Thoughts on Futility

Author: Mizhara Del’Thul

Original post: https://kynaldrnari.com/2018/05/31/thoughts-on-futility/

Entry for YC120 New Eden Capsuleer’s Writing Contest in the prose category.

It’s futile. There’s no path to success. We can not win this. We can not achieve this goal. It is futile.

It’s an odd little notion that tends to crop up every so often in capsuleer circles of all places. This is of course far from unexpected, because it’s true. It’s this delightful twist of irony to know that in New Eden no one soars as high, flies as far, wields mightier weapons or relishes in more wealth than capsuleers and yet… outside of that vile Empire itself there are few as efficiently hobbled, limited, neutered and chained as the freelancer capsuleers. I know, I know. This is a claim that requires some elaboration.

Consider our freedom.

There is no such thing as a border as far as we are concerned. There is not a star system or wormhole we can’t get to. Every trade station sits ready to receive our staggering wealth, every outer region system quakes under the thunderous firestorms we direct at scum in return for bounties and loot. We are as free as any in New Eden could ever be.

Consider our leashes.

We are blinded. Our eyes veiled to the vast majority of traffic and activity in New Eden. We are crippled. Our fingers on the triggers not ours after all, except when the true owners allow it. We are bound. Mere wreckage and salvage, should we tempt the ire of CONCORD. We are pawns and peons. Playthings for the powers that be, in Pendulum Pretense bloodsports. We are dupes. Forging entire “empires” in the outer regions, ready for the real empires of New Eden to swoop in and claim it all the moment our leash holders flicks a simple switch.

Consider then, our efforts.

The bleeding hearts froth and flail as clowns parade in their tents. Mad people wage wars on their ideological enemies among capsuleers, madder ones wage wars on random targets, the maddest wage war because they think they can win. They… we fight and kill and die and rise again, to fight and kill and die and rise again. A perpetual culling of those desperate or insane enough to sign on with our mad wars and our gloriously noble purpose and our relief of drudgery and boredom and our absolutely nonsensical building of empires and… well, our everything.

An example. There’s no defeating the crimson clown. He prances and pratfalls. He proclaims and prosecutes. He fiddles and falls. He loses and then what? He cries and giggles madly, yanks another tent out of the markets for what to us is largely pocket change and starts all over again. His enemies do the same, and start their own script from the start, playing their roles by rote. The cycle repeats.

Have you ever heard the definition of insanity?

What then is the alternative in the face of this futility? For futile it most certainly is. That mad mind isn’t going to change, and nor is the other mad minds that stand in opposition. His efforts are utterly pointless, achieving nothing and so are the efforts of his enemies as they reinforce everything he believes and thinks. Another example perhaps. The goons and NancyDotte and PL and Legacy and CO2 and all the other madmen out there, expending countless millions of lives in their utterly futile wars, achieving nothing but momentary grandeur or illusory successes as their capsuleer enemies lose some assets here, some isk there and some morale over yonder. The maps change a little, banks see the ISK flowing here, then there.

In utter futility, as the capsuleers then flow around the various outer region entities and shore up different sides of the map, bloats another entity, weakening a third, and the whole cycle starts again. Nothing permanent achieved. Egos have been stroked, of course, and grand claims about history being made reverberate throughout Galnet. And nothing actually changes, but local population counts. CO2, who I and many others proclaimed dead have now risen again. The Goons who were soundly and thoroughly shown for what a sad collection of terrible combat pilots and fleet commanders they are, infested another corner of the map and spread like fungus yet again. How many times have CVA and Providence burned to the ground? The Pendulum Pretense, the never-ending culling of pirates at the behest of corporations across the nations, the wars in highsec, low and null, the “colonization” of w-space. All mere cycles, never achieving something that isn’t torn down to be started anew.

Have you ever heard the definition of insanity?

That then, is the conclusion we must come to. Capsuleerdom is by definition insane. Every effort we ever make is futile. This is demonstrably true. The enemies we can fight can not be defeated. The enemies that fight us, can not defeat us. It’s futile. There’s no path to success. We can not win this. We can not achieve this goal. It is futile.

Yet we fight.

Because we must.

Because we like it.

Because we hate someone.

Because we love someone.

Because we want it.

Because we loathe it.

Pick and choose, the combination doesn’t matter. There’ll always be one that will incite the need to fight into any given capsuleer, given enough time.

… because it isn’t futile. It’s never futile. Fatal, certainly. Our efforts are magnificent in their staggering bloodshed, but never futile. You can never win a war against capsuleers, but you can win the war against their will and their cause. You can inspire fury, righteous wrath and effort into thousands, millions, trillions. You can inspire fear, terror, despair and futility into thousands, millions, trillions of hearts. You can be a symbol.

Lovely little bit of tosh that, isn’t it? Sure, it’s true, but it’s nonsense at the same time. You can be all of that, and rightly so, but that’s not the real reason why it’s never futile.

Do you want to know why it’s never futile? Why while staggeringly insane, you should never stop fighting no matter who you are and who you fight for?

It’s because of the simplest, dumbest, most pathetically cliché and trite thing there ever was.

It’s because maybe, just maybe… you’re fighting for what’s in your heart. You’ll never have to win or lose, you never have to succeed or fail. It’s quite simply the only reason you ever should need to keep fighting, no matter what. In my case, it’s the words “Never Again” writ in scar tissue.

What’s in your heart, capsuleer? Find out, then fight for it.