Yes, at the current moment, slaves are being beaten, women are being abused, and children are being forced into labor all across the Empire, just like everywhere else.
The issues that I’m alluding to have all been claimed by or attributed to that individual on these very forums.
The Empire’s issues are not ones you can just casually attribute to a galaxy wide scale. This is not some ‘lol but there’s evil everywhere’ problem, and shame on you for trying to marginalize it so.
Then don’t phrase it as ‘most if not all of the evil that’s been perpetrated in the Empire of late’. The person you are talking about is certainly a big, blatant issue, but he’s hardly the only bad actor in Amarr. He’s just a particularly loud one.
In fact, that he is so loud is what proves that he is just one of many, because even by the values of the Amarrian faith he is a man who should have been put down ages ago, yet still thrives thanks to the widespread corruption that festers in Amarr. Just like Nauplius’s evil was only enabled by those Holders who actually sell slaves to him, Lord Chakaid’s evil is enabled by those who refuse to do anything about him despite his clear sins.
You’re putting words in my mouth. I said that I’ve never heard tell of an EM fleet. If I’m wrong, then I’m glad to be corrected. But I’d be surprised, because part of my security work has entailed fleeting with alliances of all sorts of loyalties—excluding ARC’s fleets, because I’m not willing to spend billions of ISK to meet their doctrine.
More to the point, though, the reason this topic came about is because I said the Triglavians are a common enemy who deserve more concerted action than they’re getting. If EM regularly fields fleets, then that would mean every empire has at least one dedicated loyalist fleet. Imagine how powerful a message we could send if we all focused on ousting them for a moment. We could even wield enough firepower to send them away for good.
And shame on you for trying to decide what my motives are here.
More specifically, it’s enabled by a system that allows him to progress to the Theology Council and a duchy despite his own corruption.
That is an internal problem. It needs to be addressed. But neither you nor I nor Captain Rhiannon have the sort of influence needed to bring about change within the Empire. We can bring down the noisy one, though, which makes him the biggest, clearest problem in terms of this topic.
No, we can’t. No more than we can change the other issues in the Empire. Plenty of us have been trying for years. We couldn’t even stop Nauplius, another capsuleer against whom we have more freedom to act, over the course of half a decade.
That doesn’t mean we don’t have a responsibility to keep fighting that battle, both to remove those evil people and to encourage reform and change in the Empire.
I think that Elsebeth publicly decrying more liberal Amarr helps them have more clout in the Empire as opposed to hurting them. For groups like LUMEN to work towards any goals they might have for the Empire, they need to appeal to other Amarr, not foreigners, and as it turns out, Elsebeth isn’t the most well-liked person within the Empire’s general populace.
Did you just call me a liar?
I laughed.
But yea, I don’t think my endorsement would do much to help people working inside the system in the Empire.
I’m pretty sure we can say that very few slaves are being beaten in the other empires, that none of the other empires has an organized, systemic program of ‘rape them until menopause then throw them away’, etc. So let’s not try to hide things behind ‘oh, everybody does it’ or ‘things are tough all over’ type crap.
… are far from the only ones everyone else is alluding to.
The system doesn’t ‘allow’ him to progress. The system requires someone higher than him actively progresses him. He can’t simply say ‘well, I’ve been at this rank for X time, the rules say I get the next one now’. The presentation of a passive ‘well, those are just the rules’ implied by ‘a system that allows’ is 100% completely wrong. Active engagement and approval of his actions is required by the people above his new station—which means the very top of the system.
No, you can’t. Only the people he answers to can do that. There’s damned few of them, and none of them give a crap what any of us say.
As for this little chestnut…
And absent the Trigs, they still wouldn’t have. LUMEN is not a militia group. They have never been a militia group. They have supported PIE’s operations, and some of their pilots have gone on roams into the warzone, but they have no intention of, or desire to, join the militia. This is a bit like saying ‘oh, the Amarr obviously want peace! After all, CVA hasn’t deployed to the warzone!’
It’s just not what they do.
No, I made an ‘if-then’ statement illustrating my reason for broaching the topic at all.
If I say a thing, and someone responds to me but is referring to an unrelated thing, then that’s on them.
For a more specific response, cite examples.
This has less to do with ‘want’ and more to do with ‘duty’.
But since you know so much more about how LUMEN operates than me, by all means, dictate the conversation.
But they didn’t respond with an unrelated thing. You, after all, claimed
I’m sorry if you think millions of rapes every day don’t count as more of the evil being perpetrated in the Empire of late than say, deathglow attacks on a handful of planets, but I’m gonna have to disagree with you there. And I’m gonna have to point out that when people say ‘no, that’s wrong’, they are, in fact, referring to exactly the thing you claimed.
Ok, I will. Shoosh.
First, an Empire that forgets about Reclaiming is not the Empire anymore. The Reclaiming is at the center of what the Empire is. That is indeed a fact. What the Reclaiming is, though, that is written on another page and I dare say that your understanding of it is deeply coloured by your own experience and feelings. It’s not at all a fact-based understanding.
Second, we have to establish a sensible understanding of what ‘support’ means. I’d venture that ‘to support’ means an action. And actions imply intent. One can very well support the Empire in general, without having the intent of supporting a violent Reclaiming. (That is to say, humans are able to make exceptions.) If action presupposes intent, then someone like that is not engaging in the action of supporting a violent Reclaiming. That a violent Reclaiming might still benefit from my actions might be a side effect or the result of conflicting interests and intentions, though. To ascribe, given those conditions, to me the action of supporting a violent Reclaiming would be a stretch, in my humble opinion.
If one doesn’t agree with the above argument, then I don’t see, how one could really avoid similar, symmetric arguments being made about almost everyone else in the Cluster: “Anyone supporting the Republic knowingly or unknowingly supports the policy of dealing with the Amarr Empire violently (one could argue the goal is genocide, the extermination of a culture that revolves around the concept of Reclaiming). Thus, any ‘Matari’ who pose as ‘peaceful’ are just insincere or lying to themselves.”
The truth is, as I argued before, that if different people come together there is always exchange and competition of ideas. And it’s just natural for us to champion those that we believe in and that give us emotional security. And that we oppose those that threaten our own ideas. There is, really, no way around this - we can only make decisions on how we organize that exchange and competition.
Personally, I prefer peaceful exchange and friendly competition to the alternatives:
I’m totally on the side of Heideran there and his ideas as he extolled them in the Pax. It’s not dishonest in the least and to stylize violent means as more honest - apparently for the sole reason that one can also and others actually do pursue the spread of ones ideas violently - is in my humble opinion just disingenuous.
All that said, it is simple fact that if we don’t talk to one another, peacfully and in friendly competition, that won’t lead to the tensions - that are impicitly or even explicitly present between our cultures - vanishing. Instead, they will fester and grow and in the end there will be violent outbreak. To then go and say: “I said so, they were never really open to honest, peaceful conversation! So it was the right thing to not talk to them, as I said!” is really self-fulfilling prophecy.
The idea of peaceful Reclaiming has - or shouldn’t have - anything to do with a ‘prettified and dressed up version of the Faith’. It’s not about lying to anyone that force is or isn’t an option. Of course it is and all nations make use of it if they see it as the superior strategy. Still, commitment to a peaceful Reclaiming means that one holds peaceful exchange and friendly competition to be - generally speaking - the superior mode of organizing human interaction in the face of diverse beliefs.
To also hold the belief that there are circumstances where we will have to settle for the second best option, is not at all in conflict with that.
I don’t have two Rehab facilities full of sexual assault victims from other nations. Not saying rape doesn’t occur other places, but you don’t really get a cargo hold full of survivors in one stop in the State, Republic, or Federation.
I disagree with said arguement. To some degree, you and I both support things that we may very well dislike.
You can’t avoid them. Every major faction in the cluster has done and actively does wrong, but this discussion is about the Empire. Other factions aren’t really relevant. Even if every single other faction in the cluster were pure evil, that wouldn’t mean we’re without problems.
Support of a faction, any faction, can be given for any wide variety of reasons, and for us it ultimately comes down to our Faith. We are to serve and perfect God’s Empire. The fact that our intentions may be good doesn’t mean our hands are clean of guilt for bad things the Empire may do, but it should give us more motivation to fix the problems that cause us to do wrong.
Well, if you can’t avoid those similar, symmetric arguments, then you cease to make - in my opinion - anything of a meaningful distinction. Yes, we all ‘support’ to some degree things that we dislike. Support then meaning that our actions have side effects that are beneficial to things which we don’t intend to bestow any beneficial effects onto.
And while I largely agree that
That doesn’t mean that Amarr who pursue a peaceful Reclaiming are in any way insincere or lying to themselves. To the contrary, being aware of those problems and maybe also how our actions may have side effects conducive to those problems, actually shows that one is sincere in ones intentions and is not lying to oneself, either. Especially if one also works to mitigate those side-effects and get rid of those problems.
P.S.: And this is of course true both on an individual and on the institutional level.
I am not sure if you noticed me saying “above personal level” there. I am sure many - even most - Amarrians are perfectly decent individuals who mean well and want to live their lives without causing undue suffering.
But on an institutional level the Amarr Empire has and has always had in its policies the violent reclaiming and holding of people in slavery.
The “Reclaiming by the Good Word”, even if not violent itself, reclaims people to that Empire, to that Faith.
At best, it would be decent to refrain from reclaiming people until you have managed the peaceful change.
One’s intentions are important for determining whether or not one is at their core, good, but completely useless for deciding if an action was good or not. The road to damnation can be paved with good intentions.
And I don’t think they are. An Amarr who thinks our Empire is peaceful may be self-deceiving, but one who merely wishes we were more peaceful isn’t necessarily so.
Cpt. Rhiannon, I hope you noticed me saying
This is true for institutions within the Empire of which there are some at least some which are comitted to a peacful Reclaiming - there’s a lot of space filled with institutions between the personal level and the Empire in general - as well as for the Empire under Heideran.
Also, as I already said, no nation that is worth it’s salt entirely forsakes options of violent conflict solution. That’s true for the Empire and it’s true for the other three big nations of the cluster. So, uh, I beg to differ: Under Heideran there were actually no active policies of violent Reclaiming in place, even though, of course there was still the option to put those in place.
And thank you, I will continue to do my best to reclaim people peacefully to the extent that is possible, even though change is ongoing. I don’t think there’s anything indecent in that. I also don’t see anything indecent in more forced methods in regard of dealing internally with criminals.
Yes, but if you disqualify anyone as being insincere or lying to themselves, because there are some unintended consequences of ones actions that lead to unwanted results, then really, everyone is insincere or lying to themselves.
Also, intention is crucial in deciding on whether - or more precisely in which way an action and it’s consequences are attributable to a person.
While the road to damnation can be paved with good intentions, the inverse is not true: The road to salvation can never be paved with bad intentions. And you will neither reach salvation without good intention.
But that was my argument: Cpt. Rhiannon claimed that
which seemed pretty much framing those that champion a peaceful Reclaiming as those that “offer [her] a prettified and dressed up version of the Faith” who are either insincere or lying to themselves.
Which I pretty much disagree with. For either it’s based on a false understanding of what support means or it leads to everyone being insincere or lying to themselves - in which case it’s not making any meaningful distinction.
That’s because the road to Salvation is the Mercy of God and can only be granted to those who are worthy of it. As everyone sins, it’s not necessarily about all our actions individually being good, but about accepting God’s Love and being worthy of His Mercy. Actions committed by those who are both good and faithful can still be bad. I do concede that intentions should probably be taken into consideration in regards to assigning consequences, though.
I read her post as saying something more along the lines of “people who think the Empire is currently peaceful are deceiving themselves” and not so much saying anything about those who wish we were peaceful. For example, somebody who tries to bring people to the Faith while claiming the Empire is about peace while ignoring all the parts of Scripture that condone violence and conquest.