Can you see it?
The insane machinations of a blind idiot god whose smokestack fingers have gripped the universe and marched it steadily towards self-destruction? It isn’t apparent most of the time, as invisible to us as the ocean is to a fish or the sky to a bird, or space to the capsuleer. Sometimes though, sometimes it becomes a bit more overt.
Occasionally there will an event where, if you zoom out, you can almost see the system tearing itself apart. The places where incentive gradients are too strongly and too uniformly applied, where the demands placed upon individuals by their circumstances conspire to make sure that nobody who could possibly solve issues is in any position to solve them. Mass forces of hypnosis that blind us to everything outside the next marginal utility gain in the red queen’s race, the places where the system sets itself up and then knocks itself down.
Where does this mass suicide ritual end? At the end of Empires, of capitalism, of humanity itself? The death throes of civilization have been felt before, and we see it now in Kahah as we have seen it before in Arzad. All the players and movers and shakers follow their own incentives unto their deaths, and yes, there will be more deaths.
Even as the Khanid try to regain control via genocide, they lay the seeds of their own annihilation. When it comes time for a reckoning to be paid, those at the front of this event will have their names topping the lists of those to punish. The system disposes of the slaves, then disposes of the disposers. It must do this to maintain solvency. If the disposers think they’ll manage to escape the machinations of the mad god, they are in for a rude awakening.
Only by stepping away could anything truly be done to break the cycle, and well…anyone who does step away, they will simply be annihilated. Everyone involved could absolutely hate the state of affairs, but without some sort of coordination mechanism, no one can step away without putting themselves at great risk.
The capsuleers in this case, act in the form of a pressure release valve. We’re capable of stepping back, we’re capable of saying “stop this, this isn’t okay” and have the insulation to avoid being purged in the process, and yet we’re also disconnected enough from the situation that our speaking thusly has ultimately limited effect, and when we may finally act, it will be to enact our function as a part of the machinery and destroy the destroyers once the damage has already been done.
The process self destructively iterates until it has consumed and devoured everything capable of being consumed and devoured. Until the last world is reduced to an unlivable toxic waste dump, until the last asteroid has been mined, until the last human has been killed. It will not stop on its own, it will not stop willingly, it some number of humans survive the destruction, they will simply repeat the cycle yet again.
We must break free of these chains before they destroy our civilizations, murder our children and burn our cathedrals. Before our standing places are reduced to toppled stones and our great ships and stations cold tumbling wreckage.
To that end, any officer or soldier of the Khanid military who chooses to break rank and abandon this senseless slaughter, I offer you and your families and loved ones safe haven from the violence your government would inflict upon you for your dissent. I offer you the rarest of all gifts, a new choice, a new path, another way forward.
Think carefully before rejecting this offer, path dependencies being as they are, such choices may never come to you again.
Saede Riordan
Coordinator // Alexylva Paradox