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Jade Constantine
Gallente Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction
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Posted - 2009.06.09 22:08:00 -
[1]
This is the true story of the fable raised by Merdaneth in his own thread of the same name. The Anarchist Tragedy
Prelude (the true story)
Once upon a time there was a group of political dissidents living in the oppressive political environment of the Amarr Empire. They had tried all legal means of protest available to them but many of their number had been arrested, tortured, executed and the movement had been driven underground and persecuted almost to extinction. In essence these were ordinary people who just chose to believe that that it was wrong to pay blind obedience to the culture of power-worship and institutional inequality. The Holders called them Anarchists - they wore the label with pride.
Knowing they could not hope to prevail against the shock-troops of the Amarrian power-elite they stole a Bestower-class industrial laden with agricultural goods, and pooling whatever meagre personal supplies they had each rescued from the wreckage of their previous existence, they made orbit and set course to the Frontier. They wanted a new life, a better one, where individual sovereignty was recognized, where individuals were valued and where freedom was the watchword not blind obedience to meaningless tradition.
On the trip outwards they realized quickly that many things would have to change for themselves as well. In the spartan environment of the cargo holds some elements of personal ownership became meaningless: when a member of their community became sick it was the responsibility of all to treat that sickness in case it might spread and threaten all - so all medicine was appropriated by the most qualified and used wisely. Similarly some skills were very useful to the community, teachers taught all without restraint, knowing that all skills would benefit the whole. No child was left untutored. Ex soldier's taught civilians weapons drills and field maintenance. Farmers taught academics farming and hydroponics techniques. Historians and Sociologists learned carpentry and taught plumbers the theory of enlightened self interest and individual sovereignty in return.
Everyone learned a bit of everything and when one man raised the question:
"Why am I learning to fire a gun or wire a junction box? I'm a Organist by trade and that's where my skills are, why waste my talents on generalist activity?"
The people laughed without rancour and kindly explained:
"Where we are going friend is no place for one-trick ponies and specialization is of value to insects alone my friend!"
And the man shrugged and not wanting to seem a fool resolved to learn his weapons drill and electrical theory as well as anyone else!
Paradise Found
After a long journey they arrived at a pristine world. It was well suited for human life without adaptations, rich in resources and harbouring no existing sentient life: a paradise and that's what they called it. They set down with the ship and quickly assembled shelters and way-stations around their vessel. In no time a ramshackle frontier village was their new home and in honour of their collective ambitions they called the place "Freedom". From the beautiful vistas and temperate climate, rich soil and verdant woodland it was obvious they'd chosen one of the best spots for settlement on the whole planet.
The Problem of the Commons
They soon built up farms and the good soil gave bountiful harvests. Their livestock adapted to the new planet well and multiplied, the hydroponics farms they maintained in the cargo hold and shelters of "Freedom" produced everything they could want and more and those who laboured on the production of food found it easy to trade their effort for the effort of those who built or maintained structures or electrical conduits from the reactors of the grounded starship.
ISSUE - Bring Space Bushido to CAOD |
Jade Constantine
Gallente Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction
|
Posted - 2009.06.09 22:10:00 -
[2]
Close by to "Freedom" they had set aside a parcel of grazing land and fruit orchards for the common use of all. Every herder could use this land but it was understood that doing so would be for the common good and the produce would be given freely to the community for feasts and communal celebrations, or for those who might be too ill to work for themselves for a week or month or season.
Eventually a problem arose however. Some questioned the use of common land for communal farming. Some asked whether it was right that they should have to go a kilometre further from the centre of town to graze their own herds and plant their own orchards and raise their own crops. Some angrily suggested that maybe the common land should be shared more equally and that rota systems be employed, that each herder should bring his or her animals from their own farmsteads to the common land each seven-day (and a 2 kilometre round trip) simply for the convenience and prestige of grazing closest to "Freedom".
Listening to this for almost half a hour an old woman finally lost her patience and stood up to speak:
"You idiots! The common land is just that, common land, it's for the community to remind us of the first place we settled on this planet. But Freedom is not in this village. Freedom is everywhere! This planet is a paradise, you can farm wherever you choose. Go tend your own farmsteads and listen to our entertainment broadcasts on the radios. One kilometre is nothing! Back in Amarr space we walked further than that to get to enforced morning, midday and evensong prayers! Foolish idiots, there is no call to reinvent the priority of territory in this virgin soil when there is more than enough for everyone and everyone's children's children's children!"
There were some sheepish expressions then. Those with the loudest voices earlier were now equally vocal in support of the old woman's suggestion. And for the next season the colony redoubled its efforts in colonial establishment and quickly a network of farms and homesteads spread out around the settlement of "Freedom" - each man or woman or family had plenty of space, they established roads between the farms and colony, they traded their excess produce for work and borrowed labour at need, and electricians ran cables from the ship generators to the closest farms while those more remote bartered for standalone power-cells or tinkered with their own solar or wind-powered generators. It became a matter of pride to establish guest homes at the farmsteads and attract visitors and friends to dine. So matters went.
In time they all knew the truth of the old woman's words. "Freedom" wasn't a place. It was a state of mind. It was knowing one's effort and labour would be rewarded by a roof over the head, fine food and warm lodgings and the friendship and acclaim of one's peers. The planet was "Freedom" - there were no laws anymore. Just common sense.
Attack of the Wolves
As the colony expanded and the outlying farmsteads and settlements extended further into the unknown territory a terrible thing happened. Large predatory creatures were seen driven from the distant southlands and attacking the outlying herds of the furthermost settlers. These were beings of great ferocity and many clawed arms and legs and prodigious teeth that could certainly present a threat to an unarmed settler but fortunately none were so vulnerable. They were named "wolves" and everyone agreed they were a collective challenge to the free settlements and that challenge was answered promptly.
ISSUE - Bring Space Bushido to CAOD |
Jade Constantine
Gallente Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction
|
Posted - 2009.06.09 22:12:00 -
[3]
The many months of weapons training on the voyage out paid off. The creatures were routed by the high tech laser weapons from the ships store and hunted mercilessly by volunteer patrols (and since their fur and claws and bones could be worked into fine winter clothing and decorative ornaments for the homesteads by artistically-inclined settlers) there was much rejoicing at the opportunity in some quarters. The young enjoyed the challenge, the old nodded sagely at the threats arising on Paradise.
But the Wolves learned to fear the settlers after the first season of raiding and the large scale threats were ended. But they were cunning creatures and kept returning in the dead of night - and stalking loners and the most isolated farms. Clearly this underlined the need for all settlers to go armed and ensure their weapons drill and training was kept current.
The more serious problem was that there were not enough laser rifles to go around each individual farmstead - so the colony asked its artisans to develop a simpler alternative worked from the scrap metal and resources of "Freedom". In the end the colonists decided to make a simple design that could be forged from scrap metal and local materials, it was a clip-loaded slug-thrower with a pistol grip and long barrel accurate to almost 30 paces in the hands of the average settler. The prototype blueprint was given to the "commons" and everyone was encouraged to take a hand at turning the barrel on the autolathes and assembling the moving parts of the clip-mechanism with common tools and great attention to detail.
These weapons were named "Wolf Guns" by the colonists and became a very popular project in the common workshops of "Freedom". By popular acceptance it became the custom for adult colonists to carry the weapons at most times in beautiful worked leather holsters at their belts. Those with artistic skill won great acclaim amongst the colonists trading their art for raw materials and the finest food as they worked designs and beautiful symbols into custom handgrips bone-decorated with the product of slain Wolves.
Of course there were accidents, some of the guns malfunctioned, some colonists were hurt in crossfire incidents. Some even questioned whether everyone should be carrying loaded firearms in public at all.
"Maybe guns should be locked away and only used by those with the formal training to use them" a querulous ex bureaucrat suggested at a public meeting.
"Nonsense," the old woman replied.
"These guns are our right and duty to create and use. Self-defence is something we must all cherish. Each child of freedom will build a gun when they come of age. Each free man and woman will wear a Wolf Gun to symbolise their personal sovereignty and duty to confront collective threats against our brothers and sisters on this world. There can be no tyranny on a world of people confident in their own defence. You cannot bully an armed free individual - only bargain, trade and convince. That's why we're here."
And the people nodded and saw the wisdom in this. And afterwards it was the custom that each child would be taught to build his or her own Wolf Gun at their coming of age - they would customise the grip and engrave the barrel with symbolism to their taste and the weapon would be reminder of their personal power and heavy responsibility for preservation of life against the unknown.
Paradise was more dangerous than the colonists had believed. But their response was the rise to the challenge and unite in the face of alien threat and promote self-reliance that also defended the community as a whole.
ISSUE - Bring Space Bushido to CAOD |
Jade Constantine
Gallente Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction
|
Posted - 2009.06.09 22:15:00 -
[4]
The Problem of the Village Elders
After many years the pattern of colonisation on Paradise had been set. The more adventurous and boldest of the settlers ranged farthest from Freedom, they established homesteads in the hinterlands, shelters in the wilds and they returned most rarely to the original landfall settlement close by the ship. While some of those who remained in Freedom came to see themselves as administrators, dignitaries, wise with age and wondering if they should be laying claim to the common land and passing the perceived advantages of possession to their children.
At the summer solstice feast a proposal was made that a council of "Elders" be established who would reside at a large residence in Freedom and would put aside much of their personal labour in favour of administrating and directing the collective activities of the colonists on their world.
Maybe there should be some "laws" established? Maybe a police-force could be empowered to protect the peace of Freedom? Maybe they could build a prison and jail wrongdoers for the good of all?
Then a child breached custom and spoke aloud to the gathering with the innocence of her years:
"What's a prison?"
Embarrassed silence met her words. Those old enough to remember Amarrian lockups and torture cells, beatings and brutality, corruption and power in the service of hierarchy and religious lies felt ashamed then and silently counted themselves blessed to have escaped that horrible past.
Those too young to know the words were curious, but only in the manner of youth questing for knowledge of terrible things to chill the blood and evoke childish shrieks of outrage for the amusement of all.
The motion to empower a council was dropped.
"We don't really need this." commented one prospective councillor. "We're all elders on Paradise." laughed another. "Prisons?" Snorted another, "What rot!"
The Mine Road
Years afterwards a discovery was made in the hills above Freedom by an eccentric colonist who had taken a liking to geology and the study of the planets deeper rock formations. Understand that most mineral deposits on Paradise were shallow and the colonials had discovered all the iron ore and common elements they required years before. But this find was different: a vastly rich vein of Palladium-46, a critical raw material in the manufacture of Amarrian laser crystals in the huge industrial complexes of Domain region. Not very useful to the colonists - but a valuable trade material and perhaps a means for Paradise to supply itself with off-world luxuries if handled correctly.
Debate raged though; with those of an age to remember the Amarr empire were wary of opening links for trade. They argued that the colonists and their children had almost everything they could need - they were self-sufficient - well defended, they even had the makings of a new interplanetary shuttle that some of the more technically-attuned young people were building in the shadow of the old Bestower at the landing point.
But others were doubtful now of the oft-repeated evils of the Amarr. Like the Wolves these things must have seemed terrible at the time but to an armed and confident society of sovereign individuals what harm could come of merely ****ering rare metals for trade items?
ISSUE - Bring Space Bushido to CAOD |
Jade Constantine
Gallente Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction
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Posted - 2009.06.09 22:17:00 -
[5]
Edited by: Jade Constantine on 09/06/2009 22:26:37
In the end the younger settlers won the argument and agreed amongst themselves to build a mine and establish a road to transport the raw materials to Freedom. They talked of the wonderful things that would be brought back to Paradise from the stars, of how they'd teach the Amarr how to change their own lives - how they'd teach the Amarrian poor (they didn't really understand the principle of slavery) how to construct their own Wolf Guns and take responsibility for their own security and choices.
And at the last a small crew test-flew the interplanetary shuttle "Anarres" from the launchpad at Freedom into orbit where they broadcasted a celebratory song of Paradise and launched a telecoms satellite into geostationary orbit to invite star-traders and wandering space captains to come to their world and exchange tools and minerals and wealth for wealth.
Murder in the Night!
After a month the message was answered and a starship descended from the skies over Freedom broadcasting the transponder codes of a Domain licensed trader. The ship was smaller than the Bestower that the first colonists had flown into exile and release, but it was modern, efficient, and landed without difficulty on the landing field by the town commons.
The Trader was a proud man. Dressed in riches of silk and ermine, he spoke with a sneer and treated the children of Freedom as virtual savages and dried to pass off meaningless baubles and poor quality merchandise as fair trade for the valuable caskets of Palladium-46. He raised his eyebrow at the Wolf Guns, mocked the furs and worked leather belts, but he smiled altogether more nastily at the young women of the settlement. Inviting some of them to his guest quarters that evening he proposed great impropriety with indecent gestures and such drunken leering so as to cause one young woman to strike him forcefully across the face. The Trader was outraged to be disrespected in such a fashion and raised his fist to chastise the wanton savage girl only to be stopped at the sight of a Wolf Gun primed and calmly levelled at his face as she backed out and left him alone.
Later that night the Trader left Freedom and raised his ship to the stars and even the most outward-looking and curious wanderers were forced to conclude that he had been a great disappointment.
But worse would meet the dawn. The girl who had struck the Trader was found dead in a common house, shot at close range in the back with a projected energy weapon, her body burned and ruined and her mother's cloak charred black with the heat.
The people were upset, angry, many wanted vengeance and to punish this murderer, but others counselled caution and reminded the youthful that they had warned against contact with the old empire. Something was lost though. Some innocence had fled. Bad times were coming back.
The Empire from Space
It was only a matter of weeks afterwards that the shuttlecraft sighted a dozen main drive blooms during an orbital flight to place more satellites. These were far larger vessels than the Trader's ship and they moved into orbit with efficient purpose, deploying many smaller shapes around their formation as they reversed engines to attain geostationary position over the town of Freedom below.
The shuttle-crew were as excited as they were wary and opened up an open communication beam to the largest ship welcoming the new guests to Paradise and requesting they return identification and intentions. They died seconds later in the mega-pulse beams of coherent light from the main batteries of an Armageddon class Battleship as the short history of the Paradise space-movement was ended in violence.
ISSUE - Bring Space Bushido to CAOD |
Jade Constantine
Gallente Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction
|
Posted - 2009.06.09 22:19:00 -
[6]
Edited by: Jade Constantine on 09/06/2009 22:20:14
On the planet below the people gathered round their radio sets and listened in growing disbelief as the voices from space announced that they were now bound slaves of the Empire and their resources would be harvested and assessed by the servants of God and nothing but total unconditional surrender would be accepted.
Anger then, the people took out their Wolf Guns and swore to avenge the deaths in orbit, they knew this world, its forests, its valleys and seas. They had built their homes and tamed the wilderness and while open to trade freely they were in nowise prepared to give up their freedom to an Empire from Space.
No common voice met the invaders, but ten thousand shouts of refusal from a thousand homesteads and farms. From the population of Freedom and its commons to the farthest research holdings and wandering camps, the free population of Paradise rejected the ultimatum and affirmed only their intention to live free and defend those freedoms come what may.
The Anarchist Tragedy
The town of Freedom was incinerated from orbit in 60 seconds of furious bombardment. Over the next hour the orbiting fleet selected and destroyed over a hundred smaller settlements targeting EM frequencies and heat sources and sweeping deadly beams across the buildings and farmland, igniting common stores and communal halls, vaporizing warehouses and transports, transforming any unprotected human within a kilometre of the impact points into skeletally-clawed studies in agonised death. Sixty years settlement burned in sixty minutes.
Then the Empire from Space transmitted again. Speaking of God's mercy and the wisdom of the holy text they called on the survivors of Paradise to surrender again. They would be taken up into the ships and trained as field slaves and learn the mysteries of the divine on the estates of holders and superior Amarrian aristocrats.
The voices were fewer now. Many tens of thousands were dead. Others were wise enough to realize how the orbital murderers were targeting their bombardment. But others simply didn't care - again the challenge and refusal, the free people preferred to die free than submit to this strange fate unknown outside of weird storybook horrors.
Wolf Guns were fired at the sky as the beams descended again and again like summer lightening magnified a thousand-fold. Houses burned and the horizon was red with embers and killing glow and the dawn when it came was marred by smoke and carnage as far as the eye could see.
I'd like to say that the people fought back and won. (But they didn't)
I'd like to say they fought to the last and made the enemy pay a heavy price. (But they didn't)
What happened was what always happens.
The Invaders used their firepower to scatter and reduce organized resistance. The ground troops in power armour rooted out the remainder and assembled work parties of the demoralized survivors to put out the fires and build slave-pens and walls. Some carried on the fight of course, scattered gangs of young Wolf-Gunners who used their knowledge of the planet to evade capture as long as they could. Some invaders even died. The Wolf Guns could kill an unarmoured trooper as easily as a laser could. But quickly and surely the "rebellion" was quashed and the invaders felt confident enough to bring in offworld slaves to work the mines and extract Palladium-46 for the empire.
This then was the true anarchist tragedy on Paradise.
ISSUE - Bring Space Bushido to CAOD |
Jade Constantine
Gallente Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction
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Posted - 2009.06.09 22:22:00 -
[7]
The Letter
Last year the Star Fraction was fighting in Providence region as part of the Terminus-Est campaign against the holders of Sev3rance alliance. Our war was in effect an insurgency against a stronger sitting power. They had jump-bridges and cyno-jammers, huge fleets of standing militia and all the advantages of terrain and preparation. We had our cloaks and cunning, our guerrilla methodology and the message of hope that won support and information from the local populations capsuleer or baseline. One evening following a great battle in KBP7-G our depleted squadron of Recon cruisers needed to flee system and seek safety away from the Providence main battle-group. We split ourselves into single ships and I jumped on to DNR-7M. Once immediate pursuit was discounted I took a closer look at what we had categorized as a Imperial mining outpost at DNR-7M/III.
The world was beautiful. Temperate, breathable, two main continents. EM readings showed habitation/industrial presence in northern latitude and curiosity winning over my caution I brought my Rapier class ship down several kilometres from the mines.
It was as expected. Several thousand 3rd generation+ slaves in pens. A garrison of a few hundred troops. Small bureaucracy in place. Landing pads, warehouses, prefab accommodations for free commercial traders. The place was locked down tight and the geosats slaved into the constellation communications net. I elected to wait out the night with systems down but on visual sweeps my watch officers discovered evidence of ruins and previous habitation deeper in the forestry. I authorized a covert perimeter patrol of fraction infiltrators.
Shortly before dawn we received the recall code from allied command net - the Providence fleet had disbursed and it was time to lift. Our stealth marines had returned and amongst the findings were solid evidence of high yield bombardment in the last twenty years, signs of a insurgency (apparently failed), widespread pre-imperial settlement (mostly ruined) and a couple of artefacts recovered from a woodland bunker. Two things that have had a profound impact on my thinking since:
The first, a letter on a heavy scrap of parchment
"My name is Alexander Wren. I am the last of my blood. I will not live long. Since the night the skies burned I have seen my friends die until only I remain. I hear the screams from those captured. I see the cages where they are taken. I kill my enemy when I can and run when I must. I made my gun when I was thirteen summers and I never saw a Wolf outside of story books. I carved monsters into the grip because I hoped I might have a chance to fight them. Now I have seen the Wolves and they look like men but they are not men. I have killed some but they have killed more of the Free People. Now they have killed me. My name is Alexander Wren, I was born Free, I lived Free, I die Free. My father was an anarchist. He was a good man and taught me well."
ISSUE - Bring Space Bushido to CAOD |
Jade Constantine
Gallente Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction
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Posted - 2009.06.09 22:23:00 -
[8]
The second, a Wolf Gun
This was a beautiful thing, handmade pistol-carbine, engraved images of fantastic beasts along the barrel with wondrous twists and swirls of arcane symbolism all round the bone-carved handgrip. I weighted it, sighted down the length. It felt very heavy, very real. This thing was made by a child taught freedom at his father's knee. It was a weapon and a symbol. It had survived and its message reached me across the years while its people hadn't. It was a Wolf Gun.
Redemption
I returned to DNR-7M/III (Paradise) several times over the coming months. As the war turned in Providence and Sev3rance were forced to the defensive, often under siege in their own systems, we had more freedom of our own to run those spacelanes and we used the opportunity to liberate many slave-colonies and internment camps from the borderland constellations. From DNR-7M/III we rescued almost 500 original settlers and direct descendents alongside several thousand 3rd generation work slaves. Many of these were mindlocked, or traumatised beyond treatment. Vitoc addiction, disease, malnutrition, exposure and exhaustion had culled the populations and killed much of the oral history of the settlement. But enough had survived with memories intact to trace the events and fate of the colony.
Some of those we liberated chose to relocate to the Republic. Others were hospitalized. Some of the younger survivors swore vengeance and joined the fledgling Tribal Liberation Force, others fell to organized crime and would fly with the Angels. And more than a few joined the crews of Star Fraction vessels and saw some kindred spirit in our ideals and philosophy.
But I have kept the Wolf Gun and the letter. I used a shipboard nanoforge to fabricate the ammunition it uses and I've test fired it and gained a measure of its balance.
One day I'll kill a man with it and perhaps one more spirit will rest in Paradise.
It's the least I can do.
ISSUE - Bring Space Bushido to CAOD |
Kostantin Mort
Naqam Exalted.
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Posted - 2009.06.09 23:47:00 -
[9]
Too long; didn't read. |
Jade Constantine
Gallente Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction
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Posted - 2009.06.09 23:56:00 -
[10]
Originally by: Kostantin Mort Too long; didn't read.
Too short attention span? Can't say I care for your opinion then. But do have a nice day anyways.
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Spyra Gryra
Cruoris Seraphim
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Posted - 2009.06.10 00:04:00 -
[11]
This truly is a tragedy.
The Spyra Gryra says Hello :))) |
Kostantin Mort
Naqam Exalted.
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Posted - 2009.06.10 00:08:00 -
[12]
Edited by: Kostantin Mort on 10/06/2009 00:09:14 The first "parable" was bad enough but you truly conquer the heights of tedium with this particular piece.
As for your retort, it is indeed funny how times change. I've become a champion of transhumanism and hence joined what I once hated, and you have done a similar transformation: you are nothing but a demagogue that clutches at straws, replaying the wars of old in order to relive past glory. You have become what you hated, a toothless forum warrior with nothing substantial to bring forward except for your droning, pointless, boring walls of text. |
Aphoxakhan
Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction
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Posted - 2009.06.10 01:06:00 -
[13]
The story tickled my thoughts as I read, then my brain bled tears of tragic discontent as I reached the end. You steal both my interest and emotions, dear Jade, please put up a contract for their return. I will pay a ransom of a week's duty should you be so benevolent to allow me to help you strike apart the fanciful imaginations of the misanthropic monsters that have been created by virulent thoughts and millennia of fermentation.
I am a slave no longer to my own self or any other for I dream my own dreams and now riddle my own solutions. I am wealthy with thirst and desperate for a stationary evolution... it is the delightful plague I wish to spread to others, idealistic contagions and terrifying reality. It's so much less frightening when you stand atop the ignorance and see the smiles below proud of what little has yet filled their skulls.
Oh! I have found an emotion you haven't taken yet! Arrogance, drive me forward, I am prepared for the parting vacuum. Warp Drive Active. --- [Don't Think Differently, Think Critically.] |
Lord Ira
Tribal Core
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Posted - 2009.06.10 01:40:00 -
[14]
Very compelling. |
Jade Constantine
Gallente Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction
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Posted - 2009.06.10 01:58:00 -
[15]
Edited by: Jade Constantine on 10/06/2009 01:59:34
Originally by: Kostantin Mort The first "parable" was bad enough but you truly conquer the heights of tedium with this particular piece.
I thought you said it was too long for you to read? Now you think to offer "literary criticism"? What a strange man you have become Kostantine to believe that I might care what a Sansha drone thinks apt?
Quote: As for your retort, it is indeed funny how times change. I've become a champion of transhumanism and hence joined what I once hated, and you have done a similar transformation: you are nothing but a demagogue that clutches at straws, replaying the wars of old in order to relive past glory. You have become what you hated, a toothless forum warrior with nothing substantial to bring forward except for your droning, pointless, boring walls of text.
Such bitterness and rage from a creature supposedly free of the wasteful emotions of passion. It seems you haven't completely lost the narrow-minded faux-piety that led you to grovel at prayer with the other nationalists just yet.
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Aphoxakhan
Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction
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Posted - 2009.06.10 02:28:00 -
[16]
Sweet and salty beads of sweat roll down this thread in fear of the truth. Lighten up, Sansha Baby, the right way isn't the only way left but you are efficiently eliminating the alternatives. |
Jade Constantine
Gallente Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction
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Posted - 2009.06.10 11:54:00 -
[17]
Originally by: Aphoxakhan Sweet and salty beads of sweat roll down this thread in fear of the truth. Lighten up, Sansha Baby, the right way isn't the only way left but you are efficiently eliminating the alternatives.
I honestly think something has gone a little bit wrong with his mind-control implants. Ordinarily Sansha-drones are "freed" from the human corruptions of personal irritation and loathing the better to worship the perfect symmetry of their master's design. Perhaps its the melding of godslave nationalism and transhuman submission to hierarchy that triggers the reactions in this one. Who knows? I imagine we'll have to await the next stage of his journey into pirate cynic to find out.
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Kostantin Mort
Naqam Exalted.
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Posted - 2009.06.10 12:12:00 -
[18]
It is really telling that the only thing that you can bring against me is empty "ad hominems". Please, do continue with your infantile insults, they amuse me. I am more free and enlightened than you'll ever be, as well as much more succesful in my aims. ------ Innovation is a product of madness. |
Bad Harlequin
Minmatar
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Posted - 2009.06.10 12:18:00 -
[19]
Originally by: Kostantin Mort It is really telling that the only thing that you can bring against me is empty "ad hominems". Please, do continue with your infantile insults, they amuse me. I am more free and enlightened than you'll ever be, as well as much more succesful in my aims.
translation engine activated:
Originally by: Kostantin Mort NA NA NA NA NA I CAN'T HEAR YOU NA NA NA
Sorry, old foe, but calling you on your inconsistencies isn't ad hominem. Neither is catching your slippage on "tl;dr" combined with "tedium."
But please, do keep trying! It's always interesting to watch someone coping with "I am free!" programming.
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Tecam Hund
Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction
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Posted - 2009.06.10 12:31:00 -
[20]
Tecam Hund wipes a tear.
You are making a ruthless bastard cry, Jade. How embarrassing. |
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Simon Coal
Gallente The Grass Spiders
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Posted - 2009.06.10 13:05:00 -
[21]
If this story is accurate in it's representation of how Star Fraction views anarchism, I'll have to rethink a few positions... I hadn't expected so much concern for the well-being of others.
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Kostantin Mort
Naqam Exalted.
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Posted - 2009.06.10 13:31:00 -
[22]
Originally by: Bad Harlequin
Originally by: Kostantin Mort It is really telling that the only thing that you can bring against me is empty "ad hominems". Please, do continue with your infantile insults, they amuse me. I am more free and enlightened than you'll ever be, as well as much more succesful in my aims.
translation engine activated:
Originally by: Kostantin Mort NA NA NA NA NA I CAN'T HEAR YOU NA NA NA
Sorry, old foe, but calling you on your inconsistencies isn't ad hominem. Neither is catching your slippage on "tl;dr" combined with "tedium."
But please, do keep trying! It's always interesting to watch someone coping with "I am free!" programming.
I like how people that don't anything about me think that I'm some sort of BEEP BOOP I'M A ROBOT. Maybe, just maybe, I was referring to that as the ad hominems rather than Miss Constantine calling me out for "inconsistancies" that can be rationalised by even a brain-dead idiot such as yourself by means of "I skimmed the text".
But I guess you are a better man than me in the end. I guess that Jade didn't avoid my retort because she knows deep down that she has accomplished nothing at all in the past years. I should feel bad that I got called out by an ex-Ushra'Khan non-entity.
Anyway, continue doing your selective reading, it has helped you so far. |
Aphoxakhan
Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction
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Posted - 2009.06.10 14:53:00 -
[23]
Ruthless rebellion personified, Sansha Baby. You are gnashing with bloody teeth but you know not what for you gnash at... Relax, take some time, you have eternity to find peace and well-being. --- [Don't Think Differently, Think Critically.] |
Jade Constantine
Gallente Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction
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Posted - 2009.06.10 15:59:00 -
[24]
Edited by: Jade Constantine on 10/06/2009 16:03:12
Originally by: Kostantin Mort It is really telling that the only thing that you can bring against me is empty "ad hominems". Please, do continue with your infantile insults, they amuse me. I am more free and enlightened than you'll ever be, as well as much more succesful in my aims.
Why would I not attack "the man" when the man in question has decided to voluntarily submit himself to neutral re-programming to suit somebody else's grand design? You are the very antithesis of Freedom Kostantin. You have been conjured up by this true story of a real struggle for Freedom to perform like a puppet-on-demand to illustrate a flawed path to imaginary freedom through neural-alteration and chemical happy juice.
Why would I not attack "the man" who announced in one post he had not read the story then betrayed the fact he had in the second. Why insist I treat this "man" as a neutral voice with disappassionate reserve when in actuality I despise all that he stands for and all of the path he has chosen.
I view your choices with very human loathing Kostantin. You have voluntarily given up without a fight what the anarchists of Paradise chose to die for.
A more pathetic fate I couldn't imagine.
Originally by: Kostantin Mort I guess that Jade didn't avoid my retort because she knows deep down that she has accomplished nothing at all in the past years.
Hated by my enemies. Respected by my allies. Still in full control of my own mind and faculties.
Thats three achievements over you monsieur drone.
The fight continues. (But then you wouldn't know anything that would you? Since in the Kostantin Mort playbook when the going gets tough the tough resign and turn their coats.)
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Jade Constantine
Gallente Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction
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Posted - 2009.06.10 16:12:00 -
[25]
Originally by: Simon Coal If this story is accurate in it's representation of how Star Fraction views anarchism, I'll have to rethink a few positions... I hadn't expected so much concern for the well-being of others.
The story is accurate. And more to the point, you shouldn't believe everything written about the Fraction by the Amarrian nationalists. They really aren't very good with the truth.
The Star Fraction movement is not an elitest cabal of super-powered technologically-enabled immortals careless of human life. We fight for the future of humanity and the chance for everyone to take a better future from the ashes of the decadent imperialist past.
We believe that the technologies utilized by the capsule-caste today can become agents of revolutionary change in their own right tomorrow. The burning scanner is now public domain, cloning has become commonplace. How long before the lies about capsule attunement are revealed as the falsehoods we know they are?
In the skies we see a thousand thousand stars and an infinite potential for the future prosperity of mankind. But the story of Paradise is a warning to us all.
Archbishop said it best in one of his recent sermons actually. He said he considered the Amarr desire to rule was an immutable law of human nature. If we take him at his word the truth is there will never be peace or freedom within reach of the Amarrian war machine since those beclawed and bitter old men need to dominate as surely as the free captains and their planetside kin need air to breath. Neither can exist without this critical raw material so it is no surprise that we have concluded that Amarr must die that all people be free.
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Aphoxakhan
Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction
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Posted - 2009.06.10 16:27:00 -
[26]
Oh, Jericho Daisy, invincible to the assault of imaginary faces...
Sansha Baby is upset, but does not need to be. Jericho Daisy and Sansha Baby should try being friends, the opposites can learn so much from each other and make both better for it.
It is good to see Carbonated Grass questioning the answers. You may find us more palatable than expected, Simon Simon. --- [Don't Think Differently, Think Critically.] |
The Cosmopolite
Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction
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Posted - 2009.06.10 18:38:00 -
[27]
Originally by: Simon Coal If this story is accurate in it's representation of how Star Fraction views anarchism, I'll have to rethink a few positions... I hadn't expected so much concern for the well-being of others.
As an addendum to Jade's response, I will give my own brief perspective on this. It is summed up in the observation that short-term altruism is often perfectly consonant with long-term self-interest.
For example, if a group wishes to eradicate disease among its members, it naturally will investigate the malady, develop treatments and in time possibly a vaccination or prophylactic against the disease. However, a problem arises when other groups of people, not strictly speaking the concern of the first group, are found to carry the disease. The risk arises of re-infection from these outside groups or even mutation of the disease, and more virulent strains arising in those groups, which could wreak havoc among the first group. The sensible strategy would then be one of short-term altruism: manufacture and supply the required drugs and so forth, provide the necessary medical personnel and eradicate the disease as widely as possible in every group of people. The long-term self-interest of such action need not I think be elaborated.
In a roughly analogous manner the concern of anarchists that everyone should be free, and our working towards that goal, is often altruistic in the short-term but most surely works to our own interest in the long-term. This has been so for all anarchists, libertarians and other lovers of freedom and autonomy throughout the ages. It is all the more cogent as we recognise that our generation and succeeding generations will live for a very long time indeed.
The Cosmopolite
The Star Fraction Communications Portal |
Aphoxakhan
Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction
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Posted - 2009.06.10 19:03:00 -
[28]
Originally by: The Cosmopolite In a roughly analogous manner the concern of anarchists that everyone should be free, and our working towards that goal, is often altruistic in the short-term but most surely works to our own interest in the long-term. This has been so for all anarchists, libertarians and other lovers of freedom and autonomy throughout the ages. It is all the more cogent as we recognise that our generation and succeeding generations will live for a very long time indeed.
You are too right, Variety Pack Strategist. The invisible disease that is fought by The Lovely Anarchists is extremely infectious and requires surgical care to cut away the maligned brains cells of history's brand. |
Sky Grunthor
Minmatar The Dead Parrot Shoppe Inc. Balance of Judgment
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Posted - 2009.06.10 19:05:00 -
[29]
Something that I find quite common in the underlying subtext of opposition argument is a misrepresentation of what The Star Fraction stands for.
They label the Star Fraction as Anarchists and in doing so make the implication that they believe not in the rule of law but rather in the rule of personal tyranny, the rule of the bully. SF are clearly not this. What they do believe it seems is rather the rule of individual responsibility. The responsibility to guard your own freedom. In truth you can not remove the concept of responsibility from freedom, they are fundamentally entwined. If you attempt it, you are not defining freedom, you are defining tyranny.
This parable, this tragedy, is the story of the success of tyranny.
Fight on SF |
Merdaneth
Amarr PIE Inc.
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Posted - 2009.06.10 21:50:00 -
[30]
It is most revealing that in this story several of the problems this new society struggled with were not solved. Rather, they were solved by convincing people that they weren't real problems.
The Anarchists were convinced that they didn't need to specialize because someone yelled that specialization is a 'one-trick pony and only of value to insects'.
The Anarchists that wanted liked to have their flock graze in the vicnity were convinced that 'one kilometer is nothing', and that walking a long time is meaningless because 'freedom is everywhere' and that their tiredness would not matter because 'freedom is a state of mind'.
The anarchists were convinced that gun accidents shouldn't be prevented because they were 'their right and duty', no measures were taking to prevent harm because the guns were 'a symbol'
The anarchists were convinced not to have a council of experts discuss solutions because 'they didn't really need it', and because they 'were all experts'.
What is most surprising about these events is not that these people agreed to the ramblings of an old woman, no, the most surprising about ms. Constantine's parable was that these anarchists took her arguments *on faith*. No factual explanations were given, no logical arguments offered. They were simply told that a kilometer more or less was irrelevant and believed it. They were told the danger of everyone having guns was irrelevant because of duty and symbolism, and they believed it.
If that really what anarchists are like, then it would likely lead to this story. ____
The Illusion of Freedom | The Truth about Slavery |
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