Intergalactic Summit

Here's a question, why would God give the Matari freewill like His "chosen" Amarrians if he wanted them to remain enslaved? Surely, if he truly wanted the Matari to come to Him through slavery, then he wouldn't have given them the ability to rebel against slavery.

"God works in mysterious ways" will not be accepted as an answer.

I would like to hear what people think. Why give all humans free will? Why risk that someone such as myself or a Matari wouldn't follow the faith? Wouldn't it be easier for his grand plan if everyone was born with undying loyalty to him?

Please note, that for the sake of argument, lets assume the Amarr God is real. I do not believe in the Amarr Faith, but I do find theological discussions to be extremely interesting.

All have free will. All have a simple choice. Everyone gets to choose between serving God and between rebelling.

All save the Amarr chose rebellion in the beginning. Only the Amarr held pure, only the Amarr remained right-minded Slaves of God.

As we have expanded, we have reintegrated whole fallen cultures into Amarr. They have in turn become Amarr.

For example, Lieutenant Samira Kernher is someone you racist types would call Matari. Her ancestors were Matari, she is not. She is Amarr. She has chosen to follow God once more and make up for the sins of her ancestry. In doing so, she becomes a part of the Amarrian whole.

She is still a slave, as are all Amarr, but she is one by choice. That is a vastly more valuable thing than being a slave by force. If we did not have free will, if the heresy of predestination were valid, then that value would be lost.

We live in middle times. In the beginning all things were as one. In the end, all things will be as one. It is only this middle period of chaos and suffering that involves the ability to chose to do evil, and conversely the ability to chose to do good.

((And as a OOC note to CCP, if any of them are reading this thread, if you could someday write a "Why people fell" scripture or lecture from the Amarr perspective it would be kind of nice. Its hard to justify the Amarr freewill issue when we don't have the fall from grace story that *must exist* to justify the rest of what we do have on Amarr RP.))

Wise words. Peace can only be maintained when the ambitions of one power are curtailed by the resilience of another. The mega corporations exist in a constant back and forth of buying, selling and sometimes minor outbreaks of violence, but all in the interests of growing stronger and maintaining the resilience that the State is proud of.

This extends to the higher-level international battlefield and beyond, into nullsec. Strong ideals are not necessarily the most palatable, but the ones that can be reinforced and expanded with the greatest economy of effort. Efficient projection of ideology requires that one be able to maintain the home front, and have that maintenance not provide a stumbling block against further progression and expansion.

Simply put, peace for peace's sake, though noble for the individual, is death to the collective masses of a society. It may be a slow, pleasant lapse into the dark, but it is a one way trip to cultural erosion and eventually dissolution. In some cases it may even be a violent end at the hands of an uprising or foreign power with the strength to add a new group of people to its ideology. The Empire has demonstrated the efficacy of this tactic in the past, and it could be argued that only the intervention of third parties (including the equally Imperialistc, if more subtle, Federation) are the only reason that trend has been curbed in modern times. The Federation continues to demonstrate the efficacy of aggression through foreign policy and cultural exports instead of foreign action, a different approach that is less spectacular but demonstrably effective when considering the influence of their culture throughout the cluster.

Peace between the Empire and the Republic would be a misnomer on the scale of criminal neglect in description and reasoning. It would be a respite, for two sub-ideologies (we come for our people, versus, we will reclaim you) and for the greater ideals each nation espouses. Time to build more weapons, bang the drums and further integrate capsuleer technologies into their naval strategy.

I'd prefer the current 'wasteful' bleed off of aggressive tendency in what is essentially a multi-region cage match, than await the result of sending the combatants for a timeout and waiting for them to realise the paper-tiger that is CONCORD is getting long in the tooth and slow in the mind.

Statements like this always make me wonder why some Amarr get upset that we don't embrace the alliance more wholeheartedly.

If you have ever gotten the feeling that some Amarr (not all) that you meet are sizing you up for a slave collar - then we have something in common.

If the lack of interclusteral warfare is a true measure of peace among people, I would agree that it is a shame such a thing was destroyed. In the end, what happened to the Matari was to be absorbed, and I would have hoped we would have absorbed any lessons in wisdom from their culture that we could. However, we did not take advantage of that gift. We continued to do things as they had always been done, because we became arrogant and complacent. We did not make the Empire a place for the Matari to want to be nor did we assimilate them. We kept them essentially as pets.

In turn, they have absorbed those bad habits. What good does the warfare do them now? They, more than anyone, should know that force along has never changed minds or guaranteed safety. The Matari were not unprepared for war, everything that could go wrong for their defense did. And the Nefantar tribe certainly did not join us with guns to their heads. We treated them well, gave them the education and resources we should have given to them all. There is a reason there is an Ammatar Mandate and a Republic now; we have a very sharp lesson in our approaches.

We will have to pay for that for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Which should tell you what you need to know about that position. You cannot point to the forceful conquering of the Matari without also pointing out the most obvious conclusion: it didn't work. In the end, after all that time, all those lives, all that we had gained by the sword, we lost. You would think that, if you hold the Republic up as an example of the detriment of peace, you have a perfect example of its failure in us. We gained nothing in the long term with the Matari except that tribe which joined us willingly.

That is a telling lesson, one we are not truly finished learning. The Elder Invasion was simply the same mistake being repeated, gaining nothing but new enemies, only truly gaining that which was not taken by force, leaving the Republic in precisely the same position as before. You would think, having seen what happened to us, that we would have learned by now from Amarrian mistakes. Instead, many seem intent on pointing them out, and then repeating them.

You may find the odd Amarrian that would call us infallible, but that's not normally the case. We recognize now, after the wars against the Jove and Republic, that we had made a critical error. Our failures in that time, so complete as our conquering of the Matari, shows that we are being taught a lesson. We would be remiss to our faith if we did not learn it.

So, yes, I still believe in peace for the sake of peace, in fact I have to. I already know that war gains us nothing in the long term, for war can again take it away. Peace's gains are harder to generate, but far more lasting. War is the tobacco of history, it seems interesting and harmless but is far too easy to be addicted to and wears far too hard on the body over time. But, as many examples as we have of it, we never seem to learn from our mistakes.

I will be the last to say that the Amarr are immune to mistakes, at the very least.

The orthodox Amarrian interpretation of "God" is simply incorrect, even though their scriptures clearly reveal the truth, that every thing has its own purpose, dictated by God, NOT by a book, not by a council, not by the whims of a holder. The Skyforger as we know the being, the creator, created all things within the universe, giving each thing, each person, its own path; a rock does not play the part of the fish, of course. It is ill suited to do so.

The Amarrian depiction of god portrays a selfish God. In it, all beings exist to support it, and, of course, all things are expected to be subservient to its chosen people. In the Minmatar depiction of God, the universe was created, and "God" let it go. All things exist to support the totality of all things; who is more important in war, the gunsmith or the general? The tailor or the soldier? If each does not play their full part, the whole mess comes down. Individual ability, affinity, and circumstances will all combine to shape and steer the individual, allowing each to play the part for which they are best suited. The desires of a "master race" are no substitute for this design, the "divine knowledge" of a holder pales before the combined experience of an entire people.

God does not bend to Amarrian desire, any more than to mine. The Empire would make menial slaves of the best and brightest of my people, alongside the lowest and worst, with nary a care to their aptitude OR to God's overall design, and they would be convinced they've a right to do so simply because they are "better". Using people in this way is not best for the whole by any stretch of the mind. When the society suffers, all within it suffer. The power elite within the Empire does not care about reclaiming the cluster for its (The Cluster's) good; it wishes to do so solely for its own gain, and centuries of entitlement, abuse, excess, and even genocide nullify immediately any argument you attempt to the contrary. My people are very far from perfect, but then, we're not the ones trying to subject the entire cluster to forced cultural conversion, and then saying "We're right, a book says so"

Can peace occur? Yes.

Can it occur without both of our peoples finding some way to compromise, to accept the existence of the other, with regard to this fundamental divide? Absolutely not.

EDIT: Clarity

We didn't bend knee for the Federation Navy, Kehrner. Your Book O' Religion has a lot less leverage. Get used to it.

Any Caldari worth their weight in salt WILL fight when some jaijii starts looking to impose themselves on us. Learn a lesson here from history... Leave us alone, and you'll be able to hang onto whatever worldview you want to fool yourself with a lot longer.

Well, there are good and bad people, regardless of their culture. I won't say that I feel sized up for a collar, but I have definitely been made to feel like I was back in the crèche.

If only because conquering the Caldari people through peace is a laughable notion. We were more than willing to preserve what it is to be Caldari with blood and sacrifice once, we will be more than willing to do so again.

Never forget our alliance is one of mutual interests, and there exists nothing as a permanent alliance, only permanent interests. Overstepping cultural limits is no doubt an excellent method to cause interests to shift elsewhere. Certainly, the Republic has never in my mind spoke of conquering the State or converting its citizens to a foreign and alien culture.