On Those With Inferior Blood

Hey, I earned those1 titles fair and square through my posting on the IGS and elsewhere.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CLONING IN NEW EDEN

The technology of replicating a living organism through cloning is not particularly new. The trick of transferring a mind state is though.
Jovians2 have been at the whole cloning malarkey one way or another for thousands of years. Those Wacky Jovians.
The technology of cloning an individual was known in Amarr for about two thousand years by now, though until the past couple centuries3, extremely rarely used. Considered blasphemous for centuries due to the hideous abominations that occurred in the early experiments.
The Takmahl used cloning extensively to make their “biodroid” servants. And look what happened to them.4


  1. Well, the ones that I remember using anyway. “Least Horrible Sani Sabik” was one Aria gave me.
  2. Various Jovian empires and their successor polities.
  3. Basically after it became in vogue elsewhere in the cluster.
  4. You can read what happened in my work: “The Takmahl, A History”. TL:DR they died.

Again, you run into the problem that even with ‘free will’ human decisions are a result of the conditions under which the decision’s being made. And those are a result of earlier conditions, which all go back to the initial starting conditions and laws of the universe, as decided (with full knowledge of what his decision would result in) by God.

Which means he chose what decisions everyone would make, because he was perfectly capable of changing any of those initial conditions.

Uh-huh. I’m sure there was an extensive vetting process for ‘Greatest Sani-Sabik Capsuleer Philosopher of the Modern Era’… and if there’d been any competition at all, you’d have just tossed in ‘Blond’ or something. :smirk:

Well, technically, that one was given to me by Cardinal Graelyn, who said my works were “the most awesome sani sabik thinking” he’d seen in a decade or so. He also said that’d he’d know, because of his years of experience of having to deal with sabik on the IGS.

I just, you know, polished and embellished it a teensy little bit.

But we still have free will.
If someone kills a member of my family, I still have the choice to forgive, let God take care of it or take retribution. The choice still lies with us.

You speak as if God plays a video game. You have no idea.

Sin requires the existence of Free Will.

Without Free Will, then the concepts of Sin, and its reverse, Righteousness, have no meaning.

The school headmaster, principal, or whatever, has a style of management that seems difficult to distinguish from complete disinterest, or even malice. As such I find His presence difficult to infer.

Perhaps for someone who is already of your Faith there is enough grace in this world to let you see God’s hand in it. For someone who is not …

I find this world forgivable because I see no mind behind it. It is easier on my soul to see us as a bunch of struggling creatures groping through a world that was not made for us. If … if someone made this for us, made us this way, made the world this way, made this happen, intentionally …

… I would want to kill that being.

The world to my eye is sacred only because it is without mind and intention; it has no idea what it does, what it’s doing to us. It’s innocent of its own cruelty.

As a phenomenon, it is beautiful, a sacred wonder.

As a design, it’s an ugly, sadistic prank.

So probably it’s just as well that I don’t see God’s hand in things.

(Yes, the directrix has me in regular spiritual counseling. It’s not like she’s just okay with all this.)

The ability to see “God’s” hand in -anything- is heavily reliant on two factors.

1: The definition of “GOD” based on whatever religion the viewer adheres to

2: The perspective of the onlooker and the ability to see past a set of biases that act as a filter between the senses, and the analytical mind.

To the first point, what is God? What is God to an Amarrian? What is God to a Minmatar? What is god to a -still- isolated tribe of primitive beings on some random outer-rim world that nobody has even heard of?

Would such primitive minds see a blaze of light coming from a fiery golden chunk of metal in the atmosphere, as God? Would they suspect God was angry with them if that blaze of laser beams just so happened to disintegrate half their tribe in a matter of seconds leaving nothing but a slightly radioactive burnt pile of ash in its wake?

But at an even higher, modern level of perspective. What is God?

The universe that coalesced into the existence we know today began as clouds of stardust, swirling around the cosmos for millions if not billions of years. Did an omnipresent God mold these things into the stars and celestial objects humanity inhabits today? The ever shifting, always flowing entropy fields of the universe caused this chain of events to turn stardust to stars, from stars to worlds.

Is God an entity? Or is God the ever shifting, constantly ebbing and flowing, entropy fields that connects things together, even the ‘specific’ conditions by which ancient terra emerged from the primordial soup that characterized the early stages of life on Terra.

The flow of the universe stops for nothing. It takes no pause. It enjoys no rest. It shapes and fabricates everything we know, and everything we experience.

To me, “God’s Plan” Is a manner of ruthless yet controlled chaos. Actions and events that all happen as the result of -every-single-parameter- that led up to one specific event, all tied together by the machinations of the same entropy fields that have seemingly no guidance.

One thing leads to another, then to another, then another, suddenly you’ve managed to not only understand and ride the waves, but take part in directing their flow. In that sense, humanity acts as its own God.

Where is God’s hand in all of this?

First, the question of “What is God” must be nailed down.

The answer to the question, defines the perception with which the world can be seen, and the interpretation of what “God’s Hand” had to do with any of it, all of it, or none of it.

Whatever choice you make, you make based on the exact circumstances you find yourself in at that moment. In the exact same circumstances, you will always make the exact same choice.

The circumstances of that moment were determined when the initial starting conditions were set.

Oh, no. After all, video games occur in the same temporal frame of reference as the player’s existence. God, by your faith, exists outside of Time, able to see it all, beginning to end. You’re effectively arguing for the ‘free will’ of a painting.

I shall start with saying congratulations on becomming a capsuleer within the last 21 days at the time of posting this message. I recommend that you accept the invitation from the Directrix Societas Imperialis Sceptri Coroneaque. I have found it a pleasure to converse with her and a very refreshing change in how those from Amarr origin treat me. I encourage you to listen and learn from her in order to use your… motivation and ambitions in a more appropriate way.

After nearly 20 years as a capsuleer, I’ve seen plenty of capsuleers that share your view. Looking at both the recent and more distant history of the Amarr Empire, those who have acted on those views certainly have not done the Empire or the cluster at large any good.

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Depends on the Minmatar. For some, ‘God’ is a concept introduced by invaders. For others, ‘God’ is a powerful spirit, worshipped by the Amarr. For others, it’s some bit of combination of those.

For me, it’s a lie, born of an ancient need to cling to nonsense as a means of achieving and enforcing tribal unity, combined with a feeling of persecution and resentment. And so, like abused children, the inhabitants of the island of Amarr, when they had the power to do so, began to abuse others.

And if the Amarr want people to think ‘God’ is more than just the tribal totem of their abused past as victims, writ large and projected back out as abuse upon the cluster… then I suggest they come up with some evidence that ‘God’ exists at all.

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Your notion of God, sir, seems fairly similar to my sect’s: the Totality, the seamless, single All That Is. It’s what I mean by a world innocent of its own cruelty-- the wonderous labyrinth of all that exists, sacred because it exists without thought or intention. It doesn’t mean to do anything; it just … “is.”

The part of what you might call more “active” theology I have difficulty getting past is what I gather is called the “problem of evil”: “omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent-- pick two.” I think it’s often approached as I understand it from a “mysterious ways” angle-- that it can be hard to see how a given horror could ever possibly be for the best, and yet, ultimately, it is.

That’s not enough for me, though, especially since I’m not coming from a position of belief in such a being to begin with. There are some depths of misery I can’t really see or imagine a point to, and which I find it very difficult to imagine a counterweight to unless it’s that nobody ever has to experience that kind of misery again. … Which quite plainly isn’t the point because this kind of thing happens to people every day, all the time, here and there all across the cluster, without stopping.

Some of these are things the world does to us. Some of them are things we do to each other. I don’t find either forgivable as features of a purposely-created, divinely-guided world. What misery and horror isn’t willed is at least permitted, or even set up through circumstance so as to be inevitable.

Unforgivable, unless the universe is unaware of what it’s doing and its only governing “god” is the mindless thing named Consequence.

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In the end, our actions define us, not our beliefs.

Good vs. Evil is a battle that humanity has struggled to understand since long before the first Terran came through the EVE Gate. Thousands of years later, the struggle remains. Thousands of years from now, it will still remain.

A star goes supernova, and obliterates the inhabitants of an entire system. As you say, “innocent of its own cruelty”. The concept of natural selection in it’s most brutal, ruthless, and unleashed form.

Nature takes its course, and stops for nothing.

Even as “Immortal” as the term loosely fits our existences as capsuleers, we are still nothing more than sharks in an endless sea of smaller -and- bigger fish.

Our struggle to survive, on a grand scheme level, is no different than a plant growing toward the sun, over the surrounding flora that also jockey for a chance at their own photosynthesis. Their own chance to thrive and procreate, overshadowed by a bigger fish. If the small plant is successful in it’s struggle, overtime it grows, evolves, becomes hardened through the process of natural selection that governs its own existence, or becomes threatened with extinction if unable to adapt and overcome.

the cosmos long ago defined the conditions in which that plant will exist hundreds of thousands of years before it ever sprouts. The orbit of the planet, the celestials around the planet and their gravitational interactions with the ebb and flow of water on the planet, the brightness of the star, everything that defines the environmental conditions in which the plant will sprout and be given it’s own chances to live.

It has two choices. Exist, or cease to exist. It is the PLANT, that determines how that is accomplished. The cosmos merely sets the stage.

Scale this to Capsuleers, or even humanity as a whole. The same details regarding -all- the environmental conditions laid before us by the universe.

We have two choices.
Exist.
Or cease to exist.

How we achieve either choice, is determined BY US. The choice, and the actions we take in the name of that choice, is ours alone.

In effect, we become our own God, in a sense that OUR DECISIONS, shape the world around us. Be it through combat, trade, or stellar transmutation.

WE shape our destiny.

WE alter the universe simply by existing within it.

If I dig up the soil beneath the growing plant, and rip it up from the root. Have I committed an evil act by ending that plant’s existence? Or is it okay because I’m tilling the soil to plant crops to feed a village?

So-- two things, sir.

First, I think your assessment of natural process as morally neutral is precisely correct-- as long as that process has no sapient deity as its architect.

Second, I think your analogy falls apart when it relies on free will by all living things. We have no reason to think that plants make choices as such; like other biochemical processes, they mostly seem to just respond to their circumstances however their nature (which is really just another circumstance) calls them to respond.

I don’t believe in free will to begin with, mind, so I don’t think even we make our own choices at all. What looks like choice to you, sir, just looks to me like complexity.

(For this same reason I don’t actually believe in “evil.” “Evil” implies a sort of cosmic polarity I don’t think exists. Misery, though, suffering? That’s pretty hard to deny. And even if in some sense it’s morally “neutral,” it’s hard to find people who want to experience it for real.)

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Aye, correct. “Morally neutral”

No reason to think plants make choices as such? A plant (as in humans) has a basic instinct to survive. How the plant achieves that is embedded within it’s genetic makeup of capability. It may have a limited selection of options, but they are still the options available to “survive”.

Humanity, likewise, has a deeply engrained instinct of survival. The difference between us and plants, is we have more options to choose from in how we survive.

The concept of Evil -does- imply a polarity. Because it -has- to. In the end, EVERY mathematical equation MUST balance out. There are both positive and negative (polarized) attributes in nearly everything that exists.

Misery and suffering for example, are a negative polarity. Say that misery and suffering is alleviated by a generous person that helps them through that plight. Such action is a positive polarity that, in the end, balances out the equation.

IN EVERYTHING

There is Balance.

Find the balance, or become the balance.

I’m … well familiar with that conceptualization of the world and its forces, sir. I think it’s literally magical thinking, though.

Does okay as a metaphor, maybe, encouraging thought, moderation, and cautious action. A lot of stories do good work like that.

@Rynna_Alcerys As a fanatical Amarrian, I approve your message. I don’t understand all of it but I blindly follow the tenets of my faith and the prophets who bring the nebulous word of God to life.

How horrible for those who know and yet don’t do.

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Came in expecting you to be complaining about the taste.

Don’t think I was entirely wrong.

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So… to be clear, is OP part of some Sani Sabik Cult or not?

No, I think she’s a Purity of the Throne throwback, insisting on ‘divine genetics’ or something.

I have no ties to any cult, and would prefer such ridiculous accusations to be left unsaid.

All I’m doing is making observations, and from what I’ve seen, there is only one empire in the cluster that one can truly call civilized. There’s a reason for that.

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