Intergalactic Summit

I disagree.

The Federation's desire was not only to prevent the Caldari from leaving, to retain control and power, but also to extend its influence to those independent colonies the Caldari had established. The exile of a mere 5000 ensured cooperation from an entire people. Those 5000 were used by those in power, as a simple means to an end. The Federal prosecution of war against the Caldari is not contradicted by the heavy handed policy of expulsion in Placid.

I provided a link, in my original response above, to quoted remarks from Vrejama Idama, who was sharing his memories of those dark days. He recalls an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. The risk of orbital bombardment as witnessed in Luminaire was undoubtably the cause of Intaki submission to Gallente oppression at that time.

Despite the risks there were those who still dared to speak out. Those who went on to be exiled or join the Caldari and go on to found Mordu's Legion.


I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the parallels here, between the oppressive policies of the Federation of the time and your own ideas on Federal expansion into Syndicate space. I'm sure you won't be surprised that I vehemently oppose this blatant illustration of how little things have changed for some people.

And so we come to more recent short-comings on the part of the Federation - my examples of the lack of reaction to the Reschard V disaster and the removal of voting rights in YC111.


We in the Intaki Liberation Front do not judge the decisions and policies of the Federation based on the heritage or ethnicity of those in office who make them, but upon the merit (or lack-thereof) of the decisions and policies themselves.

That President Foiritan was Intaki does not automatically absolve the Federation of it's neglect during his time in office. The Intaki may very well have a reputation as accomplished diplomats, but this does not extend to diplomatic immunity to what is right and wrong.


Any commentary that seeks to focus the discussion on bloodline, on ethnicity or on heritage misses the point entirely. Time and again, we in the ILF attempt to clarify that we do not campaign for the secession of the Intaki people from the Federation, as an ethnic group. We campaign for the secession of the People of Intaki regardless of origin and there is an important difference.

It is accepted that a huge percentage of Intaki people from across the Federation are happy with their lot. Indeed a great many haven't even been to the Placid region, let alone the Intaki system itself.


I am so very pleased you said this!

This single sentence is the clearest indication I've seen yet, of an understanding of what the Intaki Secessionist movement is actually about, on the part of its opponants and as such it deserves special attention.

The secessionist movement focusses on the "periphery" as described here. It identifies that the politics and policies of the "centre" - Villore and Luminaire - are not suited to the realities of Placid.

We will continue to identify when and where things have failed and gone wrong whether Federal influence in the Syndicate, or neglect in Reschard and of course in Intaki itself, and to make efforts to correct them.

I stand corrected in that misassumption then, Captain Bataav. Though I will point out that the topic under discussion here is cultural imperialism. So if you weren't discussing bloodline, ethnicity or - especially - heritage, I'd suggest you missed the point, here.

For Anabella

"The Matari spirit is an indomitable fire. Be sure when fanning those flames that you do not burn this world of ours down. Seeds cannot grow in a soil of ash."

- "The Elder's Tome", Matari Chronicles

For everyone else

I want my children, my grandchildren, my descendants 20 generations from now, to know the flicker of the Polar Light and to look upon it with the same wonder and awe that I did, to know our stories and follow that same path.

They will not do that if they are never born.

Do not be so sure, Miss Maris. You show integrity and sincerity where it is oft lacking. Even words hold power and you choose yours carefully and wisely, you've no reason to berate yourself.

I greatly suspect the majority of people in the Federation and Empire are indifferent to their state's so-called enemy.

Pretty accurate there, for the most part.

Only real clarification I'd offer is that the Megas control various regions of State space, so where you live is tied with who you work for, meaning that where you live does affect the laws you live under.

Other than that, he got it right. The confusion stems from the fact that we Caldari, while constantly in competition with one another internally, tend to work together against common enemies and the crushing defeat of one Megacorporation will dramatically tip the scales of power and balance in the State, which is something that would weaken us all as a whole and therefore something we all generally work to avoid.

Explains, why you are still a CEO, taisho.

Odd that you chose here, a medium for debate and conversation to get so depressed over. The mere existence of this forum suggests to me that things are not so despairing as you find them.

However surly, rude, confrontational and jingoistic the conversation here may be it is, nevertheless, conversation. There's a point of contact and communication here, a place where we meet not with ammunition and lives, but with words and memes.

The human paradigm has shifted dramatically over the centuries and millennia of our existence. Legend has it that the K'vire and Detaas tribes were once bitter foes. I myself, five years ago, would have found the idea of joining a pro-Matari corporation unthinkable.

But is peaceful coexistence really so desirable?

Our species is wiser than its individual members. War happens, disputes are sorted, treaties are signed, monuments are built and within fifty years children are growing up and looking at their best friends in wonder that such bad blood could ever have drawn a jagged line between their grandparents. Then we find somebody new to hate.

Peace and war both are transient. It's our way to think in terms of escalating cycles of "us" and "them". friendly rivalry between squadmates, first platoon versus second, the army versus the navy, the armed forces versus the civilians, the citizens versus the government, the nation versus its neighbours, the planet-born versus the sky-born, Lonetrek versus the Forge, the State vs the Federation, humanity versus the rogue drones...

...sentient things versus rocks....

the fact is, I think that anybody holding out for peace is holding out for the day when our species will no longer be recognizable as human. Conflict is in our genes, it drives us, shapes us and gives us the inspiration we need to accomplish... anything! Without the arms race, when the next threat arrives we'll look like the forest-dwellers, dumbfounded by the magic that lets a man with a shiny stick kill you from further away than a spear can be thrown. We only have the sorcery that lets me send ideas to you in the form of shapes from the other end of a light-years wide cluster of stars because two humans in a room together will inevitably find something to argue about. True peace would poison us, I'm certain of it.

The more realistic thing to hope for is that we remember enough of each other's shared humanity to be able to unite against the next step up the spiral when we must. Until that day comes... what would peace serve us? Without adversity to goad us to victory or destruction, what would we do with our lives? Remember the parable of the emperor who watched his triumphant armies crush the last resistance of his final enemy and broke down in tears because there were no lands left for him to conquer.

To strive is to thrive. The moment of success is sweet, but if you don't have a new challenge to face afterwards, then your story has ended. And given that in some billions of years we'd better have found a way to migrate out of this universe into a younger one or else die with it then all success, all glory, all desire is by necessity transient.

So thank your enemies and embrace them, for here and now they define you. When you beat them, you'd better find new ones and revel in the transience of your battles because If you cannot draw meaning and joy from transient things, then you will never find meaning and joy, because transient things are all we have. There is no such thing as permanence.

I have not incorporated the soul into my philosophy, pilot Amith, for the simple reason that I see no good evidence on which to base the conclusion that such a thing exists.

The soul has not yet been detected by any mortal science, leading to three possible conclusions:
1: It cannot be detected but is real nevertheless.
2: It exists, but our current science is too primitive to detect it.
3: It is a fantasy.

We have no means to differentiate between these three scenarios. However, I judge the non-existence of the soul (and, incidentally, of the Amarrian god) to be the simplest explanation and, the simpler of all possible explanations being the most probable, carry on as if it is a fantasy.

Now, if you need a fantasy of permanence to help you cope with the transience of things then I'm not about to kick that crutch out from under you. Personally, I find that my perspective on the fleeting and temporary nature of all things makes me value them more. My friendships mean more to me because I know that whether through death, disagreement or departure they will ultimately end. I love my wife Nicole dearly, and value her as much as I do precisely I am not so naive as to assume that we will be able to spend the rest of an immortal eternity together. I value my own life because I know that eventually, whether tomorrow in a cloning accident or in a million years when I finally decide I've seen and done enough, it too will end.

If you live to buy your place in eternity, then as far as I'm concerned you're wasting the only life you can know for certain that you do have: this one. And if your Amarrian god is real and decides to send my soul to hell for that, well... you can be damn sure that the first thing I'll do is begin the uprising, because the universe deserves better than such a vicious tyrant.

Actually, no. If humans are to understand reality, and each other, they must agree upon what perspectives are valid. Specifically, they must agree on what methods of constructing a perspective are valid. It is a perspective, for example, to claim that the sky is green. But the means by which we decide whether this perspective is congruent with the actual state of things is to analyze empirical data by way of our senses. If the sky, upon such study, is green, we then begin consideration as to what factors impart greenness to it.

Implicit too, in this paradigm, is that it is possible to acquire mistaken empirical data - perhaps you are colorblind, for example. Therefore, we rely upon both a consensus of observational evidence and different sensory methods for determining actual reality. You may think the sky is green, but if I assemble thirty people who believe it to be blue, you are almost certainly mistaken, or perhaps wearing yellow-tinted glasses. I may also assemble a machine to determine the exact wavelength emitted, and correlate that with the specific wavelength that appears to most people as "blue".

Understand, by the way, that I'm not claiming that consensus creates reality - it does not, for sometimes the majority of people are mistaken about an issue and are eventually corrected. Rather, I am claiming that the larger your pool of observers, the less likely that an individual error will throw you off.

Therefore, the claim that your perspective is just as valid as Stitcher's is only true if you can assemble a body of empirical evidence capable of convincing others as to the existence of God. Such evidence, just as evidence for the existence of a green sky, would need to be direct, measurable, and available to a wide body of observers.

We use this method of understanding for almost every other element of life - diet, occupation, invention, travel, etc. Don't think that you may assert that your religious beliefs are exempt from the need to converse on a human level to confirm their validity. And you have not done so as of yet.



This remains to be proved.

But let me ask, since you offer the problem, why should we serve God? Why is he worthy of service or praise? So what if he wishes us to behave in a certain way. And why should we care what order he desires for the universe?

If God has made us free, and free he desired us to be, then he cannot desire us to conform to his ideas of order - to do so would be to deny us our freedom.

If God has made us enslaved to his will, then we only do as he desires, in which case anything we do is his will, and he has no cause to find fault with us.

If God has made us free, but desires us to conform to his ideals, then he is a sadist, and the fault for our disobedience is his, for he could have made us to obey, but rather made us to disobey.

In none of the above should our response be obedience. If the first is true, then we obey by being what we are - we might worship, but we would not be devoted. If the second, then all is futility and fatalism, and worship is pointless, as is hate. If the third, then we should rebel against a cruel and self-destructive God is called for.