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[Makkal]

Broken off from the Caldari thread that was broken off from the Alignment thread.

When characters criticize the Federation, they sometimes bring up the execution of Anvent Eturrer. The Gallente make a public spectacle of the event; he's dies when a crowd of millions scream at him, causing a machine to inject him with some chemical that sets him aflame as cameras roll and transmit the image to billions of people.

This is horrifying to our sensibilities and many Federation PCs express apologetic or disgusted reactions to the event when it's brought up. Yet the suggestion in the chronicle is that Gallente culture views this as fine and just.

I think there are a number of reasons for that, and they point to interesting and important parts of the Gallente viewpoint.

1. The Private Sphere is Not Inherently Valued - The idea that people have a right to privacy is based on the concept of the private sphere being a place of respect. When someone dies and a family lawyer asks the press to respect their privacy, we're dealing with a cultural ideal of the home as a sanctum. In some cultures, the hearth has literally been a sacred place set apart from daily life the same way a temple is set apart.

If you remove that mindset, the bubble collapses and things happen that are offensive to our sensibilities.  Public executions imply a certain loss of dignity - making a spectacle of it disrespects something fundamental to all humans.

But if you don't buy into the worth of the private sphere, as something sacred or special, someone dying as billions watch doesn't infringe on human dignity.

2. The Mob is Beautiful - Mobs tend to be viewed negatively for paradoxical reasons. Firstly, a mob lacks centralized control. It's a creature of emotion and chaos. As such, it's dangerous if you want an ordered, organized society. At the same time, the people in the mob have given up control on some level. They've surrendered themselves to the group and tends to be looked down on as it clashes with western philosophy's idealization of the individual.

I suspect in the Federation, a mob as seen as almost idealized form of human interactions. A bunch of individuals become swept up in their emotions and act without worry or restraint.

What do you think? Am I overstating the importance of the chronicle? Am I misinterpreting its meaning?

[BloodBird]

You over-analyse, I feel. In short, the execution of Eturrer was met with mixed levels of criticism and a good deal of approval.

This is because the most idealistic in the Federation's population rightly feel that they were all above that level, better than enjoying a public execution, no matter who it was. The rest felt justified and a sense of karmic retribution was had - after all he betrayed the Union itself and the Union, far as people seem to believe (at least I got that impression from PF) IS THE PEOPLE. He stabbed down everyone, for his own gain, and sold them out to their self-declared enemies. So they all had a hand in lighting him on fire and watching him die. It's a tad hard to get more eye-for-an-eye than that.

I also feel that much of the flak the Fed got for this, whoever it was from, was a good 50/50 mix of IC opportunism and OOC bias - there are so many characters out there who detest the Fed and would waste NO CHANCE WHATSOEVER to smear them, and making a crying face over the Eturrer execution is easy enough to do, even if the ones making the sad faces are Angels, Guristas, Sansha's and more and frankly have no grounds to speak on such matters. They will anyway, because that's how characters, just like humans, work.

The OOC bias comes from the OOC shock of "wait did the Fed just burn him alive on stage? That's barbaric, I did not expect they would be capable of such a thing! How could they do that, that's horrible!" and so many pro-Fed toons made a point of stating how horribly wrong they felt it was. I got the feeling at the time that only a few of those were even IC, based in what I had seen from the characters in question in the past.

Ofc, my own toon, being the unforgiving twat that he is, loved it and felt it was perfectly justified. OOC, *I* also liked it as it demonstrated a blacker part of the Fed, and demonstrated what happens to you (or more likely, COULD happen to you) if you betray the Fed from to high a position. Eturrer was crisped on stage for being the supreme commander of the Navy and selling the people out. A cadet in the navy doing the same would only be imprisoned and possibly shot for the same, if only because said cadet could not manage to let his/her betrayal have to large consequences.

And then ofc in the end there are the characters who hold Eturrer's execution up as a 'standard' in the Fed, something that happens all the time, if you believe the rhetoric, and something that invalidates any Federal right to complain about anything done to themselves. This is ofc as accurate and 'right' as Amarrians having no right to complain about, say, Matari terrorists slaughtering their people because 'herpaderp, you bombed a whole planet to dust once.' The situations are different and the conditions are completely different and the reasoning is totally different.

But that kind of logic has never stopped anyone.

[Seriphyn]

http://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-online-news/senator-proposes-ban-on-public-execution/

It was not a universally accepted thing (very few things are universally accepted in the Fed IMO). T1 explicitly states this was "the only public execution in Federation history", but yes people will always bring it up as the norm rather than the exception. Most of us OOC are programmed from birth to automatically assume democracy is perfect and infallible, and thus anti-Feds IC tend to grasp at such things to criticize the Fed (either Eturrer execution or Caldari Prime bombardment; take your pick from those two). What I mean to say is that there are other ways to criticize the Fed rather than bringing up exceptional events.

[Pieter Tuulinen]

To be fair, speaking as someone who plays an anti-Federation character, I don't give a damn what the day to day reality in the Federation is. I care about the exceptional events that have impinged upon MY adopted society.

[Makkal]

And... I suddenly find the Federation boring again.

[Silver Night]

And... I suddenly find the Federation boring again.

I find it interesting that it happened. I think it might speak more to something like spectacle elevated an absurd level (I always thought it was meant to sort of space version of your old fashioned public execution). Like reality television's uncontrolled conclusion.


I find the Federation interesting because while the pervasive Gallente culture might seem - and even be - somewhat recognizable, there are all those other cultures stuffed in there too.

[BloodBird]

To be fair, speaking as someone who plays an anti-Federation character, I don't give a damn what the day to day reality in the Federation is. I care about the exceptional events that have impinged upon MY adopted society.

And in your adopted society, people called Eturrer a hero for betraying the people THEY hate. Nevermind that if he did anything like that to THEM they would be up in arms about it.

The only thing I have left to comment on regarding this case is that, I'd love to see more characters apply the same views and principles to others as they do themselves. Stop loving the traitor who betrayed for you, but hate the one who betrayed you, and condemn both equally. This is just one example of many, I laugh every time a toon is obviously hypocritical despite giving off the general impression they don't want to be seen as such. Those who don't care are a different case, ofc.

[Z.Sinraali]

Stop loving the traitor who betrayed for you, but hate the one who betrayed you, and condemn both equally.

This imperative presumes that one considers treason to be an objectively damnable act, in and of itself. I think there are very few people who hold that view.

[BloodBird]

As far as the different factions are concerned, treason is a very, very bad thing. Why then would you be happy to cheer for someone who betrayed for you, but in the next breath condemn the one (as you should) who betrayed you to someone else? It creates a pitiful double-standard where people don't seem to realize that by cheering for the traitor simply because you profited from it, you are undermining one of your own principle beliefs - treason [against my group] is a bad thing. It seem people find it impossible to put themselves in the shoes of others.

Not that that is anything new, though.

[Samira Kernher]

As far as the different factions are concerned, treason is a very, very bad thing. Why then would you be happy to cheer for someone who betrayed for you, but in the next breath condemn the one (as you should) who betrayed you to someone else? It creates a pitiful double-standard where people don't seem to realize that by cheering for the traitor simply because you profited from it, you are undermining one of your own principle beliefs - treason [against my group] is a bad thing. It seem people find it impossible to put themselves in the shoes of others.

Not that that is anything new, though.

QFE.

Just because someone is a traitor for you, doesn't change the fact that they're a traitor. Afterall, if they betrayed them, then surely they're capable of betraying you, too.

No one liked Jaime Lannister in GoT for exactly that reason. He was a traitor. Didn't matter that he killed their enemy, he had still sworn an oath and betrayed it.

Traitors are rotten, no matter if they're helping or harming you. Sure, you should use them. Even reward them for their help. But respect them? Nope.

Of course, the lore outright states that the State views Eturrer as a hero, so vOv

[Gabriel Darkefyre]

Of course, the lore outright states that the State views Eturrer as a hero, so vOv

Was this before or after his execution? It's relatively easy to paint a traitor as a hero when they're no longer capable of turning on the side that benefited from the betrayal.

[Samira Kernher]

After, I believe.

[Andreus Ixiris]

Whatever else I could say about it, I will say that from reading Two Deaths, the public execution of Eturer was nothing if not hopelessly, tastelessly Federal. Needlessly elaborate, shamelessly commericalised, ostentatious, opulent, gauche, obsessed with audience participation - there's nothing that epitomises the worst in Federal culture like Eturer's death. As an in-game event, I'm still not sure whether it truly fit the mold of the Federation or made sense in the context of the story, but as a narrative metaphor for everything wrong with Gallentean society, it was peerless.

[Victoria Stecker]

As far as the different factions are concerned, treason is a very, very bad thing. Why then would you be happy to cheer for someone who betrayed for you, but in the next breath condemn the one (as you should) who betrayed you to someone else? It creates a pitiful double-standard where people don't seem to realize that by cheering for the traitor simply because you profited from it, you are undermining one of your own principle beliefs - treason [against my group] is a bad thing. It seem people find it impossible to put themselves in the shoes of others.

Not that that is anything new, though.

Just because someone is a traitor for you, doesn't change the fact that they're a traitor. Afterall, if they betrayed them, then surely they're capable of betraying you, too.

I'm going to play devil's advocate and disagree with making such an absolute statement. There are circumstances under which an individual could "betray" an oath they'd made that wouldn't make me think they are inherently treasonous person that should never be trusted. For example, they could learn something about the people they'd offered that oath to which lead them to change allegiances. They could knowingly sworn an oath they didn't intend to keep in an effort to damage my enemy.

Motivation is important. If the motivation for their betrayal was something as simple as money, then hell no I'm never going to trust them. They'll stab me in the back if someone writes them a large enough check. On the other hand, how do you think the Republic would view a Minmatar slave who lied, took oaths, etc, to gain the trust of his/her holder then betrayed him/her in some manner that hurt the Empire and helped the Republic?

Sure, they're not an automaton who considers their word to be the essence of their existence and would never ever ever possibly break a promise, but that doesn't mean the Republic is going to look at them as a traitor they should never trust. If you're only going to trust people who would never, for any reason, consider breaking a promise they had made, then you're basically throwing out people with moral and ethical standards, who are at risk to discover that keeping a promise and upholding their beliefs regarding right and wrong are mutually exclusive. You only want people who consider keeping their promises to be more important than any other good.

[Natalcya Katla]

No one liked Jaime Lannister in GoT for exactly that reason. He was a traitor. Didn't matter that he killed their enemy, he had still sworn an oath and betrayed it.

There's plenty of hypocrisy there too, though. One point of irony I quite appreciate is that Eddard Stark was indeed a traitor to the crown, and so his execution for that crime was entirely appropriate. He just happened to receive his sentence some 15 or 16 years late. Pretty much a case of poetic justice, there.

Edit: Quoted the wrong sentence.