Utari's Puppies (Formerly Off-Topic Thread)

It isn’t, or at least, not completely-- certainly not in the sense that I expect you to listen (even if I might hope a little). If you begin to do something foolish it’s kind of a public service to point out who you are and what you’re about.

There are ways this can be argued to be true, and some will and do, notably strong Matari partisans (who tend to want to say the Amarr are worse) and Nation agents themselves.

It seems like some simple, stupid truths aren’t worth resisting, though. Nation’s chief methods of persuasion can change your mind about them so you’ll never change it again. … at least, without permission.

That is, if one wishes to experience it, if one merely want to entertain thoughts, they can paint the moon or describe it with lots of words and graphs and such.

We don’t really have a lot of reliable data on what it’s like to be part of Nation. It’d be neat to hear from someone who’d made a major study of the effects of Nation implants and was in a position to really talk about what it’s like to be a True Slave or a networked agent. Mostly we just have stuff like the cases where Nation communities starved to death in hiding because nobody had orders to forage or could take the iniatative to start foraging.

Did it hurt, starving to death like that? Did they suffer? Or was that function turned off, too?

Evi’s apt to dismiss stuff like that as CONCORD propaganda, and I like Evi, but I don’t trust her Master, either to have the kind of foresight to avoid such an event or the compassion to worry about his True Slaves’ subjective experience. CONCORD’s version seems all too probable to me, and I don’t think Evi could verify it if she wanted to.

Is your nihilism the commonsensical one of questioning “what to do when there is no meaning in nothing to be done” therefore filling the pockets of the Record Companies that use those adolescent bands with a catchy angry rock songs and hospitals with angst people and sliced wrists? (Absolutely no judgment, i like those!)

Actually “my” nihilism is the more usual kind-- the sort of vaguely-defined void of belief and principle that almost everyone denies actually having, including me. I’m a Shuijing sect Achur practitioner. That does indeed mean that I question the existence of almost everything, including myself as a separate being; it’s distinguishable from nihilism largely by attitude.

I accept the universe-- or rather all universes, the Totality of all things-- as real. Nothing else is; our existence as separate beings is illusory, but, I do accept the subjective experiences of my fellow figments as meaningful.

We’re not “real,” but, we don’t have to be.

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