Aria veik hasn’t been to Achura meanwhile @Pieter_Tuulinen seems very interested in our culture . Let me give give a bit of our history first of all the old Achur Empire Was Feudal well we in Qí are bureaucratic at this time we were vessels of the empire . For example at the imperial court a spat between a general and someone a quart lead to rebellion by said general after a long time of this rebellion we in Qí intervened and smash the rebel Army this was The last major act of the house of Qing in Qí note the Qing rule Qí for a while and we’re vassals to the empire this rebellion inaugurated the Second spring and autumn period if you want know what the first was that in the histories of the ancestors this event is in the histories of Achura
Then I will be proud to say that the Minmatar Empire of old was an exception to this rule.
As I understand it from various sources, despite there being a central government, all the Tribes of the time basically did their own thing and kept their unique culture and values that made each Tribe different from one another. The Sebiestor kept doing the Sebiestor thing, the Brutor kept doing their Brutor thing, etc. The Tribes did not dominate each other, and instead, contributed their unique talents and gifts to the running of Minmatar Empire. If anything, the central government seemed to resemble the Tribal Assembly we have running the show currently. Every Tribe still pretty much kept the things that made them unique from one another (though I concur that there are some overlaps in their ideas). They just stopped warring with each other at this point.
There were far more than 7 tribes once. And we don’t know when the 7 we know actually got started, or what smaller groups they consumed and evolved from in their development. The Minmatar are no more an exception than anyone else.
What hypocrisy? The prophet K’vire led their ethnic tribe to form the Tikiona States and later the Fuukuyie Empire. The prophet Deteeas led their ethnic tribe to form the Raata-Oryioni states. The K’vire, Deteeas, and Raata of Kaalakiota together formed the Raata Empire under common cause. One did not subsume the other, even today in the State the ethnic and cultural distinctiveness of the descendants of the Raata, the ancestral tribes of K’vire and Deteeas, are protected in the Civire and the Deteis.
Caldari as a notion came into being as a cultural identifier in resistance to the hegemonic tendencies of Gallentean liberalism whose tenets of individualism, materialism, and rationalism can find no accord with the spiritual life of culture and nation. When the underlying human volitional drives to find a sense of purpose in a shared community, to work together in a society with a shared history and tradition, to give free license to the higher feelings of loving not just yourself out of selfish desire but others as you try to work together to build something greater and longer lasting than your own life. If that is denied then what else is left?
Just the spiritually vacuous existence of mass consumerism where the individual is left weak against the predations of venal advertising executives who will try to fill that void in life by telling you: “If you just buy more things then you will be happy, you will be popular, you will be loved by other people.”
Democracy?
You mean the exercise which proclaims dialogue in discussion but in truth is just a scheduled exercise in which the masses are won over through propaganda and then when political parties win power they’ll eject all pretense at discussion and act in their own interests in collusion with wealthy elites and corporations who care only about when they’re getting the next tax cut or amenable legislation passed in a political system which is nothing more than the economic proxies of political parties trying to outmaneuver each other for power?
Culture uplifts the human spirit to strive; the tautological nonsense of the Federation prides itself on its internal consistency yet all it has ever accomplished is to try and cast people out adrift on the ocean of life as the fodder for predators with no collective will or purpose and told they are “free”.
What it comes down to is this: If I love my people and find fulfillment in my culture, history, and traditions then by rights I must grant the same right to others to be able to do so in accordance with their own culture, history, and traditions. If I desire my own culture and my own beliefs to be respected then I have to be able to respect the culture and beliefs of others. Just because I am Caldari, and love my own people and seek to defend and uphold it, does not make me inherently superior – but it does make me Caldari.
There is nothing wrong with differences in culture and history – just as K’vire and Deteeas learned to work together towards a common purpose and cause so can we in the State where we should all be held as equal under the same laws, the same standards, and same expectations in which the only discriminating factors should be in what one can contribute to that common purpose and cause – not your cultural background.
Because if we don’t do that, then all those who laid down their lives for a future they will never know was for naught. Because if we fought to defend the right to our own existence as being Caldari to only later promulgate the denial of cultural existence to others whether through word or deed then we shame ourselves, disgrace the honoured dead, and have said all those lives lost meant nothing when generations later we hypocritically try to culturally homogenize minorities through laws and unwritten discrimination or cast them out of our borders through force.
I don’t want people adopting the Caldari culture who aren’t out of some notion that it’s superior. I don’t want people adopting the Caldari culture who aren’t because it makes us hypocrites if it’s writ, patronizing if it’s out of misplaced admiration, and permitting its promulgation a denigration of the human spirit by both those who condone it and those who in their “conversion” reject themselves in rejecting their own culture and people in favour of another not their own.
That is what I consider unworthy of consideration: the rejection of who you are as part of a culture and of a community to try and convert and adopt to another. If it’s through law or force then to me that’s an act of genocide, irrespective whether the method is pernicious and inveigling or with outright violence. If it’s voluntary, then I’m going to treat you as I see it – that you are a fool who treats culture and identity like it’s some kind of fad or fashion to be put on for size however and whenever you might feel like it.
Miss Gesakaarin,
What you describe is not democracy in its true form ( i.e. what ought to be as to what it is), it is however an accurate depiction of how Humanity’s tendency to fall onto corruption and thus twist a magnificent(per personal opinions go at least) sociopolitical concept into something as despicable as you very accurately describe. Also, to extend this, no other sociopolitical concept is truly free from this corruptive menace that plagues the Human soul, one way or another even in what is arguably one of the least corruptive(by major comparisons) the Amarr Empire and the Minmatar Tribalism(mind you not the setup of the Republic) they too are guilty of corruption and are missbehaving as to how they should be by and large, and the only reason why they may seem to be a bit better is only due to the rigid application of harsh laws in place, which could really raise some questions regarding what is it underneath it all?.
Now, we can enter into childish arguements and debates as to somehow if the lesser of the evils may say something about the socio political concepts in place throughout New Eden, or we can truly enter into a discussion of which one of all simply allows for the manifestation of human soul to be better expressed firstly and secondly which one allows for a better toolset so that the human soul can effectively become better.
And in order to make this relevant to what has been by and large being discussed, or at least where this discussion is turning into, I will offer that no matter what way you look at it the battle of cultures lets call it like that, it always boils down to a zero sum game. There cannot be another way, and that isnt because its impossible to have multiple cultures within a sociopolitical entity, but for possibility to occur it would require a fundamentally different new foundations of Government, Ethics, Norms and many other things that would build up some homogeneous(key word here) understanding among the masses to relate one to another, which quite unfortunately that sort of thing doesnt exist in New Eden…yet anyway.
Because in the end of the day dont forget that culture just as war is a human made concept which is used as an aggressive tool for those who are constituted safeguarding an entity. Nothing more nothing less, and there cannot be, under the current state of the human psyche at least, an entity that will so seemingly and responsibly understand that a sociopolitical entity can survive with truly different infusions of culture not colliding…but mixing at best or at least fruitfully coinciding one to another. And you can see it most likely in everyday life I suppose; even the culture of altruism for example( which ought to be highly noble and corrupt free) is used as an agressive tool by most to further their interests.
But then again we are capsuleers…and I am mighty glad(for whatever my opinion may worth) to see someone who is talking of culture as something that can be more and above than a zero sum game… Or are you?( the last question is sort of refered in a rhetorical manner towards the audience and not directly pointed only at you)
You know a oligarchic republic is the thing
Oh to us lost children of a humanity almost forgotten. In ancient relic vaults in abandoned cities on lost planets. The fragments of our collective past. Humanity, masters of the stars. We strike only blows to ourselves. We are but one holy unity. All from one light we came forth to this our New Eden. Our god granting us the curiosity and knowledge of the wonders of gods creation. GOD calls to us to reach for it. As a parent reaches out to its child.
Here I have given you hands to build. A mind to learn. Come to me my children.
Wile our pasts from before and after the fall make us who we are now. Let us remember we were once as one. Embrace the great endeavor. Bask in the wonders of God’s creation. And know we are one day to take our place there beyond star, space, and time.
Fly safe you children of the one light.
Beware. We may look like you, but we are NOT you.
I have seen what horrors your God has brought upon people like me. So no thanks.
As regards democracy it does not matter how magnificent the concept one may find it, or how effusive the adherents of its theory are in praise, if in practice it becomes nothing more than a blind praxis of conquest and imperialist imposition upon others obfuscated by lofty goals and professions to ideals. Human nature is social, and it is co-operative, where individuals seek mutual benefit with others as part of a common community. Collective and communal organization protects the rights, freedoms, and interests of the individual against the venal predation of others who would seek to deny them. The highest group organization of which is culture as embodied in the nation with the power of the state.
Democracy as a political system is one that is nothing more than the tool by which to deny the rights, freedoms, and interests of minority cultures as aptly demonstrated by the Gallente Federation. The foundations of Caldari corporatism was in the desire to defend Caldari culture, identity and the rights, freedoms and interests of its workers in a collective organization that was able to do so through the power of a primary economic producer. For centuries the Gallente tried to break the back of the Caldari corporations in their never-ending patronizing colonialist enterprise of “Cultural Deliverance” By doing just as I described: using the proxies of political parties elected by Gallentean majorities to service the economic interests of Gallentean bourgeoise elites and Gallentean corporations to try and force Caldari to play a game they rigged from the very start. The formalization of the Caldari nation into the State was simply the removal of oneself from a table in which it is obvious the rules are not equal.
As for culture being a zero sum game, it does not have to be so long as one is able to respect and appreciate culture both ones own and that of others through the proper cultivation of toleration and acknowledgement that other societies have the intrinsic right to exist as according to their own beliefs, traditions, and history. At present this is impossible so long as exists two sociopolitical entities in the Gallente Federation and the Amarr Empire who have no stake in abiding by the concept of permitting other cultures and societies their rights to live in peace and independence. It is the uncompromising beliefs that underpin both that make any chance at future compromise among different peoples impossible.
For in both the Federation and the Empire exists proselytizing cultures that justify their imperialist and expansionist tendencies under the banner of claiming the contemptible idea that they and they alone have sole claim to leadership and hegemony over all of humanity. Whether it is, “No one is free until everyone is free,” Or, “God told us to reclaim you,” What underlies both is a fundamental hubris that makes them the enemy of those who love their own people and values their freedom and independence. These are both societies with a long history of violent conquest in service to their ideals: whether it was the wars of the Gallente homeworld and later their indiscriminate bombardment of Caldari civilians and population centres or the genocidal campaigns of the Amarr on Athra and beyond which has seen the slaughter and enslavement of billions.
When such societies exist, who can tolerate no others but themselves and have a displayed historical propensity to use force and violence against other cultures; who embark on pogroms of genocide and mass murder to enforce their culture, beliefs, and political systems upon others then yes, they turn culture into a battle – the destruction and abolition of the cultures of others in the uncompromising belief that their own exists as somehow superior to others.
In seeing the examples of the Gallente and the Amarr, who in their conquests of rapine and plunder against other cultures debase and denigrate the human spirit I advocate that Caldari should seek the principled course of toleration and respect for others. For while they might not, we can and should.