Iāve been a lot of stuff, over time, not much of it very honorable in Caldari terms. Iāve been a criminal, dissident, exile, merc (thatās considered honorable, btw), murderer, even kinslayer.
But one quality my predecessor and I hold in common is this: we are, I am, no traitor. To do that, to cross that line, would be like death, like a suicide that kills body and soul together because it would sever me from my identity. It would kill me as a person in Caldari eyes; what remained would be a sort of wretched echo, like a smell that reminds you of a horrible thing someone did to you.
The voice of such a remnant is without weight or meaning.
Itās subjective. Of course itās subjective. We know that and we donāt care. He is worse than dead to us. The Caldari honor their dead.
If heād just gone to join the Raata and live a life in peace, I could have respected that at least. But he didnāt. Heās a fighter, a proud killer of his own once-kin. He is not only dishonored or honorless but someone to whom the concept no longer even applies: un-personed, soul-and-memory-dead, not-of-us.
Heās been baited in by the enemy, tamed and turned to kill his kin. Itās the worst, the lowest and most contemptible fate.
His opinion in this matter carries the same weight as yours:
Dust. Or the memory of dust.
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The problem with claims like this, Aria, are that theyāre inherently contradictory. Just making it proves it false. Responding to me to tell me my words hold no meaning or weightā¦ just shows they do, or you wouldnāt bother.
Consider this: whenās the last time youāve seen me respond to statements you know I disagree with, from sayā¦ DK? She can say whatever she likes. It means nothing.
The moment you can all utterly ignore Adams, treat him like just another nameless, faceless FDU pilotā¦ that will be the moment his voice has no weight or meaning with you.
The problem with claims like this, Arrendis, is that they originate in an idealized ether that has little connection to the real world. I respond to you not because I value your opinion on who the Caldari are and how they should live (and who counts as Caldari) but because I want you to stop trying to tell us who we are.
The alternative to me acknowledging it by telling you to kindly bugger off is to resort to the same tactics you claim to favor vis-a-vis the Amarr.
The Gallente have for actual, literal centuries, been trying to do that. Their first major in-person mission to Caldari Prime was by the CDS, the āCultural Deliverance Society,ā which really says it all, over seven hundred years ago. They probably did some good work; the Caldari were fractured into about a bajillion little competing post-Raata kingdoms at the time, but having been beneficiaries of an uplift doesnāt make the resulting bubbling stew of resentments even a little less poisonous.
To put it another way, consider what your people are prepared to do to tell the Amarr to let go of what you see as yours, go away, and leave you alone. This is our own equivalent, and you might have noticed that just ignoring the Gallente doesnāt make them shut up. It just makes them talk louder, and in more ways.
What works, historically, is a closed, militarized society, a prickly sensibility, lots and lots of guns, and a lack of concern for non-Caldari human life.
Even then, the Federation has persisted in trying to enlighten all us savages by literally selling us their culture (holoflicks and the like). What they managed to do was corrupt our leadership. Do you have any idea how damaging it is to get a Gallentean-style libertarian heading a Caldari megacorp? Thereās no philosophy short of the Sabik thatās so utterly self-serving, or so utterly incompatible with Caldari culture.
In short, Arrendis, this is our equivalent to your problems with the Empire. If you persist in this line of argument, yes, I might ignore you, and also thank you for your contributions to ensuring that any realignment of the Caldari State to the Minmatar Republic fails.
Maybe in the end not even anti-imperialists can resist the temptation to tell each other how to live, what to think, what to value.
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Maybeā¦ but Iām not doing any of those three. All Iāve done is point out that thereās more than one culture with a valid claim to being āCaldariā, and that Adams is going to identify as Caldari until and unless you somehow stop him.
That is not all youāve done.
That statement frames his identity as objective fact, establishing our perspective as in conflict not only with his perspective, but with reality itself.
The Raata presence in the Federation is awkward in a way for everyone concerned. As you know I love problems that illustrate the artificiality of categories and borders so this, naturally, delights me. Itās also actually great that they have someone speaking for them. Certainly someone should.
But itās just a cataclysmic shame that itās Adams. He does not represent a gray area. He represents a black one, like an event horizon.
Nope, because his experience is 100% subjective. The State canāt invalidate that, because heās defining āCaldariā according to what it means to him. So, to him, itāll be valid. Thatās all. I will, though, admit that I wasnāt explaining myself correctly in my initial off-the-cuff comments, though, and for that I apologize.
Ah. Well, itās why I jumped in to begin with, so yeah.
(Isnāt the point a little over-obvious, though? I mean itās more or less a tautology that Adams thinks what he thinks.)
(Or part of a grim witticism. āYou canāt change whatās in somebody elseās mind,ā someone says. āJust give me a minute on that,ā replies the warclone, powering up the rail sniper and chambering a flechette.)
Anyway, accepted, speaking for myself.
On itās own, sure, totally over-obvious. But it was coupled with the reminder that there there isnāt just one culture that has legitimate claim to being āCaldariā, which makes it much, much harder to issue blanket assertions that someone āisnāt Caldariā just because he no longer adheres to one of those cultures.
Itād be like claiming the State āisnāt Caldariā because they abandoned the old ways, and I think youād agree thatās patently ridiculous.
Well ā¦ only, Iām sure at least some among the Raata believe exactly that. There is ā¦ sadness, to me, in the way the Caldari have reacted to their experiences with the Gallente. They learned a lot, and my own people and other client peoples have benefitted, perhaps greatly, from how badly the Caldari wanted not to do to us what the Gallente had done to them.
But the State Caldari are a people forever preparing for winter. Only in space, there is no winter, so we identified a substitute to forever prepare and guard against: the Gallente, the Federation, those not-of-us who would steal our traditions, steal our identity, and leave us as soft and weak as they are. Maybe thatās why we adopted winter as our sign and seal: cold-gleaming metal, brutal edges, harsh realities.
In our determination to remain as we were, we changed ourselves. There is sadness in that. I couldnāt blame the Raata for seeing it also. I hope they donāt judge us harshly for it, but Iām sure some do.
That would also be sad, if itās so.
(The attentive might notice that I occasionally switch from including myself among the Caldari to not. Iād like to claim some kind of consistency but it reflects an ambiguity in my own background-- Iām culturally of the Achura, a sort of poor cousin and client people to the Caldari, but also half-Caldari, Civire, by blood-- so basically whether I do or not depends mostly on how it feels in the moment.)
(Either way itās unambiguous that Iām from the Caldari State generally. Just, it tends to depend on whether Iām thinking more from Motherās peopleās perspective, which is related but a little distinct, or from that broader whole.)
Iām sure some do. But, you know, theyāre not the sole arbiters of Caldariness any more than the State is.
Iād say just the opposite: In space, youāre always looking for hard-to-get resources, and one mistake from freezing to death in an unforgiving environment.
And as a reminder of where the State Caldari had come from, and what shaped them before they left, yeah.
Yeah, see, this is where you start sounding like youāre speaking for reality, Arrendis. One thing I can say with some certainty for any of the contenders for the title of āCaldariā: theyāre not going to care much what anyone outside that circle as they define it has to say on the matter.
Letās say the two circles are mutually exclusive (I donāt think this is the case, mind). In that case youād come closer to the overarching reality if you said that they are each the sole arbiters of Caldariness-- each, immutably, implacably, in its own mind.
Nah. Maybe thatās how it is on Matari ships or stations (and I donāt think even there) but food and fuelās not generally much of a problem (gravimetric fusionās kind of our thing, you know? And, you know, hydroponics, etc.) and while space is very unfriendly if youāre underequipped even Caldari Primeās winters didnāt historically suffer from a lack of air.
Space is its own thing.
Well said.
Not so much āspeaking forā as ācommenting onā. If the Raata can feel like the State arenāt Caldari, and the State can feel like they are, and vice versa, then neither one is the sole arbiter of Caldariness, only the sole arbiter of what they, themselves, consider Caldari.
Sure, but you know, their own mind doesnāt impact anyone not them, which includes me, soā¦
Ships and stations are analogous to settlements: they are small, isolated things that provide shelter against conditions outside, but they can never truly negate conditions outside. Just as weather can kill crops, environmental effects can overwhelm even a stationās protections. And the vast distances between them are unforgiving for those who travel without precautions.
Each is the sole arbiter of its own vision of Caldariness. At that point even sharing a name is going to be a point of contention, not a unifying quality. They probably wonāt have all that much in common but the name and a dim view of others who might claim it.
Which side of such a line one stands on can be extremely important, especially for people considering a closer relationship. The Caldari often donāt treat people outside the āCaldariā circle as quite real, or maybe even quite people. (The āNonentityā non-caste is a good internal example of how this can get mean.)
Or to caravans and large cities. Major stations often have a population well into the multiple millions.
All analogies break down at some point, Arrendis. The Caldari do not now face the same cycles and kinds of hardship they faced as a culture coming of age on a glorified comet. Not that thatās stopped us from occasionally kicking someone out into the snow when their productivity drops off.
ā¦ for themselves. If they want to be the arbiters of that identity for others, they have to be able to enforce it, or their determinations are irrelevant. Not saying thatās good or bad, just that it is.
Yup, thatās very true.
Major stations, proportionate to the vastness of space, might, if theyāre lucky, equate to a single house on a frozen world.
Nope, but I still think itās more accurate to say that space is more akin to an endless winter than to no winter at all: the only ease and shelter there is are the ones you make.
Do you see the connection here? Determination: very relevant if youāre anywhere nearby (physically, socially, financially ā¦ ).
I think the ones who have best claim to that kind of hardship in space (or āspaceā) are the Triglavians. Imagine going into an environment where the kind of tech and resources we have now are the absolute bare minimum to even survive, and the kind of culture that grows out of that. Yikes.
Sure. But he doesnāt want to be anywhere nearby. So for the purposes of the whole discussion kicked off by someone telling Adams heās not Caldariā¦ irrelevant.
I think that until a normal human being can stand outside in winter in the KK mountains or on the outside of a station, and survive, the analogy holds. Different flavors of ā99.999999999999999999999% of all of space will kill youā doesnāt make bopping around outside Random Astrahus #4572 in your underwear any less deadly.
Heās pretty close by pretty often actually, on the opposite side of a war. This makes him a particularly pointy case, and an easy one. We affirm our kinship by denying his.
Also I know Adams well enough to be pretty confident heās not immune to this line of attack, though his defenses might have improved with time, and frankly him claiming kinship after what he did is an insult to those he betrayed, including his own ancestors who gave their lives to the State. This is, in part, retaliation.
(Heās trying to do something constructive; good for him. He did something breathtakingly offensive in the process, though, so I hope he dies with an icicle through his heart. Or his throat. ā¦ Maybe his kidneys.)
Also relevant: that youāve identified yourself as the sort of person whoād argue this, and continue to argue it, thereby pissing off basically the whole State-- even a dissident like me.
So, you know, well done?
Not the same thing, and you know it.
Sure, wouldnāt think of disagreeing.
Cool. Pun intended.
In all the time youāve known me, was that ever in doubt?
What is the true opposite of love, Arrendis? Not hate, but indifference. Strong feelings, though inverted, are still a bond.
He is in contact. How we think and speak of him matters-- to him, to us.
And I think thatās all I have to say about this.