Independence
May 01, 2011 - Oliver Marlowe
Me again. As many of you have guessed, I’m sure, I’m not really new to this game. I’m using this nation so my ideas and arguments will be evaluated on their merits, rather than on the merits of the gameplayer who believes them. I use this identity because, well, Babylon 5 was so well-written, so true-to-life, that we can see many parallels between a science-fiction television show, and the state of gameplay in NS.
So, lets look at Babylon 5 for a minute. On Babylon 5, ambassadors of the major powers met in a council room; Humans, Centauri, Narn, Minbari, and Vorlons. Accompanying them were a large group of smaller powers, including Drazi, Brakiri, and other species. Many of those smaller powers formed into a group called “The League of Non-Aligned Worlds.” We don’t get to hear a lot about them, but the League is usually mentioned as a single entity, giving it a larger power than the other minor species.
“Neutrals” in NationStates are very much like the lesser powers. I put the term in quotes, because it means many things. It might mean that you’ve no interest in playing the invader/defender game at all. For the purposes of this argument, I’m going to call that neutral. They’re quite capable of banding together for mutual defence; often they don’t, but that’s their decision, as they certainly have in the past. At one time the FRA was such a band of neutral, founderless regions.
As I’ve said NationStates • View topic - Assessment and Commentary on the FRA, a little ideology can be a dangerous thing. I’ve also NationStates • View topic - The Shadow War linked the Defenders and the Invaders to the Vorlons and the Shadows; both representing the two major ideologies and superpowers of their two universes. The neutral group, which is composed of those true neutrals who don’t want to be a part of the game, and another group I’m driving towards, have been said to represent the other races, caught in between. I even suggested that the neutral group might some day rise up, and tell the Defenders and the Invaders that we didn’t need either of them anymore.
I recounted the Vorlon maxim, that understanding is a three-edged sword, and described it as being somewhat between the two extremes. I think, though, that while Defenders and Invaders inhabit one spectrum, the neutral group has two points, for the ease of understanding we’ll say that one is above the Defender/Invader line, and the other is below. The one below is the neutral, the one that I described above. Wishes above all else to be left alone, and does very little to achieve any agency in inter-regional affairs.
The one above, I choose to call Independent. Independent regions are active, typically engaging in light, sport-like invading, or invading for reasons outside out of their own enjoyment. I’d classify imperialists in this group, generally speaking (not in all cases, but in many). The Independent group, of course, is going to be reasonably fractious, because the other major component of an Independent region is a rejection, not of invading or defending, but of the ideologies associated with both superpower groups. Decisions based on ideology will cloud your mind, rather than free it. It is the height of arrogance and hypocrisy for an invader to claim that an invasion of his region’s sovereignty is wrong. By the same token, it is an ideological failure when a defender does the same damage to an invader that he abhors an invader doing to others. Ideology restricts our ability to think rationally about an issue.
Independent regions seek to use true realism, in the international relations sense, to examine decisions with regards to their own activities on an issue-by-issue basis. An Independent region may comfortable form Mutual Defence Agreements with founderless regions, and protect them for whatever reason, and still engage in sporting invading, or imperialism, so long as the reasons for the defence of these regions is practical, and not ideological. There are very few Independent regions. Qwendra, perhaps, qualifies in the sense that I mean it. There is a dearth of leadership in the game in this area, a void that is yearning to be filled by regions which can find the strength to reject both the Shadows and the Vorlons, er, the raider ideology and the defender ideology.
If you’re a raider, or a defender, or somewhere in the middle, I encourage you to consider looking seriously at the ideologies put forwards, and the groups which purport to represent them. Consider the manner in which ideology constricts one’s ability to act reasonably, and consider rejecting it, in favour of finding your own path.