A statement was made that by being an atheist, I insult practitioners of Matari spirituality. I cited you as an example and posited that you don’t need my permission or approval to believe what you believe.
For once, Diana, you have actually managed to understand and support my position perfectly.
Ah. Can confirm: 0 fucks given in either direction regarding another’s spirituality… until it glasses my homeworld, enslaves my people, destroys our culture, and starts acting like it’s doing me a favor in the process. Then it can piss right off.
I missed this. Thank you. It is good to know, and of course I continue to hope that she is doing well.
What?
Sounds like bait.
Pointlessly, too. The idiot’s idiocy has been demonstrated. But you’re right, it was getting off-topic.
Because I reject the notion I should go back to the Empire and put a collar around my neck?
God is not ‘the Amarrian God’ He is God. He exists independently of anything and everything. Do you really think that His Will can be thwarted because the Amarr Empire fell into corruption and hypocrisy?
You are still stuck in the paradigm that they taught you.
The Amarr Empire was founded to cultivate the spirit of man and serve God’s Will, but we all know that it does neither now, and has not for hundreds, or thousands of years. The Emperor, or Empress, is supposed to be the direct representative of God in this world, but we all know that’s not the case.
You and I both know that the Amarr have made thorough edits, redactions, and alterations to the Scriptures throughout the millennia. I look at any verse that preaches the supremacy of the Empire and blind obedience to the nobility and Emperor as automatically suspect. As should you. Emotionally, you might want to believe otherwise, as I know this journey is painful, but you are much too intelligent to blind yourself to the truth.
Then we fix it. If Amarr is corrupt then we cleanse it. We do not abandon it and our mission. The purpose of Amarr is not your personal faith alone, divorced from anyone and everyone else. Even faithful in the Republic or the Federation or elsewhere have a duty of bringing those around them into the faith, of expanding God’s reach until all creation is back in unified wholeness with Him.
We need the Amarr Empire, because we are the Amarr Empire. Each and every one of us, no matter where we live, are part of it. And if the Empire is ill and broken, it is our duty to heal it.
Letting the Amarr Empire die is fine, too. We’re ok with that.
Well, I’m afraid that’s not going to happen.
So if you have any constructive input to anything, perhaps now is the time to express that instead of absurdities like the Empire falling?
Is constructive input a requirement in the off topic thread?
It’s the “Off-topic” thread, not the “Idiocy Containment” thread.
Although, I don’t think that can be contained.
So, I guess I yield. Whatever. Have fun.
Not with that attitude, it can’t.
You can’t. Not within the framework that it currently requires.
Theocracy is a fatally flawed concept, beginning from the point where because it’s theocracy, it can’t be flawed. If everything’s hinging on ‘god’s will’, then as soon as mistakes get made, you’ve got evidence that god’s not actually behind it. And mistakes get made, constantly. Governance requires mistakes, because governance requires trying things, and some portion of them will inevitably fail.
So if the person in charge is screwing up, you replace them… but if god wanted them in charge, then… what? Everyone who said ‘It’s god’s will!’ has to publicly admit they didn’t have the first clue WTF ‘god’ wanted? God lied? Or was god just being a mean-spirited bitch?
None of those options will keep a theocracy in power. And any form of government that vests power in the leadership, without making that leadership responsible to those who are led, is all about maintaining power. Even in the State, where the upper levels of the Megacorps are almost as hereditarily-stratified as the Empire, the top levels are answerable to lower levels through the corporate structure and the nature of corporate shareholders.
Theocracy doesn’t allow for that. Theocracy hinges directly on refuting that bottom-up accountability. It is why theocracy will always degrade quickly into either a dictatorship, a hereditary aristocracy, or (as in the case of the Amarr Empire), a quasi-feudal nobility of hereditary oligarchs overseen by a supreme executive chosen from among their ranks. And whichever form arises, it will maintain the trappings of the faith, even as that faith serves only to reinforce the power structure from which the ‘church leaders’ benefit.
The most interesting wrinkle the Empire’s introduced, really, is Shathol’syn. That, at least, yokes the Heirs to the current supreme executive by effectively saying ‘any one of you assholes has me killed, there’s a 5 in 6 chance you’ll die’. It lends a bit of additional stability and rigidity to an already ossified structure.
The framework can be flawed. It can be made tolerant of mistakes. What it requires is recognizing that we as people are not God, and do not speak for Him, only in His name as best as we are able. We serve Him, and take guidance from Him, but we are not Him. As said in the Epitoth, Amash-Akura was charged to rule on his own merits, with the wisdom and power granted to him by Avetat, Ametat, and the sefrim taken away. And before the Moral Reforms, the Empire was ruled by a Council of Apostles instead of one emperor claiming to be the ‘voice of God’ (which is in defiance of what is said in Epitoth).
What must be understood, is what teachings can be verified as God’s true word, as revealed to us by the laws of His universe and from the time in which He communicated directly with Amash-Akura, and what is only the attempts of mankind to grasp His wisdom with incomplete understanding. Mistakes in our interpretations can and must be acknowledged for us to properly understand His will for us, because we are working only on our own merit. The belief that certain people speak with God’s voice who can do no wrong has lead us astray.
But God must always be there. Those studied in Scripture and proven in faith have an essential role in ensuring a moral government. If anything in Amarr they are too divorced from it. The Moral Reforms eroded their influence in favor of the centralized all-powerful emperor. That is a problem, yes. And it’s something that should be changed.
Sure, but that’s not a recipe for a stable government. It means that your leader is no more likely than anyone else to actually have the right ideas. That doesn’t breed stability. The whole ‘council of apostles’ idea has merit, but that really doesn’t differ much from any non-theological form of oligarchy—like the Tribal Council, for example.
But, as you and I have discussed before, there’s a lot of esoterica in theology, and a lot of esoterica in law and governance… and it’s not the same esoterica. Trying to have someone be an expert, with comprehensive knowledge, on completely different sets of esoterica that each on their own cover far more information than you can stuff into a human brain… it’s just nuts. And it’s counterproductive. Worse, it leads to bad results in both fields.
Let the people who specialize in governance govern. Let the people who specialize in theology and philosophy advise, and give guidance on principles and how to apply them. As soon as you shackle the two together, you harm both.
Law is part of the theology. Of course, one can specialize in different areas of theology. Any well-functioning government must of course have people who focus on different areas, working together to figure out the right decisions to make.
I have a new cat! Of course he is living with my parents and I will be visiting. Lord Wretched Heap V, beloved by all, has taken up residence.
He is fat. <3
You brighten every day you grace us with, Loai!
loai :)))
