Intergalactic Summit

I would respectfully suggest that, if the nuptials are undertaken in a pious and spiritually informed manner with an Orthodox spiritual guide and clergyperson, there are many ways to bring about the Reclamation.

"We need to save them, all of them, from themselves. We need to reclaim their fates and envelop them in ours. And we need to love them, no matter how much it hurts..... All these wayward children." - Her Holy Majesty Empress Jamyl

Now, now Samira already cleared up for me my lack of faith makes me an apostate. I did at least at a certain point try and be faithful, I mean I said the right stuff for a bit I just didn't believe it. Also I certainly have ideals, had I not there would have been no reason to surround myself with the people I do, or think the things I do. Something tells me if I had no ideals I would pretend to be faithful like I did as a child and maybe my parents would talk to me again.

In any case, I suspect it wouldn't do me much good to look at the faithful as potential romantic partners; and that is too bad I really feel we aren't that dissimilar.

Miss Kernher,

Apologies for the misused honorific. Do you prefer Miss or would your military rank suit you better?

You are correct in that we must be ever wary of the influences of non-believers. I am confused though how you can say this and yet support a source like Gutter Press. It seems to me that they are exactly the type of influence that all Amarr should avoid. Do they carry more weight here than the Council?

Again, in a perfect universe, we would only import from the other races, that which we would find pure and appropriate. Again too, God has not given us such a Universe. The reality of the universe we do live in, exposes us to a great amount of foreign ideas and ideals. What is better? Do we allow them to continue corrupt our people, or do we adapt the better portion, the most Amarr portions (in line with Scripture and approved by the Council, of course)?

Is there room in our faith for such growth? Do we and the Council have the ability to re-define what we label as "heretic?"

I do not know.

I do not take offense to your words. You can't help being what you are. But as it would be improper for me to address you as "Lady" it is probably just as inappropriate for you to make an assumption on the faith of any True Amarr. For the record, I am currently employed by Hedion University. My standings within the Empire are above reproach. My current line of research is on the history of the Sani Sabik offshoot of our faith and how it progressed from then to what the "cult" currently is. I suppose I could explain to you the significance of the jacket. But I won't. I will tell you that I have found many differences between the Sani Sabik and Omir Sarikusa's Blood Raiders. I don't suppose this is common knowledge for someone of your standing and profession. Still, perhaps you should ask your Holder before blithely throwing around accusations in a public forum.


"The Wrath of God is Immense. His Justice is Swift and Decisive. His Tolerance is Limited.
Be Careful. Pure Thought is the Instigator of Sin.
Be Watchful. Free Thought is the Begetter of Disorder.
Be Respectful. Uniform Thought is the Way of Life.
The Mercy of our Emperor is Limitless. His Rule is Benign and Righteous. His Love is Perpetual."
- The Scriptures, Book I, The Code of Demeanor

Again you ignore a lot of factors. Maybe there are those people you speak of (actually, the chance is rather big, given the number of people in the Empire): But what is the probability that this number is anything like 'the first dozen of of it's thousand cuts'? Rather slim. It's more like the first three of a billion. And the thing with cuts is: They heal. So, does the leakage really make an impact? Cultural institutions are resistant to change, the entire avalanche system you envision only gets to roll, if the threshold that can be sustained is superceded. And last: The trickle back, the people that take up the Amarrian marital tradition. I mean, that is basic reaction kinetics: First you need to put in enough energy to get the reaction going and then you need to have the forward reaction to be proceeding at a higher rate than the reverse reaction, with which you probably have to deal.

Your idea that you can take the history of the Federation - or your interpretation of that history - and how it changed and simply apply that to the Empire is not only wrong, but shows your lack of attention to detail - which seems to be a recurring theme. If you look into Amarrian history then you will find that Amarr culture and society are quite different from the Gallentean and that they are especially different from the feudal Gallentia of history in dealing with influences from the outside as well as internal change. Amarr resisted successfully the very real pressure the contact with the Udorians put it under. A pressure that was much bigger, actually, then the one the Federation puts the Empire under nowadys. So, save for your argument to the possibility, there are no reasons to assume the change you predict will happen. To the contrary: Everything we know about the Empire shows that it might very well be possible, but highly unlikely.


As to my assertion that "marriage has been 'reduced to a husk' in the Federation", I'd like to make you aware that I qualified that first by saying 'over large swathes of Federation culture' and also added the caveat that "The Federation is quite diverse and there are members of the Federation in and for which, family and marriage hasn't lost their social meaning." Also, it's not like 'triablism and nepotism' don't happen in the Federation either. I'm sure if we look at any influential person in the Federation, we have a high probability that they ended up where they are because their parents were able to pay for the best education and because they knew the right people, were married to the right people, et cetera. After all, people in the Federation are free to do it that way, and those that do end up more successful, usually. So, denying the realities of human nature doesn't solve the problems you point out: Rather it makes them worse by blinding a lot of people for the realities. In the Empire there are written and unwritten rules to assure that problems that might result from marriages are alleviated: In the Federation where there is the assumption that people 'marry out of love' there also is the idea that there is no need to manage any problems that may result from marriages (because those arise only if people have other reasons for marriage, no?) and to the dissolution of the support network which the extended family offered.

That said, I'm quite centered on the Empire in questions of whether foreign practices will likely spread to the Empire. I think it's a question best answered from that perspective. By contrast, your approach of trying to answer that question by looking at the Federation to make seems to be the wrong perspective to take. If I were to answer questions of the Federation, I surely would try to get into the shoes of the federation, to answer those questions with an perspective of the Federation's past and cultural peculiarities. That is why I'd beg to differ: I might take an imperiocentric stance on this, but that's not imperiocentrism. You seem much closer to an "-ism" with your projection of federal history on the Empire. So, maybe you start with lecturing yourself? Or is only imperiocentrim bad and foederocentrism is a good thing?

As to the "love and marriage" issue, I think one should be aware that 'love' is used to mean a couple of things, which, though they might have certain things in common, can be quite different.

Usually, I feel, that those people who just want to get quickly married, no matter what, are still under that impression when one meets someone new. They are exciting, there are still the butterflies in one's tummy, it is romantic - or maybe even more exact: erotic - love. This passionate love which we feel as something like an outside force is sensual desire and longing. Oftentimes, it is not easy to distiguish from lust - if that distinction is still made at all. All this is not to say that erotic love is a bad thing, but it is indeed the kind of love that can move us to the noble as well as atrocious acts, unless it is tempered by wisdom. That wisdom allows us to listen to erotic love and use it as a guide to discover the beauty in the things we are so affected with. But I'd claim that erotic love alone isn't sufficient to build a lasting relationship on, much less, in my opinion, a marriage: Especially if we lack the wisdom to temper this form of love with.

But there are other forms of love. A faithful's love for God is usually not of the erotic type - or at least not of that type alone, as one can be in erotic love with God in so far as one can be enarmoured with His beauty, which, though isn't perceptible by the senses. Rather than the physical kind of affection, the faithful aims to feel a pure, non-physical attraction to God, because there is the awareness that God is the Good. And as we aim for the Good because it is the Good, there are no external conditions to this: in that sense the love of God, which a faithful aims for, is unconditional. Ideally, this extends to ones spouse, as the married are united in God, the one true and only Uniter and Unity, through the divine spark within them. And that actually extends to all humankind - remember the first sign: God become man.

Of course, this is quite the high aim, and there is yet another form of love. (And arguably even further ones, which I skip for the sake of briefness, as they don't play much role for the matter at hand.) A dispassionate virtuous love, which aims for the mutual good is the kind of love that properly belongs to the marriage. And true mutual benefit lies in being good for one another. This 'being good' is not to be understood as conferring material benefits, but by being a good influence on one anothers character, ones ethical makeup, or by enabling us in some other way to live righteous lives. And if I say 'dispassionate' then that's not because this love isn't deeply felt, but because it is not revolving around a feeling, but around the mutual good.

So, pragmatically, the most important type of love is the one that aims at the mutual good and it, rather than erotic love, is the one that should be the foundation of marriage. It is the type of love that makes up the glue of society: From the family, to friends, in business contracts up to the entirety of the society it is - in differing intensity - what makes us stick together and form a community, rather than a [i]mere[i] society that sticks together only for utility. But that kind of love doesn't rush anyone into a marriage. Rather, it knows that it is enduring and that it has time and as the lovers aim at the mutual good, it is willing to make time to pursue this common good. As such it is what makes a marriage work as an enduring partnership to master life, together.

Still, there is the aspect to marriage in Amarr, that it is a unification in God. Thus, I think it is clear that heretics - who can't really be unified in God with whomever - can't really enter a marriage by Amarrian law. Yet, they shouldn't be just written off. Nor should faithful that found a heretic that is capable of love that aims at the common good flee to foreign marriage ceremonies. If the love between the two is truely one of mutul benefit aiming at the common good, then the heretic will naturally come to see the error of his ways, repent and then - if God wills - join into marriage reclaimed as a faithful.

Well, even if they themselves weren't, the beliefs they follow are.

What you say is essentially what I meant, and I apologize if I was unclear in my own writing.

No. You should look at a dictionary.

A heretic is, as defined by a dictionary, "a professed believer who maintains religious opinions contrary to those accepted by his or her church or rejects doctrines prescribed by that church."

Heresy is an offshoot of the religion that is declared non-canonical by the orthodoxy. It is still part of that religion, if a criminal part.

Apostasy, meanwhile, is rejecting the entire religion outright. An apostate is someone who, "forsakes his religion, cause, party, etc."



Because the common person doesn't understand the linguistic difference in the words and uses the word heretic arbitrarily even when it is not the appropriate term to use.

Blood Raiders and Sani Sabik are heretics. Equilibrium of Mankind are heretics. The Reformed church in the Federation are heretics. The Khanid church used to be defined as heretics though are today regarded as heterodox. The key unifying element of all of these is that they are criminal offshoots of the Amarrian religion. They still believe in a form of God, but they have twisted it into something false. Heresy can be of varying degrees of severity, and result in varying kinds of punishment: from simple repudiation and penance, to exile, to execution, and finally to striking from the Book of Records. It is also true that a large amount of Amarrian crimes heard about on public media are cases of heresy, because every citizen of Amarr is a member of the faith and so any crime or belief they commit that is at variance with doctrine could be charged as heresy. Heresy is thus a very common accusation against other Amarr.

Matari spiritualists are heathens, or infidels, or simly faithless or nonbelievers. As are Caldari Wayists, and Intaki. As is any foreigner really, regardless of whether they follow a religion or not. The unifying element here is that they do not practice the Amarr religion in any form. Any religion they follow, if they follow one at all, has never had anything to do with Amarr.

An apostate is someone who was brought up in or chose to accept the Amarr religion, but then later chooses to reject it wholesale. It is the crime of the original ancestors of every non-Amarr race, when they turned from God and forever tainted their descendants. It is the sin that the Reclaiming was begun to correct. A former Amarr who chooses to become an atheist is an apostate. A former Amarr who chooses to embrace the Caldari Way or Matari spiritualism is an apostate. It is the rejection by a former believer of not only the teachings of God, but of God Himself. Accepting God but rejecting the teachings is heresy, rejecting God Himself is apostasy. How can there be any greater crime than that? As said in Scripture:

"To know the true path, but yet, to never follow it. That is possibly the gravest sin."
- Missions 13:21


If I were to become a blood raider, I would be a heretic. If I rejected Amarr religion entirely and took up Matari spiritualism, I would be an apostate. In that case I could also be considered a heathen, due to practicing a non-Amarr religion, but the bigger crime would be the apostasy because I would have known God but chosen not to follow Him.

Miss Mithra,

It may seem odd to you, but I am not obigated to elaborate to the furthest possible extreme when I am only stating an opinion in brief on a public forum, especially in a thread that is not exactly meant as a platform for intense debate. I would dare say doing so on every single occasion would likely quickly become rather exhausting and be detrimental to my health, in fact. I did not set out to start an in depth discussion on this matter.

In any case, I could go on at you about social theory regarding cultural diffusion in the face of globalization and how it's essentially a proven truth that in an supernational environment with low transport costs which, at least in space, our society absolutely is, people will trend towards picking and choosing their customs over time regardless of background culture (which yes, obviously does go both ways - I wasn't fetishizing federal culture (and probably shouldn't have used it as an example) there as you seem to have painted me doing, and I quite accept aspects of amarrian marital culture will be picked up in other parts of the cluster, as well - but I think the phenomena will inherently cause more compromization to strict and regulated systems versus unregulated ones simply because there's nothing to compromise in the latter case) and how that trend transcends individual circumstance, which forms the basis of this opinion, but I don't really think you want to hear about it. I found the tone of your post rather aggressive and condescending, so I'm going to back away from this dialogue.

I will thank you for clarifying your comment about immigration, however. Obviously I'm aware of the existance of passports, but I had drawn the wrong understanding from the remark originally.

The traditional Amarr response to other faiths goes something like this:

Heathen/Atheist: Convert. If necessary, enslave and/or kill.

Infidel: Enslave and convert or kill.

Heretic: Kill.

Apostate: Kill.

A heathen is someone of another faith, but not a widely held one; or someone who only practices it nominally. Such as a person who is only mindful of their faith on holy days, during weddings, funerals, times of extreme stress or trauma. Lip-service practitioners.

An infidel is an atheist or someone of another faith who is devout in their belief.