With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

[hance1986]

The Shadows would meet OL and tell Mister Morden to take a hike.

 

[Buggy123]

"Well…" He fans out his hands. "There are so many. An end to piracy and slavery, naturally. Partially to protect our own citizens and partially through moral concerns. I regards the Imperium as an architect of civilisation. That is the moral justification for our actions."

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Eh, I don't think it's the same thing. American/British imperialism strongly involved race; the primary race(s) inhabiting any particular region played a large part in how 'civilized' they perceived it to be, and in all likelyhood any genuinely 'uncivilized' regions were so in part because of that same bias in prior interactions. At it's most extreme, it was just a outright declaration of racial superiority with a element of conquering thrown in; pure monkey-brain bias and tribalism.


Vega, on the other hand, is a region lifted straight from satan's hairy ass, where pirates reign supreme, mass slavery runs rampant, and any remotely innocent people are usually oppressed or fearfully mixed in with the rather-less-decent. It would be fairly hard to make it worse; the Guardians pact did a number to the region.

"Move in and fix things for them", or hell, even "Move in and conquer them for their own good" is perfectly reasonable in Vega, even if you do a poor job of it or do it for misguided reasons. Sure, there are practical problems with conquering someone to fix things against their will, but again... Vega.

 

[Mr Zoat]

Various possible typos marked in orange:

It's also a little odd to view an organization as an architect, but as far as I can tell that's just the metaphor he's going for.

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Karna needs to be capitalized.

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I regards the Imperium as an architect of civilisation.
I regard the Imperium as an architect of civilisation.

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Thank you, corrected.

 

[Handlewithcare]

The Shadows would meet OL and tell Mister Morden to take a hike.

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I am still waiting for that one.

 

[Mquz]

Eh, I don't think it's the same thing. American/British imperialism strongly involved race; the primary race(s) inhabiting any particular region played a large part in how 'civilized' they perceived it to be, and in all likelyhood any genuinely 'uncivilized' regions were so in part because of that same bias in prior interactions. At it's most extreme, it was just a outright declaration of racial superiority with a element of conquering thrown in; pure monkey-brain bias and tribalism.


Vega, on the other hand, is a region lifted straight from satan's hairy ass, where pirates reign supreme, mass slavery runs rampant, and any remotely innocent people are usually oppressed or fearfully mixed in with the rather-less-decent. It would be fairly hard to make it worse; the Guardians pact did a number to the region.

"Move in and fix things for them", or hell, even "Move in and conquer them for their own good" is perfectly reasonable in Vega, even if you do a poor job of it or do it for misguided reasons. Sure, there are practical problems with conquering someone to fix things against their will, but again... Vega.

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On the other hand, I think Vega is more like parts of colonial Africa - sure, capable of fighting back, having some civilized leaders also capable of both accepting new traditions and fighting back, see for example the recent Extra Credits piece on Queen Nzinga, and piracy is really hard to get rid of without a stable, and capable government in place to do so. New governments don't tend to have enough respect from local governments - which might get payoffs from pirates - to be able to control piracy.
It's one of the reason that most countries that were at one time usurped by Europeans tend to descend into chaos - nobody respects the government, and the government tends to lack capable non-corrupt officials who care about the general population.

 

[Simonbob]

Eh, I don't think it's the same thing. American/British imperialism strongly involved race; the primary race(s) inhabiting any particular region played a large part in how 'civilized' they perceived it to be, and in all likelyhood any genuinely 'uncivilized' regions were so in part because of that same bias in prior interactions. At it's most extreme, it was just a outright declaration of racial superiority with a element of conquering thrown in; pure monkey-brain bias and tribalism.


Vega, on the other hand, is a region lifted straight from satan's hairy ass, where pirates reign supreme, mass slavery runs rampant, and any remotely innocent people are usually oppressed or fearfully mixed in with the rather-less-decent. It would be fairly hard to make it worse; the Guardians pact did a number to the region.

"Move in and fix things for them", or hell, even "Move in and conquer them for their own good" is perfectly reasonable in Vega, even if you do a poor job of it or do it for misguided reasons. Sure, there are practical problems with conquering someone to fix things against their will, but again... Vega.

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I'm pretty sure you haven't really studied history.


There were Stone Age tribes in Africa, when the Brits got there. I think there's still a few, even now.


Barbary pirates, Mass slavery, genocidal tribe on tribe warfare, cannibal tribes and much, much more. We don't think that it's that bad right now, but......

It was really that bad, in most places.



And, I was just ninga'd. Thanks, Mquz

 

[Cuchulin]

I'm pretty sure you haven't really studied history.
There were Stone Age tribes in Africa, when the Brits got there. I think there's still a few, even now.
Barbary pirates, Mass slavery, genocidal tribe on tribe warfare, cannibal tribes and much, much more. We don't think that it's that bad right now, but......
It was really that bad, in most places. Mquz

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There were also a unknown number of civilizations that were ground to dust by European colonizers and the "Mass slavery, genocidal tribe on tribe warfare" encouraged by the European slave trade as well as for other reasons. Also look up Mansa Musa of Mali as well as the Belgian Congo and King Leopold II of Belgium then think again upon what you have said as Africa has had it's history of civilization ignore, destroyed (as with so much of Great Zimbabwe) or denied (again see Great Zimbabwe).

 

[Massgamer]

Mr Zoat will Paul meet and talk with Felicity soon since not only can he return her to the Omega Men if she wants but with her homeworld being retaken she can do a lot of work helping her people rebuild?

 

[Buggy123]

I'm pretty sure you haven't really studied history.

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I haven't. I have about as much interest in purposefully delving in to history as I do exploring all the nuances of scatophilia, for all the same reasons. And no one ever learns from it anyway, and it repeats itself a great deal, so there's little point either way.

Instead, I just infer it from what I do see. Take that page that the story linked to for instance. You can tell straight away from the top image and nothing else that, at the very least, race was a major factor (when/where the image was made, at least). To name a detail, look at how the people riding in the baskets are depicted; primitive in dress, tools, and features. Notice the gorilla/monkey-ish features on some of the africans? Yeah, that's not a coincidence. And that's just the image.

It doesn't take a PhD to work out that, even if those places were all worse than depicted, it's still yet another example of monkey brain-y, tribalistic, us v.s. them, status game, miscellaneous buzzword, yadda yadda yadda thinking.

And there are also past examples of people coming in with that sort of mindset and making things worse. In a word; India.

So there's probably a distribution that looks like:
X% genuinely uncivilized, from a general perspective
X% reasonably peaceful and civilized, but with non-european/american culture/races which they percieve as inherently more uncivilized largely due to racial and cultural biases.
X% decent places that are genuinely civilized and comparable to european/american civilization, but are still biased against or just simply glossed over.

What's the real distribution? Beats me, I'd have to go read history. And as I see it, that's a much more unpleasant experience than simply appearing wrong or ignorant.

I already know what it smells like from brief whiffs, because it always smells like that, it still smells like that to this day. Pretty much exactly the same.

And do you know what it smells like? Shit. It smells like shit. And I'd rather not go rub my nose in it.

 

[Mquz]

To be fair, while there were Stone Age tribes in Africa, there were also tribes more comparable to the spider guild, for example tribes in Rwanda and Uganda had better metallurgy than the people of Europe. They also had things like the smallpox vaccine in Western Africa apparently centuries before the Europeans did.

 

[Queshire]

Look, all I'm saying is that the Fire Nation thought they were spreading their prosperity and technological advancements to the rest of the world, and how did that turn out? That's right. Orange Lantern Azula.

 

[Mquz]

I haven't. I have about as much interest in purposefully delving in to history as I do exploring all the nuances of scatophilia, for all the same reasons. And no one ever learns from it anyway, and it repeats itself a great deal, so there's little point either way.

Instead, I just infer it from what I do see. Take that page that the story linked to for instance. You can tell straight away from the top image and nothing else that, at the very least, race was a major factor (when/where the image was made, at least). To name a detail, look at how the people riding in the baskets are depicted; primitive in dress, tools, and features. Notice the gorilla/monkey-ish features on some of the africans? Yeah, that's not a coincidence. And that's just the image.

It doesn't take a PhD to work out that, even if those places were all worse than depicted, it's still yet another example of monkey brain-y, tribalistic, us v.s. them, status game, miscellaneous buzzword, yadda yadda yadda thinking.

And there are also past examples of people coming in with that sort of mindset and making things worse. In a word; India.

So there's probably a distribution that looks like:
X% genuinely uncivilized, from a general perspective
X% reasonably peaceful and civilized, but with non-european/american culture/races which they percieve as inherently more uncivilized largely due to racial and cultural biases.
X% decent places that are genuinely civilized and comparable to european/american civilization, but are still biased against or just simply glossed over.

What's the real distribution? Beats me, I'd have to go read history. And as I see it, that's a much more unpleasant experience than simply appearing wrong or ignorant.

I already know what it smells like from brief whiffs, because it always smells like that, it still smells like that to this day. Pretty much exactly the same.

And do you know what it smells like? Shit. It smells like shit. And I'd rather not go rub my nose in it.

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So here's the main thing I think you're missing - some ancient civilizations that were civilized still had rituals and beliefs that Europeans would consider immoral. For example, the Aztecs were fairly advanced but still practiced ritual sacrifices, cannibalism might not be that harmful if it's consensual - I.e. a guy dies and is eaten by his family, etc...
Things that people consider may consider immoral, but are not detrimental to civilization as a whole - ritual sacrifices, consensual cannibalism of the recently dead, etc... could still potentially have been found in modernized African / American civilizations, if the Renaissance hadn't happened right when it did, which was in a lot of ways a fluke of political competition and a bunch of geniuses being born at roughly the same time, as well as Ancient Greek civilization information being preserved for them. Some of the countries in Africa were at one point at least as advanced as the Ancient Greeks, but were still in their dark ages when the Europeans came.
As to the things shown in this fic, Spider guild cannibalism isn't obviously detrimental to their civilization, even if another species has to suffer for it, just as long as they don't eat their allies. , though that is no longer a factor with the new queen. Piracy actually tends to be a lot more organized than people think and while probably detrimental to civilization, can be potentially reasoned down from as shown in this fic, since the more hardcore pirates are also being heavily published / killed, though Jaarko may eventually have to go if he doesn't slowly ease them down, but we haven't really seen him, though he seems to be attempting to lower the actual amount of piracy. At the very least, Amalak seems like a decent pro-civilization person. Basically, a lot of the skills needed to run a massive fleet of pirates are the same ones needed to run a country.

The alternative is getting rid of the Spider Queen, as well as Amalak, and reducing their people to either slaves or pirates/ rebels.

 

[DAT_NOOB]

Look, all I'm saying is that the Fire Nation thought they were spreading their prosperity and technological advancements to the rest of the world, and how did that turn out? That's right. Orange Lantern Azula.

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I kind of what to see what happened to her to be honest

 

[Buggy123]

So here's the main thing I think you're missing - some ancient civilizations that were civilized still had rituals and beliefs that Europeans would consider immoral. For example, the Aztecs were fairly advanced but still practiced ritual sacrifices, cannibalism might not be that harmful if it's consensual - I.e. a guy dies and is eaten by his family, etc...
Things that people consider may consider immoral, but are not detrimental to civilization as a whole - ritual sacrifices, consensual cannibalism of the recently dead, etc... could still potentially have been found in modernized African / American civilizations, if the Renaissance hadn't happened right when it did, which was in a lot of ways a fluke of political competition and a bunch of geniuses being born at roughly the same time, as well as Ancient Greek civilization information being preserved for them. Some of the countries in Africa were at one point at least as advanced as the Ancient Greeks, but were still in their dark ages when the Europeans came.
As to the things shown in this fic, Spider guild cannibalism isn't obviously detrimental to their civilization, even if another species has to suffer for it, just as long as they don't eat their allies. , though that is no longer a factor with the new queen. Piracy actually tends to be a lot more organized than people think and while probably detrimental to civilization, can be potentially reasoned down from as shown in this fic, since the more hardcore pirates are also being heavily published / killed, though Jaarko may eventually have to go if he doesn't slowly ease them down, but we haven't really seen him, though he seems to be attempting to lower the actual amount of piracy. At the very least, Amalak seems like a decent pro-civilization person. Basically, a lot of the skills needed to run a massive fleet of pirates are the same ones needed to run a country.

The alternative is getting rid of the Spider Queen, as well as Amalak, and reducing their people to either slaves or pirates/ rebels.

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As for ritual sacrifices, etc, I just don't really care that much. I consider racism and other systemic biases far worse than only-partially-related cultural elements that result in suffering.

As far as Vega goes, you're right, attempting to reform and rework the system to be less awful is probably better than trying to use brute force. I just think that it's still bad enough that brute force with consequences is better than the status quo. There are literally entire planets and races subject to various brutalities, and few places that are 'good' or 'partially good'.

 

[SirKaid]

I kind of what to see what happened to her to be honest

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Technically speaking she hasn't been born yet. The Ambush Bug sections with Paul going to all those different places (iirc it was Avatar, Captain Planet, MLP, and Kung Fu Panda) were all visions of the future, with one of them in particular remembering that Past Paul was seeing him and giving a bit of useful advice.

 

[Simonbob]

As for ritual sacrifices, etc, I just don't really care that much. I consider racism and other systemic biases far worse than only-partially-related cultural elements that result in suffering.

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Seriously?


I....


As it happens, despite what a lot of people like to think, one of the things about black slavery in the US, was it was often better than where they came from.


Not always, no. But often enough that the first and second generations barely considered escape or rebellion.


And, before you go any further, the blacks were not the first slaves in the US.


That was the Irish.

 

[Buggy123]

Seriously?


I....

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As I see it, humanity's collective insanity is responsible for 90%+ of all of the suffering that has occurred throughout history. It's a symptom vs the disease thing. Sure, ritually sacrificing people and stuff isn't great on it's own, but there's no point in caring about it in particular, because while the systemic issues still exist there will always be more things like that.

As for the other stuff: eh, w/e. Another day, another symptom.

 

[Slayer Anderson]

And sometimes being an architect means that you must convince foundations to remain erect in the middle of a swamp before you can build anything truly beautiful.

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Sometimes you even have to do that four times before the damned thing stops disappearing into the muck, regardless of whether or not it burned and fell over first.

 

[Prince Charon]

Sometimes you even have to do that four times before the damned thing stops disappearing into the muck, regardless of whether or not it burned and fell over first.

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That last one did stay up, but the architect's son was rather disappointing.

 

[Simonbob]

As I see it, humanity's collective insanity is responsible for 90%+ of all of the suffering that has occurred throughout history. It's a symptom vs the disease thing. Sure, ritually sacrificing people and stuff isn't great on it's own, but there's no point in caring about it in particular, because while the systemic issues still exist there will always be more things like that.

As for the other stuff: eh, w/e. Another day, another symptom.

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Ah.

I'm not sure that true.

A lot of people look at things today, and see things as wrong, that 100 years ago, we thought was normal. And, given that things like depression and suicide has gone up, around 4 fold, since we left them behind? I'm not sure they were wrong.




Besides. Until we can edit genetics, all this is irrelevant. We can't change the instincts, so trying is silly. May as well try to chance eye color by will and training.


But, this is off topic. And starting to slide towards politics.


And I hate tics.

 

[Queshire]

I am disappointed in all of you.

 

[Buggy123]

I am disappointed in all of you.

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Thank you, I appreciate it.

 

[Coda]

A lot of people look at things today, and see things as wrong, that 100 years ago, we thought was normal. And, given that things like depression and suicide has gone up, around 4 fold, since we left them behind? I'm not sure they were wrong.

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The suicide rate has not gone up fourfold. While there has been a slight increase in the US since 1997, it's on the order of 33%, not 300%, and it's lower than it was in the 1970s -- in fact, it's lower than it was in 1950. And taken in a broader perspective instead of limiting it to the US, the global suicide rate has stayed the same (within <1% tolerance) or decreased every year since 1990.

Studies have also shown that the depression rate has remained roughly constant for at least 40 years -- approximately 5%. The depression rate is low enough that even small changes in prevalence shows up as a huge jump relative to the baseline, but keep in mind that 6% is 20% more than 5%, but it's only 1% more of the total population. At that scale, no small-scale survey can be precise enough to measure a change of that magnitude with statistical significance.

What has changed is the cultural recognition of depression and suicide. People are more aware of them than they were before, so they SEE more depression and suicide than they would have in the past. But measuring the actual impact as a proportion of the total population -- the number of people who kill themselves, the number of people who are functionally impaired by a mood disorder -- shows that the actual figures seem to be pretty stable.

 

[Siskulous]

The suicide rate has not gone up fourfold. While there has been a slight increase in the US since 1997, it's on the order of 33%, not 300%, and it's lower than it was in the 1970s -- in fact, it's lower than it was in 1950. And taken in a broader perspective instead of limiting it to the US, the global suicide rate has stayed the same (within <1% tolerance) or decreased every year since 1990.

Studies have also shown that the depression rate has remained roughly constant for at least 40 years -- approximately 5%. The depression rate is low enough that even small changes in prevalence shows up as a huge jump relative to the baseline, but keep in mind that 6% is 20% more than 5%, but it's only 1% more of the total population. At that scale, no small-scale survey can be precise enough to measure a change of that magnitude with statistical significance.

What has changed is the cultural recognition of depression and suicide. People are more aware of them than they were before, so they SEE more depression and suicide than they would have in the past. But measuring the actual impact as a proportion of the total population -- the number of people who kill themselves, the number of people who are functionally impaired by a mood disorder -- shows that the actual figures seem to be pretty stable.

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When someone says the suicide rate has increased four-fold from 100 years ago countering with statistics from 20 years ago is pretty silly. The suicide rate in the US in 1920 was 0.8% (according to the 1920 census available at https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsushistorical/mortstatsh_1920.pdf if you care to verify it) so yes, the suicide rate HAS increased that much over the last hundred years. In fact, if your numbers are correct, then it has increased FIVE-fold.

 

[Maxx Crowley]

In other news, there Is actually an story going on here.

 

[PDV]

Eh, I don't think it's the same thing. American/British imperialism strongly involved race; the primary race(s) inhabiting any particular region played a large part in how 'civilized' they perceived it to be, and in all likelyhood any genuinely 'uncivilized' regions were so in part because of that same bias in prior interactions. At it's most extreme, it was just a outright declaration of racial superiority with a element of conquering thrown in; pure monkey-brain bias and tribalism

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I'll give the Limeys credit: unlike the other colonial powers, America included, they overwhelmingly left their colonies better off than they found them, and extrapolating from trends better than they would have been without interference. (Except the East India Company, they were incompetent.) I attribute this mainly to them being thalassocratic; the primary goal of most of their colonies was to serve as resupply points for their navy, and they didn't care to interfere too much in their internal affairs as long as that stayed secure.

Which isn't to say that they weren't racist, or weren't cultural chauvinists. They were. But cultural chauvinism is sometimes correct.

 

[Chaoswind]

When someone says the suicide rate has increased four-fold from 100 years ago countering with statistics from 20 years ago is pretty silly. The suicide rate in the US in 1920 was 0.8% (according to the 1920 census available at https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsushistorical/mortstatsh_1920.pdf if you care to verify it) so yes, the suicide rate HAS increased that much over the last hundred years. In fact, if your numbers are correct, then it has increased FIVE-fold.

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What counts as a suicide has also changed in the last 100 years and I am fairly certain that at least in my country women weren't even considered a part of the equation back then, and a lot of suicides were mislabeled as something else (suicide is a sin, so of course my son didn't commit suicide) in other to save face or to mask other issues.

Statistics are as solid as the data they use to come to their conclusions and the data collected back them has been demonstrated to be often flawed and full of biases, so I am not prepared to trust any of that shit.

 

[Megaolix]

Okay guys, I think the derail is being taken a fair bit too far. And it also seems to go in places best left untouched.

So, this should stop and go back to talking about the story. Right now. Because you know what tends to happen to those that ignore warnings (and for those unaware, that means threadbans and/or more).

We clear? Good.

 

[Bramble Thorn]

"'Shares for the people'." She takes a drink. "We teach the period in schools. Our little attempt to remind would-be corporate titans that worker protection laws don't exist to protect workers from managers. That if you push people too far they snap."

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Remember, folks, Rule 8...

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Um, Rule 8 is "After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a lavish spectacle in three weeks' time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out." That isn't pertinent to the issue at all.

The rule the Evil Overlords CEO's didn't follow is Rule 54, "I will not strike a bargain with a demonic being then attempt to double-cross it simply because I feel like being contrary," and to a lesser extent Rule 48, "I will treat any beast which I control through magic or technology with respect and kindness. Thus if the control is ever broken, it will not immediately come after me for revenge."

Because a person is one thing, but people as a group are another thing entirely, and the Mob is a fearsome thing indeed.

I meant there shouldn't be any form of sex he couldn't impregnate her with.

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Yeah. Receptive doves man. Receptive doves.

At this point 'calling a ring' is basically impossible. There are no free-floating rings in the vicinity of Vega. The SI would have to throw one of his up in the air for anything to happen. Anyone trying that in Vega would have to have better power and discipline than the SI, and that's close to impossible.

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I realize this was just an off the cuff statement, but don't do this, because it is a dick move, and also dumb. Because he point blank told someone that actually learning what the manual tries to teach would allow them to call a ring to themselves. And there is an actual OL CORPS now, and proper rings that can have AI support and pre-programmed responses.

This could be the start of the Orange Lantern Corps version of the GLC's seeker programs. Instead of having the rings going out to choose someone, have some stationed somewhere in calling range on standby, just listening and waiting to be called by a prospective lantern. I mean to sounds like the mindsets between general purpose unspecific "I want want want" and the specific, constructive focused desires OL is looking for present different to desire sense.

If he is handing out training manuals, then he should also make rings available for calling, so people can demonstrate they did learn what was being taught. At the very least there should be rings listening for the call, that would then take the caller to Maltus for a job interview. I mean OL's shtick is giving people what they want, in a way that accomplished his goals. So if there is some who can call a ring, then find out what their great desire is, and unless it is something completely incompatible with the goals of the OLC, make them a lantern and help them to use that ring to fulfill their desires in a way that benefits Paul's goals.

 

[Mr Zoat]

I realize this was just an off the cuff statement, but don't do this, because it is a dick move, and also dumb. Because he point blank told someone that actually learning what the manual tries to teach would allow them to call a ring to themselves. And there is an actual OL CORPS now, and proper rings that can have AI support and pre-programmed responses.

This could be the start of the Orange Lantern Corps version of the GLC's seeker programs. Instead of having the rings going out to choose someone, have some stationed somewhere in calling range on standby, just listening and waiting to be called by a prospective lantern. I mean to sounds like the mindsets between general purpose unspecific "I want want want" and the specific, constructive focused desires OL is looking for present different to desire sense.

If he is handing out training manuals, then he should also make rings available for calling, so people can demonstrate they did learn what was being taught. At the very least there should be rings listening for the call, that would then take the caller to Maltus for a job interview. I mean OL's shtick is giving people what they want, in a way that accomplished his goals. So if there is some who can call a ring, then find out what their great desire is, and unless it is something completely incompatible with the goals of the OLC, make them a lantern and help them to use that ring to fulfill their desires in a way that benefits Paul's goals.

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Letting people have unrestricted unmoderated access to a ring that is known for driving people insane would big a bigger dick move.

Dox would not do it because he wouldn't give up control. The SI wouldn't do it because he doesn't want to do that to people.

If someone reached such a level of comprehension, they could call and a Controller or the SI could feel it and maybe take a closer look. The SI is going to be spending more time in Vega and he can look around manually.