled orphans or some such nonsense.
“Deathless” ? Cartel ? Guristas ? A bunch of idiots that consider the inflicting of violence to be the apex of human endeavour. Booooooring. A thousand poxes on them. Such trite boring banality.
SOCT ? Oh right. The spooky bunch of spooky secret spooks that hide out in the ass end of space and pop up every so often to remind people that they’re spooky spooks. Whoop de doop.
I expect all that will be learned is how to violence other capsuleers with marginally more efficiency. No great technological or philosophical breakthroughs. Just more shootier shootyguns. Fan-bloody-tastic.
I should have been a naval architect or weapons engineer, instead of an archaeologist. Seems to be a lot more fardling money to be had from desiging phallus-shaped ships with phallusguns that shoot exploding phallus-shaped projectiles.
Do what you want. Nothing good will come from any of it.
Frankly, I’m shocked that it wasn’t always obvious to you. If there’s anything that a study of humanity, past and present, should tell you, it’s that guns and phallii will always get all the money.
A wind garden ? What’s that ? a garden planted with lots of tall leafy things that wave gently in the breeze, and you sit there on a bench or something and have a right good think ?
That’s actually not far off. I think they usually have more sound to them though, chimes and so on, which are more important than the plants. The winds are considered spiritual allies to the Caldari, guides and patrons.
(It’s not my sect’s practice so I hope Mr. Thorne will correct me if I’m wrong. Achura are considered spiritual kin by the Wayists but it’s by convergent spiritual evolution under similar kinds of pressures, and the specifics differ quite a bit.)