Peace in Our Times

[OrrinDymas]

"Colonial One to alpha patrol:"

Orion: "Reading you C1"

"Looks like things are getting too hot here, we're departing Harris in 5 minutes, we could use some cover on our way to escape point X-ray."

Orion: "Rgr, gaining clearance from McDuff, we'll see you in the ice."

[Malaclypse 666]

BEAMTENHERRSCHAFT



This is the age of bureaucracy, and to live at this time is, as Proudhon said, "to have every operation, every transaction, every movement noted, registered, counted, rated, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, refused, authorized, endorsed, admonished, prevented, reformed, redressed, corrected ... to be laid under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, exhausted, hoaxed, and robbed." The governing I Ching hexagram is 47, K'un, , oppression or exhaustion, the dried-up lake, with the usual reading of superior men oppressed by the inferior. This is the time when homo neo-phobe types most rigorously repress homo neophile types, and great heresy hunts and witch trials flourish. This correlates with the number 8, signifying the Last Judgment, because every citizen is to some extent a State functionary, and each is on trial before the jury of all. The traditional Chinese associations with this hexagram are sitting under a bare tree and wandering through an empty valley�signifying the ecological havoc wreaked by purely abstract minds working upon the organic web of nature.

The 16th Tarot trump, The Tower, describes this age.

The Tower is struck by lightning and the inhabitants fall from the windows. (Cf. the Tower of Babel legend and our recent power failures.) The traditional interpretations of this card suggest pride, oppression, and bankruptcy.

This correlates with Libra, the mentality which measures and balances all things on an artificial scale (Maya). Typical Libras who have manifested Beamtenherrschaft charac-terists are Comte de Saint Simon, Justice John Marshall, Hans Geiger, Henry Wallace, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kenneth Galbraith, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., John Dewey, and Dr. Joyce Brothers.

In Beamtenherrschaft ages there is ceaseless activity, all planned in advance, begun at the scheduled second, carefully supervised, scrupulously recorded�but inevitably finished late and poorly done. The burden of omniscience on the ruling class becomes virtually intolerable, and most flee into some form of schizophrenia or fantasy. Great towers, pyramids, moon shots, and similar marvels are accomplished at enormous cost while the underpinnings of social solidarity crumble entirely. While blunders multiply, no responsible individual can ever be found, because all decisions are made by committees; anyone seeking redress of grievance wanders into endless corridors of paperwork with no more tangible result than in the Hunting of the Snark. Illuminati historians, of course, describe these ages as glowingly as Zweitracht epochs, for, although control is in the hands of homo neophobe types, there is at least a kind of regularity, order, and geometrical precision about everything, and the "messiness" of the barbaric Verwirrung ages and revolutionary Unordnung ages is absent.

Nevertheless, the burden of omniscience on the rulers steadily escalates, as we have indicated, and the burden of nescience on the servile class increasingly renders them unfit to serve (more and more are placed on the dole, shipped to "mental" hospitals, or recruited into whatever is the current analog of the gladiatorial games), so the Tower eventually falls.

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[Nightfall]

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.


ewige blumenkraft! take it easy:cool:

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If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God? - from 'Nightfall' by I. Asimov
The Outcasts consider Siniestre Nube a sacred place for several reasons. Early explorers discovered a jumphole within the depths of the cloud that leads to a strange world of ringed stars and strange craft. All ships in the burrial ground are placed facing that hole to honor the Alien Spirits. - An Outcast rumor

[Malaclypse 666]

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
ewige blumenkraft! take it easy:cool:

und ewige schlangenkraft!

You as well, mate.

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[Malaclypse 666]

Um.. have the janitors gone home yet?

I bumped this to make a short.. (for me, heh) observation: (I just read the entire thread again for enjoyment.)

The Peace talks "failed" in one sense. The storyline is fixed. It should probably remain so for a time; both from the standpoint of our roleplaying, and the constraints of the game's history as currently "written". The cases for why it would fail, RP-wise, were made passionately, but completely in character. (So passionately, that I was fumin' at ol' Nightfall for awhile.. we even mussed each other's hair a bit in PM's).

But in another, even better sense, they "succeeded". They helped to revive a flagging participation by the community, which seemed for various reasons to be teetering on the brink. They helped to point out that an idea by an inspired individual can inspire the rest of those in proximity to participate. And, to show and encourage others how to create and promote events and story lines which engross and involve us all.

Well done, Discovery! And well done to our host, Harlequinn. She came holding nothing but a Rose of Peace, and left, having unwittingly planted and nurtured an entire new garden of hope. At least, for me.

Perhaps she'll invite us back someday.

"Mal"

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