I don't know how to hit the right target

I was thinking of something that Mekan of Omega said (sorry, Mr, er, Mr. Mekan). About wanting things. And about backroom deals and expectations and the way in which matters unfold. It was in one of the threads about pirates, I'll link to it in a minute.

My question is, where do you draw the line between what people want and what other people convince them that they want? I mean, we're all individuals, but people are influenced and manipulated by others all the time, and it's very easy to convince someone that they want something when they don't have it. People don't like feeling excluded, so they latch onto what you feed them.

I mean, this whole democracy thing, the idea that we should all have a contributing voice on political matters, regardless of how self-defeating that is (I've said it before; salarian democracy won't look any different from salarian oligarchic matriarchy, and that's hardly some big evil anyway). I'm not saying people don't want democratic reform, but they want it because they've been told to want it.

I know it seems unfair to some people, that most of the Union's population doesn't directly involve itself in politics, but until recently it just wasn't an issue. It wasn't. There were always groups who clamoured for, I don't know, a more asari way of doing things, or else wanted more representation, but they were just fringe groups. This is - it's like a fad that's gotten out of control. I know what some of you are going to say to that, and I'm not trying to argue that there isn't any actual thought or philosophical reasoning behind these movements. Because there is. I don't agree with it, but I get it, alright? The thing is, though, this is clearly just being stoked by, well, by someone. Someone with influence.

So how do you say that to people? How do you say "look, I know this is important to you, and I don't want to dismiss it because really I can't do that if it means that much to you, BUT, what I'm really dealing with here is whoever led you to think that this mattered in the first place. Because that's the real issue"? It sounds insulting.

Here's the thing (and please don't turn this into a joke about Pariah), it's not as if anyone's being enslaved or ill-treated or anything. It's not like salarian citizens were ever particularly unhappy, even if they disagreed with a few things. But now they *are* unhappy, and they want things to change. Because they've been told they should want that. They've taken that direction they were given and made it their own. So how much stoking do you have to do before people genuinely do want the things you're telling them they want, and people like me can't question it because it sounds like we're saying they're not individuals with their own minds, that they're puppets or something?

I mean, it's not like what these people want is unreasonable. It's pointless and I don't agree with it and I think they're messing with things they shouldn't be, but at the same time I can't say it's something terrible. But what do you do when it's so obviously not some innocent grassroots movement but something being pushed by people with an agenda?

I keep telling you all that something's gone wrong back there, that what you're seeing is symptomatic of something really worrying in the Union, and this is what I mean. You use the guys on the ground as, as shields, you know? You light the spark from behind the scenes and then they fan the flames, and the traditionalists can't just dump water on it because then they *are* being unreasonable. The enemy is throwing up salarian shields. So how do you put the springbugs back in the pod?

This is the really scary thing. They've started viewing the people - the guys on the ground, the guys who don't have to worry about political decisions, or don't get to worry about political decisions (I don't care where you stand on that point) - as tools, as weapons. They're whipping them up and using them to put pressure on the bloodlines whose policies or mere existence they don't like. That's never happened before, not like this.

It's like they look at the Union and they see, I don't know, a farm. Resources, to be - to be reaped.

So how do you hit the right people, and not your own brothers and sisters? Someone tell me that.

I don't think you really can and that is the horrible part.

I know you are thinking this through the angle of unnecessary chore, but what if these radicals stoked up a long-dormant will for change, as horrible as their methods were? People who've lived their whole life accepting that the oligarchy is eternal and unmovable and then one of their own stands up and shows that they can too matter and make the people on top of the totem pole listen to them. (speaking of which we haven't heard of any more Sur'Keshian cities being annihilated, did the dalatrasses cave in to SDU?)

You say "it's not as if anyone's being enslaved or ill-treated or anything". I think its the enslaved are realizing they're enshackled.

You know, I hear about the people who actually fought in the war, about taking down husks and knowing you were fighting what used to be your neighbours? Or worse, when you were fighting people who were indoctrinated and had to be treated as the enemy because you weren't in any position to help them?

It's like we're fighting in some afterimage of the war. It came to Sur'Kesh after all.

We've got people who see us all as a resource to be reaped for their own unfathomable ends that we don't understand, and they keep throwing a load of us up as shock troops to help them.

Some of you were saying that you hoped our leaders had learnt some lessons from the war? They've learned the wrong ones. They've learned how to be Reapers.

i'm going to answer this question because my sister probably feels she shouldn't i'm guessing

you find the people calling the shots, and you blow their stupid heads off

it's kind of sad you usually have to break a couple other people on the way to finding / shooting / surviving after shooting those shot calling guys, but - assuming the shot calling guys really are unique, and there aren't just a thousand more ready to pick up where they leave off - you can really change things by taking out the linchpins.

...if there are a thousand guys ready to pick up where the dead ones leave off then maybe you should rethink whether those guys maybe have a point.

Except that's not what's happening. I know you humans like the idea of the, the rebellious underdog finding the courage to stand up and make a change, but that's not how it works. The people on the ground don't matter at all. It's someone just manipulating sentiment for their own ends.

It's how we work, in a sense; you find the right levers to pull, the right information that will turn a conflict to your advantage before it even begins, maybe head it off completely. Except it's not just information or influence now, it's people. They're not fighting in the abstract, they're fighting with my people's lives. It's a perversion of what's kept the peace for millennia.

Mr Ragum, I don't want to be rude, but you've already shown a tendency to romanticise things in line with this... human desire to see the underdog come into his own and matter, be more than a cog in a functioning machine. Your recent problems with the Hierarchy? I admire your people's spirit, I really do, but this isn't what you think it is. It's that sort of human sentiment that's destroying us.

Friends call me Mek.


I work for a living. Don't call me Mr.


Honestly, it DOES sound insulting. It kind of implies that somehow, their train of thought is...like some kind of disease. Like, 'you aren't a bad person, but you're just kinda messed up in the head because you caught this idea from someone else. Don't worry, we can fix that.'


How do you figure?


Welcome to the Milky Way Galaxy.

This isn't anything new to people outside the Union, even if this isn't how the Union ever operated before.

Some people would say that's how ideas work, you know? Like a disease. I mean, they originate somewhere, or they're created somewhere, and then they spread. They evolve and they mutate, and they split into different strains. Maybe someone does some tinkering with them in a lab somewhere to make them more effective, like able to take effect sooner, or with more overt symptoms? Then you choose the right vectors and you introduce them to a population. Some burn out and some come and go periodically and some turn into full-blown pandemics and totally change the face of society. That's what I think.

And I know it's insulting, that's the problem. I don't know where to draw the line or how to express myself. Because it's one thing to disagree with someone when they're discontented with something, that's normal. But when you're trying to fight the people who are stirring up the discontent in the first place, you end up doing the same thing as they do, you end up turning that person with a viewpoint into something less than salarian, like they're just a piece in the game whose autonomy doesn't really matter. I don't want to do that. But I think this is a big part of the problem; I'm trying to see who and what started it all running, you know, but part of me feels that it's too late, because once you unleash the idea you can't stop it, not without disrespecting all those people who think it's a good one.

Ideas are sort of like information; they don't really belong to anyone, but someone can control them or hoard them, or release them deliberately at the right time to cause a lot of chaos.

I mean, we're salarians. We try to win the battle before we begin, maybe even so that there isn't a battle. I just... I think we already lost. They moved against us and we lost. Do you see?


Our clans and cliques and marches and corporations have always fought for recognition and funding and resources and all the rest of it. But now it's like the people are the key to all of that, so it's about fighting over the people. That scares me.

I am not that deep into the matter since i know far too little about salarian inner politics and social inner workings to be exceptionally clever about it but since you brought asari ways up, maybe this angle is one to look at.

The salarian society is one that is mostly if not totally impermeable when it comes to social layers or actual social influence. In stark contrast to the asari society that has it's very unique, almost automated built-in ladder of social importance resulting from the natural age pyramid. Permeability is a central aspect and the prospect for everyone to be able to achieve any position in society is liberating the individual to be productive and content wherever she is at this point. We could not live otherwise, it would feel like slavery. Something similar goes for humans or turians, they both have permeable social systems in their own ways, fitting their respective nature and lifespans, more organized and asari like with the turians and more individualistic and probably more violent with the humans.

In the aftermath of the Reaper War the strongest of emotions are visible even in the salarians and it may be so that only in this environment some salarians now muster the energy it takes to attempt and blow the impenetrable barriers apart by force. Having witnessed the galaxy fighting, all the other species in combination and also important individual decisions made by individuals without regard of their social status may have set this in motion finally. It does make the goal inherently right or wrong.

The movement only gains its importance by how many people actually will want to penetrate the barriers, to actually really leave their spots (or the other way around, rather stay put because they are content). All of this only matters if literally everyone wants to leave wherever he is right now in the social system. This makes the fight for the masses the core of the crisis, this makes everyone a participant or a possible victim which seems tragic.

PUSSY

This is why no one takes you shits seriously

I...

Look, you seem like a decent enough guy, but you really, REALLY don't know anything about us "victims of infectious thought." You are pretty much saying that ANYONE asking for change in the Union is insincere about their passions and only care because a shadow figure wants them to care. They are victims, cattle led astary from the right path of the daltrasses.

Yeeeaaaah, no. Fact of the matter is plenty of salarians, INTELLIGENT salarians, WANT change. We have thought, considered, and weighed a system of government that sat idlely behind our borders leaving millions to die at the hands of the Reapers and found it just a tad lacking. It's not just about some sort of mindless emotional response, you know? It's a reasoned reaction.

I guess the answer to your question about how not to offend "these" people is just... Don't say the stuff you are saying to them. Because, shrell man, you just reduced them to nothing.

^ This is the sort of thing I mean.

I don't know how to avoid offending people. I don't know how to let people know that I *get* how these things are important to them, and that I know they're making their own decisions, but that I still think they're being used. People are pieces in a far more complicated system. They are, it's just how it works. It's who's trying to control the shape of that system and how, that's what worries me. Partly because I don't know the answers. I'm not trying to take anything away from anyone's autonomy, but their autonomy only works on the level of that one person, you know? There's a lot going on when you look at things on the broader level.

And again, I don't know how to say this without sounding dismissive.

I mean, I have a lot of problems with the way things work back there. A lot. I just think that what the individual person sees and means as a positive change is also part of an agenda that isn't positive and isn't really change, except for how it has the Union feeding on itself. And I don't know how to challenge the second without seeming to attack the first.

I've sort of burned some bridges elsewhere on the 'net because of this. This place... it's harder to do that. Because weirdness and offence is sort of expected here. But I'll say it anyway: I don't mean to offend, Mr. Jeral.

Or Mr. Beble? Which do you prefer?

Ahh, the line-delete but.

Where would but you should be happy with the status quo! and its those damn agitators! political arguments be without it.

I'm not happy with the status quo. I haven't been home in years! That doesn't mean I want the Union to turn and collapse on itself so I can get what I want! Or so someone with a lot more influence than I have can lead me to think I've gotten what I want!

This isn't like the people who dismiss your campaign about the Compact. If anything, I'm protesting against exactly the sort of thing that you're protesting against! About using people as tools while telling them that there's meaning in that - telling them that it's a privilege to dance to someone else's tune because you're convincing them that they're actually dancing to their own, you know? Trying to convince them that you respect them for what *they do* and not just what *they do for you*. I mean, you're not disrespecting the drell raised to revere the Compact, are you? Raised to revere it so that they're manoeuvred into it while still making a free decision. You're not saying they aren't autonomous or shouldn't be, or that they can't make reasoned decisions. You're saying that people with influence are determining their perceptions and skewing them so that the decisions they make are the ones that let these people exploit them. And the Compactees themselves insist that they want to do this because it gives them a sense of pride and dignity, and they really mean that!.

You seem to make it work, though. What you mean and what you don't mean. How do you do it?

It's not *your* type of agitator that's the problem - you're trying to argue against that sort of attitude, to challenge that idea that you can see other people as tools. The agitators in the Union are doing the opposite, even if they're using rhetoric that sells the idea that they're trying to end some supposed exploitation.

See, my problem is that it *starts* with those agitators -- well, no, okay, it starts with a few people who have an idea that the agitators can use and want to encourage -- but then it goes beyond that. It moves to people who now see things differently and so genuinely want things to change, just like your young drell genuinely *want* to be Compactees. They make these ideas their own. More than the people who were fanning the flames. So it's like the agitators have a whole array of shields for their efforts at reengineering, because questioning what's happening reads to people as an attack on them and their choices, and it just makes them more outspoken and committed. It's just like the weapon at Entish! It... it perpetuates itself.

You get that I never use the word "agitator" without a smirk, right?

Out with it, who do you actually think is pulling their strings?

^
Let's hear it, Phraag. You said someone with influence. Who?

That's the thing, I don't know. I don't even know if the people who say they're with a particular group or want a particular thing are really with that group or if they're just.... stringing people along. I don't know who the players are, only that they're definitely there. If that makes me sound paranoid, then I'm sorry, but who among you really thinks there aren't high-level backers to this? If it were just groups like Equality For All, who were well-meaning but ineffectual, then I'd buy it. Really. Because if you look at what they were saying, they were about slow and natural change, about change in circumstance and making the most of the opportunity. That's like, low-level change. People are comfortable with that because it doesn't shake up their world too much but it lets them deal with their frustrations. That can happen on its own. But these calls for total democracy, for representation for everyone, they're completely radical and they're happening so quickly, even by our standards. Maybe the rest of you don't see that because we always look spontaneous to you? I don't know.

And the SDU are not some little group like Equality For All. I mean, we know that. If they're powerful enough to take on the STG, if even any of that Agent Red business was real - and they destroyed a city! Don't forget they destroyed a city! - then you can bet that they've got people seeded among the, well among the people, urging them on. Stirring them up. They don't want positive change, they want to throw the people at the leadership to bring them down.

And that's just the people pushing this "equal participation" idea from the revolutionary side. Don't forget the attempts by the traditionalists to co-opt it, like what I'm sure is going on at places like Farish Vey. You can see the pieces being moved about, even if you can't see the person actually moving them. You can tell from how they're moving that there's some guiding agenda behind it.

...Y'know what I hate about academics, politicians, generals an' armchair commentators?

The way you think "the people" are fraggin' stupid.

We're so damned dumb in fact, that we need people like you to guide us an' keep us in line, because otherwise, the big bad revolutionaries are gonna convince us we want things we don't want, an' lead us into disaster.

News flash losers. All most people want is a home, family an' friends, a full belly, a rewarding career, maybe a hobby or two that makes 'em happy, and the hopes of being healthy an' free enough to enjoy it. "Stirring people up" is actually fraggin' hard if they got all that. If any of it's missing, though, I don't see's how some agitator is going to stir up something that's not already in their minds, looking for a way to express itself.

It seems the public opinion here is that you, mr. Phraag, are in bed with the dalatrasses and are perfectly content being bossed around by mothers dearest, others rights be darned!

Salarian subterfuge being what it is, I would honestly not be surprised if Mr. Phraag was not at least onto something. It's a tactic used an awfully lot in marketing - a salesrep's job rests entirely on the foundation of being able to make you think you need whatever is being sold, regardless of whether or not you even want it in the first place.

Rising above the status quo to the point of revolutionizing anything takes considerable time and effort - time and effort most would prefer to spend in pursuit of more 'reasonable' and 'realistic' goals. It's not a matter of being stupid, it's a matter of how easily you can be manipulated to further someone else's end - perhaps without even noticing it until you're too far in, or begin believing it yourself.

Come now, when was the last time one of you succumbed to buying that new pair of shoes, or a new piece of tech that you didn't really need, the one that looked cool or fashionable, or because ' everyone else has it'?