9 [video]

Sep 21, 2011 16:48

[Vanessa is sitting with her back to a wall, a pile of books stacked up haphazardly next to her ( Read more... )

thanks o'brien, repressing things, ports suck, monarchies suck, wardens suck, rageposting, i have discovered marxism, zuko sucks, political flamebait

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private. hiding that communism like a boss. iam_aghost September 21 2011, 22:06:11 UTC
Some of us, do believe in equal work for equal pay, in work being valued above status, in from each according to their means and to each according to their need.

We are not... the same as privileged overlords. I can understand how it seems that way - but some of us prefer equity over inequity, I swear.

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private lifeafterhope September 21 2011, 22:18:05 UTC
Do you. Then I suppose you don't take advantage of the things you're given over us. You don't go to the warden areas, you don't use your private bath, you never ask the admiral for things.

You never force an inmate to ask their master's permission to work or to help or to teach, or value a warden's word above an inmates means or need.

More words with nothing behind them.

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Re: private iam_aghost September 21 2011, 22:29:16 UTC
I could happily do without. I have not asked the Admiral for a single favour since I have arrived here.

As for that - my interest is my patients. I value their well-being above any warden's word. But, as I said at the time, to do that, I require someone to vouch for you. It is as simple as that.

And my point wasn't about specific incidents. It was more that... we're not feudalistic ruling classes. We might be, in your view, injust and unreasonable - but a lot of governments are. A lot of systems are entirely imperfect - and that is always open to change and movement. But setting us up as monoliths compared to the power structures in those worlds is as much generalising as us, say, presuming inmates are not to be trusted.

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Re: private lifeafterhope September 21 2011, 23:02:51 UTC
Which you do. You wouldn't require someone to vouch for a warden.

And if you aren't the ruling class, why so many little things to mark your status? What does it gain to force us to bathe together? To keep us from drinking, or swimming, or walking in sunlight, but to keep us down and elevate you?

I'm not generalizing. I've been here long enough to see how this system works, and I've seen enough of them to know that if you're part of it, you support it, no matter how different you claim to be.

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Re: private iam_aghost September 21 2011, 23:05:27 UTC
I would require them to have medical qualifications.

I cannot answer for that individually. I do not wish to make an excuse either way or another - but my boys bathed together. It wasn't to make them feel inferior.

I'm not claiming to be an exception to the rule - I'm claiming you're looking at the system, but not the individuals within it.

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Re: private lifeafterhope September 21 2011, 23:25:48 UTC
Ones you recognize, no doubt So nothing from off-Earth is good enough... unless they're a warden.

I'm looking at the system and finding that individual wardens who go along with it support it, hold it up and crush us down, whether they claim to believe in it or not.

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Re: private iam_aghost September 21 2011, 23:43:51 UTC
I would still want a qualification vouched for by someone from that... society.

I have been 'oppressed'. I imagine you have too. This is not the same. For all it's faults, it is not the same. Which is not to expect gratitude, nor to tell you to appreciate being here. I doubt I'd get it.

But I wish to do nothing but to help my inmate, and I know that does not occur by fear.

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Re: private lifeafterhope September 21 2011, 23:59:49 UTC
And if there were none?

No, it is not the same. It's worse. At home, I could organize. I could rally my brothers and sisters to the cause and we could fight without being put down by magic we can't touch or oppose. If my friends were imprisoned, I could help them, free them. And if we died, we died martyrs, remembered by those who followed us.

Here if we die, we die pointlessly, returning again and again, chained to a life we didn't ask for. It isn't only our skills and our freedom you've stolen from us, it's our lives, our fates.

It's an oppression harsher than almost any King could dream of.

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Re: private iam_aghost September 22 2011, 00:12:30 UTC
Then I would not want to leave them in charge of medical procedures.

... No. A martyr's death... is a tragedy, not a glory. I know many, many men who died fighting against an oppressive regime. And they were noble. Righteous. But it was still nothing but a tragedy. It cared little for what it was left behind, only in itself.

You can fight without losing sense of the meaning of death. Not its glory, but it's tragedy. You lose track of that - you kill at will and die at will - you lose the meaning of the fight itself.

This is no theft of your life. Your fate, essentially, is still your own. You see oppression because all you look for is oppression - it doesn't mean it's not there, in principle, but it doesn't mean it is all there is. I cannot force my inmate to be anyone he is not. Only persuade him of the value of my judgement.

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Re: private lifeafterhope September 22 2011, 00:41:33 UTC
Gentle torture is still torture; anyone will break under enough of it. All we have is the hope [so much sarcasm] of resisting it long enough to disappear.

I've seen enough death to know its meaning, and I know there is no tragedy in dying when your death frees people to fight on, when it gives them new strength, when it in itself is a blow to the enemy.

I died fighting for what mattered. I never gave up and I never killed when it wasn't necessary.

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Re: private iam_aghost September 22 2011, 00:56:03 UTC
There is always tragedy in dying. There is always tragedy in someone throwing their life into any cause - better lived in it than dying in it.

I died defending the things I loved. But it is a tragedy, none the less.

And I know being trapped, like a fly in amber. More trapped than any inmate here.

I almost like you enough to explain.

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Re: private lifeafterhope September 22 2011, 01:11:44 UTC
And better to live, then die for it than to live discredited and useless.

I've heard it before. "If you knew my story, you'd know why it's alright for me to oppress you. I'm different. It's special for me."

I'll tell you what I told him. Don't bother. No story you could tell would make me agree to that.

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Re: private iam_aghost September 22 2011, 01:20:50 UTC
I'm not trying to use it as justification for anything.

I'm trying to empathise with you.

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Re: private lifeafterhope September 22 2011, 01:22:43 UTC
How generous of the lord to feel sorry for the serf without lifting a finger to help him.

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Re: private iam_aghost September 22 2011, 01:27:15 UTC
Again, you're interpreting things to your own ends.

I'm trying to understand the position you're in - start off with something we might have in common, as opposed to something we may disagree on.

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Re: private lifeafterhope September 22 2011, 01:53:36 UTC
Something we might have in common that you almost deign to speak of.

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