The Caldari Dialogues
The Caldari Dialogues was a series of four blog entries written by the player of Svetlana Scarlet. Each entry focused on a particular aspect of the Caldari State and people. It cover the foundations, the corporations, the average Caldari living in the State, and all those who are on the fringes of society.
There is the possibility that in the future other authors may add to the first four, please note your contributions here with a brief summary.
For those interested in understanding what the Caldari are about or how to play a believable Caldari character these entries should be worthwhile reading.
Foundations of the Caldari
- by the player of Svetlana Scarlet
This is going to be the first segment of what is intended as a multipart series discussing the way the I, as a writer and Caldari roleplayer in Eve Online, see the way the State and its people. Recently, there has been a lot of headbutting about this on the Chatsubo, through which I suspect I have made few friends among the people at CCP who are in charge of the latest storyline leading up to the debut of Faction Warfare on 10 June. I am posting these here mostly as a result of a discussion I had with the players of Kai Zion and Yoshito Sanders, who have been of the opinion that my rather scathing criticism of the storyline has been a bit premature. Because that conversation seemed to at least enlighten them, I thought I would use that conversation (and a log which Kai so generously provided) as a springboard for a series of more in-depth articles on the topic. I'll be interspersing bits of our conversation with my text, so you can see what happened there. However, just a warning; these quotes are not in the chronological order from the discussion, but in relevance to the topic. I'll include the timestamp though.
I won't just be discussing the Caldari per se, but I'll also be bringing in a lot of references that I think shaped the way I view Caldari society, and probably contributed to the thoughts of those people originally responsible for the idea of the Caldari when Eve was in its germination stages. Where possible, I'll try to make sure I quote or link these sources, but sometimes that isn't going to be feasible; I'll try to include enough information about them that you can hunt them down on your own if you want, at the very least.
I'll be putting the bulk of these entries behind the cut -- they are going to run long, probably, so if I don't they are going to make the front page look a little weird. As always, I invite comments, criticism, and analysis from anyone. And with that, let's get to the first part of this discussion, where I'll discuss what I see are the foundations of Caldari thought, morality, and attitudes, and where they came from, both in Eve history and in reference to the real world. So let's start this off with a snippet of our conversation...
The Caldari mindset is a confusing one -- they are described as capitalists, nationalists, militarists, xenophobes, objectivists, and a variety of other adjectives, some that often seem to be contradictory. The truth of the matter is, the Caldari have a very complicated mindset that comes closest to the mentality of a lot of Asian cultures, especially China and Japan. Many of the tenets of Caldari thought, in my mind, are similar to those of Confucianism or Bushido, but that doesn't paint a whole picture. Let's have a look at what we know about the Caldari and see how that has shaped them.
For me, there are two major events in their history that contribute to their mindset. First, we have the post-collapse state of Caldari Prime. From the Caldari Timeline, we know that at the time of the Eve gate collapse, the planet's atmosphere wasn't even breathable, at least not unassisted, and by the time the automated terraforming processes started by the initial settlers changed that, most of the planetary population had died. The few outposts that did survive scraped by for a few hundred years, then emerged on a still hostile, but at least habitable planet, and then they had to try to rebuild society. How many of them actually were there on the planet? Well, we can surmise that it's at least several hundred (smaller than that, and the population would likely have died out or become a bunch of inbred mutant freaks before they could do something about it), but probably not much more than a couple thousand, at least in any one place; larger, and it's unlikely we would have seen a societal collapse that brought about an 8000-year wait for the next recorded civilization.
So what does this give us to go on? Well, those first Caldari are probably going to be faced with some very tough choices. They need as many people to survive on the planet as possible, in order to preserve their chances of overall survive, but they also can't have too many, or they'll sap whatever resources are there into oblivion. Keep in mind that the number of plants and animals on the planet are also probably going to be pretty low -- if the atmosphere wasn't breathable for humans, it probably wasn't very hospitable to anything larger than small insects, worms, or other primitive life that also survived in the outposts the humans lived in; aquatic life may have been more diverse. They are probably going to be living on scavenged food, food plants and livestock that have gone wild, or possibly some of the genetically engineered terraforming organisms (perhaps they were designed to be edible to serve a dual purpose). Either way, things are not going to be rosy for our early Caldari. What I see coming from this are the first foundations of the Caldari mentality.
- Emphasis on the greater good. It doesn't matter that much if any one of your community suffers, so long as it increases the likelihood of overall survival. If one of the group is suffering from a contagious disease, and you have no antibiotics, you may not want to, but you're going to have to keep them away from everyone else in order to prevent it from spreading. If you know they are going to die, or think they are going to die, there's no reason to give them your precious food or water to preserve that life if it will make the rest of you suffer.
- Emphasis on efficiency, practicality and productivity. In order to preserve resources, including food, water, and manpower, you need to find a way to do things in the most efficient way possible. This is very similar to the above comment, but it also adds the concept of measured value. For example, take two workers, John and Harry. John can plow a field in half the time of Harry, but you only have enough food so that one can have a full ration. Who do you give it to? The answer is obvious to any Caldari, and if you had to pick one to save from a burning building, the answer is also obvious. This isn't just a practical decision for the Caldari though, it's a moral one; by saving the weaker one, you could be dooming your community to a worse harvest in the fall. You will have failed the community, and possibly caused its demise, because you made the wrong choice.
- Ancestor worship. This one is a bit more of a stretch; we know that Caldari spirituality, or at least mythology, is somewhat animistic, perhaps similar to Shinto, thanks to Cold Wind. I also think the ancestor worship that is part of Shinto, or at least the belief that one's ancestors can become kami, has been largely adopted by the Caldari, because their forebears are their link to both a more prosperous time and a great struggle that made their society possible. Your father taught you how to plant your crops,and when he dies, his spirit will become part of your field, as his father's spirit did before him, helping you to make the right decisions and negotiating with the other spirits to bring you the right amount of rain. This also ties in to an emphasis on tradition and conservatism.
All of these tie into modern ideals of the Caldari about self-sacrifice and nationalism, which are really developments of these ideals, as I told Kai and Yoshito here (shortly after I pointed out that Cold Wind itself is supposedly published by Lai Dai, a Patriot corporation):
Of course, these are only the first steps along the path to the Caldari mentality. As time goes on, we have the Caldari grow and begin to form civilizations again; presumably, before that they had been very nomadic, moving around to follow food sources. There was plenty of territory and not a lot of people, so despite the fact that there probably wasn't much in the way of food either, the danger of overhunting or overfishing was probably fairly low. About 7000 years ago, we begin to see the first real civilizations develop on the planet, probably indicating that populations were getting large enough and the ecosystem large and diverse enough that it could support cities and agriculture. This corresponds roughly to about 7000-9000 years ago here on Earth, when the first agricultural communities were emerging in Mesopotamia.
Presumably, the Caldari did not languish quite as long in that state due to leftover knowledge from pre-collapse times and recovered artifacts of that era; certainly even the most primitive inventions that wouldn't be seen anywhere here on Earth until far later could provide a possibility for the Caldari to reverse engineer them, assuming they survived; the question is, if the Caldari took so long to do it, why did the others, who presumably had a jump on them? It took the Caldari 9000 years for their first great empire after the collapse, the Raata Empire, which seem to have been at least of a similar level to the Persian or Roman Empires on Earth in terms of influence, if not size or scope. It took the Gallente about 12500 years, the Minmatar roughly 10000 years, and even the Amarr about 8000 years for this same development. It is hard to understand why, but then we don't know what kind of disasters befell on these worlds during that event; it would seem to follow that whatever happened to them would have also affected Caldari Prime (especially since Gallente Prime is in the same system), however, so this is a little confusing. Possibly, the fact that Caldari Prime appears to have been an industrial colony built for a specific purpose and probably had a lot more technological development, may have had an effect. The other possibility is that Caldari Prime is simply smaller, in terms of land mass, and therefore a "world government," even one like the Roman Empire (the Mediterranean, around which their empire was situated, literally means "middle of the world"), was easier to come by. Of course, we don't have that much to go on with the ancient history of the various races, but it is something interesting to note.
Anyway, we don't know much about the Raata Empire, except that it emerged only about a thousand years after recorded civilization begins on Caldari Prime. It does last for 2500 years (something that makes me think that it was at least eventually nearly global in scale), however, so it must have some lasting effect on the Caldari consciousness. Because of the lack of information we really have, we can really only make some vague assumptions, but I'll try to stretch these as much as possible. Feel free to take me to task if you disagree.
- Socially, and probably technologically, it is likely that the Raata Empire was fairly stagnant, at least in terms of its basic structures. I'm guessing this for two reasons. One, we know that the Raata Empire lasted for 2500 years, which indicates a considerable amount of stability, something that isn't likely when the government or society is being reinvented every few decades or even every century. Note that this is longer than any other continuous government has existed on present Earth -- perhaps the Chinese may claim that they have lasted that long, but even that is a stretch. Second, despite being the dominant political entity on Caldari Prime for two and a half millennia, it still appears that the Gallente were the first realize that they were not alone in their star system. Keep in mind that if Rome had stood this long, it would have fallen sometime in the mid-1700s (assuming you go by the date of the city's founding). This stagnation is probably a result of ingrained Caldari conservatism and a lack of pressure from outside entities (yet another reason to believe that the Raata Empire spanned most of Caldari Prime). Note similar retrenchment in Japan following the rise of the Shogunate.
- It appears to have been somewhat feudal, at least, from what we see in Cold Wind. Notice that the forerunners of the Civire and Deteis are flying the flags of their houses, not a single state; presumably, military control was split between families (assuming that is what a "house" is in the chronicle; quite likely due to elements of ancestor worship). This, along with the strong emphasis in the Caldari consciousness on the greater good, probably led to some sort of code of honor or duty, which we can still see elements of today. I suspect that in the end this contributed to its downfall, and the only reason it lasted so long is the strong tradition of Caldari conservatism.
Somewhere though, the Raata Empire collapsed, and fifteen hundred years passed before contact was made by the Gallente. What were they doing during this time? Presumably, technological progress sped up, and certainly once the Gallente arrived that had to continue as well. There's a few items in the timeline that are unexplained -- I'm curious what this "Cultural Deliverance Society" is that is referenced. Is that a Gallente version of the Bureau of Indian Affairs or the British Raj? Is it some sort of Gallente pro-Caldari rights activist group (presumably, it's not Caldari, since it "arrives" on Caldari Prime)? Certainly, the Caldari must have lagged behind the Gallente in terms of technology at the time of first contact; they could not have had even 1700s-era astronomical science and miss a worldwide civilization in their same star system.
Based on what we've seen of the Gallente treatment of the Minmatar, some sort of paternalistic "help the poor Caldari get all civilized" society doesn't seem that farfetched. One can certainly see how that would not really endear the Gallente to the Caldari, who as a society take pride in self-sufficiency. Colonialism couldn't have sat very well with them, especially since they appear to have made rapid technological advancement after first contact; the Sotiyo-Urbaata Drive was developed by Caldari engineers, after all. It certainly doesn't take long for the Caldari to throw off the shackles of the Gallente and declare their independence after the founding of the Federation.
The Caldari xenophobia, or at least distrust of outsiders, probably originates in this period of their history; being taken advantage of by colonial overlords, no matter how well-intentioned, is not likely to have made them very happy. We only need to look at the examples of Britain and India, or the United States and the various Amerind tribes, to see that this relationship is often abused and engenders resentment.
From here, we get to the modern Caldari State and its current corporate oligarchy, as well as the Caldari war of independence. I don't think that's a topic I can easily squeeze into this already long article, so I'm going to wrap this section up here. I know there hasn't been too much from the discussion Kai, Yoshito, and I had, but that's because we focused mainly on current Caldari society and the recent events with Tibus Heth and the Provists. There should be quite a bit more in the next installments.
The Corporations
- by the player of Svetlana Scarlet
The Rat Race
- by the player of Svetlana Scarlet
Those Left Behind
- by the player of Svetlana Scarlet