I recognise the name Hans Nardieu from somewhere.
Are you one of those Federation chaps who are big into political speeches ? Alain Octirant was one of the others.
Was a whole bunch of you people, with these big arguments about Gallentean constitutional political arrangements.
I find it remarkably amusing that you are willing to engage in discussion with Commander Kim about the virtues of strength and power and yet you refuse to counter any of the valid claims that one of your own countrywomen has put as a counter to what you stand for ideologically.
It is almost as if your position has been built on ground prone to subsidence, with even less substance to be found within your words. Then again, what can I expect from an U-NAT. A party and ideology that has proven itself to be a colossal failure, outstandingly incompetent and profoundly anti-Federation during its tenure in the halls of power.
Edward no
I think it’s adorable, two stereotypes finally finding the opposing stereotype to rail against.
It’s like watching a love story.
Strength lies not in defence but in attack.
And yet you have done neither.
Again, that’s a huge mistake. Unlike Gallenteans we do not control our youth with propaganda. Instead of brainwashing them to love “democracy” and “freedom” we teach them math, engineering, languages, trade, natural sciences - without any “political science” crap. Our State produces literate and competent workers, managers and soldiers. There is no better combat academy in our cluster than SWA. Graduates of STI and SAC dedicated their learning time to subjects they will use in their work, and not useless brainwashing about how democracy works (or should work), and other crap like that.
I am example of SWA graduate. My ideologue, unlike gallenteans who suck it from media, was formed by myself from reading history books and from watching how gallenteans behave, from studying and analyzing, from looking at things as they are without any subjective interpretations. That’s what young Caldari are taught to do: to think, to study, to learn, and not to fall to any propaganda. And, of course, to be efficient in what we do. Will it be flying, fighting, building or creating.
We don’t “own” the youth. We give them knowledge, knowledge that will allow them to reveal their potential, to climb corporate ladder and to shine like bright stars of competence… or fall down into common worker class. All depending on their merits and abilities.
I appreciate you admire our strength, but I believe that there is much to do to really apprehend this strength, to grab it into a fist and strike it deep into Federation, shattering this abomination into pieces~…
And again, no. We do not use the propaganda to control the will of the masses. We are not the Federation to do this. They use it with their media 24/7, convincing every gullible soul that democracy is not bad, that freedom is not bad. Compare it with State media… you’ll find just lots of advertisements of… well, goods. In the State we don’t try to convince anyone that one moral is better than another. We do not try to convince anyone that freedom is good, or that freedom is evil. We simply do not NEED to control the will of the masses.
And you know why?
Because in the State will of the mass means NOTHING. The Will of Caldari people is not the will of the mass. It is the will of Corporation. We do not let cooky and janitor run the show, management in the State is done by merited and professional managers, who took their positions by winning competitions with their peers, and not because they put a nice show to that mass.
Ahh, this is the quintessence of the freedom - ability to do whatever you want and use your strength to dominate the weaker.
But we detest the concept of freedom. We detest the concept of individualism. These are demerits and if you will be selfish and freedom-loving person, you will have very little chance climbing on top. Those, who walk by heads, stumble and fall down. Those, who walk by helping others, eventually reach their limit, but find their niche instead, where they can work together with others on a common goal. Everything in the State is competition, and you can’t win them all if you will be alone, dominating those, who are weaker than you. In the State even weak has ability to become strong and climb on the very top. And for us, unlike gallenteans, it’s not the question of cruelty. It’s the question of efficiency, it’s the question of merits, it’s the question of being a dedicated corporate worker, a team player, and a damn good team player.
I pretty much know who I am. A cold warrior? Maybe. But you clearly don’t know how I operate if you think I dominate weaker. I teach weaker. I give them advice.
And I do not fly to “dominate” anyone. I fly to eliminate gallentean invaders and oppressors.
I can’t imagine having so much shame and hatred for your ancestors. I do not share it.
A challenge directed at no one at all.
A call to arise and do nothing at all.
A request to dare which never says what is to be dared at all.
All in all, a worthy example of the Gallente predilection to say a lot in order to say absolutely nothing at all.
Much like your posting.
“Hatred?”
You left the Federation. I’m still here. In fact, my first action as an adult was to immigrate here – I chose to come here, to work here, to become ethnic Gallente. If you read my post and your takeaway was that I spent years reading and studying and memorising our achievements and mistakes because I “hate” those who came before me, I feel genuine fear at the ways you must express your distaste. That’s not healthy. Get help.
I have an understanding that our forms of governance were designed to accommodate mistakes and facilitate improvement. We revise our constitution, we replace our elected representatives, we draw up new laws and get rid of the old because governance of several thousand cultures and trillions of peoples is difficult. I reject the premise that for one to appreciate the Federation, one must worship those who came before. We’ve learned better. Tomorrow we’ll learn more, and we’ll fix the mistakes of today, and we’ll be better then than we are now. These are processes that are inherent in democratic systems, and being cognizant of them is no more hateful than remembering when election day is.
Shame? Yes, sure, shame. Shame and guilt are teachers. They have their place. I would rather feel shame than make the same assumptions, repeat the same mistakes that facilitated crimes against humanity. They’re more practical sentiments than patriotism. I don’t feel a need to indulge in performative pride, performative love, for a peoples who by virtue of being dead, can’t feel the effects of love. They won’t notice if I spend my energy in ways other than patting their corpses on the back for not ■■■■■■■ everything up. I’d rather examine them and their actions, seive what is useful, what is good, from what is bad and what causes pain, acknowledge both, and discard the latter. I carry enough weight as it is.
I’m not under any contractual obligations to provide insightful commentary on the IGS at present, no.
Your first action as an adult was to become a member of an ethnicity?
You… became descended from other ethnic Gallente. One day you were, I dunno, descended from Athrans, and the next day, all your ancestors were from Astrin?
How’s that actually work?
Reasonable thing to be confused about. The Federation is post-racial, meaning that on a government level, there is an understanding that race is a social construct with no biological basis in reality, and one that can be done away with. People frequently conflate race, ethnicity, and culture, which while related, are three different concepts.
In the Federal Constitution, under the title of Freedom, you’ll notice a subsection named “Right to Identity.” What does that mean? “Identity” is a big word. In its umbrella, it incorporates 1) sexuality, 2) gender expression, 3) culture. Those are the big ones I can think of, but there’s easily more, and I’m sure there are more elements of identity that we’ll discover in the future.
Intaki, Mannar, ethnic Gallente, Jin Mei, Caldari - while people outside of the Federation might call these races for simplicity’s sake, we consider them “interstellar sociocultural categories,” and they’re not frequently used one-on-one, inside member states. In general, within the Federation, people don’t tend to use such big sociocultural categories to define themselves to each other. They use it as a shorthand for people of other empires to understand. I live on a small planet in the middle of nowhere. If I told you my identity, which is related to my member state, profession, and passions, you wouldn’t recognise it. But you will understand “ethnic Gallente.”
When you talk to someone who lives in the same city as you, you tell them what neighbourhood you live in. When you talk to someone who lives in the same country as you, you tell them what city you live in. When you talk to someone from a different country, you tell them what country you’re from. It’s an approximation a little like that. When someone says they are “ethnic Gallente,” they’re not wrong, but they’re not being as precise as they could be.
So, yeah. I showed up one day, from somewhere else. I never felt quite right in the culture I was born. I don’t think that culture much liked me either, given everything its members did to me. I liked some things associated with the ethnic Gallente umbrella. So I moved to Gallentia. I explored heritage sites, I listened to people who had been identifying as ethnic Gallente for far longer than I, I read the histories. I sung our songs. I’ve done more that would make this post go on far longer than it needs. It felt right - it felt good. It made a sense to me that nothing else had at that point. I’ve been ethnic Gallente for, oh, nearing fifteen years, and I don’t regret it. I don’t know if I’ll always feel this way, but even if I don’t, it’s not like I’ll be punished if I change my mind. I’m pretty sure this is who I am, though.
I talked about the ethnic Gallente case here, if I’m not making much sense. It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t lived it, I think.
Now, if you mean how does that actually work as far as how well it actually works in practice, that’s a mixed bag. Some identities took to it better than others. The ethnic Gallente, Caldari, and Intaki didn’t have overmuch in the way of racial strife when the Federation started becoming post-racial - they had different metrics by which they defined themselves and each other, things they considered far more important. The ethnic Gallente had already ■■■■■■ their ancestral history into a muddy puddle, anyway. Even back at the foundation of the Federation, an average ethnic Gallente frequently had more ancestors from planets other than Gallentia than they did on Gallentia, and the individual nations of Gallentia mixed until skin colour/ancestry meant absolutely nothing. (Immigration didn’t help matters. Gallentia has bigger populations of people on it who immigrated there sometime in their ancestoral history than people who don’t.)
Then you have the Mannar and the Jin-Mei. The Mannar definitely subjugated all their neighbours on their planet for generations upon generations, before joining the Federation, but somehow that never comes up. Did the pain of smaller identities from Mannar VIII get erased when the Federation became post-racial? I know the names of many that still exist, but I can’t imagine it helped their case any. The Jin-Mei literally created ethnostates on Tei-Su through genocide of all non-Jin-Mei races before they met the Federation, but it seems like everyone’s forgotten that too. And in newly-joined member states, post-racialism takes a while to seep in, so you’ll see people in places like Lirsautton still informally recognise race as a system, although that’s literally unconstitutional.
I think it might make a little more sense if you consider it with respect to the difference between race and tribe in the Republic. The Minmatar who’ve immigrated here seem to put an emphasis more on clan and tribe membership than race, anyway.
Okay, so, that’s really neat. And, also explains a lot about why the Caldari get so panicked about losing their identity and uniqueness if they end up under Federal rule.
I’m of two minds. I mean, peoples tend to want to stick together, and if they really want to, maybe they should be able to? But, also, that tends to lead to bad stuff for people of mixed blood and so on.
I don’t know. I really don’t.
Yeah, it makes the State Caldari perspective more sympathetic, in my opinion. The identity-shifts come with consequences on culture, too - cultures do blend here, and the ethnic Gallente do as much cultural blending as they do bloodline blending. What would being planet-neighbours to the ethnic Gallente do to any culture? Would they have gone the way of the Garouni, Hueromont, and Morthane cultures, becoming swept up in a larger identity? It explains the cultural features, good and bad, that have remained on either side after secession, too.
(As a side note, people have been identifying as ethnic Gallente less and less, over time. Maybe in our immortal lives we’ll see the first true death of an identity. It’ll probably be a good thing, in our case.)
And the Caldari State – people with heavy Gallentia ancestry did join the State during secession. They’re considered Caldari now. They’ve adopted the culture, they actively practice it. I’m sure they look it, too. The Raata and Federation Caldari who decided to remain, they’re still distinct culturally - both from the ethnic Gallente and from State Caldari - but it’s anyone’s guess if that would have been true if the State hadn’t seceded. The identity of the ethnic Gallente did experience a profound shift as a result of secession and the U-Nat regime.
“Post-racial”? Don’t get me wrong, but the very term is… kinda alien to me. I mean… I get how you’re using it from the context of later statements, but when you say…
to me (and while I certainly can’t speak for most Matari, I think I can at least say that within my experience, my Clan at least all take the same view, cuz that’s where I got it), those are… social, cultural, political, and ethnic labels, and they mean slightly different things depending on which type you’re applying. But… ‘race’…
They’re all human. That’s their race. They’re not, you know, slaver hounds. Or some non-human primate. I’m the same race as every Brutor I know… heck, same race as any ‘True Amarr’ I know. We’re human.
So… I really don’t quite get what you mean when you say ‘post-racial’. If you mean there’s no bigotry… well, I think the treatment of the Intaki and others within the Federation, including the pressure to assimilate and take part in the ‘melting pot’ disproves that. There’s a clear prejudice against those who say ‘you guys do your own thing, and that’s fine, we’re gonna pay our taxes, obey the laws, and all that other jazz, but opt out of the cultural paradigm, in favor of maintaining our own.’
I think you might be conflating race and species. Yeah, everyone in the Gallente Federation is human. Though, it might be worth noting that until the ethnic Gallente and the Caldari met, their words for Gallente and Caldari was interchangeable with “human,” as well, and only came to mean what it means now after having met each other. To the Gallente, before the knowledge of extraterrestrial life, Gallente meant human. To the Caldari, before the knowledge of extraterrestrial life, Caldari meant human. It’s possible we’ll replace “the human race” convention one day with something else - sentience, perhaps. Crimes against sentience, for example. Or instead of humanitarians, sentiencists.
There are cultural movements in the Federation which consider themselves post-human, but that’s separate from and unrelated to post-racialism.
I reread my post, and I don’t see a place where I suggested the Federation is post-bigotry. There are many different things to be bigoted about other than race. For example, there’s a general bias in the Federation in favour of polyglots, as a result of the pluralistic system we live in. (I’m not certain what you mean by the “treatment of the Intaki within the Federation” - the Intaki identities practically run the Federation. They’re way more engaged with the Federal level of governance than any other identity.)
I’m further confused by your assertion that there’s a pressure to assimilate. Which identity are we going to pressure people to assimilate to, again? Are we telling everyone to become Intaki? Are we telling everyone to become Mannar? Jin-Mei? Caldari? It’s not the ethnic Gallente, as I said before – there are proportionately less people identifying as ethnic Gallente now than there were at the foundation of the Federation. And there are plenty of identities who opt out of – sorry, which cultural paradigm? – Anyway, there’s plenty of identities who opt out of the entire Federal game. We have plenty of rural communities that can’t be bothered to form up as a member state, that often haven’t heard of the Federation in spite of being within the borders, and they’re happy doing whatever they do. I’m not sure they all pay taxes or obey the laws, but it hardly matters.
The Federation did ask the Jin-Mei to get rid of their caste system, and they declined, and we didn’t do anything about it. I guess recent news has illustrated how that’s a tricky proposition either way. But I think that further suggests that it’s not really as simple as assimilation/melting pot vs no bigotry, ever. Some sociologists suggest caste systems are built on bigoted assumptions.
You immigrated here. You’re not ethnic Gallente.
I’m not ethnic Gallente either, I’m Mannar.
Words have meaning, Tressith.
And while I left the federation because a capsuleer who confines himself to an empire is a fool, I did not leave my people, I left that place. The Mannar have been scattered across the cluster for years, and I intend to do what I can to give them a true home again.
And no, I will never apologize for the Federation, or for the Mannar, for failing to be perfect, and I cannot understand such an endeavor. Failing at perfection does not mean we were never great.
But is that true? I’m not a racist, I’d never claim to be. But we do know that certain people are good at certain things. We know that certain people tend to get certain diseases at a higher rate. Why? Because of their race. I’m not saying anyone is inferior or superior, I’m simply saying that we have statistics to back up the fact that there are certain things that affect certain races. I’m open to everyone is human, but I will say that different groups of humans are varied.
How much variation is there between groups who were on different planets?