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Yun Hee Ryeon
Dead Six Initiative
Lokun Listamenn
364
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Posted - 2013.11.29 17:19:00 -
[1] - Quote
Heathen Bastard wrote:I have chosen my title and path. It is to burn down everything. I am a monster, the worst kind, that which hunts other monsters yet cares not for the sons and daughters of man who might stand in my way. I will destroy it all, and when the great four lie in ruins we shall all be freed. From righteous lies, from false freedom, from the petty rat race.
... from the civilzations that provide the infrastructure and technical expertise that sustain your existence.
No one stands alone, miserable fool. |
Yun Hee Ryeon
Dead Six Initiative
Lokun Listamenn
365
|
Posted - 2013.11.29 22:23:00 -
[2] - Quote
Heathen Bastard wrote:I'm something a bit more insidious than that, an ideal. Ideals need not water, nor food, nor any "technical expertise". They need a single thought, a spark to illuminate the darkness. A spark that will bring the heavens low.
Ah. Make that "miserable fool with a high opinion of the contents of his head."
An ideal is not some perfect form existing in some world reserved for shining beings of light. An ideal is an idea with pretensions, a product of human minds-- frequently human minds engaged in flights of fancy that take them deep into realms of abstraction and away from the concrete. We're ever so good at talking ourselves into all sorts of nonsense.
The anarchist, the sort of creature you seem to be, is a particularly short-sighted breed. Humans are hierarchical by nature. Anarchy collapses into some of the nastiest forms of hierarchy the way a supersaturated solution grows crystals: you might be able to keep it liquid in a test tube, but in the wild? Not likely.
That would seem to make you a careless romantic chasing a ideological phantasm without regard for your own wellbeing or that of your fellow sapients.
It takes a certain kind of courage to look reality in the eye and take it for what it is, soldier. I've never met an anarchist who had it. |
Yun Hee Ryeon
Dead Six Initiative
Lokun Listamenn
367
|
Posted - 2013.11.30 07:36:00 -
[3] - Quote
Heathen Bastard wrote:Reality is chaos. a random happening, a billion to one chance. Who are we to deny it? All this fake freedom, petty grudges, and blind faith try to keep the truth of the world from people. I just want to tip it a bit and watch it wobble, maybe fall down. Then to pick itself back up and see if new flowers bloom from old seeds. If a few get crushed within the cogs of the dying machinations of petty men, so absorbed with their own power that they'll brand any speech against them as an enemy and sick their hounds upon, then so be it.
You call me a fool, but what does it say of the man who knowingly and seriously converses with a fool?
Or woman, in this case.
Don't talk of foolishness like it's some kind of rare and special condition, soldier. Most people are fools. I might aspire to wisdom, but I can't claim to have achieved it-- I'm just clever. A clever fool. Also probably a little arrogant, which is a problem.
You just happen to be flapping your foolishness in the breeze at the moment for the rest of us to smell.
Chaos is also an idea, though one that exists closer to reality than an "ideal" does-- it's an idea that's usually used to describe how things are, have been, or might become, rather than how they "should be." Reality can be described in terms of chaos, or in terms of ordered systems. Ideally, you need both: order tends to collapse into and spontaneously emerge from chaos. Order is to some extent always unstable, always an illusion-- but so is chaos, which contains its underlying orders and tends to collapse back into predictability.
Either can be unpleasant to live through. This is beside the point, though.
Reality is reality. There's no denying it; it has this way of insisting on being itself, whatever else you may wish it were. It doesn't need our help to be what it is, however chaotic or orderly that may be. If you insist on being an anti-civilizing force ... the stars aren't going to care. Chaos won't applaud your good work. Chaos has no reason to notice. It doesn't require reason, and there's no sign that it "notices" things-- it simply is.
The only things that care will be you and your fellow sapients. That is, the creatures you're hurting as you try to help out something that never, ever needs help. |
Yun Hee Ryeon
Dead Six Initiative
Lokun Listamenn
367
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Posted - 2013.11.30 16:14:00 -
[4] - Quote
Heathen Bastard wrote:Really, the man who cries out for freedom from the bondage of slavery needs no help? the man cast out from his family for a single wrong act? the damned guilty of naught but words angering those above their station?
You were the one who claimed to care nothing for baseliners, soldier. Instead, could it be that you think your cause is so righteous that you just don't care who gets hurt in pursuing it-- that your claim to monster-dom is a mask?
As I said, humans are hierarchical beings. What's more, it is in our nature to disregard the welfare of those below us in the social pecking order. Your approach won't free slaves, soldier; even if you succeed, you'll just return humanity to a state where the exercise of power is rawer, more naked.
A human is not a noble animal, soldier. As animals, we're quite nasty. Civilization is the grand project of trying not to kill each other. Take that away, and you're right back to the strong taking whatever they want and the weak suffering what they must. You might say we have that now, but right now, for example, rapine is illegal virtually everywhere.
Without civilization, it won't be.
Quote:Don't pretend to know what's best, I don't, you don't, even the amarrian's little empress has not even the slightest inkling. I seek to bring the heaven's low so that they may yet rebuild to greater heights. Will it work? Not a clue. will the universe care? Not a damn. Will I die in ignominy, my work unfinished? Quite possibly.
Does this mean I should give up? Never. Even when the odds are impossible, one must keep to their path. If god were to bar my path, then I'd gladly join hands with the devil and crash the gates of heaven.
Another romantic sentiment.
Resources wasted on an impossible project are just that: wasted. Suffering caused in its pursuit: pointless. Deaths caused: meaningless.
What's best? Lots of people believe they have some sort of answer or other, and I'm happy to concede that many of them have found something that works (reasonably well) for them.
The universe wasn't created for us, soldier. Some, especially Gallente and Amarr, may disagree, but there is no one "correct" path. "What's best" is whatever lets us get by. Many societies, many paths; who's to say what's right or wrong but the march of history, the consequences we bring upon ourselves with our choices?
It is a leader's place to try and chart a path that will produce an acceptable outcome. I don't envy Empress Jamyl; it has to be especially difficult to make that sort of choice for so many people. On which note, you are aware that she herself has stated that the era of slavery is coming to a close?
The CEP seems to have it a little easier. At least there are several of them; during Tibus Heth's reign, he was stuck in Jamyl's position. It didn't seem to suit him very well.
Quote:I don't care to be remembered, if it happens, then that's okay. I want to see the fruits of my labor, to help build a world free of sin, one that is truly peaceful. This current one does not provide that option, So it must be torn down and allowed to recreate itself. Maybe it goes right, maybe it doesn't. Eventually, someone will come again to try, they may not wear my name or face, but they'll be the same obstinate fool you're speaking with.
Soldier, a dark age never goes right. That's why it's a dark age. And the same power structures emerge, time and again, as it ends.
Human beings, at base, are tribal animals (in the primitive village way, not the Matari way) who can only care about roughly 140 individuals at a time. Civilization's great challenge is to expand that circle, and it's not a tidy process. Return us to a state of nature, and we have to start all over again.
It won't be tidy next time, either.
The closest anyone's managed to come to your "world of peace" is Sansha Kuvakei, and he did that by editing and revising humanity and enslaving the vast majority. Now they're coming for the rest of us. The "world of peace" is out there, and it's a predatory nightmare that tears families apart and cybernetically implants people against their will.
Perhaps they actually do find peace, once implanted, but I really don't trust Kuvakei to edit my mind. He's been known to forget to instruct his minions to take the initiative in keeping themselves fed.
Perfection does not exist in this world, soldier. The most we can hope for, time and again, is "good enough for now." |
Yun Hee Ryeon
Dead Six Initiative
Lokun Listamenn
367
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Posted - 2013.12.01 03:16:00 -
[5] - Quote
Heathen Bastard wrote:and why can it not?
It's because we're not built for peace, soldier. We are built to clash and compete ... even if that is not all that we do.
More than that, a dark age is no environment in which to produce a peaceful civilization. At a time like that, only a fool or a holy man trusts a stranger. Peace is built partly on the understanding that no one is seeking anyone else's violent death. Civilization is a prerequisite for that understanding to become anything solid.
Really, keeping us from killing one another over, say, grazing rights is what civilization is about. And you want to throw it out because it's not going fast enough for you? Tch.
Quote:Hit a man enough times and you will break their spirit, as has happened to you. You refuse to see any good in the common man, seeing only the base fiend that lies within. I want to see the best of man. I've been hit and I keep standing for the good in man, what precious little there is to be found. Even that tiny spark of good can light a tremendous fire to keep the monsters away.
It does not take monsters to create horrors, soldier. Mankind can do that just fine itself.
You seem to think I hold a very dark view of humanity. The truth is more complex (as it usually is). Achur religious practice is generally friendly to the sciences, and Achura Shuijing, the "Jewel-Crystal" sect, of which I am a member, is more spiritually skeptical than most. Clarity is our aim, to see with eyes unclouded.
To me, humans are wonderful animals-- animals capable of sapient thought, even of rationality, when we can be persuaded to use it. Our intelligence can be a great blessing or a profound curse, but it does not negate the animal aspects of our nature. We still get led around by our instincts a good bit, though they can be subverted or circumvented.
Civilization is an attempt to get past the part of our nature that only cares about our own small villages. It attempts to broaden the group we care for by adding abstract concepts to the "cared about" circle, concepts like town, planet, even interstellar nation-state.
It's not easy to do. Bumps and bruises are inevitable along the way. Troubles such as gang activity are systematic of poor socialization-- humans reverting to a tribal state. High status groups within the civilization can become "tribal" themselves, their loyalty reverting to close associates at the expense of the society at large. Our instinctive gravity points towards vicious clannishness, not because there's anything "wrong" with us, but because that's what a human being is: an animal that lives in small communities.
I don't have to think badly of humankind to want civilization to prevail. I just have to have a higher tolerance for the unpleasantnesses that come along with the process.
Quote:Sansha's is the wrong kind of peace, you do not gain peace by simply forcing it on someone and stealing their free will, that is no different from slavery.
Actually, I'd consider it substantially worse. As a slave to the Amarr, I would still be able to mentally draw funny faces on the cathedral wall if I wanted to.
The Minmatar held onto large portions of their culture despite a thousand years of Amarrian rule. It's sort of inspiring.
Quote:You gain true peace by creating a world where wars and fighting are unneeded.
I wish to see a world where good men rule, and people like me and you are just a footnote from the dark days when man still practiced the art of war with such alarming frequency. If perfection does not exist, then we must strive to create it, not continue the cycle of suffering just because it's "good enough"
You create a world where wars and fighting are unneeded by spreading civilization and binding the civilized worlds together in such a way that fighting is not only pointless but obviously counterproductive. How do you do this? Well, the Amarr have one idea, but you'll excuse me if I don't like it very much. I figure if the empires can be brought to actually let go of their grudges and, ideally, the outer powers can be convinced to move to a less hostile stance (good luck with the Blood Raiders; Sani philosophy is normally opposed to peace and harmony on principle), something interesting (and good) might happen over the next few hundred years.
Improbable. Still, humans can be surprising creatures. It definitely won't happen any time soon if we get splintered into thousands of scattered worlds again, though. It'll happen in a most unpleasant way if those worlds then get overrun by Sansha's Nation. Getting overrun by the Blood Raiders or Angel Cartel would be a bit more familiar (sort of like invasion by the Amarr, only without the warm fuzzy intentions), and more recoverable, but still not exactly a fine day for peace and harmony. |
Yun Hee Ryeon
Dead Six Initiative
Lokun Listamenn
368
|
Posted - 2013.12.01 07:05:00 -
[6] - Quote
Heathen Bastard wrote:I don't want to splinter. I want to burn, they are conceptually different means to to vehemently different ends. It's hard to describe, I want everyone one to know that banding together is good, and fighting each other is evil, but they need something to rally against. They need a monster, some dark terror to force them together to see that their differences are as sand in a vast desert, each grain unique, but insignificant when measured against the whole.
Sansha is a good monster, but too dangerous to be allowed to live. I'd make for a decent one, but I'm only a single man, and while I do get up when I fall, I still do fall too easily.
So therein lies the problem, to achieve my ends a monster is needed that is powerful enough to force cooperation, but also disappear back into the ether when it's not needed anymore.
That sounds like the plot of one of the more optimistic fantasy dramas. So at least you're not alone in having this idea, even if you're considerably more alone in actually wanting to try it.
One major problem you have is that humans are awfully good at working out reasons to fight. You've probably seen it happen on the individual scale: two friends, often men, are at loggerheads over such-and-such a trivial matter. Neither, all of a sudden, has anything good to say about the other. Neither will make the first move to resolve the situation: the other party is wrong, and blasted well ought to realize that. It's a matter of principle.
"It's a matter of principle": the epitaph of many friendships.
You might think nations wouldn't work the same way, but ... in the end, nations can be surprisingly person-like. Both Caldari and Gallente foreign policies (especially regarding each other) are driven to a surprising degree by resentment and pride, along with a sense of betrayal-- they were friends, once. Partners, even.
As long as people have falling-outs, groups of people will do the same.
Another major problem is that your monster will have to survive indefinitely. Tibus Heth's not even a year out of power, and history's already leaving him behind.
Now, we, collectively, might make a half-decent monster. We're not there yet, of course, but that might be a decent use for us even if we do turn out to be as arrogant and horrible as some of us seem to want us to. |
Yun Hee Ryeon
Dead Six Initiative
Lokun Listamenn
368
|
Posted - 2013.12.01 17:00:00 -
[7] - Quote
Heathen Bastard wrote:And that's why I call myself monster, because while I am technically fit to the task, being immortal, I still lack the fangs to carry out such a grand purpose. One day maybe, but that day is not today.
... Even if I must walk alone, this is the path I have chosen. To become the grandest monster known, so that people may put aside their differences even if they only do so to take up arms to slay me.
Soldier, unless and until doomsday weapons become man-pack devices, you're in the wrong line of work. At most, you're one actor among many. Your ability to act in the macrocosm is limited. It's a difference between us and capsuleers: their blessing and curse is to work and think on a larger scale.
A capsuleer is a sapient weapon of mass destruction.
We are potentially their counter, since we excel on a scale they often forget matters. We are more naturally dragon-slayers than dragons. If we produce the monster you hope for, it will be by becoming that monster as a group, not by producing individual terrors. And I can guarantee that we will not do that for any idealistic reason; if we become monsters, we'll be doing it for real.
Quote:From those foxholes, friendships will arise, those stories will spread and inspire goodwill. maybe in a thousand years those seeds will have blossomed into flowers of peace between men.
Or those men will die and their sons will be right back at each others throats. I still can say on the day I finally die for the last time, that I gave it all my might, and for a moment I achieved something grand.
When we arrive at whatever uncharted shore we wash up on after all of this is over, first round's on me. I'll extend that to the Templar and his little princess as well.
Sansha Kuvakei once achieved much of what you aim for: the empires united to destroy him.
It didn't last.
If you're going to play that card, you'd best be prepared to stick with it for the long haul-- to become a lurking menace, a permanent threat. It's funny, though: even the resurgent Sansha Kuvakei is not enough, alone, to bring the empires into unity against him. He's taken virtually entire colonies in a matter of a couple hours, and still the empires regard one another as greater threats.
Perhaps we're suffering from villain inflation? |
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