I’d say it depends on how much of the person is lost in the process. Certainly, I think it’s warranted in situations like what you went through, or when talking about the effects of long-term, systemic abuse like slavery. In many ways, the longer-period, low-intensity conditioning is even more of an obliteration of the original person than actually eliminating them, because what remains is a corruption of what was, a perversion and pollution that can never be set right, but will draw in those the original person was close to, risking them falling into the same trap.
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That’s … a pretty loaded way of describing the change. The Amarr use slavery as a form of punishment for criminals, too-- is that also a corruption, perversion and pollution?
(Not a rhetorical question; it seems like you feel it’s inherently destructive. Do you see anywhere it could be productive? Or is it just … awful, distorting-- evil, basically-- period?)
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I’m not sure why being a victim of slavery by Amarr and their Reclaiming and Sansha and their nanites make such a fundamental difference. Both methods employ ways of coercing you to at least behave in the way they demand and both can, albeit not necessarily, use methods that force your brain to think the way they want you too. The only difference I’m aware of, and perhaps you can correct me if I’m wrong, is that the Sansha method is perhaps a bit more refined and subtle.
Actually, let me correct that. I think the Amarr may not, if you do not appear to be overly resistant to their influence, in all cases, force you to take drugs that will alter your mind to better accept their instruction.
Wow, reading all this I can see why some Amarr might think that I believe them evil incarnate. I don’t though, it’s slavery and the privileged mindset it engenders among holders specifically, and the Amarr population in general, that I find problematic. Many of the Amarr seem to be really good people and would probably never condone the practice of slavery if it were laid out plainly to them, that slaves are just as much people as themselves.
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Of course it’s a corruption. It’s not being done with any legitimate intent toward rehabilitation—if it were, it wouldn’t need to be generational. It’s an excuse, a way to make the undesirables useful to those in power, no matter why they were undesirable in the first place.
And yes, I know that the Amarr view such things in the time-frame of families and legacies, but the two facets of Amarr culture developed around one another. They didn’t decide ‘we’ll enslave the kids’ because they value family legacies over individual guilt or innocence, just like they didn’t place more of a value on dynastic virtue because of generational slavery. The two grew together out of earlier cultural states.
Incarceration with an eye toward rehabilitation is one thing. Enslavement—including all of the scattershot application of ‘good’ conditions vs ‘bad’ conditions, ‘good’ holders and ‘bad’ holders, is another thing entirely. And that’s without getting into just what those conditions are. Consider things like the Cleansing Pits: active use of traumatic experience and corporal punishment in order to achieve behavioral modification. And you and I know someone who was sent to one of those facilities by a Holder who is, by all accounts, not a cruel or abusive one.
And this person isn’t even a slave. Just a retainer.
So… no. No, I don’t think there’s any real productive element to a disciplinary system based on cruelty, or built on the idea that the surest way to instill corrected behavior in a population is to enslave them long enough that you can inflict the same conditions on their children and grandchildren, and maybe by the time you get down a few generations past that, they might learn their lesson.
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Uh … it might be easiest to explain this in terms of motive and method, Ms. Ambrye.
Sansha’s Nation seeks a utopia. “Master” Kuvakei understood humanity the way a lot of Caldari do, as sort of fundamentally fractious, violent, irrational, tribe-oriented beings requiring strong and enlightened leadership. The difference is, he saw that as an engineering problem.
If it worked very well, maybe I wouldn’t mind so much. Maybe. I’d have to think it over. But, apparently it’s kind of like having a really horrible mental condition inflicted on you, where parts of your butchered mind can scream and scream and scream, but your voice never will; no one will hear, not even the other parts of the hive mind you’re bound into: the implant won’t allow it.
What’s worse, it might even come with a kind of immortality. … You get your mind tinkered with by someone who just cares how you behave, not what goes on in whatever’s left of your head-- and then they don’t even let you die.
If that’s the way of it, it seems to me like Sansha Kuvakei built a Hell worthy of Mr. Nauplius’s most awful imaginings.
Now … the Amarr do have, and sometimes use, something arguably analogous, the TCMC (transcranial microcontroller). Actually I think it was Ishukone that invented the things; the Caldari don’t seem to use them on people much, but sell them to certain Amarr houses (Khanid and Tash-Murkon Holders both use them, apparently). They’re a little different from True Slave implants, though: less mind-butchery, more like a perceptual filter of some kind. They’re pretty controversial.
The Amarr (unlike myself) do actually believe in free will. Their goal is to bring people to their God (in the sense of worship rather than sending them to meet Him). So … for the most part, the mind is supposed to be allowed to choose. The illusion of “self” doesn’t get messed with quite so directly-- though, as Arrendis points out, the whole process is intended to kind of strongly suggest an outcome.
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Because Amarr doesn’t, right? It’s easier to characterize Amarr as a nation of sociopaths?
Well, that’s a little better.
It is supposed to alter the person. It is supposed to break them down, so that when they stand up again, it is free of their sins and better than they were when they fell. It is supposed to hurt, because we cherish our sins and fear parting from them. We love freedom, but freedom is an incredibly dangerous thing that not everyone can be responsible with it. Until we have learned how to control our wickedness, we need protection from it, and to protect others from it. Slavery provides, or should provide, an ordered life, where you are restrained against all the evil things your impulses drive you to do. Where you can thrive in service and trust that those above you will know right and will put you to your best use.
The problems in slavery, come from when you let someone that is corrupt and wicked be the master, when such a person should be the slave. And perhaps there is too much wickedness in mankind for the system to work the way it should. But that’s really the error most people get in opposing slavery, I find. Yes, slaves are just as much people as those who are not. But what we share isn’t wisdom and purity, what we share is our capacity for sin. Those with undeserved power and freedom should be brought down. No one, no matter what ancestry, title, or influence they possess, should be allowed any freedom if they have not proven by their own faith and deeds that they can be responsible with that freedom. And maybe slavery hasn’t proven itself the right system for developing that, because of the failures of those who we should have been able to be trust to govern right and true, but that is what it was supposed to do. It is supposed to respect human life and dignity, because it is supposed to develop a good life and teach dignity.
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Then how do you know that this is happening? If one part of your brain can’t hear the other part of the brain screaming is that part of the brain actually screaming? I’m not condoning the Sansha method, I’m just not sure how we know this to be true. Stories, rumurs, speculation, or do we have solid research that says this is the case?
How is this worse than Amarr slavery where we can see slaves objecting, at least on occasion? If we know that the Sansha slaves would resist if they could, but Amarr slaves do occasionally rebel, what makes the Amarr version better?
The Amarr (unlike myself) do actually believe in free will.
You are a determinist, Ms. Jenneth? I realize that the Amarr Reclaiming turns on the notion of free will, that somehow it’s the slaves fault for not accepting the Amarr message. That those who reject the Amarr faith are being willfully ignorant, so they can continue living in sin I suppose? I need to stop here because I really don’t know what the “free will” argument of the Amarr is and I’ve probably speculated too much already.
At any rate, you say the intention matters. Well, utopia is a goal that is probably never achievable, though may be approximated to some degree for many people if they are lucky. Salvation of the soul is trickier as we have yet to see any evidence of a spirit, or have a consistent definition of what a spirit is so that we can test for it. In either case, I don’t see the justification for the imposed slavery.
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What is wrong with being useful?
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Because it presupposes that ‘useful’ is all you want them to be. It doesn’t matter if those in power are right or not, they have the power, so anyone who crosses them gets to be… useful. It engenders exactly the problem you decry: that those who shouldn’t have power will have power, and will not be brought down.
After all, they have the power. More, they have the authority to determine what is and isn’t acceptable behavior. Push too hard to get the bad ones removed… and you’re fomenting rebellion, spreading sedition. The people who are most likely to hold onto power are the very ones you don’t want holding onto it… because they’re the ones who don’t care who it hurts, as long as they hold power.
They’ll be more ruthless, they’ll be more relentless, and they’ll come out on top, because the population is already conditioned not to think critically, not to hold their leaders accountable… but to OBEY.
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They demonstrably do not. See what is, not what you wish it to be.
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No, that’s not what I’m saying at all, Ms. Kernher. I think the Amarr are on a natural social evolution to reaching this path themselves, it’s on the rest of us to help them achieve it sooner. It’s a strange aberration that prevented Amarr society from dropping slavery while most other societies have dropped it wholesale, if they had it at all. It’s not the Amarr society is made of sociopaths, it’s just how Amarrian society evolved. The rest of us zigged, Amarr zagged.
If it makes you feel any better, the Federation has a thing for Imperialist expansionism that I despise.
Well, that’s a little better.
I hope so. I was being sincere.
It is supposed to alter the person. It is supposed to break them down, so that when they stand up again, it is free of their sins and better than they were when they fell. It is supposed to hurt, because we cherish our sins and fear parting from them. We love freedom, but freedom is an incredibly dangerous thing that not everyone can be responsible with it. Until we have learned how to control our wickedness, we need protection from it, and to protect others from it. Slavery provides, or should provide, an ordered life, where you are restrained against all the evil things your impulses drive you to do. Where you can thrive in service and trust that those above you will know right and will put you to your best use.
If the person you are dealing with is as at least as rational as you, shares many or all of the same values towards friends, family and humanity in general as you, why would you need to rely on slavery to force them to change their mind on anything? Your slaves are human, plead with them to change their minds in the marketplace of free ideas. That is what you’ve told me that you have been working for this whole time, a new way of enacting the Reclaiming?
Slavery provides, or should provide, an ordered life, where you are restrained against all the evil things your impulses drive you to do. Where you can thrive in service and trust that those above you will know right and will put you to your best use.
Can this not be done without the imposition of slavery?
The problems in slavery, come from when you let someone that is corrupt and wicked be the master, when such a person should be the slave.
The problem is that any human should presume that they are wise, temperate and knowledgeable enough to be another human’s master. If you pledge yourself and your allegiance to someone, that’s fine. You have made a decision as much as a free agent as one can be in this universe. We all need something bigger than ourselves, some of us are content with family, nation or maybe simply the next game of MindClash. Others need something more, such as deities and divine inspiration. It’s just not okay to force that on others, and I do believe the Amarr are starting to come around to that conclusion. Running head-on to reality hasn’t helped, I’m sure.
And perhaps there is too much wickedness in mankind for the system to work the way it should.
Slavery doesn’t work because humans generally resent being slaves.
But that’s really the error most people get in opposing slavery, I find.
So, if slavery can’t work because people are too wicked, then the justification for slavery by the Amarr falls apart.
But what we share isn’t wisdom and purity, what we share is our capacity for sin.
If by sin you mean causing unnecessary harm to another human then yes I guess I might agree with you? If you’re talking about some transcendent beyond the physical shortcoming with some deity then I don’t agree as I’m not sure that such a thing even exits. I believe I stated as much a couple of months back.
Those with undeserved power and freedom should be brought down.
Hear, hear! but the next bit about faith and deeds I’m a bit iffy on. Deeds I agree with, one can only be judged through ones actions, but faith? As you know, whenever the word faith pops up I tend to start asking what the person saying it means; is faith belief, an act, or something else? The last time I asked you about defining faith you told me this:
There you told me what the Destiny of Faith is, which I thought was very intersting. It didn’t really answer what faith was, but a walk of faith, which I believe is correct terminology? Let’s assume that there is something, out there, worthy of faith. Is slavery a necessary component? If something is worth believing in would you even need to force someone to believe in something that they should naturally want to believe in?
And maybe slavery hasn’t proven itself the right system for developing that, because of the failures of those who we should have been able to be trust to govern right and true, but that is what it was supposed to do. It is supposed to respect human life and dignity, because it is supposed to develop a good life and teach dignity.
Or perhaps, slavery is the wrong way to do anything? Otherwise it wouldn’t be slavery.
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You really think people would if it was a choice? No. Not more than a handful. When you give people a choice, they choose by their passions. By what’s easier. By what they want. Even when it’s wrong. That’s the whole point I’ve been making.
The flaw in what we have done was assume that there are those who can be trusted with the responsibility of providing the decisions. Instead, those people are prone to all the same failings everyone else is, but with the power to bring everyone else down with them.
Slavery is wrong not because people don’t need to be slaves. It’s wrong because there’s few who can actually be trusted to keep those slaves.
I don’t know.
There is nothing inherently good about ‘making a decision as a free agent’. A bad person, who cannot be trusted to lead a good life on their own, should be subjugated by a good person, regardless of whether that bad person wants to be subjugated. Freedom isn’t a right. It’s a privilege.
Yes.
Willing worship. Belief in something even when there might be things about it that you don’t understand or approve of, because you trust in them.
A deed without faith is empty of meaning. Faith without deeds is shallow lip-service.
Yes.
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I see what we’re taught. How we’re supposed to be. What we’re supposed to stand for.
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Yet holders are born, not created through the process of slavery. It is therefore assumed that being born into one family makes you responsible but being born into another makes you irresponsible.
Hm.
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And what do you see when you open your eyes and look at reality, rather than the wishful thinking?
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You already know the answer to that.
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That is hardly sound justification for slavery though. Just because few people will see how wonderful your idea is, is no reason to force them to see how wonderful it is. In fact,most people won’t even then, rendering slavery as a means to change an individual’s mind impotent in that respect. The ideas pleading with free agents and slavery may look to introduce often only take root over generations, slavery brings harm with it though.
I don’t know.
I’m not sure either. This is something that might be worth looking into.
There is nothing inherently good about ‘making a decision as a free agent’.
Their is nothing inherently good about slavery and using it to force people to change their minds either. Worse, slavery does cause harm, to the subjugated and possibly to the subjugator.
A bad person, who cannot be trusted to lead a good life on their own, should be subjugated by a good person, regardless of whether that bad person wants to be subjugated.
Who determines who is good or bad, subjugator or subjugated, or a good life or bad life? Please don’t respond with God or the Scriptures, tell me as one sapient and sentient being to another the rationale behind it all. If sound reasons exist then this should be possible to do without appeals to unrecognized authorities.
Freedom isn’t a right. It’s a privilege.
How do you have free will without some measure of freedom to use that will? Is the purpose of free will to choose to throw it away?
Yes.
So we agree, at least in this. That the Amarr justification for slavery falls apart if all people are too wicked to allow for just masters. I’d take it bit further and say that a just person would refuse to force, or seek out, anyone to be their slave.
Willing worship. Belief in something even when there might be things about it that you don’t understand or approve of, because you trust in them.
Thank you for your definition of faith.
A deed without faith is empty of meaning. Faith without deeds is shallow lip-service.
I think my actions have meaning in and of themselves. My reasons for performing an act assign the meaning for doing it in my head. Those on the receiving end assign their own meanings, not necessarily my meaning, to the act. Their is nothing in particular about faith that makes it superior to assigning meaning to actions.
Yes.
Short of mind control technology, how can you truly force someone to change their mind?
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Sort of? … Usually that word comes loaded with a pretty simple world model, where everything’s sort of plotted out by fate or destiny or something. That’s not what I believe.
What I do believe is that a mind is a product of its circumstances (construed as broadly as possible), to the point where there’s no meaningful distinction between one and the other. “Self” is an illusion, though an important one.
It’s not something you can really test, because to do so you’d have to replicate a mind’s circumstances to an impossible degree of accuracy, though I do wonder a little what the results might be if you duplicate-cloned someone into two absolutely identical facilities. As long as you kept their surroundings very simple it might be possible to keep their thoughts and reactions identical? You could see stuff like which foot they put down first, what stuff they did in what order. … Legal and ethics problems, though, and unless you could make the clones truly identical even, like, having different little protein structures drifting around in their eyeballs might make a difference.
Reality’s complicated. It’s pretty hard to make it simple.
To put it another way, I don’t believe in free will; I believe in complexity.
The main effect of this is that as a basic principle I don’t consider punishing people for stuff that, in fact, they didn’t have more than the illusion of a choice about a worthwhile thing to do unless you can do exactly that: make it worthwhile. If punishment will produce a better outcome, it’s worth doing. If it won’t, it’s meaningless cruelty-- beating up on a fragment of reality for playing a part it can’t help playing.
Of course, the one doing the punishing is in the same situation, but, it’s not as though knowledge and thought are meaningless; they’re part of the wider context. So, I guess, what it really comes down to is that I see the horrors of this world as more like disease-- something that can be approached pragmatically and maybe effectively treated or even cured-- than as moral wrongs to be judged.
Sometimes it’s not so easy, though. Human beings are kind of vengeful, vindictive creatures; knowing I shouldn’t be doesn’t keep me from sometimes wanting to hurt someone.
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@Aria_Jenneth how would you feel of the Aamrr fell into open Civil War particularly if it was over the slavery question as in a religious reformation by A ruling Emperor failed
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Hm. Well … I guess I don’t really know, Ms. Shaishi. Right now such a thing is a pretty abstract, distant possibility, although I guess we’ve seen rumblings.
If Empress Catiz I were to move aggressively with a reform agenda, I could see the Purity of the Throne finding more support among the hard-line, orthodox Amarr. It’s hard to predict what might happen then. What followed could be really productive and important … or really sad. Or both.
I guess … like most stuff with the Amarr, I’d kind of take the bad with the good and play my part as best I could.
(I will say I’ve rarely felt as strongly about an enemy as the PotT. I have a pretty big collection of their SKINs, and, unlike the Cold Iron I use on basically every Amarrian ship design, all the ones I have I collected personally.)
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