Utari's Puppies (Formerly Off-Topic Thread)

Fiction Portal Intergalactic Summit
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A lot of the time I’m not sure whether Arrendis is trying to convince me to do stuff she thinks I should, or maybe persuade herself that I’m actually an awful person even if I don’t often act very much like one or think of myself that way. … Probably kind of both. It seems to be something that actually matters to her a little, since she keeps coming back to it. It’s a little cheering; it makes it seem like she might really care, and not just be messing with me because messing with people is fun.

… in the end, though … it seems like a main difference between her and me, and maybe you and me, too, is: I think I might have a different moral neurotype than either of you.

You might have seen stuff on this? There are basically two moral neurotypes, and every society contains both. There’s the fairness-oriented neurotype, which objects when stuff’s not fair. Then there’s the loyalty-oriented neurotype, which likes structure and authority and objects when people start ignoring the proper order of things.

I kind of expect you two are probably the former. I’m more the latter. Arrendis can be all “But people are suffering!” and I’m kind of, “Well, yeah,” and she’s “But it’s awful!” and I’m all “Yep.”

The world’s not … fair, and it never will be. That’s not really fixable. People trying to fix things with more enthusiasm than insight are likely to break more than they fix, and if you get a cascade of stuff like that you can end up with a terrible mess and collapse. But, then, if you don’t have people around pushing for things to be more fair, it’s pretty easy for things to just sort of sink into the kind of stagnant corruption people keep thinking the Empire is drowning in.

(It isn’t.)

So you kind of need both neurotypes to have a healthy society: some to keep it at least equitable enough to avoid social collapse and maybe do even quite a bit more than that, some to keep it stable.

I think I’m probably a somewhat oddly-placed keep-it-stable-er. So no matter how much Arrendis points at the injustices of the world, I’ll probably always just kind of be, “Well, that’s sad. It’s still not going to help if you blow everything up.”

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I think this is a convenient excuse for not doing things you don’t want to be bothered with.

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I’m not averse to being bothered, Arrendis; I just don’t get as bothered as you do about people doing to each other what people have a really long history of doing to each other: being awful. Stuff like the Black Eagles in the Federation actually bothers me more-- not because I have a real attachment to the Federation or have started thinking “human rights” are a real thing or something but because undercutting their founding principles seems like a really good way to, well, turn them into what the rest of us have always been afraid they might error-state into (horrible militant autocracy).

Civilization’s hard, and it’s taken just crazy amounts of work to get it where it is. People aren’t actually very good at it, and putting it back together if it breaks isn’t such an easy thing. Entrenched problems need work, but, just because people suffer from them doesn’t mean things will get better if you try to force change.

It should be obvious by now that some of the stuff that motivates you strongly doesn’t work the same on me. Maybe to you that makes me a bad person, but, it’s not you I swore an oath to, so …

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If your referring to the time I’m thinking, quite a few people were. Near the very end of her sojourn?

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The phrase moral neurotype suggests that people are born with a pre-set internal order as to what’s tight and what’s wrong. This is not the case. The moral code that one follows is borne out of their surroundings and circumstances in life.

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Maybe, but, try to use arguments from fairness on someone who’s loyalty-oriented, or vice-versa, and, well, you can see it on neurological scans. It just doesn’t work very well. They really are a little different, neurologically. I’m not clear on how that develops over time, though-- supposedly people get more loyalty-oriented as they get older?

(It might explain a few things about Amarrian society, which is pretty nearly a gerontocracy.)

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There you go again, excusing things because it’s ‘hard’. It’s not that I fault you for having different motivations, Aria, it’s that you say ‘it’s hard’… and so you don’t even try. You just shrug and leave things for other people to do, even if they’re about issues your own statements indicate you think should be addressed somehow, by someone.

When you say ‘someone’ needs to do something, you know who does it?

No-one.

Everyone goes nodding ‘yup, someone needs to do something, but it doesn’t have to be me, so I’ll let ‘someone’ be someone else.’ And then nothing gets done. Trotting out ‘moral neurotypes’ is just another excuse to leave the matter to ‘someone’… as long as it’s not you.

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You … really badly misread me, Arrendis.

Civilization is hard. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing; that means it’s precious. Fragile. Not to be taken for granted.

It’s something I care about a lot.

And, I’m defending it, against you, who’d break the world for the chance to remake it a little better.

The world’s kind of cruel. But you take far too much license from that, to do what you want.

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No, I don’t think you do. I think you care about your comfort, and that’s about it.

But you are right about one thing: Civilization is hard, and often, it involves having to do hard things in order to keep it from sliding back into brutal, vicious, ‘the strongest rule because they are strongest’ anarcho-warlordism.

And that’s what the Empire represents, Aria: The rule of the strong because they are strong. The True Amarr conquered and enslaved to set themselves atop their world in the name of power. They cloaked that power in religious claptrap and then wrapped themselves up in that power. Then, when they were able, they took that same ‘we are right because we are stronger’ attitude with them to enslave and oppress other peoples, some of whom they broke so thoroughly that their descendants perpetuate the system of abuse.

You can tout ‘nice people’ and ‘kind people’ within the Empire all you like, but it’s still a thin veneer of technological progress pasted over savage, barbaric oppression. It is not civilization. It is a hideous, twisted mockery of civilization.

You’re not defending anything. Because that would involve doing what’s hard. You’re just going with the flow, and doing what you want to do—enjoying your creature comforts and your pats on the head, while telling yourself you’re helping!!!, that you’re somehow a protector of stability and order. You’re not. You’re wrapping more and more layers of tape around a pressure-cooker, in the hopes that when it does finally explode, it won’t be something you have to clean up.

Because civilization—real civilization, not just might-makes-right bullshite spackled over with gold to fool the rubes—takes work. It takes hard work, and constant fighting to improve. Because nothing in this universe is static, Aria. If it’s not improving, it’s decaying.

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People tend be value loyalty, it’s just that it’s hard to come by people that deserve it sometimes.

And Amarrians have been passing down their customs through the generations, are you going to argue that they’re not learnt rather than people.being born with those ideals?

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I’ve been searching GalNet for this term, but I keep running into discussions on neurotypical and neurodiversity that use the term neurotype a lot. I’m not saying the study doesn’t exist, I just don’t know if you’re using the right terminology. You could be though, I’m not an expert in this.

I kind of expect you two are probably the former. I’m more the latter. Arrendis can be all “But people are suffering!” and I’m kind of, “Well, yeah,” and she’s “But it’s awful!” and I’m all “Yep.”

Actually, Ms. Jenneth I think it’s more like this.
Arrendis: “But people are suffering!”
Aria: “Well, yeah.”
Arrendis: “So what are you going to do about it?”

It’s not that either you and Ms. Arrendis don’t see the injustice that’s occurring, it’s just that neither of you agree what should be done, by who and how much.

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Well … I’m not particularly an expert, either, so maybe I am using the wrong terminology. I’ll send you some stuff on it when I get a chance.

About Arrendis? … the problem is, the answer to that last question you have her pose is always the same: “Nothing you’d consider sufficient.” Check out her rant, above. Sentiments like that aren’t rare among Matari, and have actually done a lot to expand my loyalty to the directrix to the Empire generally.

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Actually, Aria, my answer is:

I don’t have all the answers about what should be done. I know my answers for what I want to be done, but I’m entirely aware that what I want might not be the best answer. At the same time, though, I can tell you ‘by who’. That’s a no-brainer: Every single person who has the capacity to affect positive change has an obligation to do so, to the best of their ability.

Which is why I take issue with your insistence that the best thing you can do is not attempt to affect change, but to just not make waves and behave. All that ever does is empower those who’ll misuse their power.

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I like that you want a world where bakers are morally obligated to get into politics. It reminds me a little of the Federation, where everyone seemed to have opinions about everything.

It sounds a little too noisy for me, though.

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I like that you’re reading ‘affect positive change to the best of your ability’ as ‘getting into politics’. I don’t know what the best way for any specific baker to affect positive change is. Maybe it’s quiet. But it’s doing something. Which you’re not.

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Does, you know, baking count as doing something?

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I think I’d have to say that doing the thing they’d be doing anyway doesn’t count as change, no. But then, I don’t think that one thing is all that most bakers do. And if they are that rare baker who literally spends every waking moment baking, with no spare time at all?

Well, that’s where ‘to the best of their ability’ comes in, now isn’t it?

Go on now. Tell me how your every waking moment is so jam-packed, you never even get time to raise the issue of her views on slavery to Luna—to give a specific example of one of the things I asked you to do, that you explicitly refused, on the grounds that it might make someone uncomfortable.

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Being a good parent? Spouse? … Gardener? Pet owner?

Saving for late-life expenses?

Fishing?

There are a lot of paths people can walk, Arrendis, and a lot of worthwhile things they can do. If you don’t see people whose efforts go into making a good, peaceful private life, a home for themselves and their families, as spending their time in worthwhile ways …

… if you look at ordinary people, and their small, warm homes and quiet lives full of … petty love and joy and small sorrows …

… with the same contempt you show to me …

… I think you’re actually a pretty horrible person. Arrogant. Callous. Extreme.

… nothing worth emulating.

Nothing worth talking to.

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Not engaging into politics doesn’t absolve you of the consequences.

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Wow, Aria. Really? You’re gonna go the straw man route and try to put words into my mouth? I mean, I watched you start to respond and then stop again three times an hour ago. Took you that long to come up with this? To formulate a reply that let you try to grab the moral high-ground while completely evading my statement?

I never said any of those people weren’t spending their time in worthwhile ways. I never even said the baker in our example, who just keeps baking and trying to just make ends meet and spend his free time in ways that help out him, his friends, or his family wasn’t spending his time in worthwhile ways.

I said he wasn’t working to make a positive change. Someone who’s failing to meet the moral obligations that their abilities and opportunities place upon them isn’t automatically worthless, or not spending their time in worthwhile ways. They’re just failing to meet their moral obligations. That doesn’t mean what they are doing isn’t worthwhile, only that they’ve an obligation to at least attempt to do more. Like say, talk to people about issues, even if they make someone uncomfortable.

But hey, you keep on spending hours working to figure out these false narratives of things I didn’t say, just so you can avoid acknowledging the fact that you choose to do nothing, rather than discomfort yourself even a little bit.

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