How to work for the enemy?

A theoretical question:

In the utterly theoretical situation that a capsuleer would simply have no other alternatives except to work for hostile agents, what would be the way to do so and cause the least harm?

I am at the moment leaning towards only accepting combat missions, only against other hostile factions, and only in our own home space.

Given the choices, making the hostile faction pay you to shoot pirates in the Republic sounds like the least of evils.

Dina Arvid

I was going thorough some of my music records today.

I used to listen to Dina Arvid as a teenager, and until couple of years ago. Her music is emotional and pretty moody, in that slightly pretentious way that often appeals to teenagers.

I found some of her music today by chance, when I was sorting thorough stuff.

I walk in the corridors of my life,
Looking for you, sometimes you're there.
I grin and bear it, grin and bear it,
I am the girlfriend and not the wife.

(Dina Arvid, "Girlfriend")

Good times.

Personal and communal responsibility

Matari and non-Matari can have a different sense of honor and responsibility.

Some non-Matari (especially Gallente individualists) want to be considered as individuals first, and members of their reference groups (clans, corporations, social circles) second - if at all.

They do not generally consider it fair or just to be judged for the misdeeds of their relatives or friends, and do not want to feel responsible for consequences of actions that are not their own.

From the perspective of communal responsibility such views are odd. Who we are associated with defines a large part of who we are. Inaction counts as action.

"It was not me, he did it." Yet, he was your kin, should you not have prevented him?

"I did not know what he was doing." Yet, if he was indeed your close friend, should you not have known?

Perhaps, if he indeed was your kin or friend, he should have thought of you before doing what he did.

24

I am 24 now.

I feel young and old at the same time. I remember the time when mid-twenties people seemed very old to me, feels like it was yesterday.

I'm not ready to be old. Old people are supposed to be wise and settled and stuff. Years have passed, and I'm still just me.

Changes and capsuleering

In a conversation last night I said that capsuleering changes a person. Yet, we make those changes ourselves, by the choices we make and things we do every day.

It is perhaps the curse of the pod that it gives us power over so many people it becomes impossible to personally know them all. Forcing us to make numbers and abstractions out of living and breathing human beings.

I have changed since I became a capsuleer. I am not as nice as I once was.

Do other capsuleers miss the person they used to be?

Words and feelings

Lately I've started to wonder if words are the right tool for describing and considering feelings.

Words are a tool of the intellect, and language a structure built to enable thought. Creating understanding and insight with words requires precision of expression and concepts.

However, with feelings the expressions often seem to be missing. There are no scales for quantitative comparison, no names and categories for qualitative judgements, the interdependencies and causalities cannot be properly described.

If words were well suited for describing feelings, would the problem of trying to figure out what you feel exist at all?

If words were well suited for describing feelings, would not human lives be fundamentally different?

Measuring feelings

How can one define victory conditions for friendships?

Yet, there is a point where winning is no longer possible, and the objective changes to salvaging what you can. Instead of playing to win you play to not lose.

Human feelings are not a thing one can easily measure.

For my business life, I have learned to set goals based on what I want, and what I think I can get. Is making the difference ever useful with feelings, except to make me discontent with my lot?

I would not be where I am now, had I been able to see a half empty glass as half full.