Idea - Space Interpol

No matter what you do, you can't stop Sanctuary Syndrome. As soon as anyone commits a crime, they flee to the nearest planet that doesn't play nice with anyone and claims "not your jurisdiction". There's not much you can do against it, it's the ultimate defence.

 

Yeah see the above doesn't really work when your target is in one of the many space bars and everyone pulls a gun on you the minute you try to make an arrest. That's not faction to faction, thats faction to bar.

In theory, but from my personal experience I'd have to disagree. Most colonies like to handle their own, and even more criminal characters dislike actually going to jail. Most are good, but the loudest and most obnoxious criminal characters are not.

There are also planets, like Tetanus Fields initially, that claimed to be safe havens for those who have committed crimes. No expediting on that there planet. But yes, essentially if they commit a larger crime, they'd be effectively grounded if they don't want to face any flak.

 

Ohhh, if that's the case I could see this working much better.

 

Tribal african cultures on earth have had slaves justified by spirituality and devotion. Systems of servitude we loosely associate with slavery have always existed on earth and they were quite different from the european colonialist slavery. Many muslim thinkers reformed slavery in Africa and made it a system of honour.

It's not evil when it's deeply rooted in your culture and society. You can only find it evil in comparison of another society or in comparison of other morals, which means you're establishing a standard for what is moral and not moral and you're labelling it as universal, which means you're invalidating and generalizing any culture that doesn't fit your narrow standards of "morality" (*hrm hrm USA*)

As such, you cannot blame a feral floran for being a feral floran. Unless you want to push your ideals on him, which ends up being inherently more evil since you'd be aware of exactly what you're doing, while the Floran would be acting normally, from his standard. Florans are pretty animalistic, they're amoral rather than immoral, they don't go against the rules for the sake of it, they go against the rules because they ignore the rules or they don't fit their upbringing/culture. Going against the rules not acknowledging them or disrespecting the rules because they don't fit your thinking isn't evil. For something to be evil, something else has to be lawful, and there has to be a neutral middle point. Unless you wanna go by moral absolutism, which would anyway say that anyone trying to stop a floran from being evil would be evil as well, depending how it's done.

FYI, not defending slavery at all, I'm saying morality is completely relative to a standard, and florans obviously don't fit the, for example, human standards, and that doesn't make them inherently evil or bad.

 

You sure do say a lot of things that don't pertain to what I'm saying. It, as always, comes down to style of RP, how people get along IC and OOCly, and what everyone wants to happen to their character. Additionally, for chaotic places like old Steel Valley, no matter what you did with leadership it would not translate to the vagrants that frequented such places. You go in, save everyone one day and the next they shoot at ya. Leaders only have so much control over their colony, and little to no control over the people in it, making some planned stories fall flat on their face before they even start. I know I've been chewed out by staff once or twice because I was trying to get a plot going.

Now we're just arguing for the sake of arguing though, the OP has stated the true intent making most of these points moot. I concede that my initial assessment of their system was wrong, and one that acts strictly as a supplement force would actually serve well in this server.

Also, in agreeing with Sen, I say this. Evil = anything that can be considered to the detriment of human/floran/avian/hylotl/glitch/novakid kind as a whole. Wether the ends justify the means or not is purely opinion. Slavery is exploitation of a majority of sentient beings. Inherently evil. Doesn't matter if it's ingrained in culture. Just means they have an evil culture.

 

TL;DR: Abducting men, women, and children right from their homes, slapping them on a boat and shipping them off to be sold as slaves who will constantly be mistreated by their masters because they are such assheads that they can't find anything better to do with their lives IS NOT the "right" way to do slavery. It's certainly the "Chaotic Evil" route of slavery, and for some "cultures" that may be all they know so nothing seems bad, but as Tacc put it that doesn't mean they're "right" by our standards or even universal standards. What a culture IS doing =/= what a culture SHOULD be doing.

((Yeah yeah yeah we need to acknowledge their perspective and the fact that to them this is normal and not just cram our truth down their throats with guns drawn 'murica style, that's not the point of what I'm saying. I'm just saying just because a culture, say, sacrifices their third born sons and sells their third born daughters as prostitutes and executes anyone who says "Huey Tlatooni" or uses their left hand for anything except wiping one's rectum, and this ridiculous behavior has taken root as normality in the eyes of the people doesn't mean it's not completely ridiculous and obscene in the grand scheme of things, at least from our point of view.))

The act of one entering into slavery to someone in order to pay a debt to them or as punishment for a criminal action, also known by the term "indentured servitude" (because people wanted to make the distinction from this and abducted Africans pulling cotton until death, even though what we know of as indentured servitude has been in place and called slavery since before the first century.). So in that sense, Sen's right. He didn't take the time to fully elaborate on his quick remark, but this is the point I wanted to get across.

Anyways, back to relevance to the Interpol idea.

 

ITT Cultural Relativism

 

So what's your point, other than godwin? That's no different than a culture thinking slavery is moral, it's just another example. Again, unless you believe in some kind of moral absolutism, there's no way to say these people are immoral if they don't acknowledge any other morals.

Then you believe that there are things that are inherently lawful and things that are inherently evil, which is very nice seeing as you play the USCM leader, it's fitting for you to think "evil culture" is an actual thing. It's not about ends justifying the means at all, it's got 0 to do with that, I don't know why would you say that. I never asked why, I only questioned the morality of it. Somebody who doesn't know the rules cannot be evil, evil implies immorality, and immorality implies knowledge of morality. Since you believe things can be inherently evil though, I'll give to you that while someone who ignore the rules cannot be evil, they can do evil things without knowing it. Slavery isn't the exploitation of a majority of sentient beings either by the way, that's a loose definition. Slavery doesn't imply a quantity.

Bolded probably the most important thing you said. If we didn't have different morals, we wouldn't have a different point of view. Nobody is "right" or "wrong" when it comes a moral act that has no reference level. Morality starts having value when people interact together. There are things any lawful character/faction does on the server that, again, if you believe in inherently evil things, will be considered evil. Most people in life, and on rps anyway, go by the golden rule, "one should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated", and if you believe that there's some kind of absolutism or universalism in moral, it's probably linked to this thinking. If you wouldn't like to be made a slave, don't make slaves. If you do believe in that though, the second you shoot someone for doing something you disagree with is the second where you become evil as well. It's not about "acknowledging their perspective", it's more about making sense. Universal space police that sells itself as lawful isn't, by the golden absolute rule and by moral relativism. I've read the rest of the thread and understand now what is this interpol thing better, which is more like, lawful-intended mercenaries you can ask help from, from what I gather, but I mostly answered because your definition of evil is very loose. (Not just you, Tacc and Sen.)

When making my own character, of course I base it on my own morality, which is probably based on the golden rule, and me, as a person, agrees with Tacc that slavery is evil and with Sen that X society perpetuating genocide is probably the most evil thing I can think of, and that's why I'd define suwedi as lawful evil, he completely believes in what he's doing, and compared to my conception of morality, he is evil, so that's that. But you guys are focusing on the fact that the act of slavery is evil, and that the culprit should be punished for it, which is evil in the case of a feral floran: they don't know what they're doing, it's deeply ingrained in their culture and they most likely ignore that it's frowned upon, it's not evil to them. It's evil to put yourself as the absolute judge of morality and societies, butt in a society, judge individuals and label them as evil when they don't know any better. Florans are pretty close to animals, and it'd be pretty fucking silly to put animals on trials for doing something "evil". Granted, Florans -can- be aware of morality and rules, but I thought this space interpol thing was supposed to seek out whatever they considered evil and chase it out. Massacring a floran tribe that doesn't know any better would be pretty evil, given your own defintion of evil. But again, I didn't get that the interpol thing was supposed to be some sort of helper you'd call if you needed.

 

If that's the case, what would you consider it to be if the organization in question focused, not on the apprehension/punishment of the slavers, but liberating the slaves themselves? Surely there's no way that that could be considered immoral.

 

I mean my opinion on this holds no weight, I was merely defending the argument that in a rp like ours there's no absolute/transcendant morals. That'd be moral and lawful with how I see it, but that doesn't mean someone won't find it unlawful. My main argument being that morality isn't a perfect concept and that if you go by the golden rule supposedly lawful people actually resort to evil acts constantly. I say it again, I'm not opposed to this idea at all, I guess this was kinda offtopic but since I had 3 people answer my statement I felt it was necessary to make my point understood.

 

If we're going to start a debate on moral codes and absolute/relative truth, I recommend making a new thread.

Back on topic: still waiting on that IC info packet, Moar/Unix/Whatevertheheckyouwanttobecalled.

 

Why so much posts when there's already SSS? (Close enough for it).