Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Lyn Farel]

Tbh it's maybe more about japaneophytes than true japanophiles. I'm not an expert in "Japan" of course but I have come to learn about it and appreciate various things, either its current society or its past, its culture, etc, and most of it does sound rather contradictory with Caldari culture, except maybe the Musashi bit about self sacrifice, then translated into corporate Japan and corporate self sacrifice we know these days.

But if we are to take a few specific bits of a RP culture that fit to an eve fictional culture without considering the 90% remaining that do not, then I can find similarities between feudal Japan and the Amarr Empire, or whatever... It's not really hard to find cumbersome/forced analogies, it's harder to find truly fitting analogies...

Since day 1 when I started Eve, the omnipresent analogies between Japan and the Caldari made me sigh a lot.

[V. Gesakaarin]

Well to the topic at hand, wouldn't the Caldari treat the Disassociated/non-citizen/underclass in a typically Caldari fashion and not because they're space samurai whose code of ethics, morality, and justice is derived from romantic notions of bushido?

The reason I think the Disassociated are treated poorly are because of the first Caldari-Gallente war and the underlying notions of contributing to a greater good in the State. I'm not even sure what's so grimdark about a culture that values sacrifice and the greater good vilifying/persecuting those people within its society that are deemed as, "Non-contributors" or burdens upon it. It's not about right or wrong, good or evil, it's about the Caldari perspective and how they rationalize and justify their treatment of others in the State that are seen not to fit in.

[Makoto Priano]

“Like Third Reich Germans mixed with Japanese industrialists and straightforward Finnish machinists,” Harðarson attempts to clarify, without success.

That's the line I first think of. Surely, it does mention Finnish, German, and Japanese elements all; but the Japanese element is industrial, which implies zaibatsu.

And then of course there's the Teamaker Ceremony, which both combines tea making with ritual suicide, which is a rather rare practice. Or that the Deteaas made bamboo flutes, a minor detail. Or that ostracism and honor is an important element to Caldari culture, though those practices are by no means exclusive.

I mean, those are all easy little details? But really, the salaryman and the zaibatsu are the two easiest short-hands for describing the structure of Caldari business. So. Sure, we can absolutely find economic practices of a similar form elsewhere-- but if we attempt to excise the zaibatsu, how exactly do we get Harðarson's Japanese industrial influence on the same level as the WW2 German and the Finnish?

[Vic Van Meter]

“Like Third Reich Germans mixed with Japanese industrialists and straightforward Finnish machinists,” Harðarson attempts to clarify, without success.

That's the line I first think of. Surely, it does mention Finnish, German, and Japanese elements all; but the Japanese element is industrial, which implies zaibatsu.

And then of course there's the Teamaker Ceremony, which both combines tea making with ritual suicide, which is a rather rare practice. Or that the Deteaas made bamboo flutes, a minor detail. Or that ostracism and honor is an important element to Caldari culture, though those practices are by no means exclusive.

I mean, those are all easy little details? But really, the salaryman and the zaibatsu are the two easiest short-hands for describing the structure of Caldari business. So. Sure, we can absolutely find economic practices of a similar form elsewhere-- but if we attempt to excise the zaibatsu, how exactly do we get Harðarson's Japanese industrial influence on the same level as the WW2 German and the Finnish?

Honestly, the first thing I thought of when someone described the Caldari was the Industrial Revolution, that period where people were working ridiculous hours at gut-crushing rates and were totally dependent on their corporations for food, shelter, and clothing.  But they weren't slaves, of course, that would have been uncivilized.  Those people could have quit whenever they wanted.  And starved, and had no chance at income, and been blacklisted if they wanted better rights.  So maybe the Disassociated are sort of the blacklisted former employees of that era?  For good or ill, people who had been deemed unsuitable to work with others.

I always remembered the factory scenes from Metropolis, especially.

[V. Gesakaarin]

That's the line I first think of. Surely, it does mention Finnish, German, and Japanese elements all; but the Japanese element is industrial, which implies zaibatsu.

And then of course there's the Teamaker Ceremony, which both combines tea making with ritual suicide, which is a rather rare practice. Or that the Deteaas made bamboo flutes, a minor detail. Or that ostracism and honor is an important element to Caldari culture, though those practices are by no means exclusive.

I mean, those are all easy little details? But really, the salaryman and the zaibatsu are the two easiest short-hands for describing the structure of Caldari business. So. Sure, we can absolutely find economic practices of a similar form elsewhere-- but if we attempt to excise the zaibatsu, how exactly do we get Harðarson's Japanese industrial influence on the same level as the WW2 German and the Finnish?

"Harðarson attempts to clarify, without success."

Can you describe the entire history, culture, breadth and scope of any human society in just a single sentence? If you want to take those words as gospel, feel free, I take them as someone forced to try and elaborate upon a complex society and convey it with terminology designed to convey a general sense and feeling due to the brevity of the commentary.

The thing is the history of the Caldari State and the Caldari themselves are already available. The Caldari corporation didn't come to being out of German, Japanese or Finnish history, it came out of Caldari history. If we're talking about that history then I'd say the major points regarding Caldari corporatism are:

- Martial and feudal cultural values present during its industrial era which is described as being riven with internecine conflict by Warlords between each other just prior to contact with the Gallente.

- Post Cultural Deliverance Society Caldari where the social and political power of the Warlords is broken or at least diminished. The corporate model may have been where that power shifted, hell those same Warlords could have just incorporated their holdings and changed their titles to Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

- Discovery of the VH-451 stargate and the expansion outwards from Caldari Prime to form new colonies. The nascent Megacorporations were probably best positioned to have the capital and industrial assets to begin exploration and colonization outwards. Attitudes of self-reliance and self-sufficiency among the Caldari could have developed among those colonies as they were founded and grew.

- Caldari colonies and the Megacorporations that founded them become very closely tied together. Frictions develop with the Gallente who don't understand why the Caldari are identifying and giving their loyalties to the corporations they work for in the colonies and not creating democratic and liberal polities.

- Friction escalates between the Gallente and Caldari when the Federation's attempts to break the power of the Megacorporations is perceived as an infringement upon Caldari colonial rights and their independence since over the centuries prior they have become so intertwined politically, socially, and economically.

- Corporate loyalty and Caldari nationalism leads down the path to secession and the first Gallente-Caldari war.

I mean that's just a few points to me as to the history of the Caldari corporation to work on, why do I need to borrow from Japanese zaibatsus?

[Makoto Priano]

Of course building a complete and convincing history independent of actual history is desirable in some regards; it gives greater creative freedom. At the same time, writers often tend to get, well, interesting ideas about probable paths of development, and go wild with harebrained notions that are overly simplistic or shaded by their own biases. Consider TonyG's reading of Caldari culture vs. the prior lore for an example.

In this case, drawing from a reasonable real-world relation (German militant nationalism; Finnish efficiency and hardiness (an entire division of salvaged Soviet gear? wha? Winter War? wha? Jesus! Well done, Finns!); the Japanese zaibatsu) gives an effective way of providing a sketch of the analogous structures, but is deficient in that it is likely to break down under intense scrutiny, as we hold stereotypes of real-world structures against fictional structures described by a myriad of individuals. This is to be expected. Hell, even your list of influences could be short-handed as the Warring States period, the opening of Japan due to outside intervention, the Meiji Restoration, leading to Japanese imperialism in the interwar period-- but, of course, it breaks down under scrutiny.

And this is where RP, player fiction and prime fiction come in. We flesh out the world, we try to reconcile the contradictions in the material or in the shorthands we operate with, but prime fiction is the closest we have to actual knowledge of the world. We can't contradict it-- well, we can, but it sort of defeats the purpose of roleplaying in EVE Online. The issue with PF is always knowing the intent of the writer; we can only infer from the text, and go from there.

Fortunately, Harðarson is one of CCP's founders, and is a creative director. While a single sentence isn't enough to draw much actual information from, it is absolutely enough to inform our reading of prime fiction.

[Ayallah]

The disassociated make perfect sense to me both as a place to throw criminals and a tax write off to support the substance of.  Additionally, come get tested ever year, Ishukone requires a Index score of 167, maybe your son can rise to become a forklift driver with a megacorp then later, ruler of the State

[Katrina Oniseki]

[18:59:10] Katrina Oniseki > I once came across the personal logs of a SuVee prospector. He happened upon a small temperate planet rich in minerals and indigenous populations still in the early Iron Ages.
[19:00:04] Katrina Oniseki > Civilizations on the only inhabited continent had suffered countless cycles of war and strife, forever fighting each other and believing their own existance to be the greater, to be the more worthwhile.
[19:00:22] Katrina Oniseki > Completely oblivious to the greater happenings of the cluster above them.
[19:01:16] Katrina Oniseki > For so many years they thought they were alone, that their hated neighbors on that pitiful landmass were the only others. They thought their own wars, where thousands died in cold blood, were so important.
[19:01:57] Katrina Oniseki > I cannot fathom their shock when SuVee arrived to forcibly displace them for the significant mineral desposits found there.
[19:02:41] Katrina Oniseki > Great otherworldly ships hanging in the sky. Men covered in metal, speaking strange languages. Sticks that spit fire. The end of their society.

[Jace]

Regarding the disassociated, I've always assumed very few of them actually live in central State locations - and the ones that do would probably work for non-Caldari corporations alongside expatriates.

Because Caldari authorities do not consider non-entities to have any rights or protections, they will displace or otherwise eradicate communities deemed to be a threat to the order. Some of the Practical-leaning corporations may employ non-entities on a very minute wage in industries that are illegal or otherwise questionable.

The note that they may be employed for "questionable" industries implies they are not widely employed as a whole.