I’m not reading what you’re writing to me these days, Arrendis. At least not this kind of thing.
Please keep writing it if you want though. It usually sounds pretty good, and I’m sure someone’s interested.
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By the way, Ms. Teinyhr … does this change your view of me at all?
I’d understand either way, but, I am a little curious.
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Thanks for proving Miz’s point.
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Like I care much about anything either of you say.
She’s honest, but so myopic that her honesty about the world as she perceives it is nearly worthless.
You’re knowingly a raging sophist, which is actually way more boring. What’s more, you apparently use me as a punching bag for your frustrations with the Empire generally-- which is about the only thing you’ve said in the last six months I can unambiguously believe.
What points you think you and Miz have scored are just … irrelevant, to me, Arrendis. I don’t care. You’re like Veik: there’s nothing “real” here that’s worth the trouble of finding.
Ms. Teinyhr is way more interesting than either of you.
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You certainly do spend a lot of time on things you don’t care about.
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To be fair Ms. Del’thul, Ms. Jenneth did take pains to say one’s perception of reality versus another’s perception of the same reality. It’s just a matter of which perception corresponds closest to what reality actually is, right?
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It’s because I’m naive enough to hope you might change, and petty enough to hope it hurts.
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Hm. Well … what I said was really more about persuasive technique, Ms. Ambrye.
Someone whose view of reality has little or no overlap with your own is likely to seem like a crazy person. Trying to just yell across the gap doesn’t work very well: “You’re wrong!” “No I’m not! You’re wrong!”
A lot of persuasion is based, in the end, on taking someone down a path from a place that starts with familiar surroundings, and leads them into unexpected terrain. If you don’t kind of start by connecting to a place they can recognize, how do you ever expect them to come around?
There are perceptual paths in this world leading to all kind of places. It’s possible even to get to where Mr. Nauplius stands (obviously-- he’s there, isn’t he? … maybe some paths require some, ah, special characteristics, though). If you want someone to change their point of view, it’s inevitably easier if you can show them the path they’d need to take to get where you want them to be.
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Ah, but if, as you suggest, I’m enjoying this… where’s my motivation to change? Aren’t you just giving me what I want? Just like you keep doing with Napkins? How’d that work out?
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I think I understand, Ms. Jenneth. My concern here was that you were being accused of denying reality based on that statement. What I read it to be was a challenge to Ms. Teinyhr to think about and defend her own position. Perhaps leading to the challenge-response didactic you outlined.
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Well … that’s largely true. And I do appreciate it, Ms. Ambrye.
It might not be very useful to defend me to Miz, though. She’s maybe a good example of a person with whom I share almost no terrain. She doesn’t understand me very well, and, more to the point, I kinda don’t think she even wants to?
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Not really. While I do not recall having much if at all contact with your Directrix, and thus cannot say if she is someone I would approve of, you did declare yourself an enemy of the Minmatar people earlier, which in turn makes you my enemy - like I previously in another thread stated, the people you care about seem to be destined to forever be a threat to people I care about. While there might be some “good” individuals among them, the culture itself is hostile to everytihng that is not like them. Therefore I think you are wrong to pledge yourself to an oppressive, tyrannical cult just because one of them didn’t put a chain around your ankle.
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Which brings up an interesting point, and one that I don’t often belabor in public; numerous Imperial loyalists have stated that the logical end goal of the Reclaiming is, naturally, the Reclaiming of the Caldari people. It certainly makes the alliance a fascinating one, given that the State was founded as a way to establish independence from Gallente cultural and political hegemony.
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It’s a point that’s been made in numerous other threads. The response from other Caldari has been ‘they’re leaving us alone right now, so why should we care what they eventually plan to do?’
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It’s this remarkable short sightedness that will make it easier for the Empire’s expansion into the cluster. The State isn’t the only guilty party, if the Federation weren’t so short sighted itself it would do what it reasonably could to drop this war between them and The State. What do you expect though when decisions are no longer made in the public discourse, but behind closed corporate doors and based on quarterly earnings?
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What a headache…
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Okay!
So … it won’t surprise you probably that I don’t see it quite the same way. Maybe I can address your point and Ms. Priano’s at the same time.
The thing you point to as sort of the Empire’s particular sin-- hostility to everything that isn’t them-- doesn’t seem new or unusual, or, importantly, very troublesome to me. People believe as they believe for certain reasons, and, people and cultures that believe in universal truths (God; non-existence of same; human rights; etc.) tend to think they’re right and other people should be brought around to agree with them. Typically, they believe that theirs is just plain a better way to live and think, and if everybody agreed with them things would go much better and more smoothly.
This gets really troublesome when someone starts changing people’s minds at gunpoint. That’s the real problem with the Empire’s history (including some that continues into present day), especially since there’s still a school of thought in the Empire (notably House Sarum and its vassals) that still sees this as the preferred way of moving forward.
Only, the Empire’s come to a point where that’s basically not an option anymore. To me at least it looks like the Empire’s not in a position to push that policy, definitely not very hard, and probably won’t be in the foreseeable future. That’s not to say it’s harmless, but, Vak’Atioth and the Minmatar Rebellion marked a turning point.
If you say you want to destroy them because they want to convert people to their own way of thinking, that’s a little hard to distinguish from saying that you can shoot people for trying to talk you into seeing things their way.
Now-- in a way, that’s something the Caldari actually do seem to believe. They’re the only nation I know of where the Imperial Rite’s actually basically banned; it’s legal to practice in both the Federation and Republic, and it seems like it’d be really troublesome to uproot in either. That might cause some tensions moving forward.
But that … seems okay, you know? History’ll happen. It’s not like everybody’s differences are going to all just be smoothed away if we decide not to shoot at each other over them. And it’s not like you’re going to necessarily lose everything to the Empire just because you’re not willing to murder those of your kin who are believers.
I’m a target for conversion, myself, of course; that’s not really a question. But you know? I don’t mind. I like talking about ideas; I like talking about reality, and the world, and wisdom, old and new. I get plenty of that, dealing with the Amarr. There are fights to be had, sure, but, maybe they don’t need to be battled out with guns. I’m not really afraid of being talked into stuff, either. After all, if they succeed-- why would there be a problem with me accepting their view, if I decide it’s true?
Would I want it happening on a larger scale, though? … Hm. Well, maybe not. Or maybe. I’m not sure. But then, I’m kind of an exile anyway.
This much I’m sure of: I think battles fought in places like this, between thoughtful people trading ideas and influences, are really more useful and interesting than brutal wars between great powers, where who has something useful to say is less important than who has better aim.
Victory in war doesn’t validate much of anything other than maybe strategic doctrines and so on. Sticking a perspective down someone’s throat doesn’t make anyone correct. It might let you functionally destroy a perspective by suppressing those who hold it, but, that’s not quite like winning the debate.
That came out a little more train-of-thought than I expected. Does it make sense at all?
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More intelligence than you’ll find in public discourse.
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The other side of this is that victory in rhetoric on the scale of populations… generally results in the losing side deciding to try violence anyway. It’s not the only cause for it, obviously, but powerful people with armies tend to respond to being visibly shown to be wrong by saying ‘well, we’ll just kill you, then’.
It’s especially true of the ones who claim divine infallibility, and so can’t accept the concept of ‘I was wrong.’ If they do, they face the risk of civil war. In that scenario, you’d have to be utterly insane to choose to tear your society apart rather than attack the external ‘enemy’ who thinks they’re oh so smart.
It’s one of the major reasons why, rather than wasting any more time hoping for internal reforms, I’ve come around to be resigned to the inevitability of war. And if it’s inevitable, better to do it now.
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I’ve never said I desire to destoy the Amarr people, despite having ample reasons to think so, just from drawing from my family history.
However, your comparison is, well, rather astoundingly naive and bathed in ample willfull ignorance. When the Empire isn’t hindered by powers stronger than it is, they will not just try to nicely talk to you and accept their message, no, they will put a gun on your head and tell you to accept their message. In essence, they are the ones who would actively support the notion of shooting people until the survivors see things your way. There is thousands of years of history, filled with Empire’s terror and subjugation of the weak to support this viewpoint.
Just because right now the Empire itself is weak - or, rather, found its equal in strenght in the Federation - is no reason to believe they would not turn back to their old ways if their one obstacle was suddenly removed from the equation. Because, it is their divine mandate. Which, as has been debated on many, many times to be quite a problem.
I’m not sure how to react to you actually. Maybe you have the privilege of thinking that the Empire only wants to debate people into their fold, but I don’t. And if you truly believe what you say, well, you are in my mind incredibly naive and/or gullible.
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