So it’s supposition, alright.
Thank you for the insight.
1 Like
It may be a bit of a difference in frame of reference, sir. Caldari by reflex tend to think less of “me” and more of “us,” such that “freedom” can be defined as, “we get to be controlled and have dissent repressed by our own leaders, for our own reasons, instead of yours.”
That’s … not really even a joke. Even a dissident like me will, in many cases, instantly bristle at any notion that we need outside help (not least because even entertaining such an idea makes us look like traitors, which jaalan very determinedly ARE NOT. Even if they struggle a bit in Caldari society, jaalan are at least grudgingly accorded a measure of respect. Hnolku are not).
It’s a common mistake by foreigners to see Caldari society and customs as something imposed from the top down. The reverse is closer to the truth: high-caste Caldari tend be, for practical reasons if nothing else, more cosmopolitan. Generally, the lower the caste (unless you get into the Dissocs, whom few Caldari would count), the more traditional and clannish the outlook.
The State may not be an idealized form of Caldari traditionalism exactly, but it’s more responsive to its tradition-minded people’s wishes than might be apparent.
3 Likes
But hardly an ungrounded one.
1 Like
We cannot presume to know how God intends for the Reclaiming to be achieved in all aspects, therefore, we cannot know the answer.
1 Like
Also, some Gallente women have those go-faster stripes, which adds to their aesthetic value.
“We will not permit you to tell us how to be Caldari, and so you leave us with no choice”
- Excerpt from the Caldari Proclamation of Secession. CE 23154.11.22
1 Like
This, right here.
+1 from me.
1 Like
I am reluctant to speak on such things but I feel compelled to comment. It is a subject I have felt passionately about for years. I find the truth complicated.
Attend a classic Raata stage play and you will find the audience to be mostly managers and executives. Indeed, in the Academy I wrote a small body of poetry in the traditional style. I had in mind for an audience the Caldari worker of simple taste and education. When I was published by Eschelon I was surprised to find the majority of my readership were executives. This made an odd sight at parties, especially when so much of our talk revolved around the Caldari worker.
In those days the funding for the arts was recovering from sorry neglect and there was an urgent demand for new talent. But he who pays sets the rules, and it was a particular executive niche who took the most interest. One of the reasons (I think) I did not advance further on that track was that I did not wear a Directorate pin on my lapel and was more reluctant to comment on the Executor’s latest speech than my peers.
Another common subject was what a shame (It is indeed!) that so many young sejikiin bend their taste toward the holoreels and wines of Caille rather than New Caldari. If you attend one of those parties now, I expect you will not find any of those pins. But you will still find it to be populated by a particular set, and the conversations will be more or less the same.
From the Caldari worker we found mostly apathy. They are interested in the same things workers are perennially interested in: gambling, melodrama and gladitorial combat. When the worker as a class took interest in traditional arts, it was usually because the author’s story happened to include some explosions, gore or romantic scandal. He was just as likely to consume cheap imported Gallente schlock, but fortunately his taste was barely accustomed to the difference. At least this insensitivity provided some protection from the Federal agenda concealed therein.
And yet it is true in another sense that the worker is the vanguard of tradition. He has a pure love and faith for those Raata virtues the executive, overwhelmed with options, tends to find at the end of a long journey. Perhaps more importantly, the workers’ interest - as a class - is that their leaders be held to those unselfish values which define our people and our State.
4 Likes
I wonder to what degree this is the root cause of Caldari anti-intellectualism, sir: a sense that virtue should be something you are, something you live, not something you have to think about.
My own problem with un-self-critical “traditional virtue” is that it tends to get careless about the correctness of its own convictions. It’s not difficult to corrupt something like that into a prideful ignorance that will defend its mistakes unthinkingly and to the death.
I, uh, hee … I suspect, sir, that if you journeyed back somehow to the Raata Empire and checked who was attending stage plays at the time, it’d likely have mostly been the same types of people.
People don’t change all that much with time I don’t think, least of all in a culture that’s determined not to. Our toys just get more complicated. So workers even then were probably “interested in the same thing workers are perennially interested in.”
Just, maybe with fewer robots.
2 Likes
There are many tedious philosophical distinctions I decline to draw on the definition of “anti-intellectualism”. I dislike the term because it is perpendicular to the point: neither Caldari nor Gallente disapprove of higher learning as such. We differ greatly on what the purpose of education is, the relative importance of authority and tradition, and on the nature of virtue itself. The last distinction is most important.
Indeed. Though I still believe true art is timeless and cuts through all distinctions of class. And the popular art of today is often preserved and passed down as the high culture of tomorrow, where it sits on scholars’ shelves like a mortician’s slab, deprived of its vulgar vitality. The Raata culture we know is preserved from both directions.
The real purpose of mentioning it here, of course, is as a lens to view our current State culture, with all its historical complexity and foreign currents. It is a litmus test for the people’s interest and approval of traditional “society and customs”.
I agree that the last is the most important, sir. I would contest that it has anything to do with education. It’s more a matter of cultural attitude: in aggregate, is the question “why?” greeted with thoughtful seriousness or with irritation and disregard? Is good faith in its asking presumed or is it treated as troublemaking?
I’ve often pointed out that dissenters, jaalan, in the State, rather than being forcibly silenced, are given a measure of grudging respect. Usually I’m talking to foreigners so I rarely get to bring out my critique of this: they’re respected because they’re suffering. They’re being punished for questioning, for disagreeing.
They’re respected for persisting anyway. The troubles they endure as dissenters give their criticisms teeth.
But that means dissent is seen as worthy of being punished to begin with.
(I am not even a little bit speaking of myself right now. I didn’t stay, so my voice is distant and faint.)
The notion that critical thought is an instigator of trouble and/or enemy of proper social order: that is anti-intellectualism.
2 Likes
The intent behind the “why” is at issue.
Some Gallente say that critical thinking means ‘everything ought to be questioned.’ But this is plain ridiculous. It is the ultimate expression of what you called earlier ‘prideful ignorance’ - the conviction that your judgment is not just greater than your peers, but of the whole body of your elders and ancestors whose collective centuries of wisdom is tempered to cold steel by generations of practice.
Nor do they stop to ask the question why ‘everything ought to be questioned’ is itself beyond reproach, or even where they got the idea from. To do so is to endanger the real motivation of their belief - quite simply, to do as they please.
I will concede there is an allure to the jaalan. There is even an old Raata genre I’m reminded of, the Guri Play, where a character of rebellious spirit defies convention, seems at first to get away with everything, but is eventually crushed.
Comparisons are sometimes drawn with Gallente ‘Gangster’ holoflicks, but this is a crude analogy. In one respect it is true, that the motivation behind the adoration of the gangster and the jaalan is dark wish fulfillment.
This is why the jaalan is distinct from the Hnolku. No one wishes to be a hnolku in private moments of weakness.
I have enjoyed following your discussion up to this point and pardon the interjection but this point requires clarification.
The notion that ‘everything out to be questioned’ is incomplete, the fullness of the expression is ‘everything ought to be questioned, nothing ought to be assumed.’ It is an expression that doesn’t suggest we believe our own judgment is above those of our predecessors but rather an acceptance that as science, technology and, indeed, people change so, too, may the previously accepted understanding of wisdom and knowledge.
You don’t simply assume you know the answer to a question, the solution to a problem or the truth of a situation; you consider the present circumstances in light of the wisdom of your forebears and allow that to shape your understanding. Often times, as you suggest, the tried-and-true wisdom of your forebears holds true even into today.
As for the notion itself being beyond reproach, it is only ‘beyond reproach’ in that in questioning the notion you exercise the notion and it becomes somewhat self-fulfilling. You could cease to question everything at any point if you choose and instead simply accept everything you’re told, I suppose.
As for where we get the idea from, we get it from much the same place you draw your reverence for tradition and ancestors from.
The assumption that this mindset is a veneer for ‘doing as we please’ represents an incomplete understanding of the process and application of it, hopefully this helped clarify that a bit.
EDIT: I should also add that this is merely my understanding of it as I’m sure you’ll find that the individualistic nature of Gallente society lends itself to a sometimes frustrating innumerable variations.
1 Like
To me, sir, the reason for asking “why” goes to the heart of my identity.
If you look at the typical origins of Achur capsuleers (respected backgrounds tending to have the resources to commit), you can see what our own social values are. Stargazers, inventors, monks: all three are connected by a desire to see, to understand. They’re all “seekers,” all looking for insight into the nature, and perhaps even will or mind, of the cosmos.
The Achura, generally, tend to be a relatively spiritual people, and tend to have this in common whatever the specifics of the matter (there are easily a thousand sects). To a seeker, this universe is a sacred wonder. Exploration is a form of worship. Besides, it’s hard to exercise wisdom without a working model of how things fit together.
(I am not 100% on how this works for our urban kin; I was largely raised at a rural monastery before academy, so the matter’s largely outside my experience. It seems likely, considering that most Achura-by-blood are culturally Caldari, that the quality’s been retained, the same as Civire and Deteis each retain certain cultural characteristics of their own. Maybe it’s just an echo of our tendency towards inquisitiveness. But I don’t really know for sure.)
So, for me, “why?” is a question usually asked because I really want to know. I’m not looking to argue or judge, necessarily. I want to find out. I want to understand. I want to see.
(Being able to recognize us as kin, despite this encouragement, even demand, for curiosity, is one thing I can greatly respect the Caldari Wayists for.)
Probably I’d keep my mouth shut about things that don’t make sense to me for the most part, and just try to work out why and how they work as they do (which is my approach in international travel). It gets hard, though, when it’s personal. And some things at the policy level are very personal to me.
I understand about as much as probably most State citizens why marriages are arranged as they are. I’m not 100% on Ms. Kim’s belief that it’s systematic eugenics, but I find it plausible. At the very least it keeps the populations distinct: Achura, under this scheme, will look possibly even more “Achur-like” a thousand generations hence than we do now, and a half-Civire like me will be hardly a ripple in the gene pool.
But even if I can’t remember it anymore I can’t ignore what my family, and I, went through. So I do, rudely, presumptuously, dissent, and I didn’t even stick around to suffer the appropriate consequences.
Way to discredit myself as a jaalan. But I didn’t have much of a sense of that when I left, so, oh well.
It’s not something I worry about a lot. But it’s why I won’t return.
1 Like
Just for the record, I know a combat pilot with one of the major null blocs who has never fitted a weapon or combat drone to her ships. She’s only been flying for 7 years, but she’s made multiple appearances in the AT and has been involved in many of the largest space battles ever seen. So it is possible.
But I agree, it’s not possible to keep one’s hands truly clean. Riever Geist may have absolutely no kills, ever, but she’s kept ships flying while they killed people.
2 Likes
Nauplius is a religious fanatic and an opportunist. He really will take whatever opening (or “excuse”) is on offer. (He’s also a somewhat intermittent visitor here I think.)
Arrendis is a predator, and this forum is prime habitat for her, or maybe just a hunting ground. She doesn’t really need to look for excuses, just prey, which is abundant. If you cross her path with a not-tear-resistant bit of neck or flank exposed, that’s typically opportunity enough.
A slaver hound won’t apologize or try to excuse or explain away the fact that it’s eating you. Neither will Arrendis. She was peckish, and it’s not her fault if you’re tasty and easy to catch.
3 Likes
a predator that can’t hunt on two boards at the same time is not what bothers me most in the era of lost children…
Uh … not sure she can’t, pilot? Not sure if she does, or doesn’t; it’s not like I’ve made a study of her (on purpose anyway).
Anyway you seem to have something on your mind so I’ll leave you be.
1 Like
apparently some predators, as a result of excessive gluttony and lack of a sense of threat, become … less precise
Um.
K?
Edit:
Hm.
Are you feeling maybe a little … unappreciated, Mr. Firn?
Or like she should be chewing on people you approve of getting chewed?
An all-Amarr diet, maybe?