Intergalactic Summit

Doesn't it just?

I get that all the time as well: "Oh, you Crimson Saviour people all look alike" they say.

Everything has a purpose. We all have a place. The place of the Emperor, of the Council, of the Heirs, of the Holders, of the Commoners, and of the Slaves is us serving our purposes. It is those wiser than us who know better than us what our purpose is. God helps the Empress know her purpose. The Empress helps the Heirs and the Theology Council know their purpose. They help the Holders know theirs. We are all slaves before God, and do our duties as determined by those who know better than we what our duties are.



If each does not play their part, the mess comes down. Everyone must play the necessary parts for it to work. It is not up to the tailor to determine that he would rather be a gunsmith. Or for the soldier to refuse to carry out his duties because he feels he should be the general. Where our place is, what our purpose is, is determined by those above us, who can see the bigger picture, who understand that where and how we might best serve is not always where and how we might want to serve.



No. Amarr bends to God's desire. Because we are all slaves before God and have the humility to recognize that, instead of selfishly demanding that we be something else simply because we desire to be it.



Except that not all slaves are menial. There are many well-educated servants, with many duties. There are slaves working as part of the clergy. Slaves working in scientific studies. Slaves working as secretaries and technicians and programmers and pilots. Their aptitudes have been noticed by their Holders, and they have been helped onto a path where they can best pursue that aptitude for the good of God and Empire.

The difference is that they must earn these responsibilities, instead of receiving them simply because they demand it.

Our blood is tainted with the sin of our forsaking of God. We cannot be trusted to self-determine until we have cleansed ourselves of that sin and become Amarr. We are blind, and we need help to see where our paths are. It is the Amarr who, with their pure eyes, take us by the hands and guide us to where we need to be. It is something that we should be eternally grateful for, because they could have chosen to instead leave us wandering alone and lost in the dark.

Society only suffers when the blind begin to lead the blind, leaving everyone in the dark.

We seem to have far more in common with the Caldari worldview than people may think at first glance.

We likewise utterly reject any attempts by outside agents, whether those attempts are overt military acts or softer subversion via an alien religion, to change us from who and what we are. We will fight to the last to remain Matari. We will never be happy little meat puppets dancing to the tune called by someone sitting on a golden throne, too stupid to understand that we're being used for the enrichment of an elite that we can never be part of.

We fought for nearly a thousand years to be free. We will continue to fight.

If that means there will be no "peace" in my lifetime, then so be it. We will do what we must to remain uniquely Minmatar. Sorry imperials but the idea of becoming a second-class citizen subservient to you, an easily replaceable cog in your great machine stripped of my culture, traditions and beliefs holds no attraction for me or most of my people. I'd rather die in a thermonuclear blaze of glory than live as a happy idiot blindly mouthing the soft platitudes of my my masters.

I have a pair of questions regarding this sentiment. First, are the Matari who retained the faith, such as the recently rescued Starkminar, not then technically Minmatar? Also, if no one is forcing you to become a member of that faith, but others around you might accept that offer, are they then your enemies rather than your people?

Not rhetorical, I'm really curious as to how you see this.

In that sense alone, we've come a long way even since the time of Abel Jarek. There was a time when the idea of Matari believers was something to be snuffed out in the Republic, or the idea of a Republican that followed the faith but did not want to return to Amarrian space was laughable. It isn't that way anymore, and despite the Elder Fleet, that's largely come about in the last few years.

A lot of people don't see progress, but it is slowly occurring. Many early peoples thought the mountains were bastions to time, eternal pillars from the dawn of creation, instead of temporal bulges in tectonic plates.

I am perfectly happy to stand in my faith in places where it is not so warmly received, I think in fact we learn more about our faith from those who disagree with it than those who listen to it. It's been a unique experience, to preach to those not singing in the choir. I suppose strong blades are tempered in fire, not pressed from molds. More than simply learning more about my faith and how it affects nonbelievers, I've found myself more in touch with my spirituality than before I left Amarr space. Preaching a cause outside of the echo chamber has meant having to field very difficult questions about who we are as Amarrians and what it even means to be an Amarrian. In Republican space particularly, it becomes a question of how the faith can fit into lives so far removed from the seat of the Empress.

Some people find it strange or threatening, in both our empires, that the faith can reside and even thrive outside of Imperial control. I've found the idea rather comforting. It means the faith is more resilient than even many of my colleagues believed it could be. It isn't easy to be a Matari living in the faith, and it should be a relatively simple thing to shed it. Yet whereas many other parts of Amarrian government were easy to shed, the faith remains strong. There is a purity about what is left behind that became sort of the essence of my study. Like green grass being found in polar cold, stifling desert, and everything between, it can exist even in places where it has been said to not be possible.

Never say never to the idea of peaceful existence; these things tend to spring up around us. All life was a struggle by the strong to prey upon the week until humankind learned to farm, domesticate, and cultivate. We learned to rise above, if ever so slightly, that which was once an innate and cold truth to nature.

We shouldn't be so quick to dismiss each others' ideas simply because of the wounds of history. I will take the challenge of preaching the Word in stride even where unpopular. Do not give up on the idea that, if you say something with reason, understanding, and poise, even the Amarrians will listen. It may not bear immediate fruits; the crops of peaceful political cultivation are slow growing yet nutritious. It is worth the effort to raise ourselves above the malaise in which we condemn each other to death.

I think Samira's problem... well... specific problem in this case... is that she doesn't understand that we would view a cultural assault in roughly the same light as a military or economic or political assault. As Caldari we take the whole 'being Caldari' thing pretty seriously.

Please be our guest then. I am eager to see your face the day the Federation will sign treaties with the Empire again.

It is hard for me to take your volatile threats very seriously.

Too bad. You'd have a lot more friends.

Thank you to those who responded in depth to my question.



It seems that Gallente and Amarrian beliefs are more compatible than one would think. God's trust in letting us remain free thinking individuals, regardless of the consequences is a comforting side of Amarrian philosophy.

Of course this makes me think of another question. If God is willing to let people make mistakes and learn from them, then why would Amarrians put so much time and effort into correct other's "mistakes" (not following the faith either through choice or ignorance). I can understand trying to convince people to convert, but why slavery? Why reclaiming? Why all of these forced methods of conversion if God is confident that we will eventually get on the right path ourselves.



If the ability to chose is so valuable, then again, why the slavery and religious wars?

If God truly gave people free will, then why not let people exercise it and follow whichever religion they chose and with a little help of some missionary work and convincing, let them find their way to God on their own?

(WHOOPS hit post by accident, going to add more responses to this post.)



Part of me doubts that if an immortal all knowing and all powerful entity were to exist, it wouldn't need to rely on it's mortal creations for support. After all, it had to exist before what it brought into existence.

The ideas behind slavery and the Reclaiming are that we've spent a lot of time building this base of knowledge. The idea is that we should go out and spread the Word until it fills the cluster with right thinking. It's also been fairly violent, as you've intimated, until relatively recently in our history. One thing we've learned is that, while the Reclaiming has to go on, the violence hasn't exactly worked well.

You aren't far off from understanding the religion even from outside of it. Slavery operates, if I can try to pick a good analogy, it's a bit like trying to rehabilitate prisoners. It does actually take the place of a penal system in our Empire. The idea was that once people know how to function in our society, you release them. In an ideal world, there wouldn't be any slavery because everyone would be productive on their own recognizance. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Another comparison I've heard it made to is a work study program, but that seems somewhat disingenuous to me.

It wouldn't make a horrible idea, though, using that as a basis for comparison. Housing and feeding people in exchange for providing them cultural and professional education might serve a fairly good model to use so that we don't slide into our worse habits. It simply takes longer to educate people into being productive citizens than you'd think.

In the end, the Federation might free more slaves than the Republic ever will. The reason slavery has such a reputation for abuse is because there is an idea of having free work being economically beneficial. Gallente drone building will eventually make all the work slaves do cheaper to automate, so the only Holders left will be the ones that work on educating citizens. Those who are most prone to use for purely economic reasons will have replaced their slaves with automated machines.

It feels like a bit of a cheat rather than convincing Holders to the man and woman of right thinking, but I have a feeling that just good, old-fashioned human technological progress will lessen the pressure on more slaves than the Republic ever will.