Battle in New Eden

Moments of joy and moments of sorrow follow each other in quick succession in this universe that we inhabit. A few days ago, my heart was lifted by the news that the holy Paladins of PIE will join us in closer alliance. But today I feel anguished and worried, as I got the news that Farthest Shore, our Astrahus "house among the stars" in New Eden, is under attack by pirate scum. 

I have a personal connection with that station. When I started my quest as a capsuleer, one of the first theories I investigated is that the Ametat and Avetat are on a lost expedition between the New Eden star and Eve Gate. I spent quite some time in the system. 

Lunarisse was a stranger to me then, but she offered me access to Farthest Shore, and allowed me to use it as a base of operations, and showed me a bookmark closer to the Gate than I'd ever been before. Up till that moment, I had not trusted her, because I had read on the forums of her attack on an archeological expedition. Now I know that expedition was led by the heretic Nauplius, but back then I didn't know him yet.

It was that small token of trust that convinced me of her good intentions, and that made me think of joining SFRIM, and that in the end led to me finding a place in this corporation, the best that Amarr can offer for a friar-capsuleer. 

I've been back many times to Farthest Shore. For contemplative retreats. To continue a personal study of the Gate. To meet up with other explorers. To visit the new Kor-Azor research station. To join Lunarisse and Franco in marriage. To simply gaze at the whisps of plasma emanating from the Mouth of God while sitting on a pew in the Farthest Light chapel. 

These New Eden visits have helped my quest, through contacts and talks with the people in system. Through a gift of God, an encouragement in the form of an abandoned vessel that He put on my path.

I feel an acute sense of powerlessness. I am not a soldier and so I am unable to meaningfully assist in the military actions against the pirate scum that target Farthest Shore. In stead, I will do what I must do: pray to God and all the Saints for the defeat of the pirates.

A holy union

When I first looked into capsuleer corporations in the hope of learning about archeological expeditions, I was surprised to find some tension between PIE and SFRIM. One was like the Sword of the empire, the other was the Shield, and their strategies did not always fully align. I prayed at the time that these differences would be resolved - Sword and Shield are most powerful when both are wielded together by the warrior.

Today, I woke up to the joyous news that my prayers have been heard: PIE and SFRIM join together under the alliance umbrella of LUMEN. I look forward to meeting the PIE paladins in the halls of Mehatoor, and to strengthen the ties with their famous library and museum in Oris!

The fallacy of meritocracy

Our Caldari friends are organizing a conference to sing the praises of meritocracy, for their Union Day. Those not born and bred Caldari cannot participate, not even based on merit. Nevertheless, I felt inspired to write my thoughts on the subject.

First, the shield: a defense of our own system.

I note that State detractors of our Amarrian Holder system point out that a hereditary aristocracy is not “fair”, as it is based on the randomness of birth, whereas a meritocracy rewards one on one’s capacities and abilities. This has always seemed somewhat silly to me. On the one hand, people have acceded to nobility based on their achievements and work. On the other hand, one’s intellectual capacities or physical strength is also strongly influenced by one’s set of genes.

Smart people or Holders, both are part of a kind of lucky sperm club. 

 

Second, the sword, for the offense against meritocracy.

Meritocracy assumes in its essence that value can be narrowed down to a point where people can be ranked, placed in an ordered list according to their worth. But is the successful CEO who does not see his children superior to the lowly laborer who is an excellent father? Worth, merit, value: like beauty they all contain so many incomparable dimensions that creating a universally accepted ordered set out of a population is not possible.

Nevertheless, meritocratic corporations insist on selecting people from ranked lists. So how do they judge merit then? Typically, there will be a panel of meritorious men and women who will set up the criteria. In order not to run into a contradiction, the panel members must assign a high score of merit to these traits that they themselves possess. After all, it can only be a panel of meritorious people that is qualified to decide what is merit. And that's where it goes wrong.

Those that started out as meritous will by there definition only strengthen their merit, concentrating power to them and their favorite circle. Those that are not born talented -according to the panel's criteria- are deemed not to deserve success and growth in a meritocracy. Moreover, it's their own fault. The unmeritous are more irredeemable than our lowest slaves.

Many in today's State now protest their corporate leadership, decrying corruption and nepotism and yearning for a return to merit-based leadership. They fail to see that this concentration power in corrupt entitled leadership is the necessary outcome of a callous unrestrained meritocracy.

 

[[ooc comment: the term "lucky sperm club" to describe a talent-based aristocracy was, to the best of my knowledge, coined by Michael Young in his book "The Rise of Meritocracy". I found the book itself somewhat long-winded, but the author's short introduction to the transaction publisher's edition is brilliant]]

Association for Interdisciplinary Research

New opportunities may have arisen for research collaborations: the "Association for Interdisciplinary Research". It is supported by the Servant Sisters of Eve (who provide laboratory equipment) and Ishukone, and it is run by former members of these corporations.

Apart from making it easier for people to become a capsuleer and to grow their skills, it is at the moment unclear what they plan to do in practice. Both parent organizations have contributed technological breakthroughs, the most notorious being the Sister of Eve's exploration vessels. Maybe we will get new technology again?

I find it a bit uncharacteristic for the Servant Sisters of Eve - they usually keep their secrets to themselves, and have their own organisations for various purposes. They explore the Gate and want to unlock it, like so many other organizations that I come across during my own search. All roads to relics lead to the Gate it seems. But they do not share their knowledge freely, and so I do not fully trust them.

We'll see if this Association will be a true scientific society or a front for something else.

Reflection on the Achuran faith

I have been reflecting on my stay in the Achuran monastery. I've been thinking about their religion, and why it doesn't fit me.

I noticed that they are very open to exploration and understanding the universe, and I admire that. They try to see through the bias and refute the illusions that our mind adds to reality. Also that appeals to me.

All our sensory inputs are preprocessed by the mind before they enter our consciousness - otherwise we wouldn't be able to make sense of the cacophony of inputs that overwhelm our senses every second of every hour of every day. But this preprocessing also distorts and colors reality around us. We have evolved to see only cause and effect, and to divide the world into boundaried objects and categories. We create mental narratives to order incoherent impressions into a coherent framework. Through these narratives we are impelled to attach importance to certain silly things, such as pieces of paper with numbers printed on them, in order to infuse our life with an illusion of meaning and importance.

The Achuran monks want to pierce these illusions. In particular the monastery of the Seeing Blind that I stayed at tries to do this by exposing us to absurd stories, of which I have received my share. They are meant to shock us into dropping our filters and seeing raw reality.

What is the goal of that? I think it is do free us from the desires that stem from our constructs, the desire to be rich or powerful or popular. The desire to possess things and people. These desires are illusory, so they must stem from the filters and narratives that we put up in our mind, according to their reasoning. And these desires are what leads to our unhappiness and to evil. That last part, I can agree on.

Even though I can agree with these tenets, there was something that bothered me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Until now. I realized that what I miss in Achur faith is the social dimension. As I understood it (imperfectly, given my extremely short exposure), it is most focused on freeing oneself, on personal improvement and growth and reaching enlightenment by and for oneself.

Our faith is not so much about raising ourselves up, our faith is much more about our relation to the others around us than it is about our own enlightenment. Of course both faiths talk about self-improvement as well as relations to others, but I'm discerning a nuance in focus. Our faith is more about lifting your neighbor out of the darkness. It's about sharing the fragile flame of faith with others, rather than freeing yourself from pain. 

That's what I missed, I think, in the Achur faith, or in what I could glimpse of it during my short stay with them.

The Gardens of the Empire

The week-long celebrations of Foundation day came to a close. For me, they ended yesterday in a grand finale - a tour of the "Gardens of the Empire", hosted by Lunarisse.

The gardens are inside a luxurious yacht, docked in Amarr. I had no idea our Directrix had a taste for such luxury vessels. Or maybe she hasn't, and the yacht is just an excellent place to house a mobile botanical exhibit.

To be honest, it is much more than a botanical garden or an arboretum. Each hall is an exquisitely composed biosphere, reproducing also the atmosphere of a place, and telling a story. There were foreigners and new capsuleers on our tour, and I think through these immersive life-size dioramas they learnt about our customs and our history.

The gardens bear a very personal touch. I was moved by the colonist's storm planet garden depicting life on Anath V, the planet where Lunarisse lived as a child with her parents until the fateful Blooder attack. And the oasis garden, it was modeled on the oases of Mishi IV, where Luna's family is from. 

So, while for the outsider the tour is glance into the Empire, for those that know Lunarisse they also offer a view into the places of her past. It is nice to know that there are some new gardens in the making, I think they will offer a view of her hopes for the future.

God's name

Elsebeth Rhiannon told a tale at the Inter-Galactic Summit that is very much intra-galactic. 

Ms. Rhiannon is not merely a terrorist but she is also a wonderful storyteller, and offers an insight into the mind of the apostate Minmatar. They believe in spirits that have names and live with us in this world, and God for them is merely one of these spirits, albeit a very powerful one. Of course, they see it as a malevolent spirit. To them, it is an angry spirit, cut off from the original world of spirits, and the only  nameless spirit. Their animistic religion mirrors the cruelty and violence of their society.

Nevertheless, the story of God's namelessness reminded me of a beautiful prayer of St. Gregory of Nahyeen:

God beyond all things earthly,
By no other name could I call You!
You are beyond words,
when all words stem from You.

You who name all names,
You are the only unnameable one.
How could I call you other than
God beyond all things earthly.

You see, our theologians agree that God does not have a name like John or Lisa. But rather than seeing this as a weakness or a punishment, it is a characteristic of strength, or rather of God's transcendent nature. He from who all names stem is beyond naming, as the Saint points out. 

 

((ooc attribution: this paraphrased short piece is part of a longer prayer on the trancendent nature of God by St. Gregory of Nazianzen, a fourth century archbishop of Constantinople who was clearly an Amarrian))

Tour guide

For Foundation day, tours of monuments and historic places in the Empire had been organised. I had the pleasure of being a tour guide for capsuleers, for a tour in space around Amarr. 

There are many additional things to see in lowsec space nearby, but we stuck to highsec, so we could get newly graduated capsuleers to join us. The tour brought us from Doriam's reign to Jamyl's reign to the current day. 

There were many places of wonder, such as the monument for one of the first miner tycoons and the fortified monastery of the Order of Tetrimon. There were also places that bring strong emotions - the Elder war memorial, the wreck of Jamyl's titan, and the space cemetery in Molea. I am amazed that there are so many wonders to see within a few jumps from Amarr, and I even left out some, like the conserved experimental construction site of the first Upwell astrahus.

I haven't been in space during many momentous events, such as the Elder war or the attack on saint Jamyl. Luna, and lord-consort Newelle were there, and while we visited these place I could sense how strongly it still affects them. The monument that evokes the strongest emotion in me is the Molea cemetary. It has this immense number of graves, the vastness of which you can only appreciate if you fully zoom out on the grid, each of which bears a message for a lost loved one. It reminds me how interconnected we are as capsuleers, how much we form our own community in between the stars.

Moon drill archeology

I read about a remarkable archeology incident that happened just a few days ago.

The idea appears lunatic to start with. Using a moon drill for archeology. Yes, a moon drill, that excavates a chunk of moon about a hundred kilometers across and drags it into orbit where it can be exploded into a moon ore belt.

As tools for planetside (or moonside) archeology, I am more used to the artifact chip brush for carefully removing dust from precious findings. If really necessary, a small hand shovel or an excavation knife can be used. If you are a real brute, you can add a rock hammer and a chisel to your toolkit. But a moon drill?

Reading more into the details, the idea becomes a bit less crazy (just a tiny bit). As the head of the project, ms. Lauralite Anne Brezia explains, the moon drill actually does not hit the center of the region that it excavates, it digs around it. It is a bit like moving a precious plant to a new spot in the garden, you use the shovel and keep a clod of earth around its roots intact. Yet as every gardener knows, the plant does suffer. At the center of the region that is extracted by the moon drill, there will be extremely strong seismic activity. So, you will need a lot of inertial stabilizers to keep any structure from collapsing. 

Also, buildings are constructed with gravity in mind, and often it is the weight of stone on stone which provides the structural stability of the construction. Bringing it off the moon into weightlessness requires special consolidation techniques. All this effort makes me think it is easier to disassemble the ruins stone by stone and reassemble them elsewhere.

Now for this ruin, disassembly may not have been possible. It is an underground structure, several kilometers wide and half a kilometer below the surface of Umai, the first moon of Eugales V. Indeed this is not something you can transport without a huge clod of earth around it. I do not know why it cannot be investigated in situ, though. 

There is also some mystery surrounding the particular relics that were in the ruins - they may be advanced AI's. This brings its own problems: it is a bit like thawing a virus from a chunck of ancient ice and hoping it isn't a lethal pathogen. It also of course brings its own opportunities - the AI could hold immensely valuable historical data.

Unfortunately, we will probably not know. The moon drill technique went wrong: the tractor beam failed and dropped the chunk back onto the moon. The crash was more than any intertial stabilizer can handle...

Foundation Day celebrations

Foundation day celebrations are in full swing. SFRIM and PIE organised a memorable parade fleet and fireworks display, and on Sunday I'm helping out with historical tours along the sights of highsec Amarr.

The Empress addressed her subjects, and reminded us of our destiny in a rousing speech. As a result I've seen there are many new capsuleers lining up to join SFRIM and I guess also PIE, to show their loyalty and the desire to serve, which burns strongly in their hart now. Ah on days like these I am full of confidence in the glorious future of our Empire!

Happy Foundation Day celebrations, all!

Riddles

A new mystery is always enjoyable. Yesterday, mr. Jason Statesman came to the library. He'd been there before, for books on Amarr customs. He is born in the Federation, but it is unmistakable: his noble face betrays Amarrian descent. His mother confessed on her deathbed that his father is indeed from our Empire, but he does not know the identity of his father.

Yesterday, he brought his heritage: a puzzle-box which appears (to me) to be made by Jin-Mei artisans. It contains three items: a book that has become wet so the pages fused, a small fist made of noble metals, and a badge with blast damage. I kept the book and the ornate fist for further investigations. 

I'm comparing the fist to existing depictions, used in family crests and corporation logos. Meanwhile, I have the book examined, planetside, with an X-ray fluorescence scanner (we don't have this type of equipment at the library). 

The mould has fused the pages together but this imaging technique allows to scan layer by layer without the need of opening the book. It shows where the chemical elements used for  pigments are located. Doing so, it reveals the text or print below another one, even if the text would have been overwritten. The microscopic three-dimensional reconstruction allows to reconstitute the text. A full restoration this way takes years and a dedicated research student so that will not be possible here. Nevertheless, in the span of a few days we should be able to identify the book by getting a glimpse of its first page.

I hope this reveals clues as to the identity of Jason's father - it would be so nice if they can be re-united.

A new challenge

I'm back in Mehatoor, at my familiar library. A bunch of mail was waiting for me, and a couple of surprises. 

The first one is that Lunarisse is expecting a baby. God has not waited long to bless her marriage, this is a good sign! Come to think of it, I did note a distinct uptick in motherhood books and baby-care books, in her library loans, but I didn't quite connect the dots till I saw her again.

The second surprise is a job offer. A new challenge! Gottin's Lamp chapel in Mehatoor is short-handed. Lord Baracca, the official chaplain, has been gone for Empire duties now for quite a while. From time to time, I provided a bit of spiritual help to people who would ask for it in the library, on those moments that it was too busy in the chapel.

Now, Lunarisse offered me the job of co-chaplain. I gladly accepted. It lies closer to my calling, and to my training. Although I am ordained, I might be a bit rusty since I haven't had to perform rites at the monastery. But in the past months I've been doing some: taking confessions, funeral rites, and of course a high-profile capsuleer wedding.

Of course that doesn't mean my quest ends, nor does my academic work at the library end. But I will be glad to let mr. Jensen handle administrative duties for the library. Oh, and I must get back in touch with Arne Maleto, Ishta's brother. He was looking for a job as a helper in the library, and extra hands there will be needed now.