Intergalactic Summit

Yeah I get all that stuff. I can rationalise it easily enough to myself. It just doesn't make me feel any better. Logic and emotion don't really coincide with me very much. Gotta be honest, heh.



Any tips on how to "steel oneself", that'd be nice. Because that's the crux of the matter. I know I should probably do that but I have no idea how to go about it. I don't think repeated exposure will work - if I imagine another conflict situation like the one I was in, I think I'll probably handle it worse, not better. Thinking it rationally doesn't work either. But I'm not sure what other options there are. Maybe I need some kind of therapy. Who's a therapist, email me.

It's been a long time since I even had to consider how to do it, so I can't guarantee that anything I will suggest is applicable or will actually work.

The main thing to consider is that there is always someone willing to do what you aren't. That's nothing new, it's been a fact of life for as long as I can remember, and has been noted in multiple categories of literature, fiction and non. As such, there's always going to be someone who will want to punch holes in your ship's hull. The quicker that is accepted and taken on board, the quicker you adapt to the environment you work in. That's really the main thing you need to understand; no matter your personal standards you can't apply them to anyone else or hold everyone to them. Space is, undoubtedly, a violent place.

Remember, they shot first, not you. You may have killed some people today, but they brought it upon themselves. Not everyone can be helped. If that's something that is hard to swallow then there's always the tried and tested capsuleer fallback, alcohol. Ms. Roach has offered to be your drinking partner, and I'd be more than happy to oblige as well.

There is nothing to put between you and the naked void that won't feel superfluous or embarrasingly naïve, in the long run. I'm sorry.

You are in the first few steps of a rising curve. The first few are the only ones that bother you.

The first few I killed bothered me, too. Not sure if I was even a capsuleer back then. The next dozen odd, less so. As they become more of a statistic, and less individual beings with futures and hopes which you've snuffed out, stomaching yourself ending them becomes trivial. The next hundred might as well not have been there. I stopped counting after a few thousand. Had I kept count, the guilt would have driven me mad, so I simply decided to stop feeling guilty. Then there was that thing with Daasa and the nerve gas, which bumped me up to fifty-six million... aaah, they really should put me down. I'm a bad influence on this species.

I remember when I was starting out.

I was not what you might call a natural capsuleer. I flunked all the combat training exercises repeatedly, and even after I graduated, I never locked anything more sentient than an asteroid. Most of my time was spent hauling cargo around or messing with blueprints.

Honestly, I was worse than you. By the sound of it, you're not getting jittery at the mere idea of locking something up, let alone firing at it. I suspect some of my corpmates found it rather cute. Not a trait one expects in a capsuleer, much less one working for a Cartel-funded operation.

That was a while ago, now. I lost a good deal of innocence on my path, I'll freely admit that. I am not a nice person any more, I'm just good at projecting a front.

The universe gave me a rather brutal crash course in the importance of fighting for what you hold dear, but what really helped was the advice and support of those who cared. Is it inevitable that you (both as a specific 'you' and a general term for all capsuleers) will become a cold mass murderer? No. Many do. Some have so dehumanised themselves by the time that they complete training that they don't even leave the pod any more.

My advice is twofold. First, which you've already done, is seek out advice - and more importantly, find someone with some experience who can provide some guidance and wisdom that you can trust. Both of the individuals who mentored me the most in this regard were Caldari - whether that's just coincidence, or a certain innate pragmatism that helped in my case, is anyone's guess - but the important thing is that they're people you respect and trust.

The other aspect is to accept that you've changed. Contrary to what some would have you believe, we're not human any more. We're more than that. No human ever had the power to alter the fate of thousands not at the push of a button, not with a decision, but with a passing whim. We have become demigods.

Does that make us better? More worthy? Does it make everyone else without value? No. Does it make it wrong to mourn? Certainly not. But it does mean you are faced with the choice of denying what you are, and ultimately being nothing (naming no names here...), or with taking the power that you have been granted, and working out what that means for you in terms of responsibility.

Dehumanising your enemy is very easy when they consist of a datastream and a pretty shape. Be careful that it doesn't lead to dehumanising everyone else as well.

To me, "ISK/hr" is really "thousands of lives/hr".

Whenever I need a boost of ISK, I try to limit the carnage to just those that deserve it. Criminals, murderers, genocidal freaks, you name it. I try to purge villainy from this cluster. But does that make me any better than the scores I cut down?

I dare not try to find an answer to that question

You'd think that a News Talk show would be enough to pay the bills, but broadcasting clusterwide is quite expensive. It is only profitable by about .10%. Clearly, I've only been doing it because I like to do it. I like to host my little program because it tends to keep me, and others happy or at least occupied.

I suppose the productivity and smiles stop me from noticing the tears.

I would advise against this. There are clues that this perception is a symptom of the theoretical capsuleer dementia.
On the other hand, if you do get capsuleer dementia, you will not care that you kill.

I have killed in the past. I could rationalize it, although in hindsight, some of my rationalizations were not very valid.
At one point in time, I caught myself considering to destroy a ship that was no threat to me at all. In response to that, I re-evaluated my rationalizations.

I guess this is not of much use to you, but I guess I echo Momaki's statements: I don't think you should learn to cope with it completely. That's a slippery slope.

Anyway, my movement was created to offer a home for pilots like you. So if you ever feel alone, my door is open.

Step three is rinse and repeat.

If I were you, I'd be more ashamed of what you did to that slave. Dead is dead, the people you destroyed are beyond fear and pain and suffering. The slave, though? You delivered a living human being back into the hands of servitude and a master who probably had a punishment in store for runaways.

If you can live with that, but not with killing, then your priorities are awry. Both acts should weight on your soul, but harm to the living strikes me as the worse crime.

The slave ran away and deserves appropriate punishment. That punishment will be a harm, but not all harms are wrong simply because they are harmful.

And killing is the worst thing you can do to a person. Especially when it is dozens or hundreds of people as in this example. Your priorities are the ones that are off.