Intergalactic Summit

There are a few data files on it floating around. I've had a look at a few of the pre-attack memos and they were aware enough of it then. Those things are fairly common knowledge now, but in summation, it's a mental disease of some kind. I've heard it described as genetic, but that seems more based around it presenting via their genetic roulette. The knowledge of the disease directly predated the attack, as the Amarrians at the time thought it would be an ample time to gain some new slaves and take the technology. They're fairly sad documents. One of the reasons I have faith is because you always see the universe balancing out the hubris in people and punishing their pride. Once you read some of those documents, you understand the failure against the Jove and the subsequent revolution of the Matari. We deserved it.

Anyway, from what the documents I've read suggest, a few of the prominent Jovians we were dealing with disappeared. It was later discovered they were entering into a rather deep depression. I'm not sure whether that leads directly to death or simply complicates things. Obviously, the Jovians weren't exactly tripping over themselves to provide us with the details so we could help. Even the details we had at the time lit up our greedy little eyes.

One thing I've discovered via other sources is that the disease has been around for a long time, and the Jove essentially did everything in their power to solve it. They failed. Which doesn't make much sense if you don't believe in divine punishment, come to think of it. It essentially presents in every Jovian at some point and has for a very, very long time. It also doesn't seem to affect anyone else, so whatever it is it doesn't seem communicable to other humans. Then again, I don't even know if one has been in breathing distance of us for any extended period of time while infected for us to know.

I should point out that although they themselves think it is related to their attempts at genetic alteration, the disease just showed up around that time. It may not even really be linked to their genetics. I'm not a doctor, just a cleric, so I don't know if there's any more specific research floating around. I only know the basics you can find out by looking and a bit about what we knew before we attempted to conquer them.

Either way, I've always thought that the best way to preach the existence of God is through the practical. I suppose that if you don't follow the Word, you probably think the Lord tends to reach down with his mighty silver quill and writes his will across the stars. The universe doesn't work that way, but some people will ignore even His most obvious signs until they run into a wall. That's sort of the element of human nature we have to rise above. It's too easy to think we are somehow the highest consciousness in all of reality, even though we know how limited our perspective is in the greater body of the universe. The Jove were tested for their hubris, the Amarr are being tested for their hubris, and we will all come upon the reckoning of our decisions someday. It is the inescapable gravity of justice.

That doesn't mean that the Jove will survive their humility, and I don't think people should be left to suffer in their judgments alone. We are meant to all be teachers to the wayward. As always, a failure of a single man is the failure of his community, and the failure of an empire shouldn't doom them beyond help. I feel, in a way, it's part of what we owe to the universe, as a demonstration for how the Lord's people should behave. Failing to deal with our own pride, especially the sins of our forefathers, is simply not acceptable, but I know we will not overcome our failings by ourselves. There is no reason to expect the Jove to do so as well, nor is there a reason why we, as a cluster, shouldn't do our best to help them.

I think both of your points have a similar problem. You seem so focused on the conclusion that you've despaired at the distance.

In the case of faith, the idea that there is no God assumes facts that aren't in any better evidence than there not being one; we simply don't have the perspective to deal with it directly. Unfortunately, if you've never questioned more than what you can perceive with your senses and tried to understand the universe as a greater whole, along with our relatively insignificant sliver of it we can inhabit and see, it probably does seem like we're the kings of our particular anthill. It's easy to say that there isn't anything more, that something can't watch us from outside our view the way we look at a painting, because we can't see anything else. The quick answer is that it simply isn't there, even though our science will tell you that the part of the universe we can't experience vastly overshadows the bit we can apply our somewhat limited logic to. The quick answer is that the part of the universe we can't see isn't important, it obviously can't affect us if we can't affect it. There's a fallacy to that.

Unfortunately, explaining God to people who don't have any background in asking those kinds of questions is like explaining a warp drive to someone who knows nothing about physics. You can do it, but it takes a very, very long time and not everyone has the patience and concentration to learn the theoretical knowledge if it doesn't give them the instantaneous results people seem to expect.

On that note, to help the Jove, we need to start with our lack of knowledge. That means convincing the Jove some of us do really intend to help for no reason other than simple altruism and having them give us what they know, or at least allowing us to conduct our own research. That's simply part of finding a cure. Step one has to be convincing the victim that you really want to help. So we'll need to find a better way to contact them.

As of right now, most people probably do feel the suffering of another empire that has little trust for us in a shut-off part of the cluster isn't an immediate concern of ours. It does seem so far off, and a cure so difficult to find. To save an entire empire of people, though, I'd say is worth our combined efforts. We just don't usually ask with a combined voice. Perhaps if we did, we could at least do our best to try. They're obviously not solving the problem themselves; they simply have no reason to think we'd do any better at it for the same reason you do. What do we know about them and their condition? How could we ever hope to help them?

So the first step is to teach the most advanced scientists in the cluster to have a little faith. Since bad things have happened to them on our account, they have every evidence-based reason to think we're all terrifying creatures that wish them death so we can steal their technology. Maybe we can try to prove that just because you can't always see that we're trying to be good people doesn't always mean it's always the case that we are evil. We are capable of great good, so much more than we're doing right now. I certainly believe we can do better even if we largely live down to our stereotypes.

We should at least try. There's no better place to start than the beginning. We can do it between us. Put together a cooperative, say we are going to try to research the Jovian disease and find a cure, and find a way to ask what we can do for the information. Until the Jove are all dead to the man, woman, and child, there is every reason to keep trying.

While these words are not without any value, I would question any Scriptural exegesis that reads "Go forth, conquer in my Name, and reclaim that which I have given" as "Go forth, heal other people's weird diseases."