EVE General Discussion

ahahhahahahahahahhaha


why don't just wait a little bit without answering those questions? judgment suspension (or something like that)

imagine... a world...
... where human's minds will be digitalized into indestructible machines...
... no fear of death...
... no needs whatsoever...

will people still work?
will these machines keep producing anything?

or will they just stare into each other digital eyes until the last burning star will explode and the universe will turn into a black bottomless pit?

...maybe it's worth waiting till then without causing a bloodshed right now... or maybe not...


EDIT: back on topic...

we never left the monopoly on violence to corcord.
we just let they use it until we are bored to fight the 0,01's war in jita

No, in fact I didn't.
And I never said "no one should hold it".
Everyone isn't "no one"-

You blindly assume that how it works now is the only way ...
... and because a different way didn't work in the past it can't work tomorrow.

The people of today aren't the people of back then.
The amount of ships, skills, people put into worling organizations and structures is much higher.

I'm sorry to say that, but your question is already answered ... there is no Concord in low and nullsec, and players live there and create adequate social structures. We all have a choice.

... and after all, EvE is a game/simulation, where people seek fun and challenges. It's not part of our daily business but often the opposite or a friendly mirror.

This reminds me of my old days studying sociology, two ideas presented here are actually ages old topics in sociology

1. State holds the monopoly of violence - Max Weber

2. Dictatorship of proletariat - Karl Marx

I will explain a bit on the no. 2 first.

Although it may sound contradictory, Marx's vision of 'dictatorship of proletariat' was actually a vision of true democracy (I'm talking about it as a vision/ideology here, not to be confused with what happened with communisim IRL)

Because in Marx's ideal world, there will only be one 'class' in a society, which is proletariat. Since everyone in society belongs to the proletariat, it follows that 'dictatorship of proletariat' actually means that everyone in society will have equal power of governance without being subjugated by any other 'class' above them, because there will only be a single class - the proletariat- which every member of society belongs to, as such every one is absolutely equal in their political power.

So the vision here is that everybody will have equal power and this will put an end to power struggles and exploitation.

It's a bit unholy and out of academic context to link this to Weber's idea on 'state monopoly of violence', but for the discussion shaped by Sole here, I could try -

If state has the monopoly of power, and if every one in the society has the same power, with no exclusive power granted to any exclusive group, it means that EVERYONE is the state and everyone has equal right to violence.

This may sound like a horrible society, but at least ideally, this is true emancipation. You can doubt about productiveness/progressiveness of such society, but purely in terms of freedom and rights, this is the final goal of a society where everyone has equal powers and rights, emancipated with nothing holding back.

Now you work it backwards - as we imagine such society could not function, as it would be free for all anarchy ripe with destructive violence everywhere, in order o make society productive and progressive, we agree to hand over our freedom to violence to an entity empowered by people, such as the state, police, military, CONCORD, etc.

But we can ask - SHOULD society be productive? To produce what for whom? SHOULD society be progressive? To progress to what ends?

Whose needs is society satisfying by being 'in order' as it is now? Whose goals is the society progressing towards by being progressive?

What is society now? You can say that now people can live their lives in peace protected from violence, and we are in a world where the 'weak' can survive and thrive.

Or you can be cynical and put it this way - the weak and cunning have shaped and built social mechanisms now to survive and have power over the strong people, the very people, if we followed the animal kingdom like survival of the fittest rule, would have eaten them for breakfast.

Are we being humane by building social mechanisms that 'protect' the weak? Or are we being played by those unfit weaklings who now sit at the top and fulfil their adolescents fantasy of being above the strong fit dudes they never dared to fight against with their own fists.

People who could never dare to punch others in he face, and could never take a punch or two in return, holds monopoly of violence. Funny innit?

I'm not advocating anything here. But just sharing a possible interpretation of existing social (and game) mechanisms that plays with the idea of monopoly of violence, freedom, and rights.

The same laws that protects a weak little boy from being violated by thugs on the street, the very same laws protect the weak and slimey old bastards to swim in their wealth and indulge in the products of blood from 'somewhere else', all the while the police being one phone call away from coming for their rescue should anyone tries to violence them.

I like the OP's questions as we (in game) are living in a sci-fi world where humans have 'evolved' (or just changed) into something that we were not biologically.

These are valid social questions, and truly in spirit with classic sci-fi tradition, where we not only drool over shiney technology, but contemplate and ask philosophical questions about what the 'world' and 'humans' be like in such a society equipped with such technologies.

Just some thoughts.

o7

That I totally agree. Now it's 'fit' to be cunning, because as you say, that fits the environment humans are living in now, and judging by how the world came to be what it is now, this particular trait seems to be very effective.

It is an intersting question I ponder sometimes - when did a man-savage with (physica) power of a beast start listening to and follow orders from those they can crush easily? How did we get 'tamed'?

It may sound inappropriate, but I have same question when people casually say 'prostitution is he oldest profession'. Man-savage didn't need to 'pay for services'. **** is norm for beasts. When did people start 'paying' for it, whether in currency or in food or whatever was 'valuable' at the time?

Somewhere along the line the savage beast started to recognise 'orders'. Interesting.

I would like to think it was 'compassion', as Rousseaux may call it. Somewhere along the line, the beast looked into the eyes of the weak, and said 'no', and opened his clenched fists. Give the girl something. Lets help this old man. I will protect this man. I will fight for this man. I will sacrifice my own pleasure for this man. Romantic.

Then now we have a world, where lots of people at the top lacks very basic compassion with the weak. Yet they are protected and empowered by the noble savages.

I don't know really ;p

If you agree that pain and death are bad and should be minimised, then modern society is working for everyone. Violence, mortality and infant mortality are at historical lows thanks to progress made possible by the monopoly of violence.

Of course some sections of the population benefit more than others, and suffering still exists, but society is still a net benefit by these criteria.

The concept of 'empowered anarchy' is a juxtaposition of ideals in it's very definition, and while it's a wonderful thought experiment, it's not possible to have or sustain without a homogeneous culture that thinks the same all the time... like all social constructs.

Anarchy is anarchy, you are empowered to do whatever you can achieve by whatever means you choose to use until someone slips some poison in your drink. Nobody lives long or prospers for long in such an environment.

You really have two choices about violence to make:

It's either inherent in all of us and we need to have someone else externally control our levels of violence, thus justifying ever larger governments and ever larger elite circles of government, and all the violence that comes with that.

-or-

The concept that your only inherent 'right' to violence is self-defense. Use of violence outside of that context is immoral in some fashion to some degree. (What that fashion or degree happens to be is usually defined by culture.)

The real world is driven by those two choices or their logical children. It's actually easy enough to bounce back and forth between the two ideas over time, however, I've found they can also be massively confused for one or the other if you do that regularly.

EVE is not driven by mandate of either two of those. It is an interesting social experiment to study these interactions in EVE, but EVE is, by choice, whatever the player perceives it to be, and that includes violence levels.

So setting the philosophical concepts aside, trying to incite violence over a long period of time in EVE may or may not work. It's really up to the will to continue to do so and means to do so. Generally speaking, that mirrors real life and why war cannot last forever.

wat

You seems to be a sociopath.

Also, less game relevance, too much social-politic.

Ib4l

Having German in your signature doesn't make you Freud.

On what basis do you make this internet diagnosis?

The only basis I can think of is: you're a Carebear and therefore feel entitled to believe you know what you are talking about even though you really don't.

Hope I'm wrong though.