Intergalactic Summit

Thousands of years ago, on the plains of Athra, you weren't there, Captain. Only a gaggle of primitive. planet-dwelling apes were, and you were not among them. You did not exist. Nor have you served anyone or anything for millennia.

Your history and your identity began with your conception at the very earliest. You were born into this universe without debt and without obligation to do anything except abide by whichever law under whose jurisdiction you reside. Deny it all you like, but it's the case.

Any content of your identity beyond that is there at your own personal preference and whim, and any expectations and demands that others should fill their identities with equivalent whims is pure arrogance and folly.

The idea of Utopia is neither a "gray paste" nor a "bland nothingness", nor does it imply any "destruction" of identity. Quite to the contrary, it allows for the genuine creation of identity. Call it madness all you like - while you go about your own life, imagining a thousand dead people from whose genetic stock you happen to originate, judging your every action as though your life was theirs to dictate from beyond the grave. That sounds like madness to me.

The "war" started when your precious Empire came and ripped us from our homes and put a forced and violent end to our peaceful nation. Until all Matari are dead or free of your people's grasp, the war will never truly be over.




No, by that definition, the Amarr Empire are the race-traitors as they choose to treat others as property.



I really did try to simply ignore you, Samira. I really did.

If anyone among the Matari wished to join the Amarr religion, that would be their choice. After what the Amarr have done to our people, few would be willing to look that favorably upon the idea, but it is still the choice of the individual. However, there is no spiritual growth in assisting in the enslavement and destruction of your own people, Samira. All the Empire has given you is spiritual decay and I pray that you will recognize this. If you truly want spiritual growth, then pray to your God that the Empire will realize the error of the path of enslavement and that they will seek to end this war with peace, with the freeing of our people, of your people.

If you continue down this path of spiritual decay, supporting those who would enslave and kill your people, if you continue in the delusion that such a path brings you spiritual growth, then you will be too far gone to save, and you will join your Amarrian masters in being destroyed in their failed attempt at taking that which they have no right, divine or otherwise, to hold.

Ms Katla,

I would like to contend this statement, if you will forgive my brashness. You are working from an incomplete model. I would like to offer two contentions.

The first point is your statement that Lady Hanaya's beliefs are held by whim. This is not so. The excellent Lady holds beliefs because of the structure of her brain, particularly the configuration of synapses and the neurotransmitting vesicle concentration within each. Suggesting that she can simply change her beliefs is much like suggesting that the solar wind can choose to change polarity. For her to change her mind, she must be influenced by some factor beforehand.

The second point is a more systemic problem with your statement. You claim that her beliefs originated, at earliest, with her birth and not thousands of years ago. This is a genetocentric argument which fails to take into account the propagation of memetic complexes within societies. While her brain obviously did not exist before the moment of her conception, her beliefs did, transmitted between the Amarr who lived and died before her. These structures may not be as apparent as bodies or spaceships, but they are just as real, and just as physical, in the arrangement of neural structures within the brains of those Amarrians. The Lady is not incorrect in saying that her beliefs existed well before her birth, stretching back a thousand years or more.

You may make argument that loyalty to a memetic structure is foolish, but memetic structures are literally all we are and know as thinking beings. Can you propose some way to distinguish between them that would allow your statement to hold true?

Thank you, and I apologize for the intervention.

History will decide if you are right Rella. For now our nations are allies and have been these last few years. We have fought and shed blood together. Some of us have found God and the true faith.

There is nothing to forgive, Captain Scherezad - your intervention in this conversation is not illegal in any sense that I am aware of.

I do not believe I made any claim to the effect that Amarrian religion as a historical and social phenomenon originated with Captain Hanaya. It would have been quite impressive if it did. Nor do I doubt that she has been exposed to its memetic structure throughout her life, and that this exposure, coupled with social expectations, et cetera, has socialy conditioned her to a significant degree. I will also agree that my use of the word "whim" is not strictly accurate, and that it should be read as a rhetorical exaggeration.

What I am saying, however, is that her beliefs, her history and the whole of her identity is not something that sits in her "blood", as she puts it. If Captain Hanaya had been taken from her parents at birth and given to a Thukker couple to raise out in the Great Wildlands somewhere, it is very likely she would not have grown up to share the beliefs and cultural traits her Khanid ancestors held. Instead, she would most likely have adopted Thukker language and customs, identified with Thukker history and believed in some completely different ghost in the sky.

Furthermore, while I acknowledge that social conditioning does exert a powerful influence over most people's identities, it still has to be accepted on some basic level by the victim in order to work as intended. It can, however, be rejected. In fact, social and cultural conditioning is a lot like torture: It is highly likely to produce a behavior in which the victim is willing to agree with everything her tormentor says and say whatever she thinks they would like to hear (which should not be confused with "the truth") - but it can be resisted by particularly stubborn and strong-willed individuals.

That is something I know from personal experience, by the way. I myself was born to a rabidly ethnocentric parent who spared no expense and effort trying to turn me into some bizarre little cultural clone of herself who would follow some idiotic flavor of the Ida, honor the ways of our ancestors and so on and so forth. In fact, I count myself extremely lucky I didn't have to start my existence by having some old, shriveled grandmother clone into my brain. That's what they do, in my "ancestral culture". And they call Nation monsters.

So, anyway, I was obviously able to resist her in the end. In fact, if I hadn't been, I would probably not be sitting here conversing with you, but instead hang upside down from some tree on the insect-ridden homeworld of my ancestors, eating raw fruit.

Does that clarify my position, Captain?

In terms of Gallente - Minmatar relations this shows one of two things.

- Despite our own petty arguments and conflicts, we are still unified allies.

OR

- The only thing holding us together are common enemies and threats.

And I find it ironic in the extreme that one of the most mentally challenged Amarrians this cluster has ever produced (and there are a lot of them) is attempting to invoke that particular aphorism.

Firstly, I don't hear anyone in the Republic asking the Gallente for a godsdamned thing. Just where do you get this impression?

Secondly, while we have a disagreement with the Federation over the handling of the terrorist shooting investigation, we remain steadfast allies and are united as ever. You and other provocateurs may wish otherwise but, your wishes do not equate to reality.

Lastly, why the hell do you even care about what's happening in the Federation? Your national loyalties now surely lie with the Angel Cartel, no? Or are you trying to serve two disparate masters?

That war ended with the signing of a peace-treaty.

Unless you're saying that the entire population of the Republic are oath-breakers?

I would have thought that that the release of millions of slaves was a good sign that we were willing to make concessions.

But apparently the tyrant Shakor and his followers disagree.