I am considering.
I have hard time to trust that you would come genuinely, instead of for more ammunition, after what you’ve said here today.
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You hurt her feelings. You know, if you’d just ■■■■■■■ killed her crews, she’d be fine.
Ok, there’s a difference between being rigid and inflexible, and being consistent. And there’s a difference between being able to adjust and adapt, and being inconsistent. Like, I don’t know how much ‘adjustment’ and ‘adapting’, you can really be claiming to have done in the last… three hours? And trying to float that as why you’re shifting positions in just this one conversation doesn’t actually improve your position or support your claim that you’re straightforwardly honest about what you’re thinking.
Casting oneself as a hero is an act of profound ego. Leaders don’t bother with it. They just get on about the business of getting things done. And yes, she wrote a ‘how-to’ guide. She wrote something up to let people do for themselves, so she could be completely removed from the equation if need be.
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Just today? As opposed to when I was actually and actively trying to hurt you?
Eh … okay. I can understand your feelings; the exact reason I keep “explaining you” is that I don’t actually trust a good diplomat like yourself to give me the whole truth, rather than the sort measured in kind and quantity and maybe leavened with a few gentle not-quite-truths to maximize my sympathy. I can’t very well complain if you don’t trust me, either.
A literal martyr doesn’t tend to survive to enjoy the adulation that follows, Arrendis. Even that can be an act of ego, though. Also, even a thoroughly selfless person aware of her own charisma might usefully establish herself as a rallying point, a leader, a hero.
If we strip out the affective element, what I was trying to do was resist and undermine a strategy. However, that would be at best a partial truth: my real motive was intense animosity partially based in the real observed effects of that strategy but also largely sourced elsewhere.
Yes, just today.
Prior, I assumed that when that incident happened, you were upset and angry and mistaken.
Today, you told us that no matter what is said to you, you will “continue maintaining your own models” about me, and that your actions are intentional diplomatic warfare intended to denigrate. Why would I bother explaining myself to someone who by her own words will not use the explanations to change her opinion anyway, but is instead looking for ways to hurt me and my cause?
How often do your actions reflect just one motive, Else?
If you knew I was planning to murder you after it, would you share a drink with me because I also happen to like drinks, and thus I have more motivations than one?
Um … as an initial thought, I’d likely share the drink and then maybe murder you first?
(I’m something of a believer in stepping into an attack.)
But I have no particular interest in destroying your reputation or any of that stuff. If you did not constantly bring these attacks to me, I’d have very little reason to interact with you at all.
Well … you know how Arrendis claims that she’s not really trying to hurt me; that she’s just being blunt? And I even might believe her a little?
It’s a bit like that.
I maintain working mental models on just about everyone and everything, Else. It’s what I do while I’m exploring: try to work out how stuff fits together and how people tick. It can be used for destructive purposes, and that’s definitely one motive for doing it, but I’m not some Sabik who thinks everything has to be about power. A high-precision model is a really excellent tool. Finding weak points to press in on is only one use … and maybe not a very imaginative one.
If you help me see you and your people more clearly, from some standpoint you’ll be helping an enemy. You’ll also be maybe helping to make me less of one, though.
Diplomacy, you know?
For ■■■■’s sake, of course you do. Everyone does.
The point was you told me you are not interested in changing yours and whether or not that bothers me is none of your concern, and now you suddenly want me to take you seriously when you turn around and tell me you would oh so very much like me to educate you.
I know.
Maybe you should try it sometime.
Ok, so… I’m not sure why you’re suddenly bringing martyrs into the mix, as nobody claimed Else was martyring herself, or even considering doing so. And the ‘thoroughly selfless person’ using their charisma to rally people… rallies people by focusing on the goal, not herself. She wouldn’t be ‘building a statue of herself’, and considering your unforced choice of that imagery… I come away with the impression that you very much saw her efforts as being about her.
And I think any attempt to strip out the affective element would go beyond only a ‘partial truth’: as you said previously, you were motivated by your anger at someone else entirely. So, again, we have two different pictures of things.
Hers is completely consistent. Her words were supported by actions. Those actions were, in fact, consistent with her statements.
Yours was, and remains, inconsistent, constantly reinventing itself. It was built on assertions of falsehoods and manipulations that were never demonstrated. And you were motivated by multiple emotional biases (feeling the Daphitis to be attacked, lashing out at the closest thing to Miz because Miz was mean to you, etc), by your own admission. That’s not conjecture, you know? You said each of those things motivated you, and each was very much an emotional reaction.
But you continue to insist hers is the one that must be questioned. That yours is the reasonable one, and your continued hostility toward her—rooted, let’s remember, in Mizhara being mean to you—is demonstrative of Elsebeth having a flawed perception of things, and needing to “consider the contagious qualities of hatred” because she ‘doesn’t get the joke’.
If it were anyone but you saying that, Aria… what would you think of that person’s claims? What would you think if it were Matari Ronin saying it? Remember him?
And yet, the map is not the territory.
I carry this world, and my own life, lightly, Else. One way is good. The other is also good.
Even if I had no reason to mistrust you, people in fact tend not to know themselves or their own motives all that well. When most people (maybe including me!) tell you something fundamental about themselves, you should probably be skeptical. It’s not that they’re lying; it’s that ironically one’s own head isn’t the best point from which to observe one’s self.
I try to be honest with myself. I’m not sure how well I succeed. I’d definitely be a fool to accept any accounting you could give of yourself as necessarily accurate and complete. … likewise, I don’t think Miz was nearly as honest a person as she claimed, for all her brutality. But I have no reason to doubt that she was being brutally honest about being brutally honest-- at least, as far as she knew or could acknowledge.
In most cases I try to be a little polite about things, even when dealing with you. Usually when I’m really worried about giving offense, though, I just keep my trap zipped.
But that scenario of meeting for drinks and murder? … That’s not so far from the truth, you know. If you had me in your territory, under your power, and I walked safely away without incident, I expect that would be for your own sake in one way or another, not for mine. For one thing, my death or incapacitation would be temporary only; murder’s not an efficient means of dealing with most of our peers. For another, you probably wouldn’t want to risk developing a reputation as someone who kills visitors.
Not for me, but for you.
More than maybe anything else, I’m a near-compulsive analyst. I’ll continue maintaining, revising, and updating my understanding of things whether you talk to me or not. One path might lead to better understanding and greater accuracy, as well as being the more interesting course, so of course I’ll take it if it’s open.
As for my care for your feelings: I’m a combat pilot. I extinguish lives for a living; even the ones in my care don’t normally mean so much to me. I’m not quite so proud of my peer group that I’ll give a peer’s feelings more consideration than I give the lives of those depending on me, merely because she’s a peer. More, your agenda includes harm to a lot of people I care about, so if my musings upset you I don’t have a reason not to smile. After all, your doings are upsetting to me, too.
Engage with me, or don’t. I’m observing either way, from different viewpoints.
Gods and spirits. If this weren’t the Off-Topic thread I’d have to move it there, but …
Seriously, Ms. Tsukiyo? It’s of course true, but … what exactly is your point?
Building a model is no replacement for sensing and moving with the flow of things. It’s a clever person’s poor substitute for wisdom.
But I’m not at all claiming to be wise.
I remember thinking he seemed sad.
To an extent, Arrendis, I don’t bring stuff here out of an expectation that it’ll be believed or even maybe understood. Maybe that’s foolish of me, but … well … I don’t think I’m very far wrong in how I’ve been approaching things, and most of the people telling me I am have a clear agenda.
Much as I enjoy talking with you, that includes you. It even somewhat includes Charles.
That’s all the response I seem to get anymore, though. It’s all quiet over here on this side. That’s probably natural-- my way of thinking is pretty alien to the Amarr, and a lot of what I have to say there’s no way they can agree with.
Eh.
Anyway, it makes me cautious when all of you have each other’s backs. Because, of course you would.
I think, Aria, that this statement right here illustrates the problem. I’m not saying that you’re saying things with the expectation that it’ll be believed. I’m saying that if anyone else were saying what you’re saying, you wouldn’t believe them. But you insist it’s right because it’s you… and for all you claim to be a ‘seeker’ and a ‘questioner’… from where I’m sitting, it looks like you never question your own preconceptions, and whatever you said is always the unvarnished truth… even if the one contradicting you… is you.
Maybe step back and ask yourself why it is you can say directly contradictory things, and insist both are true?
You’re the one who loves logic traps, Arrendis. I don’t expect people to function as rational actors, even myself, even you. I’m comfortable with ambiguity and seeming contradiction, and always have been.
Much to your occasional frustration, yes? 
It’s not a logic trap, Aria. In fact, it’s nothing of the sort. Two mutually-exclusive things can’t both be true. And if you’re claiming to seek understanding and truth, but you’re comfortable claiming mutually-exclusive things are both true (as you just said you are)… you’re more or less setting yourself up for failure, calling yourself a liar, and declaring that you’re ok with that.
And no. It doesn’t frustrate me at all. It doesn’t impact me at all. I just think that if you’re going to do that while simultaneously claiming to be honest and straightforward… maybe you need to have a little chat with you.
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Meh. It’s because I’m sincere before I’m consistent that it comes out like that I think. … to the degree that it really is inconsistent to begin with at all.
Hm. Of course, all that said, I tend not to believe people who claim to be honest just as a matter of course. So probably I’m a liar after all.
Like everyone else.