Intergalactic Summit

Good Caldari - are those, who do their duty, follow their orders and work for benefit of the whole State, instead of themselves or their close surroundings.
Bad Caldari - are either those, who prefer their own interests, or those, who doubt orders of superiors, or those, who help gallente, or those, who don't respect our heroes, like, for example, author of this topic.

Ms. Ishikari.

As I am sure my friends in the State would rather not hear from the "other side", let me just say this.

I think Ms. Kim just demonstrated your point rather eloquently.

Honest self reflection is rare and has rightly preoccupied me lately, so... I honestly wish you well.

I doubt you'll see much, Shaman. People have a tendency to ignore anything and everything that calls for thought and consideration. At best, I suspect it to turn into a bunch of self absorbed idiots sniping at me and each other, as I did from the moment I threw it up in this cesspit for all to see and deride. Its nothing but a chain of thought that I can't keep stuck in my head any longer.

Mr. Syagrius, the gesture is appreciated, nonetheless.

It's a somewhat common feature of cultural life. We tend to perceive things according to a specific worldview, and those things we don't find particularly appealing we have a tendency to write off under a rather subjective label. My people tend to call this heresy. Most "heresies" aren't necessarily heresies, but the opinions of one that do not necessarily align with another's. Surely, heresy exists and we have quite a few good examples of things which are objectively heretical, but too often we turn it into a prism through which to color our universe as we desire.

So it is in Caldari society with "dishonor," I suppose. As everyone does, the Caldari have a tendency to shield themselves from opinions they disagree with by accusing those others of disloyalty and cultural blasphemy. It is a shield at best and a smokescreen at worst, meant to prevent their own faults from being scrutinized or from having to confront the idea that someone else may be unfortunately correct. For sure, there are certainly objectively un-Caldari views, but not so many as have been unjustly applied the label. Judgement has always said more about the principles of the judge than the principles of the accused. Obviously, we cannot judge someone from anothers' mind. We only have our own principles to guide our wisdom.

In the end, principle is all that we have as people that separate us from crocodiles, so we shouldn't bandy about terms of cultural hegemony without deep self-reflection. One would think it to be quite a burden to define who, and what, a Caldari is, yet so many seem quick to take up that mantle. We are often, as capsuleers if not simply as human beings, foolish enough to don the robes of a judge before completely understanding the foundation of their authority. Judgement is something that should be deliberated heavily and set forth humbly.

I do not think, sometimes, both of those responsibilities are taken seriously.

Essentially.

Spoken like a woman who woke up regretting the day vodka was invented...

That's not true, I measured a fifth of cognac remaining this morning.

Pardon me for interrupting the dialogue with something a bit personal - On the off chance you're reading, Tuulinen-haan, I want to clarify that what miss Gesakaarin is saying right now isn't quite what I intended to convey to you the prior night. While we might be percieved in a manner that alienates us from society and earns us considerable wariness, I'd not say that we're all that different from other human beings in terms of our capacity for normality when you rub off the proverbial finish. After all, many individuals in high places would likely love us more as the mindless objective-oriented war machines she describes then as what we actually are. That is, diverse individuals with diverse motivations, and a slightly harrowing degree of personal power.

In fact, if anything, it glorifies the Capsuleer class a great deal more then it perhaps deserves. I'd wager that if you started asking random pod pilots if they chose the profession out of a desire to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, or out of a simple desire for wealth and/or immortality, then counted the number of honest former anwsers on your fingers...

Well, you'd run out of Capsuleers before you ran out of fingers, I think.

I think that this is a very human problem, not one carried specifically by Caldari. It has to do with our prediction modeling algorithm. Bluntly, we have a hard time believing that we're wrong, even when presented with evidence to the contrary. We are, of course, good Caldari, so the other individual who disagrees must therefore be a bad one. Our concept of Heiian is correct, both in general and in this instance. Clearly the one who disagrees must hold the wrong positions on both.

We have been both blessed and cursed with our faculties.I think that the solution (for the individual, at least) is to become intimate with the feeling of wrongness - to know well how it feels to be wrong, to take the wrong course, to hold the wrong position, so that we might be able to better correct ourselves.

I'm getting good exposure to the feeling, at least.

To put it simply... People will believe, and proclaim, absolutely anything that supports their ends. Those taking the time to try and convince others such is not the case, are either lying, or deluded.