Intergalactic Summit

Every place has ingrained prejudices, hell the planetsiders have prejudice against each other over the most stupid things. You have to set that aside and look at the ideals and the cultural backgrounds that form a society to truly appreciate it. Acknowledge but don't dwell on the bad things, absorb and enjoy the good. No state is perfect in my view, each has it's problems but also each has such delights to show you. You simply need to be open enough to look.

I find that the best way of overcoming one's ingrained prejudices is to sit down one on one with Federation Loyalists. As often as you find yourself rolling your eyes and gritting your teeth, you tend to find that they are people, just like us.

I know this should be self-evident (no doubt there are people currently rollling their eyes and gritting their teeth at me!) but fifteen year old me, just coming out of the creche and entering the labour-force would have given serious thought to the hypothesis that the Gallente were an entirely different, non-human, species.

It takes time to break down these walls. Time and effort.

Uh ... courtesy of current events, I'll be rejoining PY-RE in the Empire for the moment.

This project's going to have to be put on hold for a little while.

Yes indeed... I suppose we all have some, to varying degrees. I might... have received some about the Caldari past the attack on Luminaire. I do not especially like it.





Ah well... A lot of them might think so.

I just think that it is a short term view, a lack of patience from a people that are famous for their infinite patience.

Bare anything cataclysmic, I believe that if the universe continues in its current entropy, most people will be united under a single set of truths. It will be the Amarr religion, but that Amarr religion will have continued to evolve like it has always done, and it will certainly not be the same than the current one.

The thing is...

... What the Amarr and Gallente seem to have got right, is that it is futile to resist. Cultural wars can not be won defensively and behind closed walls.

And I believe that cultural wars are just the side effects of knowledge globalization. This will happen. It has already started.

Resisting is futile. You will just break. Bending and participating, is the productive way to go.

Typical gallentean propaganda!!

THE CAUSE OF THIS BATTLE WAS TO KILL CALDARI CITIZENS AND TO OCCUPY CALDARI PRIME!

Everyone who have at lease one eye and one ear would KNOW that the attack began with INVASION ON CALDARI PRIME, and the Titan was attacked later in a desperate attempt to kill more Caldari as their invasion was brought into hold by valorous Caldari troopers on the ground.

But I agree that this place is a must see one. Everyone should see consequences of this inhuman atrocity commited by Gallenteans!

And this will become a reminder, that WE MUST RETALIATE!

Don't be silly, of course you do.

You can sell it. Prints, pamphlets, holo-reels.. there's no ideal or noble concept that can't be debased and marketed to the masses as product. And the State knows it.

Did you know that tinfoil was invented by a Gallentean? What are you going to do for hats now?

Maybe I should have emphasized the "if". I don't actually expect this to happen, for all your aforementioned reasons. It was a hypothetical statement.

Entry Four: Empty Set

It occurred to me, at last, what I maybe haven't understood about the Federation.

I've been approaching it as a sort of ideological enclave. That's the way its proponents and opponents tend to represent it-- a bastion of Freedom and Democracy (capitalization mandatory), a great and unabashedly aggressive power spreading its ideals by any and all means necessary, out to save the universe from anybody who thinks that maybe the voice of the people isn't the best entity to put in charge of everything.

Come to realize, that's maybe just the cutting edge of a blade-- the hardened, sharpened, reinforced bit that's meant to drive their own enthusiasm as much as anything else.

What lies behind is quite different.

This occurred to me when I was once again looking over the Duvolle station at Crielere, where I'm based. I was trying to figure out what it was for.

Amarrian stations are virtually cathedrals; Caldari stations are workplaces, focused on the jobs at hand. (Matari stations, from what little I've seen, are kind of about making do and getting by, but that might just be because I haven't spent enough time there.)

So what are Federal stations all about, with their gentle lighting and lightly padded, curved surfaces? I couldn't figure it out. It wasn't directly about Freedom; the place didn't keep shouting propaganda at me. The Gallente often act like they worship freedom like a god, but I didn't see so much of that. There weren't freedom-prayer drones hovering around reciting the Federal constitution. But it is easy on the eyes, and on the fingers, and gentle on the soul.

And I realized-- it's a habitat.

That's all. That it. Basically, it's just kind of a pleasant place to live. (Plus laboratory and factory facilities.)

What little I've seen so far of the Federation, planetside, hasn't been especially ideological, either. There's been street food and lovely views, but no real sense of an overarching, guiding order. This society, in which everyone supposedly has a thousand political opinions, is curiously apolitical. The god Freedom seems not to demand worship, or perhaps one worships that god implicitly, in the living of life day to day without being part of, and therefore having to conform to, an overarching order.

The Amarr seek to be the Kingdom of God. The Caldari seek Survival, come what may. The Matari seek (I think?) the Restoration of their people and culture.

The Gallente ... oddly, for such an outwardly aggressive culture, I'm not sure they "seek," other than just to live without the need to contribute their lives to a greater purpose. Where others demand contribution to a greater cause, the Gallente say, "do as you like." And for those whose character demands contribution to something greater than themselves, there's always ... freedom.

If I'm right, I don't quite know how to feel about this. Seen from this angle, the Federal cause of "freedom" could look on the Caldari State as a terrible threat: an ordered, controlled society, working, willing or not, towards a common goal, frightening in ruthless unity and efficiency.

"History," to the Gallente, seems to be anything more than a year old. But the Caldari hold grudges for centuries. How alien and threatening must we seem to eyes that just want to live peaceful, private lives? How horrifying, to a society so bereft of purpose, is one built on it from its foundations?

Even if their defenders are obsessed with "Freedom," the population works in no very focused way (really, it would be horribly ironic if they were all moving in lockstep towards "Freedom," but sometimes it seems from outside like they must be). For all the Gallentean talk of Rights and Freedoms, their goals as a society, it seems, are an empty set.

Are we Caldari the ideologues, here?

Only, if the Federation simply accepts (within some limits) any script that people want to play by, isn't the real script ...

... silence?

A society almost as silent as the universe, but for this: "Let me live my own life"?