Off-Topic Thread vol. 2

[Deitra_Vess]

@Aria_Jenneth

Elsebeth inspires people to their deaths,

@Aria_Jenneth

And Elsebeth definitely seems to know what I’m at: she, too, approaches public discussion as warfare-- and probably she’s better at it than me, but that doesn’t mean I won’t confront her.

You really don’t seem to understand the concept of free will do you?

Handing someone a gun is not the same as putting a gun in someone’s hands and forcing them to use it. If someone is being deceptive on motives it’s not Elsebeth, it’s what you wish to believe is true. Your belief that submitting to some foreign power won’t lead to similar strifes for those who don’t get the decision further down the generational lines is more damaging than informing people of other options and making those alternate options feasible for those same future generations.

Simply put, your have your agenda, you have your beliefs, as does she. Pot, meet kettle, both of your appearances are black. Both of your lights are false, one is simply more user friendly (not yours).

[Constantin_Baracca]

I am so, so, so sorry for your loss.

[Alexandre_Arthie]

Commander is fine.

Thank you,

~Alexandre Arthie

Alexandre Arthie,
Directive Enforcement Department
CONCORD Assembly

[Aria_Jenneth]

@Deitra_Vess

Your belief that submitting to some foreign power won’t lead to similar strifes for those who don’t get the decision further down the generational lines is more damaging than informing people of other options and making those alternate options feasible for those same future generations.

You might misunderstand what I actually think about this a little, Deitra. That’s … not surprising, though. I don’t talk about it much.

Simply put, your have your agenda, you have your beliefs, as does she. Pot, meet kettle, both of your appearances are black. Both of your lights are false, one is simply more user friendly (not yours).

I’m flattered you’d put us on nearly the same level like that.

For what it’s worth, I think better of you than of either Else or Samira, both of whom seem to approach their work with something like holy zeal, taking the Amarrian worldview and sort of turning it on its head one way or another. Samira does it in full sincerity, believing every word she says. Else … I don’t know. She really does seem to think of the Amarrian god as evil, but I can’t tell how much of what she says she really believes. I think her talk of gods and spirits is probably more like it is for my sect: teaching tools. Just, what she uses them to teach is … hateful.

You’re a thoughtful person, and someone who seems to approach the world with less of a sense that you already know the important stuff. I’m sorry we’re on opposite sides, although, considering where we started it would have been surprising if we didn’t end up this way.

But, like I said before … being enemies isn’t the end of anything, unless maybe it was a long friendship or something.

[Deitra_Vess]

Thanks and honestly I have no problems what so ever with your stances, ect. I don’t think your coming from a bad place with your arguments per say, but what I will say is I think a few thoughts are being overlooked.

You came to the Empire willingly, you exercised your free will to take up their religion (I know its a gray area for you but i dont know exactly how to state it more accurately) and found value in it for yourself. To be honest since it is your own belief that it was for the better for yourself I would go as far as to say I almost support it. That’s your path which you’ve carved and by no means is it my place to say a thing. I’m actually happy for you believe it or not.

My problem, much like Elsebeth’s problem (without putting thoughts to her words), there are people who were not given this chance. My grandparents were not afforded this chance and they were saved by those much like us who feel that this choice is the responsibility of ones own decisions.

What we see today are people not given this choice. Her words were directed towards those who were not given this choice. Instead she gives them an option that they have the decision to make. Stand and die, run and die, kneel and be saved or however that scripture passage goes. If standing and running are decisions they wish to make then its their own choice, their free will that your god gave them. Personally I’d rather choose to die than be forced to live another persons life if those are my decisions. Why is it wrong to give people options within those decisions?

To force a path one must follow goes against everything we are. Seven tribes, thousands of clans, millions if not billions or trillions of paths to follow. What you call her inciting the murder of those she speaks to, to us is allowing them the ability to grow, to stand on their own and prosper. To us your thoughts are worse. You speak of denying us the ability to be who we are as a people. In the end if the reclaiming has shown anything its only stressed the very difference between our cultures. Kneeling is worse than death to us.

Targeting an audience with that mindset isn’t inciting them to their own demise. Its hope, much like the scriptures is hope to your adopted kin that what we hold as true is true. The difference is, we carve our own destines’, they are not preordained. The strength of the tribes comes from the tribes themselves.

[Arrendis]

Commander it is!

[Elsebeth_Rhiannon]

@Aria_Jenneth

Else … I don’t know. She really does seem to think of the Amarrian god as evil, but I can’t tell how much of what she says she really believes. I think her talk of gods and spirits is probably more like it is for my sect: teaching tools. Just, what she uses them to teach is … hateful.

Listen.

I have now repeatedly asked you to stop doing this thing where you make it your job to describe to everyone and their cousin what I am like, where you talk about me without ever talking with me, and keep on getting it wrong. I’ve hinted at it. I’ve asked. I’ve yelled.

Yet you keep on doing it. Again, and again, and again. Every week I come to the IGS to find some new wall-of-text about myself by you, and now it took you the whole of one hour from the last indication that I wish you to stop. The hypocrisy of you repeatedly claiming you do not hold a grudge, that you are just trying to understand!

But if the goal of these attacks is to get at me, to cause me enough pain and frustration to turn me away from trying to communicate, to get me off these shared places? To leave you to spread your misundersandings and misinformation in peace?

To be honest, it is working.

And I am beyond caring that by telling it to you, I just put more weapons in your hands.

[Elsebeth_Rhiannon]

Anyone else who wants to know if I really think the Amarr God is evil, I reveal you the age-old diplomat’s secret method of finding ■■■■ out that Jenneth apparently has never heard of: asking them.

It works surprisingly often. Even for opsec stuff. Certainly for finding out my beliefs about things that I’ve explicitly stated I am open to questions about.

[Teinyhr]

@Aria_Jenneth

I call her by names she’s earned

You have earned the nickname of sad, pitiful, brainwashed amarrian dog puppet as well.

@Aria_Jenneth

my side is morally inferior

Indeed.

@Aria_Jenneth

Try harder.

I’m already number one, so why try harder?

@Aria_Jenneth

But I don’t see myself in that warped mirror you’re holding up-- no truth, just a botched caricature.

Of course you don’t. You don’t have the guts to. If my “mirror” shows you a botched caricature - maybe that’s because you’ve become one?

@Aria_Jenneth

you should expect that I will stop listening to you at all.

Have you actually begun to listen in the first place, though?

[Veikitamo_Gesakaarin]

I think there’s a difference between perceptions and reality. It just becomes disingenuous when presenting personal perceptions as objective reality – especially when it involves other people.

[Teinyhr]

You don’t say?

[Aria_Jenneth]

So, as I said before, Deitra, you might misunderstand a little. It’s also why Ms. Teinyhr keeps missing her mark. In a real way, you and Directrix Daphiti or even you and Lady Newelle might share a paradigm more than you and I (or even Lady Newelle and I).

You see, I never left my faith.

You might remember Wayists from your time in the State? The ones who, instead of just using the “Mind Tool” focusing techniques, really practice the old ways? Functionally, that’s me, just from a somewhat different tradition. The Way of the Winds accepts Achur practices as being of the same faith by another name.

I’ve gotten a little distracted by things of this world, so I can’t claim to be a very good practitioner, but really it would be hard to be and still be very involved in things. Sometimes I wonder if maybe that’s what my predecessor did: if she withdrew from the world and is maybe living as a hermit monk somewhere. My beliefs still inform my outlook a lot, though.

And, here’s an important place where most Amarr and I differ, Deitra: I don’t believe in free will to start with.

[Aria_Jenneth]

@Elsebeth_Rhiannon

I have now repeatedly asked you to stop doing this thing where you make it your job to describe to everyone and their cousin what I am like, where you talk about me without ever talking with me, and keep on getting it wrong. I’ve hinted at it. I’ve asked. I’ve yelled.

We’ve actually spoken a lot, though, Else. And I’ve learned by both listening and watching that what I will get when I ask you about stuff is what you want me to think is true rather than what is. It doesn’t mean you’re lying (though I don’t trust you), but even if I believe you’re fully honest that just means you’re speaking as I do: saying mostly what seems true to you at any given time.

Only, you might not be much of a diplomat if you did that. So maybe that’s not it either.

I’m more interested in what you do than in what you say-- although of course some of what you do is through what you say, how, to whom. And if that nettles you … well … I don’t mind that at all. Although I prefer it if the reason you’re nettled is that I’ve picked up the patterns all too well.

Maybe I’m not there. Maybe I’m not close. But I don’t think you’d be this unhappy if I was just wrong.

[Deitra_Vess]

Well, I guess I was misunderstanding it a bit, though my point was mainly to explain the backlash and why it was so. The idea of criticizing her words would, to use a better example would essentially be telling a Caldari to drink tea in response to someone telling them to follow their own culture and trying to assist in defending Home. That’d be how the responses would be seen. I think that might be a slightly better analogy and possibly a better way of explaining it. Maybe you didn’t see it that way at the time, and I doubt it was some intentional statement being made, but that is how it would be taken for the most part.

It doesn’t surprise me that I would share things in common with them, barring Mrs. Newell on a few issues. I do feel that like myself, Directrix Daphiti does not seek genocide. I do not believe Mrs. Newell does. I do believe they both, like myself are working for the security of their people and have that in their intentions.

I do remember the Wayists from my time in the state. It was a major disappointment to me that the only place I was barred from visiting were temples or even the planets they reside on. I was allowed to view the Peaks but not that. Admittedly I was and still am interested in their beliefs and what I could learn from them.

I think it would be wrong of me to try and change your mind on free will so I won’t. I can say that it is free will that is at its core within the culture I originate from. Destiny is forged by your decisions. Admittedly I’m curious how it could be any other way.

[Elsebeth_Rhiannon]

@Aria_Jenneth

I don’t think you’d be this unhappy if I was just wrong.

I really don’t know how to put this more clearly.

I am not in the most part upset by what you say, though you do get it wrong a lot too.

I am annoyed by your habit of making these statements and walls-of-text - here yet another one - about me at all, in the first place. Why do you feel this constant need to explain me?

For the record, it is not “talking with me” that you do a lot. It is talking about me, attempting (and failing) to talk for me. It is condescending, it is demeaning, it is intrusive, it is pushy. It feels like you jump on every chance to tell people about my supposed evils. It feels like an attack on me, like an attempt to push me into a box of your choosing. It is not communication, it is control.

And fair enough, you are my self-professed enemy. Maybe that is what you want.

I trust the audience sees through your repeated hypocritical claims of “analytical thinking”, “not holding grudges”, “talking with me a lot”, though, so enough of this.

[Aria_Jenneth]

@Elsebeth_Rhiannon

And fair enough, you are my self-professed enemy. Maybe that is what you want.

Do you remember who it was who told me that?

It was you. When I put out a feeler about visiting for a while. I was curious, I was hopeful. You told me what else I was.

Much of the rest? I watched your “diplomatic” interactions with Lord Avarr during Thebeka. I watched your interactions with your own kin. I watched, and I learned. The Amarr have taught me a lot, but it’s you and yours who taught me to hate.

So now I’m being rude. Oh, dear. I wonder where I learned such a bad habit.

Incidentally, to borrow a page from Arrendis for a moment, a “wall of text” is not just long, it’s also short on paragraph breaks, giving the eye nowhere to rest. Brevity’s something I need to practice, but my walls come with plenty of handholds. Or eye-rests, if you like.

[Aria_Jenneth]

Hm. Maybe not having conversations like this one so often is at least part of why I’m finding grudges easier to hold lately. Actually maybe I should have written you before Else. Oh well.

See, I’m a determinist. To me, free will is a biochemical illusion. Essentially, Else and I are acting out a script here, our interactions determined by a complicated collection of factors ranging from classic stuff like life experiences and genetic and cultural predispositions (nature AND nurture) to the specific organization of neurons in our brains, what we had for breakfast (assuming we had it), how well we slept, and possibly the gravitational pull of that third asteroid from the left.

The resulting process might call itself reasoning and decision-making, but (absent some randomizing factor) if you ran it a thousand times from the exact same start position it’d come out the same all thousand, because it would be the same.

When I say human beings are animals, I’m being quite literal. To me, we’re all just small, complicated parts of the much larger process called the universe. This separate, distinct being I call “myself” is an illusion, a trick my mind plays on me as part of my biological design to make sure I do what I need to to keep living.

I don’t have free will; I have complexity. The same’s true of Else, so it’s actually pretty cruel of me to be so hard on her. The stuff I hold against her, well, in a sense, it’s not her fault. It would be best if I could just let it go.

So maybe, remembering that, I’ll try.

(Even if I succeed, it’s not because I “decided”; it’s because the necessary pieces to prod me in that direction were already there, and you came along, following your own course, and poked them into place. Fun, no?)

[Arrendis]

@Aria_Jenneth

So now I’m being rude. Oh, dear. I wonder where I learned such a bad habit.

You’ve had it for literally as long as I’ve seen you posting on the IGS. So… your dad, maybe?

[Deitra_Vess]

Well, my doors always open if ya wish, it is for anyone honestly, even if I shoot at you. Dialogue should never be weaponized. The only thing I can say is while all of those are good points to consider is it really possible to contribute everything? Chance has no hand in anything? It just doesn’t seem right to me, hard to explain really.

[Aria_Jenneth]

Well, that’s where the chaos aspect of complexity has its place. It’s why I was so careful about saying that if you ran stuff repeatedly from exactly the same initial conditions, you’d only get repeats; change the timing on a passing bird or the particular way a breeze eddies around the side of a building and you might change the whole sequence.

The idea isn’t that everything is predictable (it isn’t; it’s way too complicated to predict with certainty unless you can fully model the universe). It’s that what we see as “free will” is actually determined by circumstance. So, “determinism.”

The important part is that there’s no separate actor lodged up between these ears choosing paths and calling shots. It’s more like a coalition of circumstances: cause and effect, working at a very subtle, pervasive level.

It can be seen as a mechanical way of seeing things, which might be why, as I understand it, Arrendis and I share this belief even if we don’t share much else. But to me it’s actually a great comfort. If this view is correct, not only are we not alone; we’re not even really here as separate beings to begin with.

A person is kind of like a complicated eddy in the flow of the world, a wandering knot of chemicals, energy, and constant interactions. We emerge from the world; exist both within and as the world; dissolve back into the world-- a wonderful trick of physics where, for a short span, a little bit of the universe becomes sapient.

As a practitioner of the Shuijing, or “Crystal,” sect, I don’t believe in the Amarrian god, or any other, as a literal being. My “god” is the Totality: all that is, a divine existence of which I’m a tiny part that isn’t even really separate.