Jev North
Hyperpredator Rest Home
502
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Posted - 2016.12.30 18:53:19 -
[2] - Quote
Patience. It's early days to call a definite lifelong purpose for a second-year capsuleer, and none of these things are mutually exclusive in any case.
Das ist schmutzig, falsch und moralisch höchst verwerflich. Bin dabei.
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Jev North
Hyperpredator Rest Home
504
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Posted - 2016.12.31 00:48:20 -
[3] - Quote
Aria Jenneth wrote:The whole "achieving your full potential" idea is a pretty pernicious piece of work, anyway. Directly or implicitly, it encourages the idea that "the truly worthy" should "realize the entirety of their potential" ... at whatever cost to others.
Like they say, somebody who tells you you're destined for great things is probably trying to fleece you in some way. Go short on the ones who think they themselves are destined for greatness. (And stay out of their direct path.)
Aria Jenneth wrote:The last time I played the philosopher, I tried to carve out a new Path of Achur practice-- a way of understanding our place in things, a moral code. It was basically hostile to the idea that we were even still human beings.
It was an arrogant thing for me to do, though I guess I was a little desperate at the time.
I hope I'll be slower, this time, to do such things. After all, one who lights a trail of beacons for others to follow while lost, herself, is apt to end up just leading people right into whatever abyss she ends up in.
Oh, I don't know, that's going pretty hard on your former self.
I think the grim tone of her writing was a consequence of the pain she was experiencing; she didn't want to be a human being, because she realized on some level that she'd make a pretty dodgy specimen of one. The paradox there is that this understanding, the capacity to feel this guilt and the perceived need to be punished for it with dehumanization, arguably made her more of a decent human being than most capsuleers.
Your existence might be an interesting resolution to that paradox.
In any case, I found her philosophy useful as a springboard for my own, if you can call the smattering of thoughts I have on the subject a philosophy. I think there's a great deal of merit in some of the core ideas -- taking a bird's eye view of our existence as a caste in society, figuring out what our values and mores towards each other and the rest of the Cluster should be.
I think the needle on the question of whether we are human or not is still quivering somewhere on the "Yes" side of the scale, but that ultimately, it's not a very relevant question. Being human doesn't get us a place at the table by itself. Not being human won't excuse us of anything. We'll have to carve.. no, let's say make -- a space of our own to live.
Who lives literally by stuff they read off the IGS, anyway?
Das ist schmutzig, falsch und moralisch höchst verwerflich. Bin dabei.
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