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Archives => Katacombs => Topic started by: Esna Pitoojee on 01 Oct 2014, 22:25
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Amarr and Caldari are bad guy factions
u wot mate :s
Is true!
While outside the topic of this thread, of the four factions (while all four have "dark sides" and "shades of grey"), Amarr and Caldari are the two most overtly 'bad'. Amarr for their pro-slavery theocracy, Caldari for their 'motherfuck the individual and all his rights, State Above ALL' attitude. Whereas Min/Gal are all like "Freedom! Democracy! Cake!" We've been involved long enough and care enough about the little nooks and crannies of the PF to know the cake is a lie and they're both bad, too, beneath the veneer... but yeah, they're the good guy factions, ur in bad guy club so ur bad and u shuld feel bad, k?
Honestly not sure if srs.
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@Miz: I've never been able to role play a character that doesn't have "pieces" of me in their makeup. In my short experience with Rp I've found there's usually two kinds of role playing happening. One is the very conscious act of "the love of the art" interacting, conversing, just having fun with the medium. This can take tons of different forms, from parties to debates, sharing deep secrets, or fighting in Grand battles.
But behind all of that I've always been convinced of a therapy that goes on. Just like many of us share insecurities and doubts with friends and family, putting these "pieces" of ourselves into our characters can be deeply fulfilling and therapeutic to our human condition.
We can find comfort and yes sometimes face harsh truths, but looked at in the proper light I think there is value in most of it, and if things do get toxic, there are a lot more tools at our disposal to distance ourselves if needed.
@Hav: I disagree that Caldari are more "bad" as you put it. I have always viewed the Caldari philosophy as one akin to; "The sum is greater than the whole of its parts." emphasizing a healthy proactive people that lauds it's achievements a pushes all to achieve their best.
I wouldn't necessarily consider this bad, just "different."
And finally on the subject of "feeling lonely" in a [Insert specialized/exclusive roleplay niche here], perhaps maybe instead of immediately specializing yourselves into these niche "population: you" communities, you could attempt to function in a wider community and make those specialities of character an aspect of your role play rather than a "defining feature."
I feel that way about exclusivity right up to faction level Rp. Segmenting this already small community into smaller sub groups to me at feels like it starves individual limbs till the whole body dies out.
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@Hav: I disagree that Caldari are more "bad" as you put it. I have always viewed the Caldari philosophy as one akin to; "The sum is greater than the whole of its parts." emphasizing a healthy proactive people that lauds it's achievements a pushes all to achieve their best.
I was only being partially sarcastic with my individualism snipe. It is very easy to see Cal as not being bad if you are not strongly attached to hyperindividualism.
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Of course all factions all have "good" and "bad" traits to various degree, that some people will even fight "bad" and "good" because they see differently (cultural relativism and all that, the best thing to play in Eve RP ever imo), the point made I think was more that gallente/minmatar usual values are often closer to "good" than their counterparts compared to western IRL culture.
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@Hav: I disagree that Caldari are more "bad" as you put it. I have always viewed the Caldari philosophy as one akin to; "The sum is greater than the whole of its parts." emphasizing a healthy proactive people that lauds it's achievements a pushes all to achieve their best.
That's well and good, I don't disagree with that point in and of itself. But the Caldari culture is hardly a nation of "All for one, one for all" musketeers. It's their overt and celebrated ruthlessness that puts them on the dark side of the Gal/Cal coin (Federal ruthlessness is more of an under-the-table, backroom, behind closed doors thing - on the face, all must be fair and just and egalitarian).
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Of course Caldari are bad. They're space americans.
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But wait. If the Caldari are Americans, what're the Gallente?
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EU. Federation of different cultures etc, hypocrisy abounds, etc etc.
On a more serious note though, cases can be made for each of the empires to be good guys/bad guys (except for the Empire which is just flat out bads). The Caldari have an ordered and meritocratic society where everyone can prove their worth and rise in the ranks on their skill and intelligence alone, with the somewhat commendable outlook that benefiting the State means benefiting all within it and yourself as well. Of course, the bad guy bits come with the capitalistic ruthlessness, cultural xenophobia etc. The Federation have the usual "western good guy" thing with democracy and free culture but on the other hand represent a fairly nasty lie given what we know lurks beneath the veneer.
The interesting thing about the Republic to me is that they're only good guys by dint of getting abused and fucked over by worse bad guys (Empire/Federation). Otherwise it'd be a quite bad guy faction all on its own, with the inherently "corrupt" system of family > clan > tribe way of life, poor social systems, the outcast issues with the reliance on voluval marks etc etc. If the others weren't even worse, they'd never be "good guys".
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@Hav: I disagree that Caldari are more "bad" as you put it. I have always viewed the Caldari philosophy as one akin to; "The sum is greater than the whole of its parts." emphasizing a healthy proactive people that lauds it's achievements a pushes all to achieve their best.
That's well and good, I don't disagree with that point in and of itself. But the Caldari culture is hardly a nation of "All for one, one for all" musketeers. It's their overt and celebrated ruthlessness that puts them on the dark side of the Gal/Cal coin (Federal ruthlessness is more of an under-the-table, backroom, behind closed doors thing - on the face, all must be fair and just and egalitarian).
I'm a little unconvinced that a splash of makeup is all that it takes to differentiate between bad and good.
If both are ruthless, while only one is openly so, both are still ruthless. If Caldari are bad for their unrequited efficiency in the boardroom, then the Gallente stand equal footing on the Senate floor.
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the Gallente attitude towards social welfare is a lot more rightward leaning than a lot of people realise.
The fundamental thing about Gallente culture, is teh idea that you can "be who you want to be".
If you're poor, then, a substantial proportion of Gallente society believe that you are poor because you want to be poor.
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Which of the factions one is going to categorize as 'good' and which as 'bad' is really a matter of perception/perspective. It depends on what catches ones eye and how it resonates with the hierachy in which one lines up the values one holds dear.
For example: I personally find that the Gallente are not more beningn because they hide their flaws so enthusiastically - rather that cultural dishonesty is something I find especially off-putting. On the other hand: Someone who IRL thinks that poor people bear the responisbility for being poor themselves won't have much of a problem with the Gallentean idea that 'poor people want to be poor' that lou points out, I guess.
So, while the categorization of the factions says something about our western cultural norms and how CCP characterized the factions (yah, there are tendencies there in relation to western standards - and they got more pronounced with EVE: Source, imho), it mostly says something about the person doing the characterization, imho.
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TBH I personally think it's better to look at the sides from a thematic perspective rather than a good/evil one. Thematically the competing factions look primarily to have been designed as complimentary sides of the same coins. Both the Federation and the State are two different depictions of classic dystopian universes, one in which the average person is free from want and so society loses its deeper meaning as mass consumption and hedonism settles in, where democracy is a lie because only a very small percentage of people actually care enough to vote, and the other being the corporate state owned entirely by megacorporations that exploit and brainwash their workers and cast out anyone that doesn't follow the rules as threats to carefully tended social stability, where meritocracy is a lie because only those who do what society expects of them will have their merits acknowledged. The State may be overtly dystopian while the Federation is portrayed as overtly utopian, making the State appear the worse of the two at first, but both are dystopias in reality. Read dystopian novels and you will find similarities of societies in those books to both the State and the Federation.
On the southeast side of the cluster you instead have the conflict of spiritual and national identity and as a result a far more volatile conflict than Fed/State. Unlike the above dystopian factions, where materialism reigns and the absence or insincerity of spirituality and the human soul is a central flaw, both Amarr and Minmatar have a deep spiritual and cultural core that is so central to who they are that they eventually feel the need to force it on others. They have spiritual, moral, ethical mandates. Neither side is capable of 'leaving things be', because unlike the northwestern factions they have a inner drive to not leave things be. It is a sin for the Amarr to not Reclaim and it is a sin for the Minmatar to not rescue the rest of the Minmatar. Refusal to engage in these central points of dogma result in accusations of treason and faithlessness, this is why there will never be peace between the two until one is destroyed by the other (and this destruction must be cultural, physical destruction fails when the spiritual core lives. Hence why the Minmatar nation did not end with the Day of Darkness, and why it was ironically the Amarr in the position of rebellion in Immensea when they felt their spirituality was threatened). Amarr and Minmatar need meaning to their lives, they need to feel spiritually fulfilled, and in most cases this fulfillment requires the enforcement of their beliefs on those who represent a threat to them. Both look to conquer people who they feel should be theirs, who they feel must be saved. "We come for our people," though mostly used by Matari RPers, is a slogan that fits both sides, because their beliefs demand that they bring what they view as "the lost" back into their fold whether or not the target people have ever actually been in their fold. For the other factions, both the Amarr and the Minmatar represent inherently dangerous elements because they will both refuse to compromise and will actively work against you should you appear a threat to their core beliefs. They have goals that grip their hearts and souls, heaven forbid if you try and get in their way.
As a whole, I'd probably still personally classify the State and the Empire as the darker groups within their thematic pairs, primarily because they've been written with more overtly bad aspects by the modern western perspectives most of us hold, which I don't consider an issue personally. They are more often portrayed as the black half in black-and-white scenes by certain writers though (hello Tony G), which can be frustrating. But I really prefer to just avoid quantifying good and evil as it's ultimately a rather irrelevent distinction for RP (and sometimes leads to OOC harassment of players); I'd rather focus on what each faction represents and believes because these are the things we are seeking to emulate in our roleplay.
Also, I think this bit of the thread should be split. It's a very interesting discussion IMO, but very offtopic for this thread.
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It seems to me that they fell short of the dystopian perspective they are hinting at with the Federation. Yes - hedonism, lack of interest in the public good, secret governmental organizations that are above the law, these are all things that are standard science fiction dystopian themes. But they put them so far in the background of the Federation that it doesn't take hold as 'what the Federation is' in the same way as the State, Empire, and Republic themes do. And I believe this is part of why Fed RP can be so much more difficult to do. The PF is all over the place as to what the Federation is, they have intentionally made it mercurial enough that these themes cannot take hold as the dominant Fed identity. The dominant Fed identity is that they have no identity. While that points toward underlying problems in a nation, it is not concrete enough for it to be overly characterized.
I love what Source did with the Federation and the story they put in, but it focused on the particular elements of the Federation I find the most interesting. It still left the underlying aspects very mercurial. Whereas with the other three, Source went back to solidifying their tropes. The Federation PF in recent years has only solidified a couple perspectives within the Federation without ever trying to define it as a whole. (For example, Source's bit on Caldari absolutely brings it back to its neofascist underpinnings - even with the imagery. Which I personally appreciate, because perhaps it can help kill once and for all the Knights In Space version of Caldari that was so dominant for a while.)
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(For example, Source's bit on Caldari absolutely brings it back to its neofascist underpinnings - even with the imagery. Which I personally appreciate, because perhaps it can help kill once and for all the Knights In Space version of Caldari that was so dominant for a while.)
Word.
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(For example, Source's bit on Caldari absolutely brings it back to its neofascist underpinnings - even with the imagery. Which I personally appreciate, because perhaps it can help kill once and for all the Knights In Space version of Caldari that was so dominant for a while.)
Word.
I'm nt quite sure if it is bringing it back to 'neofascist underpinnings'. The PF I read back then allowed for many perspectives and resulting interpretations. And I think that was a good thing: it allowed for a realisic diversity in RP.
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There sure was a certain belief in the caldari bloc in the past that caldari were awesome and full of admirable values. There was a clear bleedover between IC and OOC that was underlying everywhere enough to make OOC outsiders pretty put off. Especially since they only wanted to focus on the positive values of the faction depicted in the PF rather than embracing the whole.
But here again, we had that in every faction.
(except for the Empire which is just flat out bads).
How so ? I can see plenty of good sides in the Amarr Empire, like culture, high education (well, for the people that can access it), a deep interest into knowledge and wisdom, benevolent enterprises, a society where order, self discipline and purity is put above all else...
Of course there are "good" sides in the Empire. And of course, like for all other empires all those "good" sides can quickly turn into very nasty sides when coupled with other facts.
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(except for the Empire which is just flat out bads).
How so ?
the Empire is bad, because it is religious, and all religions are bad. except the pagan ones. which were super cool. then Abraham ruined everything. for ever.
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Well yes, I already guessed that :lol:
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The Theocracy is an issue but merely a lesser one. It's the expansionist imperialism, thought police (heresy!) etc that are real scary. Well, oh yeah... and that tiny little thing where they turn people into belongings and can't see what's wrong with that. Having good sides (I'd argue against "for Purity" being one of them) does not make up for the faction being entirely and utterly a bad guy when there's something that horrifyingly wrong with them. There is no way to mitigate something as horrifying as that. Every "good side" sprinkled on top is like pissing in a black hole and hoping that'll turn it shining white somehow.
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@Hav: I disagree that Caldari are more "bad" as you put it. I have always viewed the Caldari philosophy as one akin to; "The sum is greater than the whole of its parts." emphasizing a healthy proactive people that lauds it's achievements a pushes all to achieve their best.
That's well and good, I don't disagree with that point in and of itself. But the Caldari culture is hardly a nation of "All for one, one for all" musketeers. It's their overt and celebrated ruthlessness that puts them on the dark side of the Gal/Cal coin (Federal ruthlessness is more of an under-the-table, backroom, behind closed doors thing - on the face, all must be fair and just and egalitarian).
I'm a little unconvinced that a splash of makeup is all that it takes to differentiate between bad and good.
If both are ruthless, while only one is openly so, both are still ruthless. If Caldari are bad for their unrequited efficiency in the boardroom, then the Gallente stand equal footing on the Senate floor.
I may be misrepresenting my opinion. When I mentioned everyone (that is, all four "Empires") having their shades of grey, I mean to say that all four are "bad". In their own, special little way. As Miz points out in his post - if not for the Amarr, the Minmatar would be a bad guy faction themselves, based on what they've been doing. When I call two bad guy factions and the other two good guy factions, I'm only talking about the veneer all four factions have. Without actually reading any of the PF beyond the descriptions you see at Chargen, a new player would be pretty convinced as to who's who in the alignment of good vs. evil.
New Eden being the grimdark space world that it is, it's only after you've invested the time reading that you find out there are no good guys here. No heroes or saviours to show our avatars a shining beacon of goodness and hope to follow. Some individual players might choose to be good guys and stick to their e-moral guns, some players might choose to try and be good guy reformers among the bad (Esna comes to mind, based on what I know of his long-past IC interactions with Zuzanna Alondra). Others, like Miz and I, choose to be on the villainous side of a "good" faction.
It's the shades of grey CCP's written into their worldbuilding that makes it so it's very difficult to really be "doinitrong". Like, you gotta go pretty far out of your way.
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Which of the factions one is going to categorize as 'good' and which as 'bad' is really a matter of perception/perspective. It depends on what catches ones eye and how it resonates with the hierachy in which one lines up the values one holds dear.
For example: I personally find that the Gallente are not more beningn because they hide their flaws so enthusiastically - rather that cultural dishonesty is something I find especially off-putting. On the other hand: Someone who IRL thinks that poor people bear the responisbility for being poor themselves won't have much of a problem with the Gallentean idea that 'poor people want to be poor' that lou points out, I guess.
So, while the categorization of the factions says something about our western cultural norms and how CCP characterized the factions (yah, there are tendencies there in relation to western standards - and they got more pronounced with EVE: Source, imho), it mostly says something about the person doing the characterization, imho.
Absolutely. The problem then becomes generalising personal perception that tries to colonise others (using real life discourses in an act of epistemic violence). EVE actually enables us to be someone else. What I love is when someone or a group creates meaningful content, something immersive, something that is organic and grounded in the world, something that does not make me think of real life discourses, but something that gives me the impression to stand on its own footing.
Maybe I should just delete my account here and go completely IC. No OOC anymore. I'll give it a thought.
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The Theocracy is an issue but merely a lesser one. It's the expansionist imperialism, thought police (heresy!) etc that are real scary. Well, oh yeah... and that tiny little thing where they turn people into belongings and can't see what's wrong with that. Having good sides (I'd argue against "for Purity" being one of them) does not make up for the faction being entirely and utterly a bad guy when there's something that horrifyingly wrong with them. There is no way to mitigate something as horrifying as that. Every "good side" sprinkled on top is like pissing in a black hole and hoping that'll turn it shining white somehow.
I don't see how it's different from other factions, which all have shocking negative sides if we really are going to speak with humanitarian virtues in mind.
The only thing I see is that you personally find the Amarr ones despicable OOCly, which is perfectly understandable but doesn't make a general fact.
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The only thing I see is that you personally find the Amarr ones despicable OOCly, which is perfectly understandable but doesn't make a general fact.
Are you trolling, Lyn? Because it really, really seems like you're implying these aspects of the Amarr Empire aren't objectively and decidedly bad. I mean, if the Amarr Empire were a real place, with the laws and policies they have, you would want to live in an expansionist imperial state complete with inquisitors and state- and religiously-sanctioned slavery?
The entire modern world finds these things despicable. You don't?
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The Theocracy is an issue but merely a lesser one.
This is definitely one of those subjective cases. I personally don't see theocracy making a nation any more evil than any other form of government; there's plenty of evil democracies in the world. Depending on the religion, a theocracy could potentially be better (in an ideal world, at least. Corruption happens everywhere).
It's the expansionist imperialism, thought police (heresy!) etc that are real scary.
Imperialism is a pretty common sin as nations go, though, and something Amarr doesn't do anymore due to international treaties. What makes Amarr's scary, and what I assume you were referring to, is that the religion can be interpreted to make violent conquest a divine mandate, which threatens the long term viability of those treaties. That's definitely scary, though something that can be changed at the cultural level and certainly was being changed by Heideran and Doriam. The lore afterall established that non-violent conversion is the preferred method by most everyone except the Sarum Family. So as far as imperialism goes I'd say this is a potentially dangerous aspect but not one that's very likely with the modern Pax Amarr.
I won't deny the thought police though. "Book of Emptiness" and EVE Source do however both describe an Amarr that tends to be rather lax about it unless it's something seriously dangerous to society, since Amarr can usually rely on "the deadening weight of cultural inertia" to counter most forms of deviancy. Even in the case of heresy, when it's not something seriously disruptive the Empire tends towards lighter punishments (as shown in "Book of Emptiness"). The most aggressive actions are against those groups that are actively working as a subversive element.
Well, oh yeah... and that tiny little thing where they turn people into belongings and can't see what's wrong with that. Having good sides (I'd argue against "for Purity" being one of them) does not make up for the faction being entirely and utterly a bad guy when there's something that horrifyingly wrong with them. There is no way to mitigate something as horrifying as that. Every "good side" sprinkled on top is like pissing in a black hole and hoping that'll turn it shining white somehow.
You have a very strong opinion on this. I am wondering (and this is an honest question), do you consider the same about RL societies that have employed slavery? (America definitely, as it was probably the most horrifying implementation of it, but would also need to consider nations like Rome, Greece, Ancient Egypt, Britain, China, Russia, and others, as well as Islamic states which retained slavery until just a few decades ago).
I may be misrepresenting my opinion. When I mentioned everyone (that is, all four "Empires") having their shades of grey, I mean to say that all four are "bad". In their own, special little way. As Miz points out in his post - if not for the Amarr, the Minmatar would be a bad guy faction themselves, based on what they've been doing. When I call two bad guy factions and the other two good guy factions, I'm only talking about the veneer all four factions have. Without actually reading any of the PF beyond the descriptions you see at Chargen, a new player would be pretty convinced as to who's who in the alignment of good vs. evil.
Definitely. I won't deny that I gravitated towards Amarr and Caldari originally because they both stood out at first as the dark factions. I still view Caldari as dark, there's very little about them that comes across positively to me, though my opinions on the other three have become more nuanced.
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(For example, Source's bit on Caldari absolutely brings it back to its neofascist underpinnings - even with the imagery. Which I personally appreciate, because perhaps it can help kill once and for all the Knights In Space version of Caldari that was so dominant for a while.)
I'm nt quite sure if it is bringing it back to 'neofascist underpinnings'. The PF I read back then allowed for many perspectives and resulting interpretations. And I think that was a good thing: it allowed for a realisic diversity in RP.
People will have different interpretations. I was always very frustrated with a lot of the past interpretations of Caldari and the State that ran amok. In my opinion, it is the least interpretable and variable of all of the factions but somehow got hijacked by RPers in a very nonsensical direction. Caldari have always had a strong neofascist (note the neo part - people somehow miss it a lot) feel to me. But others have disagreed with me. It is part of why I am spending very little time with Caldari RP recently.
The Caldari are not samurais, knights, or conservative small business owners. Being surrounded by Caldari RPers that have jumped on those bandwagons drives me crazy, so I have largely done the peaceable thing and moved on to other factions for myself instead of trying to ruin their fun.
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I most certainly apply it to real life nations that employed it, but there is a mitigating factor there in that they didn't have quite a few thousand years more of development and time to get to grips with such questions of ethics and morality. Every nation that actively engage in slavery goes beyond the pale. This includes human trafficking and in certain respects I'd even include the way certain penal systems are designed practically as for-profit slave labor. They are inexcusable failures of ethics and morality, no matter what society we're talking about and does overshadow any "good" sides. The Empire in Eve makes every real life example look positively saintly by comparison.
It definitely is an opinion I hold strongly and I'd seriously question the ethical and moral capacities of those who do not.
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everyone that rp's amarr has damaged ethical and moral capacities. you read it here first.
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The only thing I see is that you personally find the Amarr ones despicable OOCly, which is perfectly understandable but doesn't make a general fact.
Are you trolling, Lyn? Because it really, really seems like you're implying these aspects of the Amarr Empire aren't objectively and decidedly bad. I mean, if the Amarr Empire were a real place, with the laws and policies they have, you would want to live in an expansionist imperial state complete with inquisitors and state- and religiously-sanctioned slavery?
The entire modern world finds these things despicable. You don't?
I don't think Lyn means to troll: What he is saying, as I understand him, is that Amarr doesn't stand out that much more than the other factions, if you look at it:
First, thought police isn't so much athing in the Empire. No, really. It isn't: They are more concerned about orthopraxy than orthodoxy. You think God doesn't exist? Fine, as long as you keep it to yourself and go about your daily business as if he would exist. Actually, thought policing is something that happens more in societies where freedom of action is stressed. Of course you can do what you want, but you can't want what you want! EVE wise thought policing is, I think, much more common in the State and probably the Republic then the Empire. And prolly also in the Federation, where, at the end of the day, you aren't allowed to deviate from the ideas of 'freedom', 'plurality' and so on.
In regard to expansivist imperialism the federation is not at all a second to the Empire. The Gallente Federation is every bit as imperialist as the Amarr. They just wrap it in some nice gift package.
In the Gallente Federation wage slavery abounds. They might not be slaves on paper and ofc they are free to leave (and die)! But de facto economic necessities binds them to their employer as the slave to its master. Similar arrangements exist in the State, no doubt: The corp decides about your education, your position in life... they really own you for all intents and purposes. And in the Republic people are practically owned not by another person, but by their clan. Their fate is not in their hand, but oftentimes depends on the oracle of the voluval, up to people being expulsed from society or even killed not because of their actions, but simply because the voluval lottery assigned them with the wrong mark.
In all these cases there is no way to mitigate something as horrifying as that. Every "good side" sprinkled on top is like pissing in a black hole and hoping that'll turn it shining white somehow.
This isn'tonly true for the Amarr, but all four factions. The Amarr aren't the arch-evil of New Eden, that can't possibly been found in the other factions. Nor are they naturally and necessarily evil, while all other factions are only bad accidentally.
The important point Lyn makes is: "I don't see how it's different from other factions, which all have shocking negative sides if we really are going to speak with humanitarian virtues in mind."
I don't see how one could deny that point and I'm curious why one would, just to brand the Amarr as exceptionally evil.
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@Lou
Wonder who would say something as ridiculous as that? Didn't see it once in this thread.
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Oh, and about the Amarr aspect. It is considered evil by people for two reasons: slavery and the contemporary association of theocracy with people like ISIL or the Hollywood stereotypes about the RCC during the Inquisition and Crusades.
Slavery is a no-brainer and it always seems to get people going faster in science fiction because this is supposed to be the future - the notion that someone stayed that backwards for that long is rather horrifying to people (even Aristotle was aware of abolitionist arguments). I think someone above mentioned this aspect, but I am too lazy. But it is the only major element of any of the big four that can't be argued for in offline terms. You can make an argument for hedonism, censorship, tribalism, theocracy, corporate control, nationalism, surveillance, and every other potentially objectionable element of the four empires in EVE. But literal slavery no longer has any arguments in its favor in the offline world, so it makes Amarr de facto bad in many people's eyes.
Edit: as for my own personal opinion, I think the entire topic is not only pointless but nonsensical. Nation-states are not moral actors. To say that a nation is 'evil' or 'good' is a misuse of terms.
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it's what y'all are trying to imply, without breaking the forum rules and getting catacombed.
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But it is the only major element of any of the big four that can't be argued for in offline terms. You can make an argument for hedonism, censorship, tribalism, theocracy, corporate control, nationalism, surveillance, and every other potentially objectionable element of the four empires in EVE. But literal slavery no longer has any arguments in its favor in the offline world, so it makes Amarr de facto bad in many people's eyes.
There are real life arguments for slavery. In the 'civilized west' it's just not called slavery in those cases. It's not a point about arguments: It is bout emotion. Todays people are emotionally so against slavery, that they deny hearing arguments for it. Which isn't a bad thing: The bad thing is that they oftentimes don't notice that there is slavery under their noses, but just not called 'slavery'.
P.S.: And of veiling that leaving slavery behind wasn't a trivial thing and how great an achievement it is.
Edit: as for my own personal opinion, I think the entire topic is not only pointless but nonsensical. Nation-states are not moral actors. To say that a nation is 'evil' or 'good' is a misuse of terms.
I strongly agree! Not only that, it's going wildly through a jumble of 'nation-state', 'society' and 'the Amarr' (or any of the other three factions). None of these are moral actors, and to say they are 'evil' or 'good' is a misuse of terms, I agree.
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There are real life arguments for slavery. In the 'civilized west' it's just not called slavery in those cases. It's not a point about arguments: It is bout emotion. Todays people are emotionally so against slavery, that they deny hearing arguments for it. Which isn't a bad thing: The bad thing is that they oftentimes don't notice that there is slavery under their noses, but just not called 'slavery'.
I used the phrase 'literal slavery' intentionally. Issues like wage slavery, colonization, imperialism, cultural oppression, and other concepts that could be compared to slavery are a different topic. Literal slavery is quite distinct and no longer has arguments for it in the modern world.
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P.S.: And of veiling that leaving slavery behind wasn't a trivial thing and how great an achievement it is.
Oh, and I agree with this. Especially considering that it is still a thing, just not on the same scale. But the Russian mob absolutely has literal slaves.
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There are real life arguments for slavery. In the 'civilized west' it's just not called slavery in those cases. It's not a point about arguments: It is bout emotion. Todays people are emotionally so against slavery, that they deny hearing arguments for it. Which isn't a bad thing: The bad thing is that they oftentimes don't notice that there is slavery under their noses, but just not called 'slavery'.
I used the phrase 'literal slavery' intentionally. Issues like wage slavery, colonization, imperialism, cultural oppression, and other concepts that could be compared to slavery are a different topic. Literal slavery is quite distinct and no longer has arguments for it in the modern world.
I disagree: penal slavery has quite some proponents even in the western cultural hemisphere.
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it's what y'all are trying to imply, without breaking the forum rules and getting catacombed.
I'm really not implying anything of the sort. Now if someone came along and said they consider slavery (as practiced in Eve) to be a morally and ethically justifiable thing by real life standards, then I'd say flat out they are morally and ethically bankrupt, Catacombs or no. I highly doubt I'm an example of someone dancing on that line, given my near permanent residence down there. What someone chooses to RP in Eve does not reflect on their real life morals and standards, unless you think I'd be a-okay with murdering several hundred thousand people over a religious/political issue.
I used the phrase 'literal slavery' intentionally. Issues like wage slavery, colonization, imperialism, cultural oppression, and other concepts that could be compared to slavery are a different topic. Literal slavery is quite distinct and no longer has arguments for it in the modern world.
This exactly. They're just not comparable and even if they were they'd remain morally and ethically horrifying. Human trafficking. Flat out slavery as seen in Dubai etc. Cultural Oppression and so called "wage slavery" are all exceedingly bad things but they're still separate terms describing different things.
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Yes, slavery is bad. I don't see, though, how not keeping people slaves makes e.g. deciding their fate through voluval any better. And why slavery should be the be-all-end-all when deciding ethical and/or moral value. It just doesn't follow that a society (that a society isn't the proper subject to be predicated with moral categories aside) that allows for the practice of slavery is automatically more evil than a society that decides the fate of all its members by a lottery and forces them to live by that fate.
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I disagree: penal slavery has quite some proponents even in the western cultural hemisphere.
Those arguments are founded upon the idea that penal 'slavery' is not in fact slavery. That is entirely different than someone going 'yes, it is slavery but this is why it is okay..." which is what the Amarr do.
And as far as all of this making Amarr 'the most evil,' I agree that notion does not necessarily follow from what I am arguing (even after we ignore what we agreed upon earlier, that it is a misuse of terms). I am merely saying that it is the only faction that has a fundamental element of their society that is universally considered morally inexcusable. That doesn't mean that from a variety of perspectives the other societies may or may not blow it out of the water when they are compared - just that all of their elements hinge on perspective. The Amarr empire is the only one out of the four that has a fundamental element of itself that is considered a universal evil in contemporary society. That doesn't make it 'more evil' than the others, merely that it has an inarguably evil characteristic.
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The voluval has the mitigating factor that it's supposedly an actual representation of a type of person. An exile mark is a mark of a person that would be a threat or a significant detriment to society, after the voluval ritual read the person (through genetics, neurology, whatever. Who really knows?) and tagged him/her as such. Whether or not that'd actually work, who knows? If we could accurately identify and screen out murderers, sociopaths etc, we quite probably would. It's not a lottery, it's a screening. It's also hardly "forcing" anyone but the exiles, as everyone else are still entirely free to make their own choices.
I'm sorry but it really doesn't even come anywhere near slavery. Even worse, generational slavery.
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I disagree: penal slavery has quite some proponents even in the western cultural hemisphere.
Those arguments are founded upon the idea that penal 'slavery' is not in fact slavery. That is entirely different than someone going 'yes, it is slavery but this is why it is okay..." which is what the Amarr do.
As I said: there are those arguments, they just argue it's actually not 'slavery'...
And as far as all of this making Amarr 'the most evil,' I agree that notion does not necessarily follow from what I am arguing (even after we ignore what we agreed upon earlier, that it is a misuse of terms). I am merely saying that it is the only faction that has a fundamental element of their society that is universally considered morally inexcusable. That doesn't mean that from a variety of perspectives the other societies may or may not blow it out of the water when they are compared - just that all of their elements hinge on perspective. The Amarr empire is the only one out of the four that has a fundamental element of itself that is considered a universal evil in contemporary society. That doesn't make it 'more evil' than the others, merely that it has an inarguably evil characteristic.
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Yes: I see your point here. I don't think - as I already said - though, that this is a matter of argument (at least not in the restricted sense of argument that philosophy uses) but more a matter emotional and traditional factors. it is, I'd claim, in fact not the case that most people in western society are against slavery because they have been convinced by arguments to the position against slavery. Most people even think it absurd that one would have to give a rational argument against slavery: They consider it a brute fact that slavery is bad, they are raised and educated to find it abhorrent - few people question this default position.
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The voluval has the mitigating factor that it's supposedly an actual representation of a type of person. An exile mark is a mark of a person that would be a threat or a significant detriment to society, after the voluval ritual read the person (through genetics, neurology, whatever. Who really knows?) and tagged him/her as such. Whether or not that'd actually work, who knows? If we could accurately identify and screen out murderers, sociopaths etc, we quite probably would. It's not a lottery, it's a screening. It's also hardly "forcing" anyone but the exiles, as everyone else are still entirely free to make their own choices.
Wait, now. Even the Matari don't know how their supposed 'screening' works. For all intents and purposes, as much as anyone in New Eden knows, it could just as much be a lottery. That you go and accept - even more than accept: you buy into the justification that is given within the system of the voluval is quite, uh, disturbing to me.
Also, I hope really that you don't stand on the position that we should use screenings to pre-emptively convict people. In the society I live in people are convicted for actions and the best a screening could ever achieve is showing that there is more of a potential for someone to be a murderer or other criminal. I really hope you don't want to convict people for a higher than average potential to commit a crime! Sociopathy is a disorder, by the way. I hope you don't think that suffering from a disorder is incriminating as well? Also, if you read the voluval PF, you will see that by volouval usually certain careers are 'suggested' to people, certain positions are at the very least much more easier to reach, if you have the right voluval.
It's not like the Matari are a group of tribals not able to know better: Just as the Amarr they had several thousands of years to find out that sociopathy is a disorder and try to devise treatments, rather than simply using a 'screening' of which they don't know how it works, and expulse those people from society. And even if they knew how their screening worked and that would be no excuse, really.
I really can't seehow you are able to not only downplay how abhorrent a system is that is incriminating people before they actually comitted any criminal act, but even arguing that it is justified!
P.S.: Also,it doesn't really matter if the practice of the voluval is actually any better or worse a practice than slavery. The point is: It doesn't get any better a practice because one doesn't simultaneously practice slavery. How bad it is is independant of whether one also practices slavery or not. And in the end Lyn has it right: From a humanitarian viewpoint all four Factions in New eden are, in the end, not to be recommended as places for vacations, to put it mildly. They don't differ in that, really.
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As I said: there are those arguments, they just argue it's actually not 'slavery'...
That is my point. My point is the admission that one is conducting slavery and that it is not morally objectionable to do so. That is what makes the Amarr de facto 'evil' to people. It is not so much the fact that they are holding slaves, but that they blatantly call them slaves, admit they are slaves, and say this is morally justifiable. If they were involved in 'slave-like' activities but did not call it that, you would have all sorts of people arguing their case.
The very fact that people defend contemporary slave-like institutions by arguing it is not slavery reinforces my point - it has become a universal that slavery is objectionable. So those that partake in it do not refer to it as 'slavery' because even they admit that universal. The Amarr do refer to it as slavery and consider that to be justifiable. That is the difference.
Yes: I see your point here. I don't think - as I already said - though, that this is a matter of argument (at least not in the restricted sense of argument that philosophy uses) but more a matter emotional and traditional factors. it is, I'd claim, in fact not the case that most people in western society are against slavery because they have been convinced by arguments to the position against slavery. Most people even think it absurd that one would have to give a rational argument against slavery: They consider it a brute fact that slavery is bad, they are raised and educated to find it abhorrent - few people question this default position.
I agree. The majority of people could not make an argument against slavery that does not equate to 'because.' I agree with you. It has reached that level of universality, which is part of my point of why the Amarr are seen as they are by players. It has truly become a universal view in contemporary society.
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It is not so much the fact that they are holding slaves, but that they blatantly call them slaves, admit they are slaves, and say this is morally justifiable. If they were involved in 'slave-like' activities but did not call it that, you would have all sorts of people arguing their case.
The very fact that people defend contemporary slave-like institutions by arguing it is not slavery reinforces my point - it has become a universal that slavery is objectionable. So those that partake in it do not refer to it as 'slavery' because even they admit that universal. The Amarr do refer to it as slavery and consider that to be justifiable. That is the difference.
I#d argue that it's a sign of using the word 'slavery' becoming inacceptable. Not slavery itself... It is the label that people find inacceptable, not the practice. One more problem with emotionally motivated stances agains 'slavery'.
I agree. The majority of people could not make an argument against slavery that does not equate to 'because.' I agree with you. It has reached that level of universality, which is part of my point of why the Amarr are seen as they are by players. It has truly become a universal view in contemporary society.
I agree that as soon as 'slavery' is used in any context but as sexual kink, people go: Evil. The problem is, many people don't think even a second about what slavery is and how they would notice it, if not labeled as such. And even if people covertly arguing for certain forms of slavery are called out on it, they just respond with: "No, I'm not arguing for slavery, that would be evil to enslave people! No, I'm arguing for 'leasing prisoner work'. Hey, do you think criminals should not do something productive for society, but that society should pay up for them?"
It's not slavery per se that people are opposing, but the use of the label is unfashinable and not to be used. As if the thing we referr to by the word vanishes with the use of the word...
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Of course we don't use screening to convict people and nor would we. However, if we could with a high degree of certainty screen people for positive and negative attributes, we would use it quite close to how we already do things in real life. It's for all intents and purposes an aptitude test that shows what kind of person you are. If I could have one in my youth, I would have done it so fast you wouldn't even believe it. So many things I went for that I just wasn't suited for, other things I am extremely well suited for etc.
The extreme minority that are exiled (and are free to live their lives however they want after that, not enslaved or jailed) are most certainly a nasty mark in the "bad" category but there is just no comparing it to slavery. Even remotely. And you're quite right, there is really no need to formulate some formal argument against slavery at this point. It's that universally recognized as utterly bad.
It is in fact so bad that none of the other factions in Eve can compare in the "bad guy" contest, unless you count some of the pirate factions. Some of them.
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There is always the need to understand why you are against something. If you don't know why you are against it, you loose sight of what you are against. That people stopped to do so doesn't mean that there is no need. Just to make my position clear: I think that the position to be against anything without being able to give rational arguments for being against it, is always worse than being against it and being able to give rational arguments for why this is the right position. Else you open the door for all kinds of 'because we feel it to be bad' or 'because that is so' pseudo-arguments.
Also, as I added above: It's not about comaring one evial against the other. In fact I think there can a strong case be made that evils are not comparable quantitatively. Yet, to talk yourself into the idea that the three factions in EVE that are not the Amarr are any 'better', because they don't overtly practice slavery and have officialy no acceptance for it - well, that's quite weird.
it's amounting to say: It really doesn't matter how heineous the acts are that you commit - as long as it's not slavery, it's forgiveable.
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I agree that as soon as 'slavery' is used in any context but as sexual kink, people go: Evil. The problem is, many people don't think even a second about what slavery is and how they would notice it, if not labeled as such. And even if people covertly arguing for certain forms of slavery are called out on it, they just respond with: "No, I'm not arguing for slavery, that would be evil to enslave people! No, I'm arguing for 'leasing prisoner work'. Hey, do you think criminals should not do something productive for society, but that society should pay up for them?"
It's not slavery per se that people are opposing, but the use of the label is unfashinable and not to be used. As if the thing we referr to by the word vanishes with the use of the word...
We are largely agreeing at this point. I would just add the note that the instant response to the word due to the 'traditional/stereotypical' notion of slavery. Which is what the Amarr openly partake in.
At the end of the day (don't you just love that phrase? ^.^), whether it is considered universally objectionable only because of the term, the traditional concept of it, or some other reason - the fact is that it is considered universally objectionable in the terms and context that the Amarr empire performs it. So players will always consider that aspect of Amarr society de facto evil, and many take it further to implicate the entirety of the empire because, well, it is easy to do so.
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I have actually gone through the arguments time and time again, particularly after Eve. It's just not an argument I'm willing to start going over in this thread, yet again. The simple fact of the matter is that there are shades of grey in everything when it comes to Eve factions. None are white, some are darker than others and out of all the "bad" characteristics of each nation in Eve, the acceptance and even promotion of slavery in a supposedly developed culture is the worst of them. Add the theocracy (unique to the Empire), the thought police (shared to a lesser extent with others), imperialism etc etc and I'd say you can most certainly say the Empire are the worst of the four.
Particularly as slavery is the one characteristic used to "darken" a faction in Eve, that is wholly and entirely recognized as such in real life. The other "bad" characteristics would be subject to debate in many cases.
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At the end of the day (don't you just love that phrase? ^.^),
oh yes, I do! <3
whether it is considered universally objectionable only because of the term, the traditional concept of it, or some other reason - the fact is that it is considered universally objectionable in the terms and context that the Amarr empire performs it. So players will always consider that aspect of Amarr society de facto evil, and many take it further to implicate the entirety of the empire because, well, it is easy to do so.
I#d agree that it is how I expect people to react. Still, there is the hope that some people - and that even includes EVE-players would rather take the less easy road and see it as the critique of contemporary culture as which dystopian fiction can always be read and rather start to think about what slavery actually means and the implications for our 'modern' societies.
But maybe that is too much to expect. ;)
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The simple fact of the matter is that there are shades of grey in everything when it comes to Eve factions. None are white, some are darker than others and out of all the "bad" characteristics of each nation in Eve, the acceptance and even promotion of slavery in a supposedly developed culture is the worst of them. Add the theocracy (unique to the Empire), the thought police (shared to a lesser extent with others), imperialism etc etc and I'd say you can most certainly say the Empire are the worst of the four.
You say it's a 'simple fact'. The fact that not everyone is automatically agreeing with you is showing quite strongly, that it might be a fact, but not a simple fact. There are some people that are able to suspend the knee-jerk reaction we have been indoctrinated with and reflect on whether slavery really is 'simply the worst'. That might be morally not so great, but ethically - that is from the standpoint that reflects on whether our knee-jerk moral reactions are actually justified - it is most commendable. In the end there will be people who (hopefully) understand much better why slavery is to be opposed, why it is not a simple matter and the product of much hard work (which you disrepect and denigrate with your position that it is so simple a matter) that we hold this position nowadays, and how to identify and oppose slavery, even when not labeled as such. In the end that makes also for morally better prople. Not because they follow the moral imperatives to the letter, but because they strive to make thier morals better.
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Ahahaah, oh god did you really just start making judgments on real life moral superiority? Now that's a line even I wouldn't cross in here, unless the debate had gone to some really dark and scary places not suitable for Backstage.
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Still, there is the hope that some people - and that even includes EVE-players would rather take the less easy road and see it as the critique of contemporary culture as which dystopian fiction can always be read and rather start to think about what slavery actually means and the implications for our 'modern' societies.
But maybe that is too much to expect. ;)
Yes, perhaps it is. Though it is a long, thriving tradition of dystopian fiction. Gibson wasn't so much writing about the Sprawl as he was North America from 1975 to 1988.
That being said, CCP is not Gibson. But that doesn't mean the players can't pick up the opportunities we happen to have even if CCP wasn't intending to give them to us.
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Ahahaah, oh god did you really just start making judgments on real life moral superiority? Now that's a line even I wouldn't cross in here, unless the debate had gone to some really dark and scary places not suitable for Backstage.
No I didn't start: That started already with the claims that "Every nation that actively engage in slavery goes beyond the pale." and "...there is really no need to formulate some formal argument against slavery at this point. It's that universally recognized as utterly bad."
Yes, perhaps it is. Though it is a long, thriving tradition of dystopian fiction. Gibson wasn't so much writing about the Sprawl as he was North America from 1975 to 1988.
That being said, CCP is not Gibson. But that doesn't mean the players can't pick up the opportunities we happen to have even if CCP wasn't intending to give them to us.
Right! I will pick up on those opportunities, whether CCP intended them to be there or not, because they are intellectually so much more satisfying!
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Right! I will pick up on those opportunities, whether CCP intended them to be there or not, because they are intellectually so much more satisfying!
It also allows for more interesting arcs and so forth within roleplaying - or at the very least one's own character fiction.
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I most certainly apply it to real life nations that employed it, but there is a mitigating factor there in that they didn't have quite a few thousand years more of development and time to get to grips with such questions of ethics and morality. Every nation that actively engage in slavery goes beyond the pale. This includes human trafficking and in certain respects I'd even include the way certain penal systems are designed practically as for-profit slave labor. They are inexcusable failures of ethics and morality, no matter what society we're talking about and does overshadow any "good" sides. The Empire in Eve makes every real life example look positively saintly by comparison.
It definitely is an opinion I hold strongly and I'd seriously question the ethical and moral capacities of those who do not.
Of those who do not what ? Those that do not share the opinion that the nations that employed it didn't have quite a few thousands years of development and time to question its ethics ? Those that do not share the view that some penal systems are designed around it ? Those who do not share the opinion that it overshadows any good sides ? Those that do not share the view that the Amarr in Eve makes every real life example look positively saintly by comparison ?
1) Some of the RL nations that employed it lasted maybe as long as the Amarr Empire itself. Starting with Ancient Egypt. Even the Romans and Greece lasted centuries. And they didn't have time ? They actually had a few philosophers that questioned it.
Also, there still are plenty nations and cultures that are perfectly fine with the concept. Remove western commonly accepted belief that slavery is pure evil, and enforced by the West and the superpowers, and see what happens. Hell, it already happens with Daesh, and i'm pretty sure now that you mention Dubai and the likes, that would probably openly practice it if there was not again the West watching them in the first place. Same for China. And others.
2) Some penal systems ? Probably.
3) Trying to rank bad and good sides respectively and putting them on a scale from 1 to 10 or 100 is completely silly. One's good action doesn't negate a bad one, and vice versa. So a bad side overshadowing a good side ? It sounds completely silly. They are two separate things.
Here I could even be doing like you and question your own morals and ethics if you really think that. But it would be rather... arrogant. And definitely implying a moral superiority. And seriously flirting with ad hominem.
The only thing I see is that you personally find the Amarr ones despicable OOCly, which is perfectly understandable but doesn't make a general fact.
Are you trolling, Lyn? Because it really, really seems like you're implying these aspects of the Amarr Empire aren't objectively and decidedly bad. I mean, if the Amarr Empire were a real place, with the laws and policies they have, you would want to live in an expansionist imperial state complete with inquisitors and state- and religiously-sanctioned slavery?
The entire modern world finds these things despicable. You don't?
I'm only pointing at the fact that Miz seems to be obsessed by the Amarr negative sides while dismissing all the other equally negative ones of the other factions, and stating that as an obvious fact, which it isn't.
It is also quite obvious that Miz feelings on the matter are completely coloured by his own feelings, and it's not the first time on the matter. It doesn't bode well for any cool headed discussion.
The only thing I will say again, is that compared to our western humanitarian views, it's despicable and hardly imaginable at the scale the Amarr Empire practices it.
The same way that gallente pleasure hubs, brothels filled with pedophilia, children sweatshops, underground circuses, and other nasty things probably much, much horrible than the regulated slavery of the Amarr Empire, is atrocious. Ah, and let's not forget the Omega cities and all those pieces of humanity that are just categorically REMOVED or FORGOTTEN in every federal record because those no man's lands are so depraved and poor that they do as if they do not even exist.
The same way that Caldari base workers living in conditions barely better than any labor slave of the Amarr Empire, and i'm not even speaking about the disassociated and all the ones that got out of the system, that even hobos probably have better living conditions because hobos RL are at least not hunted down since they are still considered as HUMAN. Not even speaking about their thought police condoning CEOs and white collars that can sell your whole family if that's what they want, because it's the fucking mega that makes, writes, and applies the law, which means, your fucking employer. And that's supposed to be somehow better than Amarr slavery ?
Or the same way that Minmatar mutilate you for the only reason to get bad luck with your Voluval mark, are ready to kill millions of people just to achieve their goals and are overall depicted as an even more wicked version of South Africa.
(For example, Source's bit on Caldari absolutely brings it back to its neofascist underpinnings - even with the imagery. Which I personally appreciate, because perhaps it can help kill once and for all the Knights In Space version of Caldari that was so dominant for a while.)
I'm nt quite sure if it is bringing it back to 'neofascist underpinnings'. The PF I read back then allowed for many perspectives and resulting interpretations. And I think that was a good thing: it allowed for a realisic diversity in RP.
People will have different interpretations. I was always very frustrated with a lot of the past interpretations of Caldari and the State that ran amok. In my opinion, it is the least interpretable and variable of all of the factions but somehow got hijacked by RPers in a very nonsensical direction. Caldari have always had a strong neofascist (note the neo part - people somehow miss it a lot) feel to me. But others have disagreed with me. It is part of why I am spending very little time with Caldari RP recently.
The Caldari are not samurais, knights, or conservative small business owners. Being surrounded by Caldari RPers that have jumped on those bandwagons drives me crazy, so I have largely done the peaceable thing and moved on to other factions for myself instead of trying to ruin their fun.
+ 1.
It was quite different before TEA though. Caldari RP changed radically between the old generation and the new one. :/
The voluval has the mitigating factor that it's supposedly an actual representation of a type of person. An exile mark is a mark of a person that would be a threat or a significant detriment to society, after the voluval ritual read the person (through genetics, neurology, whatever. Who really knows?) and tagged him/her as such. Whether or not that'd actually work, who knows? If we could accurately identify and screen out murderers, sociopaths etc, we quite probably would. It's not a lottery, it's a screening. It's also hardly "forcing" anyone but the exiles, as everyone else are still entirely free to make their own choices.
I'm sorry but it really doesn't even come anywhere near slavery. Even worse, generational slavery.
Nobody proved that the Voluval is a real thing that works. It's purely a tradition.
So, if someday I decide that a certain colour of skin is indicative of the evilness or dangerousness or criminalness of a person, and that a whole tradition and customs emerge out of it, it's going to be a... "mitigating factor" ? Or that people with slanted eyes, harelip, and the likes are deviant and criminally potent people and that it just sleeps deep inside them ? Speaking about traditions that go way back to stone age by burning at the stake all the ones with pale eyes or whatever because they are obviously a manifestation of the devil... And then people cry that slavery is a sign of medieval societies ?
They are "free". Right. Free to get mutilated and sent to Vo'Shun, yeah, sure.
And ah, we are still comparing in a matter of scale, aren't we ? That the Amarr slavery is an institution covering billions of slaves, and not the Voluval few millions of unlucky losers ? But we haven't even spoken about the rest of them, right ? The rest of them that like the Amarr go through an institutional slavery willingly, perfectly knowing that their whole life will be decided by a huge farce of a lottery that nobody even knows how it works and what it really does ? If that's not slavery, I don't know what it is.
Ah, but the will and ideals behind the system are just and righteous, right ? They do that because they genuinely believe that their system works (even if they have no proof or clue as to if it works), and they are actually helping people and society as a whole ? And the Amarr do not ?
Ahahaah, oh god did you really just start making judgments on real life moral superiority? Now that's a line even I wouldn't cross in here, unless the debate had gone to some really dark and scary places not suitable for Backstage.
The moral superiority only comes to those who question and find the reasons why it is so rather than those who simply play sheep to their own upbringing and flailing their arms at how bad it is without even being able to explain it in the first place. You should have understood that if you read what Nico wrote.
Personally I know I did myself, and also know precisely why I despise slavery, either in its institutional form, or in all its veiled forms.
Also yes, you started it in the first place by questioning our moral and ethical capabilities, which also explains why we are responding that way now.
Ah now, my apologies for the caustic tone.
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everyone that rp's amarr has damaged ethical and moral capacities. you read it here first.
Then Blood Raider rp'ers must have none. ;)
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*snip*
(http://img.pandawhale.com/61100-thor-this-post-I-like-it-anoth-wq6Z.gif)
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I'll just leave this here.....
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ (http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/)
-No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
This of course is historically also one of the only declarations to ever pass through the United Nations with absolutely no objections and only 8 abstentions.
It is widely considered a landmark moment of success for the United Nations as it brought together a vast group of signatories from varying political climates to agreement.
Edit: In case you are wondering, the signatories at the time (which is much larger now) were:
Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia Belgium Bolivia Brazil Burma Canada Chile Republic of China Colombia Costa Rica Cuba Denmark Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Ethiopia France Greece Guatemala Haiti Iceland India Iran Iraq Lebanon Liberia Luxembourg Mexico Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Norway Pakistan Panama Paraguay Peru Philippines Siam Sweden Syria Turkey United Kingdom United States Uruguay Venezuela
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Shall I now list all the articles that are in direct opposition to the practice of volual? <,<
let us just take this one:
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
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You can list all the contradictions you want.
It doesn't change that fact that slavery is not reviled by "Western societies" alone.
The spirit of the document stands regardless of the nations who then choose to ignore it for their own sake. I also think you be hard pressed to find an average citizen who doesn't agree with the notions of article 9. Outside of the small minority who still espouse The Patriot Act.
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You can list all the contradictions you want.
It doesn't change that fact that slavery is not reviled by "Western societies" alone.
The spirit of the document stands regardless of the nations who then choose to ignore it for their own sake. I also think you be hard pressed to find an average citizen who doesn't agree with the notions of article 9. Outside of the small minority who still espouse The Patriot Act.
Of course you can add pretty much all the countries that suffered from the wrong end of western slavery too, which accounts for a good part of the world with colonies and all that.
And also the countries that agree on the principles just to avoid being pointed as morally dubious countries.
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Apparently thread has exploded.
I most certainly apply it to real life nations that employed it, but there is a mitigating factor there in that they didn't have quite a few thousand years more of development and time to get to grips with such questions of ethics and morality. Every nation that actively engage in slavery goes beyond the pale. This includes human trafficking and in certain respects I'd even include the way certain penal systems are designed practically as for-profit slave labor. They are inexcusable failures of ethics and morality, no matter what society we're talking about and does overshadow any "good" sides. The Empire in Eve makes every real life example look positively saintly by comparison.
It definitely is an opinion I hold strongly and I'd seriously question the ethical and moral capacities of those who do not.
I consider it a bit complicated because I can't personally see it in a binary capacity, as different people treat slaves differently. The big issue with it is that the person at the top has largely free reign over what they can do to the slave, and so ill treatment or positive treatment is variable. In the Empire you have examples of such horrible things as breeding facilities, vitoc, TCMCs, HEP, slave soldiers, and serious corporal punishment, while also having descriptions of slaves who are treated better and have more opportunities than commoners. The former is evil, but the latter is more complex an issue. In many cases RL slavery was a step up from absolute poverty or better; see the Mamluks where free Egyptians would sell themselves into slavery just to be a Mamluk because of how prestigious their positions were, and the Mamluks themselves took pride in their slave backgrounds. Things like that can make the issue a lot more complicated for me--is it still a bad thing if the slave has a better life in slavery than out? I think the answer to that can only ever subjective, since it is based on how much a person values independence. For me, I would not mind being owned by someone if I was treated well, but I certainly would mind if I was treated poorly. It is poor actions that I consider morally repugnant (and why I for example consider war and murder to be worse things than slavery. Sadly, unlike slavery these things still remain legitimate institutions in most societies). Slavery's worst issue, in my mind, is that it gives people of potential low moral character a position of unregulated power over others. In this it is not unique and I would point to Amarr's feudal structure as just as bad even if commoners are technically not slaves (assuming you don't define serfdom as slavery) as the structure gives Holders nearly as much power over them as they have over slaves. I expect commoners likely have it even worse off in many areas, due to lacking the social services that slaves get.
As far as making other examples "look saintly" goes, I'd again say that it's too variable to say. If you look at "The Lottery", you see something entirely unjustifiable and wholly evil. If you look at "Chained to the Sky", you see something almost equivalent to a free life. As a whole, I'd say that from what I've read I would consider American slavery by far the worst implementation of the institution, with Amarr comparing better with Islamic, Roman, or Greek due to the imposition of moral guidelines and granting of some basic rights and opportunities to the slave, which did not exist in the American system. Within EVE itself, Amarr are certainly the most moral of the slaver organizations, and if we start looking at other fictional universes we'll find almost all are far worse than Amarr (Tevinter in Dragon Age being one that pops to mind. An entire empire of Naupliuses).
Also, I really don't get where all these comparisons to voluvals are coming from? Or how people could consider them slavery? There's negative and positive aspects about the voluval ritual and it's something that could fill out a thread all on its own, but I wouldn't consider it a form of or valid comparison against slavery. They're two very different topics.
Just a random update on the original topic. After a lot of thinking, pondering, rereading of my old fiction, going through all of my accounts and looking at characters, creating some new character concepts, I realized there is really only one thing I have never done - taken my Minnie characters for a real ride and explored that faction. So I think that will be my solution for the time being - going to put Jace on ice once a few skills are completed, bring my Minnie out of mothballs and go that route. And also try to learn some of the aspects of EVE that I have never bothered to over the past seven years because I was too busy trading/hauling. The character itself is set perfectly for a dramatic change in his own story that will allow me to bring him back.
I'm excited.
*pushes Jace towards Havo and Miz*
They don't bite.
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Also, I really don't get where all these comparisons to voluvals are coming from? Or how people could consider them slavery? There's negative and positive aspects about the voluval ritual and it's something that could fill out a thread all on its own, but I wouldn't consider it a form of or valid comparison against slavery. They're two very different topics.
The entire point is not to compare the voluval ritual with slavery. The point is that they are in fact two different topics, that need to be evaluated independently: And the bad sides of the voluval aren't mitigated by the fact that Matari culture is comitted against slavery.
The thing many people here have a problem with is that Miz claimed that slavery has a special status in regard to 'evilness' that other evils don't share. Apparently he is espousing a standpoint by which you can somehow take the 'good things' that happen in a society as positive value and then substract the 'bad things' from that to get a result that determines whether a culture is 'good' or 'bad' by whether the result is positive or negative.
And - though the people objecting found that already absurd enough as an evil doesn't stop to be an evil because you have also a good (and because societies/nation states aren't the proper subjects to be predicated as 'good' or 'evil', as they aren't moral agents) - he topped that by claiming further that while you can count good against evil in all cases, you can't do so with slavery. Slavery is in his system like the big Veto: The second you practice it, all is done: You are evil, unforgivably so and whatever good you do looses all meaning and value.
So, the point in bringing up the voluval ritual is to make a case that even though the Minmatar are comitted against slavery (As far as it is regarding those they consider 'their people'. Matari culture has in general no problem with the Ealur being slaves or with the odd Amarr that found the way into slavery.) they are still capable of and do commit actions that are by all reasonable modern standards quite appaling, immoral, wrong, yes - even evil. It doesn't get any better or more forgiveable that Matari accept and do such things, just because they are opposed to slavery.
So the argument is: First, evil actions are evil actions, they shouldn't be done and they don't get justified or offset through doing good things. Second, even if one accepts - for the sake of argument - that bad actions can be offset by good actions in some way, then there still is no good reason to think that comitting slavery can't be compensated for by good actions and even less reason to think that comitting slavery somehow negates also, miraculously, the value of all the good things one has done.
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Wow you're good at inventing a lot of stuff people never said. I'm starting to recognize this as a pattern with you.
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Second, even if one accepts - for the sake of argument - that bad actions can be offset by good actions in some way, then there still is no good reason to think that comitting slavery can't be compensated for by good actions and even less reason to think that comitting slavery somehow negates also, miraculously, the value of all the good things one has done.
I feel obligated to post this:
(http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/74/a0/88/74a088d3004ef07a9d4c93d2e326e456.jpg)
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This was the last place on the internet I could avoid GoT. Dammit, anyway.
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This was the last place on the internet I could avoid GoT. Dammit, anyway.
Either you're blind as a bat or weren't looking hard enough. There's GoT references all over Backstage. :lol:
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This was the last place on the internet I could avoid GoT. Dammit, anyway.
Either you're blind as a bat or weren't looking hard enough. There's GoT references all over Backstage. :lol:
Let me keep my denial. Ssshhhh.
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You know nothing, Jace Snow.
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You know nothing, Jace Snow.
...
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Wow you're good at inventing a lot of stuff people never said. I'm starting to recognize this as a pattern with you.
Well, if you think that paraphrasing and interpreting what people say is 'inventing stuff people never said', then yes, I'm inventing stuff. Otherwise I of course might be good at inventing stuff people never said, but I don't see how this has a bearing on the debate at hand - and I will simply take it a s a compliment.
That said: Having communicated with people about this discussion outside of the bords I am quite sure I'm not the only one who understood what you wrote (with some deviation, sure) the way I described it above. So, I'm can't see where I supposedly could have invented stuff people said. If you feel like 'I invented stuff you never said', ascribing it to you, then I must have misinterpreted what you wrote here, for I can assure you at least that I didn't mean to misrepresent.
I feel saddened though, that your first reaction here is to blame me with making stuff up, rather than taking into consideration that there might be a misunderstanding. After all I tried to make clear that I was giving an account of how I understood your position by starting with "Apparently he is espousing a standpoint..."
So, if you can point out where you get the feeling that 'I made stuff up', we can maybe sort out the misunderstanding?
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It's 01.30 at night here so I'm not particularly interested in rewording seven pages of an argument, no. All I can recommend is reading the posts again and maybe take them as written. I know I haven't made any such claims in this thread so far, so that's pretty much the end of it as far as I'm concerned.
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All I can recommend is reading the posts again and maybe take them as written.
In fairness, that's very difficult to do conclusively. Words are often ambiguous, and more so when strung into sentences. Even more when into paragraphs etc. There's always a few different ways something can be taken, however carefully you phrase things.
Which is not to say deliberately misinterpreting an argument and arguing with that, instead of the argument at hand, doesn't actually happen (i.e strawman) - it's just ungenerous to assume they are doing this deliberately rather than genuinely misunderstanding the point you were trying to make.
I get this all the time, from both ends (um, so to speak :ugh:)
I get misinterpreted often, because generally, I'm more interested in exploring ideas and different points of view, so my method of expression starts off a bit...tentative and fractured, maybe. That view tends to harden when people (inevitably) misunderstand what I'm saying or where I'm coming from, as it forces me to clarify. (Or if I've had the same exchange more than once, which gives me time to solidify my thought process) Which is actually helpful, as it allows me to interrogate and understand better my own view point as I'm having it (if that makes sense).
(Which is also why a friend plays Devil's Advocate, which drives me to absolute distraction :evil:)
I also misinterpret what others say, as I'm trying to understand their points and arguments which are often contrary to how I think and see the world - i.e it's not a point of view that comes naturally to me, so it does not immediately make sense, as it does to them. So when I say something like "but if I've understood you correctly, you're saying this, and I disagree because this" I sometimes get hostile responses, as they believe I've deliberately misinterpreted them (because I'm responding to an argument they feel they haven't made), when I'm actually trying to understand what it is they are arguing.
It's largely, I think, a problem with the internet and text speech, where expression, tone and body language might clear up some of that ambiguity between meaning of words and add some kind of meta-textual meaning that we're entirely missing.
On-topic though (er, or where the topic has gone, anyways):
Amarr sux and Minmatar victor :P
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It's 01.30 at night here so I'm not particularly interested in rewording seven pages of an argument, no. All I can recommend is reading the posts again and maybe take them as written. I know I haven't made any such claims in this thread so far, so that's pretty much the end of it as far as I'm concerned.
First, I agree with Kala on the point that "Words are often ambiguous, and more so when strung into sentences. Even more when into paragraphs etc. There's always a few different ways something can be taken, however carefully you phrase things. "
Second, I never expected you to reword 7 pages of an argument at 1:30 am: A forum has the advantage of allowing you to respond when you have time. Also, I asked you to point out where you think I made things up you never said, ascribing them to you in that post that you criticized because I supposedly did so. That's not, at all, rephrasing 7 sides of argument. And lastly, if I take all your post in this thread and put them into a word document, then that's a bit less than three pages, with a good page of that being posts that have nothing to do with the argument we discuss here and quotes of others you made.
That said: I don't see where you have actually argued for your position, in fact you said that you wouldn't give an argument for your position in this thread:
I have actually gone through the arguments time and time again, particularly after Eve. It's just not an argument I'm willing to start going over in this thread, yet again.
So it seems to me that first you assure that there is an argument for your position, but you are neither willing to give it here, nor to link to where you have given it in another thread. And then you accuse me of attributing stuff to 'people' which they never said, without even being willing to point out where exactly I did so. This, to me, isn't the way how one does engage one another in dialogue: I hope you reconsider your position on the latter, at least.
But as you insisted, I went through what you wrote again and tried to see what you meant there. Just let me give the spots which I can hardly interprete any way that makes sense of the words and doesn't end up the way I outlined it above:
The interesting thing about the Republic to me is that they're only good guys by dint of getting abused and fucked over by worse bad guys (Empire/Federation).
So, I can't bring myself to understand this in any way that is not saying: The Minmatar are to be understood as 'good guys' because they have been the victims of even 'worse guys'. And I can't see the logic here that would make that argument valid, unless you implicate a premise of the type "something bad turns good, if you have something worse to compare it to" or "if you have someone comitting a bad action, that bad action stops to count if he turns up the victim of a worse action".
Well, oh yeah... and that tiny little thing where they turn people into belongings and can't see what's wrong with that. Having good sides (I'd argue against "for Purity" being one of them) does not make up for the faction being entirely and utterly a bad guy when there's something that horrifyingly wrong with them. There is no way to mitigate something as horrifying as that.
(bold emphasis by me)
Again, I have difficulty to interprete that any way that doesn't imply that the Amarr are the worst of the four factions because they a) practice slavery and b) slavery can't be compensated by anything good: Which also implies that the wrongs other factions commit must be mitigable, as else they would commit evils as bad as the Amarr, which would mean they ended up on the exact same spot on the god-evil spectrum as the Amarr.
Every "good side" sprinkled on top is like pissing in a black hole and hoping that'll turn it shining white somehow.
Now this is quite poetic language here, but taken in the context of what you previously wrote (see the quote above), it seems to me that you here liken slavery to a 'black hole' which is swallowing all 'good sides' a culture may have (the 'piss' in your analogy), meaning there is no hope to ever have any mitigating factors in regard to slavery.
Every nation that actively engage in slavery goes beyond the pale. This includes human trafficking and in certain respects I'd even include the way certain penal systems are designed practically as for-profit slave labor. They are inexcusable failures of ethics and morality, no matter what society we're talking about and does overshadow any "good" sides.
Again, I can't see how to interprete this any other way than saying that there isn't anything that can excuse slavery and that it is because of that that slavery is so much worse than other moral/ethical wrongs. Which implies that other moral wrongs must be excusable in some sense.
The voluval has the mitigating factor that it's supposedly an actual representation of a type of person. An exile mark is a mark of a person that would be a threat or a significant detriment to society, after the voluval ritual read the person (through genetics, neurology, whatever. Who really knows?) and tagged him/her as such. Whether or not that'd actually work, who knows? If we could accurately identify and screen out murderers, sociopaths etc, we quite probably would. It's not a lottery, it's a screening. It's also hardly "forcing" anyone but the exiles, as everyone else are still entirely free to make their own choices.
I can't see, by the best of my abilities, how you can not make a similar argument for slavery in the Empire. I merely have to change a few words to make that work:
Amarr slavery has the mitigating factor that it's supposedly an actual representation of a type of person (e.g. there are 'slaves by nature', just as the voluval assumes there are 'criminals by nature'). An enslaved person is a person that would be a threat or a significant detriment to society, after a comittee of experts examined the person or his/her culture (through genetics, neurology, sociology, theology, penal system, etc. pp.) and tagged him/her as such. Whether or not that'd actually work, who knows? If we could accurately identify and screen out murderers, sociopaths etc and put them in a position where they are productive members of society we quite probably would. It's not bad luck to end up as slaves, it's because slaves have habits that are detrimental to society and must be reeducated. It's also hardly "forcing" anyone but the slaves, as everyone else are still entirely free to make their own choices.
I think, by the way, both the argument you have given and I quoted above as well as the variant of it above actually fail to show that the wrongs comitted are in any way mitigated in each of the cases.
Anyway, it seems to show to me that you feel that the wrongs comitted by the Matari are mitigable, while for some reason - while one can give quite similar, if not the same arguments that can be brought to bear on exiling people to Vo'shun - Amarr slavery can't be mitigated or compensated for.
(...)there is really no need to formulate some formal argument against slavery at this point. It's that universally recognized as utterly bad.
It is in fact so bad that none of the other factions in Eve can compare in the "bad guy" contest, unless you count some of the pirate factions. Some of them.
So, I can't bring myself to read this any other way then saying that the Empire is 'simply utterly evil' because it practices slavery and that at that point anything else is better: No matter how bad the atrocities that are comitted actually are. The only irredeemable evil - it seems to me says that passage - is slavery.
Again: That is how I understood what you wrote there and though I say that I can't see any way of interpreting those passages any other way, I don't want to say that is is how you meant them (the latter being a precondition for a 'straw men' fallacy, by the way).
So, if you want to make a point that deviates largely from what I gave as interpretation of your words above, then it would be in fact helpful if you put some effeort into rephrasing your point or point out at which parts I got something wrong and why.
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The interesting thing about the Republic to me is that they're only good guys by dint of getting abused and fucked over by worse bad guys (Empire/Federation).
So, I can't bring myself to understand this in any way that is not saying: The Minmatar are to be understood as 'good guys' because they have been the victims of even 'worse guys'. And I can't see the logic here that would make that argument valid, unless you implicate a premise of the type "something bad turns good, if you have something worse to compare it to" or "if you have someone comitting a bad action, that bad action stops to count if he turns up the victim of a worse action".
As I interpret this, it's not saying 'Republic are good guys because they are fucked over by ostensibly worse bad guys'. It's saying, 'Republic are bad guys, but in people's minds they appear better because of being fucked over by ostensibly worse bad guys.' In other words, the victim here is still bad on their own merits, but because they are a victim to something else, something usually viewed as worse, people tend to put on the white knight hat and give them more sympathy than they would otherwise get.
AKA, underdog status. People tend to sympathize with the little guy, even if the little guy will bite you in the shin and pull your pants down when you don't give him what he wants.
I'd point to RL examples where governments will provide arms, funding, and aid to otherwise really awful groups because those groups are fighting something that is viewed as worse. See the Soviet union in WW2, the Cold War, or many situations in the Middle East. In these examples the groups getting the aid tend to get propped up in propaganda, the media, and in people's minds as the good guys because they're "our friends". These formerly "valued allies" then end up becoming hugely problematic once they get in power and people start wondering "wtf, weren't they the good guys?" when it was obvious that they never were. This is something that is coming across very clearly with the Republic's recent actions. Honestly I love the Republic arc for this reason. It's got that failed intervensionism angle going. Easy-to-control pro-intervener puppet government gets installed in the beginning, but gets overthrown by militant radicals who don't like the foreign influences. The people, by and large, support the radicals, because the puppet government was, well, a puppet government, too easily swayed by foreign interests, while the radicals promise national pride and progress as a strong, independent nation. These radicals don't care about previous relations, and will bite the hand of the original intervener just as much as anyone else if they get in their way, because the only thing that matters is the homeland.
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Mm. Rooting for the underdog is why I originally rolled Minmatar, as well as a punk aesthetic. Seemed cool as shit, quite frankly :D
Tear off the chains and stamp on the oppressors. STAMP, STAMP, STAMP.
WE WILL DEFEAT YOU WITH SHIPS MADE OF DUCT-TAPE, RUST AND BAKED BEAN TINS.
Granted, I'm at the shallower end of the rp pool >.>
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Thank you Samira for that elucidating pots. Okay, so the idea there might be that they just seem to be better, because they are the underdogs. Still, I have troubles with getting that together with the claim:
On a more serious note though, cases can be made for each of the empires to be good guys/bad guys (except for the Empire which is just flat out bads).
So, if I take that serious, the Matari must be better in some sense than the Amarr, else the Amarr wouldn't be the only ones of which one can make no case to be 'good guys'.
Also, I think the RL examples of politics supporting underdogs that are arguably bad people goes along the lines of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' and 'they may be bastard, but they are our basterads' then: 'Ahw, the poor underdogs'. Else there'd be much more support for third world countires that are underdogs and not doing that bad, actually.
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Thinking along these lines, I might have found an interpretation of Miz position as put into writing here, that is another than the understanding I had so far:
It'd be that people aren't open to arguments which are about the Amarr being in whatever respect 'good guys', because slavery is so widely accepted as reviling.
I'd have problems with that view as well, though: First it would mean that people are utterly closed to rational argument if they are convinced that something is really an evil thing. Second, it would mean that if bad/evil behavior is justified in a likewise irrational way, (like, for example, if people agreed with the seperation of a certain group of people in ghettoes or camps and even their extermination, because they are irrationally convinced that this group of people is so utterly evil,) then we couldn't possibly change that position.
Once we held a belief in a way that it wasn't anymore open to rational questioning, we would be stuck with it: For better or worse.
That, as well, would be quite the horrifying situation. Luckily, I don't see any reason that people, in the entirety, get so stuck on a position that they entirely close down to reasonable debate and rational discourse and arguments.
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Gonna step in here only because in seeing two things that just aren't sitting to we'll with me here.
First is the idea that people are somehow "closed" to rational debate when slavery is involved. This is simply untrue. The debate of slavery ended arguably before the American Civil war did. Calling it bad and walking away there, is closer to an act of simple time saving than it is being rationally closed minded. (Cold Blooded murder is bad, refusing to debate it's potential merits is not close mindedness, for example.)
The second issue I have is the incredibly slippery slope of comparing "calling Amarrian's bad," with the ghettoization and eventual mass elimination of Jewish people (Aka 'The Holocaust'.) Granted you didn't exactly name, names here but I think we'd all be kidding ourselves if we thought you were talking about something else.
Generally speaking though I' do have to agree with Stannis of this one (he being the true king and all.) Individual acts either good or bad should be judged individually. Tallying everything up is not only philosophically dangerous, but also nearly impossible.
In short.
Slavery = Bad
Amarrian's = People (capable of both good and bad but cannot completely represent inherently one or the other.)
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Also, I think the RL examples of politics supporting underdogs that are arguably bad people goes along the lines of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' and 'they may be bastard, but they are our basterads' then: 'Ahw, the poor underdogs'. Else there'd be much more support for third world countires that are underdogs and not doing that bad, actually.
That may be the case in the people at the top who know better. But for the common person? "Our bastards" becomes "our friends" becomes "the side of right and good and freedom."
[spoiler](http://sydwalker.info/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/ww2_propaganda_russian_freedom.jpg)[/spoiler]
In WW2 when the west was allied with the Soviet Union they were presented very highly in western propaganda. Roosevelt and Churchill encouraged positive depictions and refused to act on information that would have depicted the Soviets negatively (the Katyn massacre as one example (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre#Western_response)). The average person on the ally side believed the Soviet Union were good guys because they were fighting against the Nazis, and the governments made sure to encourage them to believe that.
I'm less up to speed on the Cold War stuff but as I understand it was a similar case in the American people believing that the non-communist governments supported by the US were better than the "evil" communist governments supported by the USSR, regardless of which was actually the more moral government.
First is the idea that people are somehow "closed" to rational debate when slavery is involved. This is simply untrue. The debate of slavery ended arguably before the American Civil war did. Calling it bad and walking away there, is closer to an act of simple time saving than it is being rationally closed minded. (Cold Blooded murder is bad, refusing to debate it's potential merits is not close mindedness, for example.)
The debate of slavery ended in the west around that time. It hadn't even started in the Middle East, and never really did until western pressuring in the 20th century. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_views_on_slavery#20th-century_suppression_and_prohibition)
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The debate of slavery ended in the west around that time. It hadn't even started in the Middle East, and never really did until western pressuring in the 20th century. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_views_on_slavery#20th-century_suppression_and_prohibition)
This is a bit of a misnomer Samira. While it's true the middle east was the last to get on board with the negative notion of slavery.
It is not on anyway because they had anything of merit to say on the subject.
They simply clung to archaic religious notions (like Islam's and the Caste System to name another) longer than than other parts of this world did.
This is partly due to the regions relative isolation to Western philosophy. Turkey being the only nation in the region to really interact and trade with Western discourses, and this is of course after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Which previously clung deeply to the notion of a Caliphate and the supremacy of the Muslim man.
It is of course also due to religious interpretation in the region, which is used to this very day across the globe to justify all sorts of manic acts.
TLDR: Using the last horse to the stall (The Middle East) as an example of contemporary debate around slavery. Isn't representative of the majority but rather the ethically slowest of us all.
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Gonna step in here only because in seeing two things that just aren't sitting to we'll with me here.
First is the idea that people are somehow "closed" to rational debate when slavery is involved. This is simply untrue. The debate of slavery ended arguably before the American Civil war did. Calling it bad and walking away there, is closer to an act of simple time saving than it is being rationally closed minded. (Cold Blooded murder is bad, refusing to debate it's potential merits is not close mindedness, for example.)
I would ageree with you there. In my opinion people that refuse to debate whether slavery can be justified and if so, in which forms, are not entirely closed to rational arguments, they usually simply safe time by choosing not to in certain, specific circumstances (with which I want to say: the don't debate it in everyday circumstances).
That is exactly why I think that from people acting like that it doesn't follow that there is no questioning possible of whether slavery is in fact bad. Mizhara seems to be pretty comitted to the view that one can't possibly question whether slavery is bad or not, that it is a 'simple matter of fact' that it is wrong and that you don't skip rational arguments about it because of time constraints, but rather because they are not needed.
I on the other hand would say that you don't need to debate all the time whether slavery is bad or not, exactly because there are rational/reasonable arguments against slavery.
The second issue I have is the incredibly slippery slope of comparing "calling Amarrian's bad," with the ghettoization and eventual mass elimination of Jewish people (Aka 'The Holocaust'.) Granted you didn't exactly name, names here but I think we'd all be kidding ourselves if we thought you were talking about something else.
That's not what I meant, there: What I meant is, if you don't allow for rational argument to be the thing that decides what to view as acceptable and what not, but say that if something is without rational argument viewed as acceptable or not and say that rational argument is unnecessary, then you have a strategy of justifing things as acceptable that immunizes it from rational critique and which then can be used to justify even things that are obviously evil to us -and arguably, by all reasonable standard should be.
It's not about comparing "Amarr are bad" to anything, it is about how any way of determining what is morally/ethically acceptable or unacceptable that is immune to being rationally questioned is a potential strategy to justify horrendous acts and immunize them from rational critique: And that therefore that we shouldn't employ such strategies at all.
Generally speaking though I' do have to agree with Stannis of this one (he being the true king and all.) Individual acts either good or bad should be judged individually. Tallying everything up is not only philosophically dangerous, but also nearly impossible.
That is the core of my point, trying to bring this to bear against the position of Mizhara, which seems to be one that allows for tallying up bad against good - unless it is about slavery, in which case the one practicing it is evil for all intents and purposes.
In short.
Slavery = Bad
Amarrian's = People (capable of both good and bad but cannot completely represent inherently one or the other.)
Exactly what I was trying to argue for!
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Some of us (me) would actually like to have slaves irl but we can't. So we play a game that lets us. Some of us (me and most people imo) would like to kill people irl but we can't. So we play a game that lets us.
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I would like to kill some people as well, at times. And there are people around of which my first impulse is to think that it'd be better for them and all others if someone else would be eligible to make all their decisions for them, at times.
That doesn't mean, though, that I succumb to those impulses: I have the ability to consider those matters reasonably and entertain rational arguments about such cases. I also have the ability of impulse control. If rational, reasoned argument can be made that murder is not to be done in any case and that under no circmstances is the autonomy of moral agents to be taken away from them, then we should control our impulses and do the (reasonably and rationally) right thing.
If playing such scenarios helps you with real life impulse control, though, that is all fine by me!
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Some of us (me) would actually like to have slaves irl but we can't. So we play a game that lets us. Some of us (me and most people imo) would like to kill people irl but we can't. So we play a game that lets us.
Thread delivers.......
/thread
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Some of us (me) would actually like to have slaves irl but we can't. So we play a game that lets us. Some of us (me and most people imo) would like to kill people irl but we can't. So we play a game that lets us.
Thread delivers.......
/thread
(http://i.imgur.com/FNLmmdC.jpg)
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It is of course also due to religious interpretation in the region, which is used to this very day across the globe to justify all sorts of manic acts.
The same can be said for extremists from any religion.
TLDR: Using the last horse to the stall (The Middle East) as an example of contemporary debate around slavery. Isn't representative of the majority but rather the ethically slowest of us all.
Considering the fact that Islam was far ahead of the west on several areas of human rights, including treatment of slaves, for a significant part of history, I wouldn't be so quick to call the Middle East the 'ethically slowest of us all' just because they abolished it later.
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It is of course also due to religious interpretation in the region, which is used to this very day across the globe to justify all sorts of manic acts.
The same can be said for extremists from many religions.
TLDR: Using the last horse to the stall (The Middle East) as an example of contemporary debate around slavery. Isn't representative of the majority but rather the ethically slowest of us all.
Considering the fact that Islam was far ahead of the west on several areas of human rights, including treatment of slaves, for a significant part of history, I wouldn't be so quick to call the Middle East the 'ethically slowest of us all' just because they abolished it later.
I'm sorry but I'm not quite convinced the Islamic Golden Age is a viable excuse to forgive years of ethical barbarism because they got it right for 100 years of the how many years they've been around for.
The point I made and the point that still stands is the Islam has not contributed anything of merit to the world in the discourse of ethic's in centuries.
Consider that fact of female genital mutilation for just a moment and then get back to me about the sagely wisdom bestowed upon us nearly a half millennium ago by the Islamic Golden Age. (Which did a lot more for mathematics than ethics BTW.)
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Luckily, I don't see any reason that people, in the entirety, get so stuck on a position that they entirely close down to reasonable debate and rational discourse and arguments.
You are an optimist one aren't you ?
Gonna step in here only because in seeing two things that just aren't sitting to we'll with me here.
First is the idea that people are somehow "closed" to rational debate when slavery is involved. This is simply untrue. The debate of slavery ended arguably before the American Civil war did. Calling it bad and walking away there, is closer to an act of simple time saving than it is being rationally closed minded. (Cold Blooded murder is bad, refusing to debate it's potential merits is not close mindedness, for example.)
I quite strongly disagree with that statement.
Cold murder, as cold murder between two civilians as I suppose you refer to, is not "bad" because bad (it doesn't mean anything at all ffs), but bad for most societies and civilizations for obvious reasons. However if you meant cold murder of some kind of people (enemy leaders ? Would you prefer that we hadn't assassinated Ben Laden for example ? Difficult question no ? Doesn't seem obvious to me as an answer), even the worst criminals, can be argued as a necessity or even good depending on the people arguing for it. I mean, look at all those nations that still practice the death sentence. That's cold murder, institutionalized. Let's call a cat a cat, it's legal cold murder. I personally don't agree with it, but i'm a minority in the world.
As for slavery, it can't even be described as necessarily bad for society per se. Just bad for our model of society, our values, and ideals that put a great emphasis on empathy and human rights. "All are born equal in rights yada yada". Dates back to 1789. Foundation of a lot of things in western culture.
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I'm bouncing out of this thread now.
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Luckily, I don't see any reason that people, in the entirety, get so stuck on a position that they entirely close down to reasonable debate and rational discourse and arguments.
You are an optimist one aren't you ?
Gonna step in here only because in seeing two things that just aren't sitting to we'll with me here.
First is the idea that people are somehow "closed" to rational debate when slavery is involved. This is simply untrue. The debate of slavery ended arguably before the American Civil war did. Calling it bad and walking away there, is closer to an act of simple time saving than it is being rationally closed minded. (Cold Blooded murder is bad, refusing to debate it's potential merits is not close mindedness, for example.)
I quite strongly disagree with that statement.
Cold murder, as cold murder between two civilians as I suppose you refer to, is not "bad" because bad (it doesn't mean anything at all ffs), but bad for most societies and civilizations for obvious reasons. However if you meant cold murder of some kind of people (enemy leaders ? Would you prefer that we hadn't assassinated Ben Laden for example ? Difficult question no ? Doesn't seem obvious to me as an answer), even the worst criminals, can be argued as a necessity or even good depending on the people arguing for it. I mean, look at all those nations that still practice the death sentence. That's cold murder, institutionalized. Let's call a cat a cat, it's legal cold murder. I personally don't agree with it, but i'm a minority in the world.
As for slavery, it can't even be described as necessarily bad for society per se. Just bad for our model of society, our values, and ideals that put a great emphasis on empathy and human rights. "All are born equal in rights yada yada". Dates back to 1789. Foundation of a lot of things in western culture.
You clearly don't understand what cold blooded murder is.
To murder in cold blood is to murder without reason. Without motive or cause. To simply murder. I. E. Walk up to a stranger and execute them on the very spot for absolutely zero reason. A senseless/thoughtless act in the very literal sense of the word.
In this sense. There is Zero ethical debate about cold blooded murder it is the antithesis of morality and the human condition. It is wrong.
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Huh ? Ok, we may not have the same definition in mind then, but I see where you are coming from. I simply understood it as killing someone calmly, without being under the guise of emotion, reasons or not to do it.
However you are only reacting like Miz and saying outright that it is wrong because it is. It doesn't make any sense and explains nothing and certainly not why it is.
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I'm only not explaining why randomly murdering people without cause is bad because I'm giving even here the benefit of the doubt that they understand this as a self-evident truth and not something that requires me to explain in length.
I can however explain it if you need me to. But I'd rather not have too cause ::lazy::
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I'm bouncing out of this thread now.
There are free seats in the observation lounge. I made the same decision somewhere around the fourth time this thread went bizarre beyond belief.
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You clearly don't understand what cold blooded murder is.
To murder in cold blood is to murder without reason. Without motive or cause. To simply murder. I. E. Walk up to a stranger and execute them on the very spot for absolutely zero reason. A senseless/thoughtless act in the very literal sense of the word.
Huh. I thought to murder in cold blood meant to do so calculatedly - hence the cold. Intentionally and without emotion.
As opposed to manslaughter or crimes of passion where you strike out due to rage or hate.
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Murder in the second degree is actually the "crime of passion" murder. Manslaughter is reserved for acts of accidental killing. Criminal negligence leading to death.
Murder one, aka murder in the first degree is murder with planning and intent. Planning being the critical component to a murder one charge.
Cold blooded murder on the other is a commonly misused term that isn't in fact used in at least Western legal justice systems (no one is charged with 'Cold blooded murder'. ) But it's original meaning is to murder without cause or motive.
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You clearly don't understand what cold blooded murder is.
To murder in cold blood is to murder without reason. Without motive or cause. To simply murder. I. E. Walk up to a stranger and execute them on the very spot for absolutely zero reason. A senseless/thoughtless act in the very literal sense of the word.
Huh. I thought to murder in cold blood meant to do so calculatedly - hence the cold. Intentionally and without emotion.
As opposed to manslaughter or crimes of passion where you strike out due to rage or hate.
Second-degree murder is ordinarily defined as: an unlawful, intentional killing that is not premeditated or planned, nor committed in a reasonable "heat of passion".
First-degree murder is usually defined as an unlawful killing that is both willful and premeditated, meaning that it was committed after planning or "lying in wait" for the victim.
That said, definitions of murder vary, especially in the technical context of law. Merriam-Webster says in regard to cold-blodded:
cold–blood·ed
adjective \ˈkōl(d)-ˈblə-dəd\
: showing no sympathy or mercy : done in a planned way without emotion
: based on facts : not affected by emotions
biology : having cold blood : having a body temperature that is similar to the temperature of the environment
Full Definition of COLD-BLOODED
1
a : done or acting without consideration, compunction, or clemency <cold–blooded murder>
(...)
'Consideration' here seems to mean 'a desire to avoid doing something that will make another person sad, upset, angry, etc.' in that context.
Murder seems to presuppose some minmal intent by definition and thus it is far from a totally random killing. Cold-blooded murder could be random in the sense that you had the intention to kill someone, while not intending to kill someone in specific, letting e.g. a diceroll decide who you kill. It is not the kind of killing where someone walks up to someone else and devoid of all reason kills that other person.
That it is unlawful killing is what distinguishes it from death sentence, which is lawful killing of a human. This is also why murder is by definition wrong - in the sense of 'wrong' as 'unlawful'. Of course one can't argue about that. What one can argue about is, though, if unlawful killing can be morally/ethically justifiable, though. There are a lot of arguments that say that e.g. tyrannicide can be considered justified morally and ethically, even though it is unlawful (most Tyrants outlaw the act of killing themselves).
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This is partly due to the regions relative isolation to Western philosophy. Turkey being the only nation in the region to really interact and trade with Western discourses, and this is of course after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
I just have to pipe in at this. The notion that the Islamic world was somehow backwards because it didn't have access to Western philosophy is way off base. Much of ancient philosophy was kept alive purely because of the Muslim world - and thinkers like Al-Farabi were developing similar foundations as the Western philosophers at the time. Those foundations did not disappear, but instead were continued and developed in a similar fashion to the West's - we just don't 'remember' them in the West because we are strictly taught our own tradition that developed out of Aquinas.
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This is partly due to the regions relative isolation to Western philosophy. Turkey being the only nation in the region to really interact and trade with Western discourses, and this is of course after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
I just have to pipe in at this. The notion that the Islamic world was somehow backwards because it didn't have access to Western philosophy is way off base. Much of ancient philosophy was kept alive purely because of the Muslim world - and thinkers like Al-Farabi were developing similar foundations as the Western philosophers at the time. Those foundations did not disappear, but instead were continued and developed in a similar fashion to the West's - we just don't 'remember' them in the West because we are strictly taught our own tradition that developed out of Aquinas.
Al-Farabi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Farabi#Philosophy)
Al-Farabi is a philospher of the Islamic Golden Age.
Al-Farabi argued that the ideal state was the city-state of Medina when it was governed by the prophet Muhammad as its head of state, as he was in direct communion with Allah whose law was revealed to him.
Sorry but Al-Farabi may have been renowned during his time. That time being the same time as Aristotle and Plato. But Western philosophy wasn't even a notion until the Renaissance period. Aquina's (who was born nearly 300 years after the death of Al-Farabi) wasn't even a part of the Renaissance period (14th Century, which is a whole century after Aquinas' death.)
So if you want to call Al-Farabi and Aquina's influential sure.
But Al-Farabi was not "Developing" similar foundations as Western Philosophers (Plato,and Aristotle both being Ancient Philosophers), and even if he did that work was immediately mired in an Islamic dark age that its still struggling to get out of.
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I wonder why hasn't anyone invited lawyers, sociologists and theologists into the thread. That would settle everything nicely.
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But Al-Farabi was not "Developing" similar foundations as Western Philosophers (Plato,and Aristotle both being Ancient Philosophers), and even if he did that work was immediately mired in an Islamic dark age that its still struggling to get out of.
Congratulations, you caught me misspeaking when the end of my paragraph clearly communicated what I meant - namely that Al-Farabi and others laid the foundation for a vibrant tradition of philosophy that easily rivals the West for much of history. We in the West ignore that tradition partly because it is not what informed our development.
You can dismiss Al-Farabi for being Muslim if you want, but you damn well dismiss the deified Greeks for considering women subhuman (literally) and defending slavery (when it was clear from their writings they were aware of the abolitionist movements of the time - yes, they have been around that long).
The Islamic world still contributes to an endless amount of disciplines to this day - including ethics, aesthetics, political theory, and countless others. We simply ignore them in the West because we like to say that a small minority of extremists are representative of the Islamic world. Sorry, ISIS is not Islam. It is unbelievably ignorant to claim that the Muslim world (as if that is somehow a homogenous thing that can be characterized as a whole) is still in some sort of dark ages or to claim that they have contributed virtually nothing to entire fields such as ethics.
Edit: Took out a phrase that was typed in very poor judgment.
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Al-Farabi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Farabi#Philosophy)
Al-Farabi is a philospher of the Islamic Golden Age.
Sorry but Al-Farabi may have been renowned during his time. That time being the same time as Aristotle and Plato. But Western philosophy wasn't even a notion until the Renaissance period. Aquina's (who was born nearly 300 years after the death of Al-Farabi) wasn't even a part of the Renaissance period (14th Century, which is a whole century after Aquinas' death.)
So if you want to call Al-Farabi and Aquina's influential sure.
But Al-Farabi was not "Developing" similar foundations as Western Philosophers (Plato,and Aristotle both being Ancient Philosophers), and even if he did that work was immediately mired in an Islamic dark age that its still struggling to get out of.
That is so blatantly false.
Western philosophy has a gapless history from its pre-Socratic beginning up to the present. Ancient philosophy is 'western' philosophy. And it most certainly didn't start with the Renaissance, that is simply being ignorant not only of the philosophers of classical and late antiquity, but also of the middle ages.
From Augustine, Boethius, Johannes Scotus Eriugena, Remigius of Auxerre, Anselm of Canterbury, Adelard of Bath, Bonaventure, Duns Scotus, Peter Auriol, the oft-quoted William of Ockham, Albert the Great, up to Thomas Aquinas all were decidedly western philosophers that are still read to day - some more some less - and only scratch on the surface of the many people that were bearing the torch of philosophy through the so-called 'dark times'.
What did start with the Renaissance period was early modern philosophy. To claim that only modern philosophy and as it's first instanciation the humanistic philosophy of the Renaissance was 'western philosophy' is amounting to falsification of history and can't be seen as anything but a misuse of terms, especially as there isn't even a radical break between early modern philosophy and the western philosophy of earlier times. To the contrary, renaissance philosophy explicity drew on earlier philosophy, especially Platonism, but also on the aristotelian tradition which had come to dominate in scholastic philosophy in the high middle ages. Beyond that the humanism of the Renaissance would not be thinkable without it drawing on the earlier humanism as developed by Islamic philosophers.
Al-Farabi's time (*872, †950) certainly wasn't the time of Plato ( 428/427, †348/347 BCE) and Aristotle (*384, †322 BCE). He living, thus, more than a millenium after the two great ancient greek philosophers and in relation to them he indeed was a contemporary of Aquinas.
Al-Farabi himself was educated in classical greek philosophy. We know that he studied the texts of the ancient greeks, especially Aristotle, who has long been of great influence in islamic philosophy, through the Baghdad school at which Al-Farabi learned and teached. He was a systematic rethinker of Hellenic philosophy.
That is to say that he was not developing similar foundations as the ancient greeks, but he was firmly standing on them as his foundation. Al'Farabi's thought by the way didn't get "immediately mired in an Islamic dark age", but rather continued to flourish on through the works of great philosophers as Avicenna, Al-Ghazali, Averroes, Ibn Gabirol, Maimonides and other and was carried on into the late centuries of the 2nd Millenium by numerous scholars in Safavid Persia as well as Ottoman Turkey and is a still living tradition, just as much as philosophy is in Europe and overseas in so called 'western' countries.
All those forming - together with other philosophers - a current in western philosophy that started even earlier, arguably with Al-Kindi - so called islamic philosophy or 'falsafa' (an arabization of greek 'philosophia') - which wasn't only practiced by muslims, by the way, but also Jews and Chirstians living within the cultural sphere of Islam.
Though there was a certain decline of philosophy after the 'Islamic Golden Age', especially in the more western parts of the islamic cultural sphere, in the eastern parts of it, especially Persia and India islamic philosophy didn't loose its dynamic and continued to flourish. Later on in the late 19th and early 20th century interest in the specifically islamic tradition of philosophy resurged with the Nahda movement and this interest continues to the present day.
As for islamic philosophy not contributing to ethical questions in the last 4 centuries:
As for sexism, the common law long denied married women any property rights or indeed legal personality apart from their husbands. When the British applied their law to Muslims in place of Shariah, as they did in some colonies, the result was to strip married women of the property that Islamic law had always granted them — hardly progress toward equality of the sexes. ("Why Shariah?" (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/magazine/16Shariah-t.html))
Evidently it was not through islamic thinking having nothing to contribute, but rather due to the ignorance of Westerners, that it did contribute little.
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Luckily, I don't see any reason that people, in the entirety, get so stuck on a position that they entirely close down to reasonable debate and rational discourse and arguments.
You are an optimist one aren't you ?
Not really:
But if you have a million people you always have a few dozen that question the status quo because they think it is cool to do so. And a handful of people questioning with intellectual honesty, because they want to find out if society is right.
Amongst the mass of human 'sheep' there are always some that are 'as wise as serpents' and amongst those some that are also 'as immaculate as doves'. Though, on the other end, there is a lot of 'cattle', in my opinion, for sure.
I wouldn't exactly call that optimism.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZlNNSjsELs
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*snip*
Alrighty, by the time I was this last night it was way to late to me to get thought to page and didn't want to reply in such a state. Now that I've got a good night sleep I think I can begin to at least tether something coherent together. First and foremost.
Western philosophy has a gapless history from its pre-Socratic beginning up to the present. Ancient philosophy is 'western' philosophy. And it most certainly didn't start with the Renaissance, that is simply being ignorant not only of the philosophers of classical and late antiquity, but also of the middle ages.
You are absolutely right. Forgive my narrowness is definition. An apology to -Guy who keeps changing his name- as well. I was thinking it terms of contemporary and modern Western Philosophic eras. (Pre-Socratic - Ancient - Medieval - Renaissance - Modern - Contemporary) Only because I thought we were arguing about Islamic Contributions POST Golden age.
Secondly;
Al-Farabi's time (*872, †950) certainly wasn't the time of Plato ( 428/427, †348/347 BCE) and Aristotle (*384, †322 BCE). He living, thus, more than a millenium after the two great ancient greek philosophers and in relation to them he indeed was a contemporary of Aquinas.
Absolutely right again. No excuses here except I think I was on the train home from work and completely forgot about the BCE time period. Seriously though. I went so red when I realized with I did here.
Okay now onto the actual points of contention here. Namely your "name dropping." Quite honestly some of the names you've used here as examples of philosophers where influenced are people who one could more easily be argued to be influenced by Plato, Aristotle, or Socrates.
By that I mean the influence is at a very foundational level. In the same way that a lot of Philosophers right upto to contemporary philosophy are still influenced these men. (To provide an example: The Wright brothers have and still to this day influence the field of aviation, in that they discovered the fundamentals of flying. Comparing the plane they used to fly over Kittyhawk and a modern day fighter however is a very different story.)
So let just go over these "names" you've used to highlighted. Actually before I do that I would also be prudent to point out that all of the philosophers you claim were influenced and carried the torch forward after Al-Farabi, lived and died all within the period of the Islamic Golden age, none making it to the end.
Avicenna (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicenna)
- Avicenna lived alongside Al-Farabi, and were actually considered opponenets of one another during their time
- That does not mean Avicenna wasn't deeply influenced by Al-Farabi however, especially in metaphysics.
Al-Ghazali (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ghazali)
-A deeply influential man in the work of Islam
- Also a man whos works ran completely contrary to Al-Farabi's. His first work The incoherence of Philosphers is a direct attack on Ancient Greek philosophy, Al-Farabi, and Avicenna.
- Indeed Al-Ghazali's rebuttal of Greek Philosophy was so strong he cemented his style and train of thought into the Islamic psyche for years to come.
Averroes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averroes)
- An Aristotelian Philosopher, that while deeply respected in the Muslim world was considered deeply controversial for his challenges again Al-Ghazali.
- A founder of Scholasticism he also rejected Al-Farabi's, and Avicenna's take on Greek philosophy as a whole, primarily by attempting to distinguish Aristotelian from Platonism.
Solomon Ibn Gabirol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_ibn_Gabirol)
- A Jewish Neoplatonic Philosopher who actually attempted bring Western philosophy back into the Orient.
Maimonides (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maimonides)
- Now this guy is most definitely heavily influenced by both Aristotle and Al-Farabi
- No real arguements here.
Basically my point is. These men are contemporaries who died at the closest one hundred years before the end of the Islamic Golden age. A point at which you openly admit the entire process ground to a halt.
Now lets think about the end of the Golden Age (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age) for a minute. Ending in the eleventh century, the twelfth century Renaissance (The one with Aquinas's in it) hasn't even begun yet.
We then have:
The Renaissance Era Philosophy Which includes: Bartolomé de las Casas, Desiderius Erasmus, Niccolò Machiavelli, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Nicolaus Copernicus, Michel de Montaigne, and Francis Bacon.
The 17th Century (Aka The Age of Reason) which includes: Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) Mir Damad (d. 1631) Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Mulla Sadra (1571–1640) Hugo Grotius (1583 -1645) Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) René Descartes (1596–1650) Thomas Browne (1605–82) John Milton (1608–1674) Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) John Locke (1632–1704) Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715) Isaac Newton (1642–1727) Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) Damaris Cudworth Masham (1659–1708) Mary Astell (1666–1731)
And I haven't even got to Kant yet.
The point is, all these names have to be put into perspective. Simply listing them off is deeply dishonest and doesn't paint a full picture.
Think about how deeply influential the men above have been on the philosophic world, and then look towards the Middle East during this time period. This is of course during the rule of the Ottoman empire, and the fall of Islam from its once prominent position on the globe.
......which wasn't only practiced by muslims, by the way, but also Jews and Chirstians living within the cultural sphere of Islam.
While we're on the Ottoman empire, lets talk about the position of Jews and Christians living among Muslims. Specifically the fact that they were considered second class citizen in entire legal sphere. The women often forcibly converted to Islam to be married off at a young age, and the men being given the scrap pickings of land title. During the formation of Turkey as a state they used to tax Christians and Jews, along with Armenians (We all know what happened to them...) and other Non-Muslims heavily, in an attempt to balance the wage differences and bring money back into the hands of Muslim's.
Shariah law was not an option in the Ottoman empire it co-existed with a secular legal system. The problem being anytime a Muslim was involved, Shariah took precedent.
Which brings me this:
As for islamic philosophy not contributing to ethical questions in the last 4 centuries:
As for sexism, the common law long denied married women any property rights or indeed legal personality apart from their husbands. When the British applied their law to Muslims in place of Shariah, as they did in some colonies, the result was to strip married women of the property that Islamic law had always granted them — hardly progress toward equality of the sexes. ("Why Shariah?" (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/magazine/16Shariah-t.html))
Evidently it was not through islamic thinking having nothing to contribute, but rather due to the ignorance of Westerners, that it did contribute little.
This has to be some of the most dubious cherry-picking I have seen to date when talking about Shariah law. Not only do you insult the Suffragettes and all contemporary modern female critics who fought long and hard for female recognition and equal rights in the eyes of the law, but you also mask Shariah a moderately contemporary justice system.
Shall I highlight the sections (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia#Criticism) of Sharia where a women is obliged to marry her rapist. How about Honour Killings? Or how about what happens if you criticize Mohammad? Or how about Apostasy?
Don't be ridiculous.
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Haven't we established that body mutilation and all those other things in the EVE universe is less evil than slavery... ?
.. ok, I'm trolling.
/puts herself in the corner for a time out.
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As usual, a Western media-induced perception of Sharia law only focuses on a very specific interpretation of it. Akin to only seeing certain Biblical principles through the eyes of the Westboro Baptist Church, Dominionist Christian theologians, or other extremists. Sharia law is not conceived of or interpreted in one specific way throughout the entirety of the Muslim world - which is the underlying problem with approaches such as yours. It declares the Muslim majority world a homogenous entity that can be characterized in one specific way: akin to the Taliban or ISIS. The vast majority of Muslims despise those entities just as much as the West, but they are ignored by the West because it is easier to spread fear and hate about all Muslims than it is to educate oneself about the Muslim majority world.
I think this will be my last contribution to the thread, though. I'm not paid to educate people on forums and I don't trust myself to continue much further without getting upset.
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As usual, a Western media-induced perception of Sharia law only focuses on a very specific interpretation of it. Akin to only seeing certain Biblical principles through the eyes of the Westboro Baptist Church, Dominionist Christian theologians, or other extremists. Sharia law is not conceived of or interpreted in one specific way throughout the entirety of the Muslim world - which is the underlying problem with approaches such as yours. It declares the Muslim majority world a homogenous entity that can be characterized in one specific way: akin to the Taliban or ISIS. The vast majority of Muslims despise those entities just as much as the West, but they are ignored by the West because it is easier to spread fear and hate about all Muslims than it is to educate oneself about the Muslim majority world.
I think this will be my last contribution to the thread, though. I'm not paid to educate people on forums and I don't trust myself to continue much further without getting upset.
This is simply not true. You are trying to brush legitimate criticism under the blanket of Islamophobia. '
The criticism I just highlighted are current laws in countries like Saudi-Arabia and Afghanistan. Stop attempting to veil legitimate criticism as simple western ignorance its simply not true.
Current Countries that use Sharia Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_of_sharia_law_by_country)
-Please feel free to look at the ones in Purple that still use Sharia Law in its totality as the all encompassing system of Justice it was originally designed to be.
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I think I lost the track of what people were trying to demonstrate in the first place.
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I think so have they.
Refer to OPost for reference.
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I think I lost the track of what people were trying to demonstrate in the first place.
Amarr Empire is bad guy faction.
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I think I lost the track of what people were trying to demonstrate in the first place.
Amarr Empire is bad guy faction.
which guess what
Thats a topic derailment that's leading into horrifically OOC RL inflammatory topics.
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Just a few point: The list of names - if we start with Al-Kindi (*801) and look up to Maimonides (†1200) we look at a time span of 400 years. So, if you let the Islamic Golden age end in the 11th century at least the later ones I cited were active after the 'decline'. Point is: The Islamic Golden Age wasn't a mayfly. It didn't stop with Al-Farabi's death in 951! There were still - if you count the 12th century as belonging to the Golden Age, for which there are good reasons - 250 years of quite busy activity in the whole islamic cultural sphere. And as people didn't live up to 400 years back then, strictly speaking they all weren't contemporaries. At all.
That most of the people I named took up the works of the greeks as their foundation is true: It makes my point that Islamic philosophy is a branch of western philosophy. Hell, even Wikipedida does list Islamic Philosophy under 'Western Philosophy'. (Not that this means much.)
I don't say that all was nice and cozy, but: Even Al-Ghazali with his fundamental critique is firmly sitting within western philosophical tradition and it's practice of rational criticism. His entire tretise is a reaction to philosophers. He is, shortly speaking, not thinkable without the ones he reacts to, he plays the same game. I mean, it's not like we don't count the Sceptics as western philosophers, because they were... uh critically questioning others before and contemporary with them.
Also: If you ask "is there anything x was able to contribute", then you are allowed to cherry pick. After all the question is "What are the cherries we should've picked there?". Your claim is, there weren't any cherries to pick, when in fact, they were there. It's after all not about whether one should accept shariah in general, but whteher there were lement in islamic ethics which we should have taken over. And yes: We should have seen taken from them the idea that women can own property, instead of only accepting that idea after women had to fight for it.
lastly, as to the influence of islamic humanis and Renaissance philosophy I refer to books like "Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance" (George Saliba, 2007) focusing on the impulses the Renaissance got from the near east in regard to natural science and articles like "Scholasticism and Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West"
(George Makdisi, 1989), elucidating the relationship of Renaissance Humanism to mediaeval Scholasticism as well as the relation to the corrspoding movements in the islamic sphere, showing convincingly that Renaissance Humanism drew on Islamic ideas.
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* looks at thread title*
*looks at preceding pages*
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There seems to be an extreme lack of moderation in this topic.
Good job to all those that participated in the derailment. Was fun to read all around. Looking forward to the next derailment! :D
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(http://38.media.tumblr.com/f245835937b51797f83131639bba25ce/tumblr_mhf1scka6f1s4wlbio1_400.gif)
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This will be solved. I had enough.
Yah. I whistleblew cause people aren't paying attention.
Come at me bro. I'll be in VFK. :P
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(http://www.chicagonow.com/the-blue-streak/files/2013/07/tumblr_m8l60jLcij1ra5p9wo1_500.gif)
[mod]A number of rule violations in here, by a wide range of participants. Rules 3 (and 3b) and 11 in particular. There may be some warnings of various levels of officialness going around later.[/mod]