The events in Colelie, and why do the Feds sometimes seem patronizing

Show me the poster who defended the incursion as a good choice.

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You want to try the decision makers and/or fleet commanders of the Colelie Incident in a Federation court?

I’m in. Oh, I’m in any time.

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What like this one?

I saw that hanging up somewhere when I was at PTS. Don’t remember where. A tube station maybe… or someone’s dorm room…

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So … this isn’t really, exactly a disagreement, Ms. Rhiannon: what you point to seems like a very “human” thing. But it also seems like if tribe & kin is allowed to trump other considerations, there won’t be a lasting peace. With anyone.

Why? Because grievances will happen, and revenge is a very human impulse-- as is discounting another’s revenge on you and yours, and thirsting for vengeance in turn. Such impulses have to be devalued, or what results isn’t likely to deserve to be called a civilization for very long.

I’m not immune to this. Neither is anyone, maybe. But if you want peace, you can’t prioritize it. Because, that way, lasting peace just won’t happen. There’ll keep being new reasons to fight.

The Caldari say Starsi tastes like revenge. It’s a little funny-- they really do kind of make a fetish out of it, but at the same time they’re really good at keeping it tamped down among themselves. Feuds inside the State don’t spiral out of control, maybe because there’s one outside to focus on.

I wonder, if the State were alone in this universe, whether it would be at peace with itself.

Maybe the best thing for peace in the cluster would be for the Drifters to really try to kill us all.

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Good old PTS, still up to all sorts of shenanigans. I am a terrible person but I admit that made me laugh. Tech humor best humor, and you can take the girl out of PTS, but you cannot take PTS out of the girl… or something.

Also well done with the pun.

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You will notice I said “if we operate solely from ideas of…”

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I’m aware. But … it doesn’t seem as though bowing to those tendencies and impulses, maybe to any degree at all, really contributes to peace, either. I’d go so far as to suggest that those impulses are counter-civilized by their nature-- they’re rooted in who we are as a species, and some level of compliance with those impulses is maybe not so much desirable as inevitable.

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Not saying that any poster did - but obviously someone with rank made precisely that call.

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So. You come to a thread discussing why outsiders can sound arrogant when they dismiss the deepest emotional basis of our culture, and suggest that maybe that basis is by nature counter-civilized.

Well played.

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Definitely. After all, we were at peace before YC110 when Gallentes attacked us. Megas might have rivalry and quite intense, but it is a healthy rivalry.

I don’t understand how Drifters are still relevant. After assasination of Her Majesty Jamyl I and failed attempt at incursion into the Empire, when they were steamrolled down, I haven’t seen any (especially “murderous”) activity from their side.

On the other hand, we still have Gallente Federation, that tortures and kills people every day, so if there is a candidate to try to kill us all, it would be gallente, not Drifters.

When Synthia seems to have a better grip on understanding cultural issues than some people, then those people might want to have a really good think about their position.

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The sign of a good thread.

image

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Mm. I’m not Gallente though. And … I’ve been thinking a little about this stuff, in the context of stuff like: if you come and kill people I care about, what should I do to you? How far should I go? Should I just let it all go?

If the Federation discounts your reasons and chooses to avenge injuries done to its own family and tribe, what happens? You spoke before of risking war. Maybe if they took tribe and family more seriously, this wouldn’t have happened at all. But … maybe you’d be fighting right now. Furiously.

Like I said, the Caldari make a fetish of revenge, and I’m not sure it’s a good thing. Maybe it’s needed to keep the impulse from turning inwards. Maybe it’s not.

We Achura have maybe a little extra experience swallowing our pride. Possibly because the odds of avenging it are so remote, and the cost … doesn’t really bare thinking about.

To be clear, I don’t think the person who was holding forth on this from a Federal perspective was doing himself favors. I’m not at all sure the Federal system is even stable, much less ideal. Maybe none of our societies, or the spacer meta-society, really are.

But I do know that a lot of crawling back out of the black spiral that keeps trying to draw me back down, has been letting go of my desire to murder people because I feel justified in doing so. Musing about that and comparing my experience to yours might make me arrogant. But if I embrace those feelings, I would be making it my mission and purpose to forestall all-out war between the Republic and Empire by killing as many Republican Matari as possible.

You persuaded me you’re a threat, you see. And, as you suggest, I value the lives of my loved ones over any number of your people. One way to stop the cycle of revenge is to crush your enemies utterly beyond recovery.

Ms. Vess talked me out of it, though. If there’s a chance another method might be more effective, I’ll go with that for now.

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Oh, we are absolutely a threat. Ours is a complex system of strong and often conflicting loyalties and senses of honor. It is a balance that continuously topples and self-corrects, and endless shift that has a stable form. Like a storm-cloud, maybe - high winds and strong currents were you to stand inside it, but still keeps its form when you look it from the outside.

But it’s who we are. And in a sense a self-correcting system is more stable than a monolith that once fallen will stay fallen.

I would not give away all my pain and all my guilt over the Ray and the events her death caused, not if the price was never to have followed her.

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IMHO the Honor always shall take priority, and grief is a waste of time.
Technically, if the crime happened on their territory under their authority, it means it is their fault and thus their responsibility to commit justice, and I agree with you about this, but I do not agree with the priority of “blood spilling”. If Gallenteans would punish those, who were attacking Caldari on Caldari Prime in YC110 and protect Caldari from racial violence instead of beating them - then there wouldn’t be war at all. And I would be perfectly fine if Gallente would judge them instead us (back then I trusted them a bit more)… but they didn’t. Committing a justice shall be a chore. If you seek to do justice “yourself” instead of letting anyone else do that - there are dangerous to the fair treatment motives. And in this case any demand to give you do the justice is WRONG.

On the other hand, there is an issue about trust: would you trust gallenteans to judge someone? Because if you don’t - then letting them do this justice is WRONG. I myself have little to no trust to gallenteans, I wouldn’t let them judge even an argument between two pet furriers over a bowl of feed. But again, since we are allies to Amarr Empire, I completely will agree to their decision if the crime would be committed in their territory. Because they are allies. Because we trust each other.

Now tell me, if you don’t tust gallenteans, why even make them allies in the first place? You cannot reply on dishonor with dishonor (and that’s exactly what happened in Caillie - and probably #1 reason I myself would not be interested in trusting Minmatar either like I don’t trust gallenteans), as that makes you as bad as the one you are fighting against.

I so want to add “And this is why the Federation must be destroyed” into this discussion, but for me it looks that both sides went wrong.

With all due respect, Kim, your questions are unanswerable, because they seem to stem from a completely false understanding of what my point was.

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Please excuse me for this, and if my analysis was shallow. Could you please point on what I didn’t understand?

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It’s hard because it is in the unspoken premises, but for one, I am not looking for truth on how people should feel about these things; does honor matter, or blood, or grief. I am pointing out that opinions on this differ, and thus any attempt where one system can assumed to dictate (for example) jurisdiction is doomed to fail.

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I actually like this position.
As for unspoken, I am one of those, who prefer everything to be made clear and “sorted into shelves”. All the laws, all the regulations - they should be stated as clear as possible without any chance of wrong reading or different interpretation, covering every possible situation.

Returning back to the problem of one system - I repeat myself, I like this position. We also have absolutely independent Megacorporations with their own laws, traditions, even systems - and no corporation can dictate their law on another.

Although, there should be sort of rules of how to solve situations between entities, between these different systems and opinions. And we have CBT for that. While it is profitable to have multiple different system, another system to solve disputes is a strict necessity, because otherwise even a tossed out rotten apple over a fence could lead to war. Would you agree with that?

We, actually, have this power in our cluster: CONCORD. I think there would be way less problem if Gallente wouldn’t play dorks and just transferred this issue to CONCORD immediately as international affair.

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Tribalism is merely collectivism thinly veiled with puerile romanticism and thus a tyranny to the individual. It has no place in the Federation.

The Gallente are far more advanced in their ways and philosophy than the Republic. It was their hope the Republican Matari would naturalize to the great ideology of Gallente enlightenment, but alas, base human nature won out. The space designated Republican is a meat shield between Amarr and the Gallente. The sooner Republicans get that the less of these absurd threads we’ll see.

As for kin? That’s pure nepotism even the Gallente don’t respect.

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