Ever hear of feeding into a system? Creating demand for such atrocities to be done by giving them a market? You may not do such things (sincerely thank you for that at the very least) but you indirectly support an infrastructure of torture by creating a demand. No hand is clean in such a system.
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It creates no demand for atrocity to simply buy up the slave stock of those who barely merit the right to hold it, when they inevitably handle their finances with the same clumsiness.
Is this supposed to make you sometihng other than party to kidnapping?
My understanding of the Amarr system of justice is that descendants bear legal culpability for the crimes of their ancestors. Without that, the entire mechanism for generational slavery falls apart, because those generations born to slavery and raised in the Amarr faith never turned from God—and in fact, the original generations enslaved didn’t turn from God, their distant ancestors did.
So, if descendants bear responsibility for the crimes of their ancestors, then yes, every Amarr descended from slavers is a slaver. Every Amarr whose family has not answered for their ancestors’ part in establishing the system, in operating breeding facilities, in actively working to annihilate other cultures… those descendants are legally culpable, and no less guilty of the crime than the original perpetrators.
Oh, don’t be silly now. Let’s set aside the entire concept that anyone merits the right to hold slave stock as an atrocity in and of itself. Instead, let’s focus on the economic foolishness here:
If you buy up their stock, sold off to cover debts or simply to regain economic footing, they are once again in a position to acquire more. And they will. Which means you’re sustaining the demand for slave-taking. So yes, it creates demand for atrocity.
And, for the record:
I doubt it. It’s a pretty universal concept. For example, right now? What I’m doing to you, in a knowing, intentional, an deliberately condescending way? That’s being an asshole. Like I said: that’s what separates decent people from… me.
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My argument to that is simply, at one point those atrocities were perpetrated. If you don’t inherit that responsibility, then how can you justify generational slavery. They suffer for inherited sin as well. Wouldn’t it be safe to say that of we inherit our missteps you do as well?
I’m just using generational slavery as an easy example, I think we’ve all had the slavery discussion way too much over the years.
I’m no theologian, but missteps are not all made equal.
In certain situations treason leads to enslavement, I suspect that enduring culpability is dependent on whether the ancestor’s crime warranted that particular punishment.
When peacocking about intellectual superiority, and engaging in your usual pedantry, you should do it in a deliberately condescending way.
As for the economics of slavery, supply is relatively fixed. Those with the means and inclination to increase it will do so irrespective of demand. I have a negligible impact on price, and a significant impact on their situation.
You, and everyone else who tells themselves the same thing, add up to a significant impact on demand.
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I’m uncertain whether we’re still being knowing and condescending, is the subtext of not addressing the impact on the situation that you believe it relevant or that you believe it not to be?
Given your clear sense of kinship to trillions of people you’ve never met, who don’t share your culture, largely adhere to a faith you clearly hold in contempt, and have been schismed from the Minmatar population now in the Republic and Federation with limited exception for centuries, I’d like to know whether you feel a modest but material improvement in situation for some of those ‘kin’ is worth a measure of inflation.
Before you answer, consider the gains and losses of Kernher’s crusade. The price in blood that you consider acceptable for far fewer to be free in a Republic who resent and don’t know what to do with them.
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The cost in principles of not paying that price… is far, far higher.
I’m sure that’s comforting for the maimed, impoverished and widowed.
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No less so than your hypocritical sanctimony, using an argument like that to defend a system that maims, widows, and impoverishes whole nations for centuries at a time.
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There was no argument to defend any system, more a facetious dismissal of empty rhetoric.
Any principle that dictates trillions should die so you can live in a cluster you find tolerable is better described as dogma.
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It dictates nothing of the sort. Rather, it dictates that we must strive, suffer, and sacrifice of ourselves to secure for those of our kin still in bondage the same opportunities for self-rule and self-determination that the struggles, suffering, and sacrifices of those who came before have secured for us. It speaks nothing of how tolerable we find the cluster, only of what we tolerate in ourselves.
If that means we die in the process, that is our price to pay in order to be who we should be. If it means we are maimed or impoverished, that is small sacrifice when weighed against the suffering of lost generations, the lives lost and blood spent securing our independence. After everything our ancestors offered up on the altar of the Rebellion, how could we think to look them in the eye if we were not willing to offer as much for those the Rebellion has not yet reached?
How could we dare to meet the eyes of the descendants of those selfless heroes? One waits for each of us, each day, lurking in the mirror. And each day, we must each face that child of sacrifice and answer to them for what we have done or failed to do, long before we answer to anyone else.
I know… I know… that you will see such a statement as an opportunity to pounce, to say ‘ah-HA! but I meant the maimed, impoverished, and widowed among those you seek to free!’ But that statement itself cannot help but highlight why we must work to free them. Each day they remain in chains, they are maimed. Each day, more and more of themselves, of their ability to function as a healthy adult, responsible for themselves and prepared to make difficult decisions about the course of their own lives, is worn down or ripped away. Most don’t even realize they’re losing it. It’s like taking a belt-sander to a limb they can no longer feel: they don’t know enough to miss it, and the loss will make them ‘fit’ better into the place their so-called masters want to keep them in.
Every day they remain in chains, they are impoverished, because a slave owns nothing. Any possessions they are allowed to have are not truly their own. They belong to the master, and so all they have belongs to the master as well, and it can be taken from them at that master’s whim.
We must always, in our efforts, work to protect the lives of those we seek to save. A cargo-hold of liberated corpses saves no-one, serves no-one. It honors no sacrifice our forebears made on our behalf. We strive to protect those who cannot protect themselves, to secure for them the benefits of self-rule, and self-determination. Their safety must be among our highest priorities.
But so, too, must we honor the sacrifices they choose to make. When slaves in Alkabsi rebelled this past winter, we all knew they would lose. We all knew that, with a massive Sarum military campaign being undertaken, there was no real chance to get any of them out. Preserving their lives would have required denying their choice, and so while we could not aid them in any meaningful way, neither could we tell them they should be good little slaves and go back to work.
And, though very few of the others on my side of this issue seem to understand it, I am, in my way, grateful to the Sarum forces in that conflict. Do I wish they hadn’t killed the rebels? Do I wish they hadn’t put down the uprising? Of course. But where many would have used their technological and military superiority to recapture the rebels, and some—like the Khanid—might have used indiscriminate shelling to decimate entire populations in hunting the relatively small proportion of actual armed rebels, Sarum did neither.
Sarum engaged them. It was a one-sided engagement, of course. Not even a very great fool would have called that clash ‘fair’. Still, it was an engagement, nonetheless. And in the process, in engaging the revolt as a military action, Sarum did something else.
Sarum treated them like adult human beings, entitled to make their own choices. Mankind does not make war against animals, or possessions. We do not make war against children, or the enfeebled, or those who have no means to understand their actions. We don’t even make war on the rogue drones—we treat them like pests, like vermin, but we do not make war on vermin, no matter how hyperbolic our rhetoric gets.
Man makes war… on Man. On adults, recognized as capable and competent and able, if given the tools, to be rivals and enemies. To make war upon a foe recognizes that there is a foe, and that it is one that must be taken seriously, even if the immediate capabilities and threat of the foe is not considered great. One who must be, however minimally, respected as such.
Sarum made war upon those rebels. In doing so, Sarum gave their choice to rebel something no other choice those men and women had made in their entire lives: Consequence. Meaning.
Power.
Those men and women made a choice about how they wanted to spend their lives. And their choice mattered. They sacrificed themselves to be, however briefly, the people they believed they should be.
How can I, or any of us, meet our own eyes in the mirror and dare to call ourselves Minmatar—to call ourselves kin, no matter how distant, of those brave men and women who continue to sacrifice everything they are, and everything they have—if we choose otherwise?
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This warranted being answered first. I give you enough credit to believe you know what that means, and if you wish it. The lack of decency you attribute to yourself is on clear show.
The strongest thing, and greatest single act of sacrifice performed by those who came before you was compromise, they understood the end of what could be accomplished by force. Even with Gallente backing against an Empire greatly weakened by Vak’Atioth.
It’s easy for a capsuleer to speak lightly of physical sacrifice. Though the blind fools willing to die by your dogma are responsible for their own fates, it is likely that the greatest suffering would be among civilians on the worlds closest to the opposing nations. You well know who those populations on both sides of the border are.
Your claimed respect for what is granted by one’s forebears is to be commended, but perhaps the greatest respect you could afford their sacrifice is to seize the future that was bought you, rather than squander it in the ungrateful attempt to gain a better deal. Based upon their actions of those who birthed your neonate Republic I can only infer they understood that while sacrifice could buy them a nation, wisdom was necessary to secure it.
In offering aid to slaves in Alkabsi if we assume their motivations and yours to be alike, those who granted that aid placed their vanity above the lives of those they assert are kin. They prolonged a futile conflict, increasing the antipathy on both sides likely to follow the inevitable quelling of that rebellion.
The consequence of this kind of thoughtlessness is generally to embolden the stupid and the intransigent among slave populations who hear of it, which if handled other than adeptly has the potential to cause tremendous suffering.
All choices have consequence, and while you seem to acknowledge few and accept responsibility for none. There are many possible consequences of a rebellion. I do not believe for a moment that the military operation was due to respect for those who had taken up arms, rather of assessing the options available, and charting the course with the most tolerable outcome.
The simple truth is that your societal survivor’s guilt blinds you to a choice all of you eventually have to make. Are you kin first and foremost to those free, or those enslaved. Because if one holds no primacy, you will fail both utterly.
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They understood the end of what could be accomplished by force… by them, at that moment. Situations change, especially over 140 years. I won’t presume to question the wisdom of their choices at that moment. I can only make my own choices, now, based on the current situation and the information I have.
Yes, it is easy for the privileged to speak from privilege, as you demonstrate every time you open your mouth. Your position calls upon you to offer up no suffering, no sacrifice, no effort of any kind. Perhaps you should consider that.
You, it seems, are one of the vast number of maniacs who believe capsuleers are immortals. We’re not. We’re serial copies. We’re disposable people. I am, at this moment, two months old. I will die. When I die, I will not wake up again. I will not continue. Someone else will wake up, remembering as much about my life as I remember about the life of the Arrendis Culome who died 58d, 10h, 41m, 8s ago, and all of the previous versions. The next ‘me’ will be a copy, just as I am a copy, of a woman who died a decade ago. And what is worse? No-one will miss me.
No-one will even care that I died. Most won’t even acknowledge that it happened. I won’t be missed, won’t be mourned, my life, however long or brief, won’t be celebrated in any way. I will be utterly forgotten. Instead, what will be remembered is other peoples’ awareness of an Arrendis Culome, all of us interchangeable in their eyes, all of us the same, indistinguishable. They’ll probably even still have an Arrendis they have to put up with.
But I’ll be dead. Hopefully, while I live, I’ll do something worth remembering, even if the person who did it isn’t.
I’m not attempting to get a ‘better deal’. There is no ‘better deal’ to be had, for those of us who are not in chains. There is only making the same deal, on behalf of others. It benefits me nothing, after all.
We should assume nothing about the motivations of those who are not alive to speak for themselves, and who left no record of their motivations. Assumptions are crass, arrogant things. We have their choices, and that is enough to respect those choices.
To speak of ‘antipathy on both sides’ is laughable. The abuser has hurt feelings when their victim tries to fight back, to stop the abuse? You’ll excuse me if I don’t give a crap about your poor bruised fefe. The antipathy from the abused toward their abuser was increased by the revolt? Really? I think you’ll find those men and women who were willing to take up arms and die rather than submit had more than enough antipathy already. After all, we certainly weren’t giving them weapons. They took those for themselves.
Sarum’s viewpoint has long been able to be summed up as ‘die on your feet, or live on your knees’. They, at least, acknowledge that some will choose to stand, that some will not submit. And that acknowledgment, even if they don’t want to offer it, is still respect, however slight.
Not if we win.
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That moment being one of the most vulnerable in our history. I don’t know what information you have to inform your current assessment. But it seems to be characteristic lack of interest in realities that conflict with your creed.
It calls upon all of it, and if I fail to answer that call my position is meaningless and the privileges that accompany it undeserved.
The mortality of capsuleers, is a line I’ve heard from time to time. In detail you’re correct of course, but foreknowledge that the truth of who you are will be preserved, that someone will be present to continue your work. The previous me was as concerned with her imminent death as I am with my inevitable one, duty endures.
Whatever semantics you choose, extending the same deal or bartering for a better one. You risk the future of twice as many as you stand to help.
The motivations of the slaves were not the subject of that assumption, as was reinforced in the subsequent sentence. Rather the vanity of their self-appointed saviours, the outcome in any case was not contingent on it.
To claim the antipathy of the Holders is inconsequential to the lives of slave is either indicative of a stupidity I don’t believe of you, or a lack of respect for whoever that line is meant for.
Likewise the notion that slaves who have seen more violence and death may be angrier and more belligerent, is hardly a stretch. As you yourself said, more were not armed than were. The fate of the survivors is consequential, and they were fewer and likely angrier due to outside intervention.
The recurring theme with you, it’s a game to be won. You cannot win without the Gallente, The State cannot afford to let them win or be the ones who abandoned the Empire if we do.
Nobody wins that war. They survive it… or not.
We’ve survived and rebuilt before that’s not a threat to us.
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So you wish a war, to survive and rebuild… that’s a sound strategy.
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To correct… my goal isn’t bringing people to the Republic. I’m not going to deny that choice to those who really want to, but the goal is reforming Amarr and helping Amarr’s people, which includes Amarr of Minmatar descent and other slaves.
Also, yes, buying from shitty Holders just gives them more encouragement to keep producing slaves (and in large enough quantities, encourages them to elevate breeding rates). You’re a buyer, you’re giving your seller a market for their goods. It might not be as serious of one, because you presumably are paying a considerably lower value for them and said Holders could easily get more money if they incorporated better slave holding practices, but it’s still providing them a market. And yes, even if it wasn’t you, someone else probably would… but we all play our parts, and have our own choices to make about whether we’ll feed into it.
I’m not going to tell you you’re wrong, for every individual person who goes from a worse life to a better one everything else is irrelevant, but it’s important to consider the other impacts such choices make.
■■■■■■■■. They are already suffering tremendously you colossal idiot. So, yes, every ■■■■■■■ bit of aid is owed and necessary to try to force a change in a system that refuses to change on its own because of the evil and corruption of human beings. You prolong the conflict because that’s the only way the conflict actually has a chance to accomplish what it set out to ■■■■■■■ do. Otherwise, everyone who fought in that conflict gave their lives for nothing. That is how you honor the lives of the people fighting, by ensuring that the sacrifices they made were not in vain.
People who rebel, do it knowing what they are probably going to lose. They know they are going to suffer, and probably die. And they still do it, because they know that the cause is worth that. They call for help, because if they don’t, then that guarantees their cause will never be realized. And we answer, because it prolongs their lives just that little bit longer, makes their sacrifices mean just a little bit more, gives them just a little bit more weight, with the hope that, eventually, the circumstances that lead to them rebellion in the first place will change.
It shows how little you actually care about these people, that your labeling of them is ‘stupid’. Stow your false sympathy.
It’s not about winning the war. It’s about making the current situation so untenable, raising the threat of war, that efforts are taken to address the issues in order to prevent it.
It is a game. It’s a game of chicken.
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People who Rebel do it because Rebellion and the likelihood of death is preferable to their current situation. Otherwise, there would be no point in rebellion.
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