Intergalactic Summit

I think it does matter, Aria.

I had the occasion the other night to kill a baseliner, in person, face-to-face. I was upset, and she was was in a capsuleer establishment: an intruder and unwelcome, attempting to force her presence into a situation she could not comprehend, offering an empathy that was offensive in its lack of understanding. I wanted to paint the room with her brains and blood to erase the reminder that her mere presence was of how, divested of our clones, just how fragile we still are, and what we... I could lose as a result.

I could've ended her then and there, with the crack of a hyperkinetic round and soft sounds the flesh makes when stressed beyond its limits. Others, including yourself, would've thanked me. Even you might've thanked me, as you've made her... acquaintance. I would've experienced relief and been able to marshal and deal with my emotions at that time.

But, it wasn't just my knowledge that doing so would horrify a dear friend that stayed my hand. It was knowing that the poor, ignorant, if rude, woman before me didn't truly understand the hazard she had walked into. And to kill her in the shade of ignorance would've been wrong.

The death of the crew of an opponent's ship is one thing. They signed on for that job, or perhaps they're earning freedom. My crew, at least, board my ships by choice, knowing their risks and rewards. Stephen is very careful about that. He quite carefully explains to them the efforts we make to enhance their safety. He even explains to them why it's he, not I, that's explaining it to them. If another ship's crew flies into a dangerous space and think that they've merely signed up for their university's racing team, I'm not the only one committing a wrong.

So, Ms. Fairweather knew, or should've known, the risk she was taking when she entered that space. She knew the stakes. And there is a strategy in destroying the capsules of opponents.

Conflict is messy. Things and people get broken and destroyed. The key to our humanity, I think, is knowing where boundaries of that state are, where the conflict isn't. It's hard sometimes to see that border. Some have failed, and others have given up.

I think I can still see it. I think you can, too.

Entry Fifteen

A misfit. Suspicious. Hurt and wronged.

I've avoided thinking of myself in this way.

I'm a clean slate. A free spirit, unburdened by past horrors. That's how I think about it.

If my predecessor was weighed down by the world, I've been determined to keep my chin up and my step light. But ... I can't really deny that I may be more badly hurt than I let myself think.

My beliefs and tacit understanding of the world come from a culture that's built on community and family ties, bonds of loyalty, love, and trust serving as sources of duty and moral purpose.

I have that kind of vision of the world, but my ties in that culture are ... dead. I'm a murderer, there. A kinslayer. An awful person.

The closest ties I feel are all here, among capsuleers. This is my community. I thought that meant I could wander freely, only, now, I guess a lot of the people I'd been visiting and building ties to think I'm an awful person, too.

Thinking about it, keeping this journal here is maybe kind of strange: so many private thoughts, made so public....

Coming from someone so isolated ... is that a desperate act?

It's not like I've been without good friends, though.

Maybe the real source of most of my injuries is that I'm an immature person, and easy to hurt. Most grown-up people have strong defenses (maybe too strong in some cases) to protect against life's little awfulnesses. I've sort of got some, too, but I don't think they're all very strong and maybe they went up in the wrong order: I don't suffer much over killing, but an unkind word can have me in tears.

... well ... I guess if I keep getting hurt, I'll be better defended against it eventually. Maybe that's what "growing up" is.

I think it is...

...so good to have you back.

Aria. Suuolo.

It is good to see Aria back, even if she's not strictly back as I remember.

As for PY-RE, we're soldiers of fortune. The kind of place your old self would have enjoyed more, I think, would be actual pirates.

Equally respectfully, Operative Jenneth, your response speaks primarily of your very own preconceptions.

While I would like to se you to become a good person with moral sensibilites, it's by no means that I'd think that you should be a good person within my moral sensibilities, but rather I'd like you to develop your own moral sensibilities and live according to them. Because what it means to be a good person to me must necessarily differ from what it means to you, as we are different persons.

What you are - or we have been - establishing here is not that your moral sensibilities differ from mine, but rather your lack of moral sensibilities in general.

Just like your previous self, mistaking her own struggles for those of capsuleer-kind in general, you mistake your inability to recognize the reality of norms for something more general, coming to the conclusion that morality is something that capsuleers fail to exhibit - and maybe even more generally, that it isn't a feature of the universe.

I don't look at people that merely define themselves by the structures and dynamics that establish the capsuleer role and the utility they might serve as horrible, wicked people. Rather, I look at someone who is unable to define themselves by anything but that as a slavish nature, lacking in reason to the extent that they have to rely on external guidance as they lack the ability to make a rational and reasonable choice about who they want to be.

At someone who is able to make this choice, but who shy away from the responsibility to make this choice for themselves, rather leaving it with some external source, Iook with some more disdain: As they clearly lack in courage and prudence. They tend to gravitate towards doing things that are morally questionable, as they don't want to make use of their own moral compass. And thus, by and by, they become what they do: by doing unjust actions, they habituate themselves to do what is unjust and they end up leading unjust actions and being unjust people. Someone going down this path, while able to steer herself away from it, is probably the worst kind of human.

Yes, I said human: I don't see any grave difference that would justify to speak of humans and capsuleers as kinds of the same order. Rather, capsuleers are merely a kind of human.

All this isn't about me wanting to see the world as good and right. It has to do with acknowledging that we are the authors of our actions and thus the ones that decide, ultimately, what kind of people we are. That we are capable of both good and evil and that we have a choice - not always an easy choice or even one where we clearly see what is evil and what is good, but yet a choice!

It's also true, by the way, that depending on how you habituate yourself, different things might bother you or not. You're simply running away from the responsibility that comes with these choices, by trying to avoid them. Yet, you can't really: By trying to avoid them, by turning a blind eye to your moral compass, to the choices you have by which you can make yourself into one kind of person or another, you make yourself into a person that is blind.

And that's why it's kind'a senseless to try to show you. What should one do to make one see, who plucked out her own eyes in fear of what she might behold? I can't make you want to see - and if I tried to help you see, then only because you came and asked to be taken into SFRIM, asked to learn about the Empire from within. I was the one sceptical that we would be able to help you in your endeavour, because you were asking for something you didn't really want. Not out of malign intent, but simply out of ignorance.

And I don't need to judge you. You are judging yourself already. If I read your musings here and see you thinking of yourself in terms of being a tool, I can't imagine any greater punishment. And in the end, the path you're on will lead you to the same disintegration of yourself, to which it lead you once already. No need to pass judgment over someone who does this to themselves.

If you think that I look at you with disdain, that I consider you as horrible and wicked, then you are mistaken. When I see you I primarily see potential, wasted potential. The sad case of what happens when someone tries to run from the reality of being responsible for what they do and who they are.

And yes, there might be some arrogance in this. It'd be the kind of arrogance that leads someone to let you go and try to find your path for yourself, judging that you have the ability to turn yourself into the best person you can be by exercise of reason and choice, when in fact this judgment was mistaken: And you're the kind of person that lacks either in the ability to make choices or the one to reason. And the agression then would be to ask of you, tacitly at least, something you were unable to attain.

The point, though, is this: It's not about who's dancing to who's tune between you and the world. There's but one tune, and you have to add your notes to make it complete. If you don't you negate yourself and thus part of the world.

You don't need me to be condescending to you - you're worse to yourself in that regard than I could ever be.

There's worse than being a tool; it's being the other kind of tool.

Carry on, Sojourner.

It's strange how your path may bring clarity to mine. But then again, a shaman told me something like this would happen.
So, I think you are playing your part.
...As if it could be any other way.

I'll keep watching, with more hope and less concern.

Peace and clear skies, suuolo.

One usually comes with the other in humans.

As to you, Operative Jenneth:

Again I can't see how what you say responds to what I - try to - bring forth in making my case. You speak about judging, where I speak of choice. I speak of responsibility and, again, you speak of judging. I speak of making use of reason and another time: You speak of judgement. Not me. You're the one judging yourself not being fit for judgement. Not me.

It's as well just not true that only now that you went to join mercenaries that I find harsh words for you. I found these before you joined SFRIM and I also had those for you when you were with SFRIM. I won't stop finding them and voicing them where I think it's approriate. Much less will I cease finding them because you accuse me of only finding them, because of your new associations. In fact, you are thoroughly mistaken if you think that I judge you by that: Not only has SFRIM good relations with PY-RE, but it's also the case that there are some individuals in PY-RE I think of as rather good people. Some others I'm personally not so fond of.

So I think you have a point if you insist that you shouldn't be merely evaluated by your current association. That'd be much easier, though, if you'd not insist to turn whatever is said at the first opportunity into being an attack on you due to your corpmembership.

You don't see the performative contradiction in saying that it's not your proper place to judge, that it would be wrong for you to do so?
You choose to what you turn a blind eye. You will live and and you will die by it.

I just feel it hard to make a choice when the choices are not obvious in the first place...

Entry Seventeen: Employee Retention

So ... getting settled into PY-RE presents a problem:

I'm good at this.

I don't mean really good; I'm not on the level of Mayrin Hawke, for example, or even most people in PY-RE. My reaction times are a little slow, and I tend to trail along at the back of a fleet like some little trooper puffing along beneath an enormous backpack. I sometimes broadcast superfluous information or forget to broadcast something important. I'm probably a flat-out liability in a large fleet.

... we went out in one of those recently. It really didn't go well, for me or in general.

But, I came here to learn my strength, to hone my edge, to prove (not least to myself) that I was not just a thinker, but a pilot to take seriously. That's pretty much settled, at least to my own satisfaction. And I've seen a large percentage of what I was hoping to.

So we get to the question: do I stay? And how long?

I kind of want to. Everything I said about PY-RE being a community of wanderers and misfits, it's all still true. This is a community I could live in. I could be happy here.

The thing is, PY-RE feels like an end point. It's full of experienced pilots with various (possibly-fading? In some cases?) loyalties, banding together with similarly-minded companions (with political background being next to irrelevant) while doing various sorts of work that capsuleers are suited to do that is presumably useful to we-don't-entirely-care-whom.

It's a strangely relaxed and peaceful environment for veterans-- world-weariness optional, but helpful. That last aspect is one way I really don't fit in: I've barely started to see the world, and I'm far from ready to retire from it. This feels like a place to maybe have in mind to return to, at the end, when I'm done wandering and ready to settle somewhere among friends.

. . . .

Only, I have just, as in, just, literally, now (excepting a couple minutes taken to finish the thoughts above), received a credible death threat that appears to target my infomorph. That means hitting my primary backup, hitting my archives, and hitting me, so security is all of a sudden a major concern.

Hoo boy. Looks like I'll be staying for now. I may not be very strongly a part of this world, but I'm not quite ready to quit it.

Um.

Could I maybe get a guard detail, please?


Update:

Death threat rescinded, which is a relief, in circumstances suggesting that it's seriously rescinded and not just a ploy to get me to lower my guard so I'll come right on out into the open and be killed, which is also a relief.

This also re-raises certain other questions, which I'll be taking my very sweet time about answering.

It's really nice not to constantly half-expect to hear an odd noise, look down, and find a hole where my ribcage used to be.