Intergalactic Summit

Mintor you're either deliberately twisting my words to prop up your agenda or being willfully obtuse. I can't tell which although I suspect the former to be the case.

You know damned well what I was addressing; that a person's Voluval mark has exactly ZERO legal standing within the Republic. "Good" mark, "bad" mark or no mark all are treated equally with respect to the law. Of course people still undergo the Voluval ceremony; it's an intrinsic part of what makes us Minmatar. What is not commonly practiced, as you would have those who know no better believe, is the casting out of those who receive "bad" marks. This hasn't been routinely practiced since before we broke free of your masters' rule. I understand that in some ultra-traditionalist clans in some isolated areas there are those who adhere to the barbaric practices you mentioned but, that is the extreme exception and not the rule. If casting out were as widespread as you're suggesting then, where are the Scope documentaries? Where is the outrage from moderate and liberal Matari living in and outside the Republic? Where is the Federal Senate committee report condemning the practice? Where are the familial, clan or Tribal protests?

Oh, that's right, there aren't any! I wonder why that is...?

In the name of efficiency, I have summarised your reply. Since you do not do me the courtesy of either responding significantly to my own arguments OR to further develop your own I am going to reply in kind and simply use this opportunity to state my own opinion.

Taking a problem that is a direct function of the nature of your own nation, exaggerating it to the point of absurdity and then using it to justify a war to export that self-same nature to other nations has to be the height of intellectual and ethical bankruptcy.

I'm looking forward to you expanding on this entry Ms. Jenneth.

Ah.

Hm.

I apologize, Mr. Bete. I'm trying to be more concise, but I may have gone too far.

Pragmatism's not just a common Caldari cultural trait; the Caldari steep themselves in pragmatism. They're deeply proud of it. It appears in their architecture, their clothing, their ships.... Yes, they pack their ships with the most up-to-date systems available, but there are still purely aesthetic choices to be made-- in which they consistently stick with utilitarian themes.

Their rejection of aesthetics is itself an aesthetic.

The Amarr are the same way, but on a different subject: "new" is not a selling point. Even when something is new, it will be designed to look ancient.

Entry Seven

The theory behind Amarrian feudal structure is apparently religious in nature, with a curious meritocratic twist.

Classic feudalism is built around the idea of a broad agrarian class protected, in principle, by a hierarchical military ruling class. It's a structure for chaotic times. When things settle down, the military caste tends to become, bluntly, parasitic (if it wasn't already), and eventually gets ejected in favor of some other system.

Naturally (as is probably necessary for a facially feudal system that's lasted for forty centuries), the Amarrian variant has a few twists on the usual formula.

From what I've seen and read thus far, the Amarrian social system seems to be set up mostly in terms of merit: who is trusted enough within Amarrian society to be given a place of leadership-- not as individuals, but as a family.

Individuals, if I understand correctly, can have odd, unpredictable, and largely invisible quirks that can lead to all sorts of eccentricity or nastiness (and possibly heresy). Permitting great advancement on the basis of just one person's merit is asking for trouble. However, if families are kept close-knit, and a certain a family's members distinguish themselves over time for, say, piety, valor, and lawful behavior, such a family has established a pattern of producing reliable and meritorious individuals.

A couple of quirks: even demonstrating that your family should be released from slavery can take generations, and I gather it gets harder to advance (and easier to backslide) the farther up the social ladder a family climbs. Also, because of the differing philosophies behind the ruling Great Houses, exactly what qualities make a family worth promoting are likely to vary from domain to domain.

Naturally, even if the True Amarr do not have a sort of special partnership with God that runs in the blood, they do have a "head start" within this system on account of having been in it, grounded in both the society and the religion (if there's a difference), from the start. There are True Amarr in every class from slave through, well, Empress, but on the whole they seem to hold higher average standing.

If the Udorian Royal House Tash-Murkon can be fairly taken as an example, though, it's possible for a conquered people to "catch up" pretty thoroughly, given a few thousand years.

Even with a streak of meritocracy, a system like this would, at a glance, seem to risk stagnation and corruption. The system therefore needs to have (and has) checks and balances in place, notably the Speakers of Truth, an organization of legal and theological scholars (if I understand correctly) outside the normal Amarrian social hierarchy, charged with ensuring that justice is maintained. They seem to use their power with restraint, though, stepping in to deal with extreme cases. This would seem to make their credibility and the weight their judgments carry that much greater.

In combination with a surprisingly diverse society and careful social training, the end result seems to be a startlingly resilient and even adaptable, if not exactly agile, social system.

Hm. Well....

For one, the Khanid ethnicity seems to have mostly been loyal to (and owed fealty to) the True Amarr of House Khanid. That may have inhibited the rise of a Royal House from that direction.

At the same time, House Tash-Murkon's rise came at the time of the Khanid Rebellion. So, at the very moment when the Khanid Kingdom became an independent entity (and most of the Khanid with it), the Udorians, or Udorian/True Amarr mix, (which, knowing how things work in the State, seems like it's comparatively forward-thinking) were well-placed to seize an opportunity.

(Yes, I'm of mixed blood myself, and yes, the idea of having been viewed with distaste because of it bothers me.)

So ... under the circumstances, it seems like the Udorians might have benefited from a twist of history. If one of the other Royal Houses had rebelled, perhaps some ambitious Khanid family might have had an opportunity, assuming their liege lords weren't in a position (and inclined) to block the move.

All of that said, there are certainly some Amarr (True and otherwise) who seem to feel that anyone who isn't True Amarr is forever (at least properly) in a subservient position-- trapped at a lower level in the hierarchy of being.

House Tash-Murkon are True Amarr. It is an insult to refer to them as Udorian, regardless that some elements have been choosing to identify by that label.

Udorians as a people do not exist anymore, and I can't fathom why anyone with Udorian ancestry would want to identify by it.

Well ... looking into it a little more deeply, the Tash-Murkon family's Udorian background seems to be well-known, regardless of the apparent extinction of the Udorians as a separate people.

It seems as though it gets used as an attack by more conservative Amarr, but is widely acknowledged regardless of political background. In other words, it's treated as an insult by those who think it's insulting, but otherwise as a simple fact.

Does this sound right?

Of course, this does raise the possibility that the most practical method of achieving power (at least in a shorter period of time) is to intermingle with and become indistinguishable from the True Amarr....

Is there a standard someone maintains for "biologically True Amarr"?

The baseline for establishing "biologically ethnic Caldari" is pretty clear (ability to drink kresh tea without dying) (half-Civire or not, I can't, or at least have no reason to think I can).

Is there something similar for the True Amarr?

Is there a set percentage similarity to an official True Amarr genome that's required? A certain inherited trait?