Utari's Puppies (Formerly Off-Topic Thread)

Fiction Portal Intergalactic Summit
1431

It’s a function of where you are.

In high-sec, having 15b in assets for an individual is probably solidly in ‘space middle class’. Out in null? It’s on the lower end. I’m not sure it qualifies as ‘space poor’, but if you have that much in assets, you’re probably assumed to have a couple of capital ships laying around.

At the same time, mind you, in highsec, if you get into a fight, most individual capsuleers have to replace their losses themselves. In null, most reasonable-sized organizations will replace losses suffered while acting on their behalf, even capitals or supercapitals. (I know we maintain a small ‘yeah, hand out the replacements’ stockpile in case of catastrophic FC derpage, for example. It ain’t massive, but it’s there.)

So wealth is a different critter out here. We need less cushion, so more of it can be put to work at any time.

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1432

How do two snails fight?

They slug it out.

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1433

Hm. Well, that does make sense, Arrendis, though actually SRP is something that’s kind of become routine in a lot of places I think. ARC does it for Hive ops, for example, so long as fits are doctrine.

Capitals, though … yeah, no.

I don’t think anybody was arguing against the idea that a good way to become silly wealthy is to join a large alliance, though, nor was anyone saying that wealth overall is anything but relative. Just … I don’t feel poor. And I don’t think I should feel poor. I could buy and set up a facility the size and population of a modest city. I could build five, myself, on some crazy whim.

Is that good?

It’s not clear to me that having a lot of power does good things to people. And I might have more of it than is healthy, as it is. So, no, I don’t feel poor. I feel … kind of scary. The fact that I’m nowhere near the top doesn’t make this all okay; it means that the world’s gotten … well, kind of scary. Maybe more than kind of.

I keep saying I don’t think we’re fit to rule. As a class, we’re cruel, aggressive, brutal-- a caste of killers. Will people really be happy, living under our command and whim?

Someone seems to be okay with us giving it a go, though.

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1434

Well, a lot of us are ‘cruel, aggressive, brutal’… but are we indiscriminately so? I mean, there’s a difference between someone who’s actually cruel as a general behavior characteristic, and someone who can seem cruel to their enemies during combat. Some of the most vicious combat pilots I’ve ever known have been incredibly kind, respectful, and courteous to people they aren’t fighting—even people they’re at war with, outside of the actual fights. And they’re genuinely good, and generous, and exceptionally forgiving of those who work for them.

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1435

I’ve known individual pilots who approached their actual crews the way you describe, Arrendis, but, many, many more who treat only their fellows-- their peers-- in this way … and their crews like they don’t exist.

When is the last time someone offered to surrender their ship, especially, like, a Titan, or even a citadel, if you’d spare their people? Or even, within your sight, offered to ransom captured prey, and then honored that ransom?

My predecessor built a kinda-sorta career as a prophet of our kind by claiming that we are, in fact, so insensitive to human life that we don’t ourselves count as human beings anymore. … but actually, this kind of behavior is exceedingly human-- just, not the bits we’re most proud of. Rather, it’s the bits that let aristocrats march common soldiers to their deaths by the tens of thousands in wars in which the commoners have little stake; the bits that let the gentry drink and dance while the nation starves; the bits we see over and over again in the history of pretty much every world humanity has lived on; the bits we ruefully refer to as “human nature,” and the bits of that nature, particularly, that let the powerful disregard the powerless-- not their lesser peers, but those “beneath” them, and, especially, those they rarely see or think of.

It’s a quality we’re far from unique in having, but we might be an especially extreme example of it.

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1436

I hope you’re not her only bodyguard because I honestly can’t imagine you being an effective one. I don’t doubt you have a very particular set of skills, but what makes it unbelievable for me is that you’re procrastination and indecisiveness given human form.
I’d half expect your bodyguard duties going something like, someone scrambler pistols your Directrix to the face, and you’ll ask them why they did that, and then agree that they probably had their reasons and it’s not up to you to judge them.

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1437

… damn. I thought there were regulations and treaties in place for incendiary weapon deployments.

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1438

Hee! … I guess considering how ambivalently I tend to view a lot of stuff that seems clear to you, that’s not a surprising thing.

There’s a detail you’re missing, though, Ms. Teinyhr: I don’t have a high bar for acting as long as I recognize it as my proper role and place to act-- and that’s a rolling determination that’s made on a continuous and ongoing basis.

If I have a job to do, “right action” doesn’t consist in neglecting it. I’ll serve my purpose as best I can, and I don’t need to have a strong personal reason to do so. The same sense of stillness that originally let me give Nauplius the Butcher a hug if I could save people by doing such a thing also lets me drive a longknife through the lungs of a person I’ve never met.

Or to put it more simply, my duty exists as a separate thing from any ambivalence I might feel about what my duty is asking me to do. I take orders really well, and that’s actually a lot of why I work for who I work for: I trust the Directrix not to give me orders I’ll hate myself for following at some time.

(But no, I’m not the only security person we have around.)

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1439

Well then, you have assured me of your capability of doing bodyguard duties.

I just vomited a little in my mouth though with how proud you are about following orders despite any misgivings you yourself might have about them. But I’ll leave it at that for now.

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1440

I didn’t say I thought it was wholly a good thing. My time with PY-RE is a lot of the reason for my extended stay in the Empire. I remember that crew very fondly, but … I got very depressed, near the end of my time there, while I was wandering the Federation (or, as it turned out, mostly staying sequestered in my room).

Imperials, even pretty hard-edged ones like Lady Admiral Newelle, tend to believe in redemption. That’s something I have a little need for, even if I’m not feeling quite so much like a blood-stained shadow trailing soot around Gottin’s Lamp anymore.

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1441

Well, you answer the first part with the second there, Aria. Before you can expect someone to lower themselves to beg for the lives of their crew, they have to think there’s a legitimate chance such an agreement will be honored. As we’ve established many times, trust is a hard commodity to come by in New Eden.

As for the second… even if we look at the capsuleers who are good to their crew and their people… that other ship’s crew isn’t their crew or their people.

And yes, you’re absolutely right: these inhumane impulses you’re describing may be inhumane, but they’re certainly not inhuman. Honestly, the attempt to categorize us as ‘a class’ of anything is just incredibly facile. Just like anyone else, we are not homogenous, and we inherently defy your attempts to fit us into neat little boxes of ‘cruel’ ‘aggressive’ and ‘brutal’. We’re people. Some good, some bad. Some can be trusted to steer the ship of state. Some shouldn’t be trusted to steer a dinghy.

The fact that we’re capsuleers has nothing to do with that. I suspect that if you look at a venn diagram of capsuleer personality traits and ethical standards, and compared it to that of literally any other large population of human beings, the result would be identical. We’re not different. We just have more opportunity to act on our drives.

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1442

Large categories: “The SOE,” “medical staff,” or “humanitarian organizations.” For that matter, “plumbers.”

Ethical standard: “respect for human life.”

The SOE don’t like us much, Arrendis. And, they kinda have a point? It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be as we are, but, it’s not like there aren’t reasons to consider us a questionable group of people.

… as you’ve argued in the past …

Are you just arguing with me for argument’s sake again?

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1443

No, I’m not.

And no, the SOE don’t like ‘us’. Who gives a crap what the SOE like? And no, the SOE are not a large enough group to use as a comparison. They self-select for specific personality traits, and then reinforce those specific personality traits through years of isolation and mono-cultural immersion.

I don’t think, even with all of the commonalities, you can accuse capsuleers of being a monoculture, any more than you could accuse any of the empires of being a monoculture. Even the Amarr aren’t, as I’m sure you’d agree.

And yes, there are reasons to consider us a questionable group of people. Know what the first one is?

We’re people. This makes us and everything we do immediately questionable.

As for ‘Ethical Standard: respect for human life’.

It’s great in the abstract. It really is. In the abstract, I think 99% of humanity agrees on that. Get into particulars, though, and see what happens. Ask a plumber, ‘how do you feel about a cop shooting a guy who’s trying to kill you?’ See what happens.

And the flip side of that: How often do you see capsuleers committing indiscriminate genocide for no reason? Attended any good planetary bombardments on populated areas lately? Met any eggers who like walking around in stations knifing people for no reason whenever they dock up?

Or, instead, are most of us kinda like the picture you paint of your employer? Generally kind to those we deal with directly (potentially aggressive debate styles and hot-button issues aside), but able to distance ourselves from ‘I am killing hundreds if not millions of baseliners who were just doing a job for a paycheck and didn’t care about Napkins’ politics’ when we have to blow something up in space?

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1444

See, that’s pretty often not our situation, though. Ours is more like, “How do you feel about a cop blowing up buildings if criminals take them over?”

No … because: We. Can’t. Do. That.

Even most if not all flat-out psychopaths don’t do such a silly thing.

Actually, I think most of us are more like my comrades from PY-RE: often kind, often generous, often totally willing and eager to take the opportunity to shoot down a passing neutral Rattlesnake not because it really poses a threat but because it’s a Rattlesnake and killing that will be a bit of a proud moment, and possibly profitable too.

I miss that crew. I learned a lot of good lessons among them, and there was a lot of genuine camaraderie and affection. But … I serve at the Directrix’s side as an indirect consequence of some of what I learned there. And no, I don’t see them as kinda like the Directrix.

That’s okay, on both sides. It’d be pretty sad if she were a Falcon. It’d mean, however much I cared about her, she couldn’t help me. I wouldn’t be able to heal, staying here. And I have been healing, so…

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1445

We can’t deploy super-secret stealth satellites that conveniently identify themselves when approached, but don’t belong to any design known to New Eden, either, but apparently someone did!

As for the Rattlesnake example… is that really such a massive difference in how we approach things? Human beings are naturally inclined to adhere to the norms of the society in which they live. That’s not a capsuleer thing, that’s a human thing. The society we live in says that in low-sec, anyone you don’t know is either a threat, or a target. Take a population of baseliners and remove them from a basically ‘safe’ society and put them into a similar environment, where everyone they come across is more likely than not looking to try to kill them. See how long it takes them to behave just the same way.

That’s not anything to do with us ‘as a class’. That’s us being perfectly normal human beings. Just because human beings suck doesn’t make us any worse than the rest.

Besides: are you going to seriously tell me that Luna insists on everyone holding fire in lowsec until the other guy demonstrates that they’re a threat? When she was Directrix of SFRIM, was that the standing order? Was anyone ever kicked out for such wanton murder?

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1446

Yes, yes, and also yes.

Source: was in SFRIM.

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1447

As a current member of SFRIM, ROE is usually a case by case basis. We’re not going to wait for a TLF member to start firing, for instance.

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1448

As a Director of SFRIM, RoE is, in most all situations: NRDS. If they are neither red to SFRIM (or at war), have below -5.0 security status or are marked either suspect or criminal, SFRIM members are not generally authorized to fire on without being fired upon.

There are a few exceptions in very specific areas of space, when assisting pilots of the Amarr militia or other allies, or when given orders to do so by the FC of a non-SFRIM fleet.

And yes, if someone violates this repeatedly or egregiously, I cannot expect they would remain with us. Lessor offenses may merely mean spending quality time with me.

1449

As former Praefectus Plenipotentiary of SFRIM, boy do I miss putting that on my business cards.

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1450

Excellent, corroboration!

So, in light of this, let me now ask it in a slightly different way to illustrate my point:

Do you hold fire because you are extending trust to unknown parties, or do you hold fire because you are not threatened? For example: if you have your little 20-man group patrolling for hostiles, and as you’re on a gate, 130 neutrals come through the gate. Do you hold position, or withdraw? ie: Do you give them the chance to demonstrate they are not hostile, or do you choose the more cynical course, and flee from danger that is not yet confirmed to exist?

Is your base assumption ‘Everyone is basically decent’ or ‘this place is dangerous, the inhabitants are predators’? Because if it’s the latter, then your choice to hold fire when you have the stronger position is an indulgence in luxury, not a moral high ground. It is ‘I am safe, I risk nothing by demonstrating magnanimance’. For morals to have weight and value, they must be adhered to when it is disadvantageous to do so. Else, they are simply conveniences, not truly morals at all.

Edit to clarify:
When I say ‘illustrate my point’, what I mean is this statement in the earlier part that was responded to:

“The society we live in says that in low-sec, anyone you don’t know is either a threat, or a target. Take a population of baseliners and remove them from a basically ‘safe’ society and put them into a similar environment, where everyone they come across is more likely than not looking to try to kill them.”

When you’re operating from the position of strength, you’re still in that ‘safe’ zone. You’re secure. You’re comfortable. It calls on a very different set of base responses than those we choose from when we don’t feel safe. A single pilot (as we were talking about individual behavior) choosing to go after a Rattlesnake, of all things… there’s no illusion of safety there.

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