EVE Blog Banter #10: Butterfly Effect

Welcome to the tenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month's banter leans a little, OK a lot, on the academic side. It comes to us from xiphos83 of A Misguided Adventurer, who asks the following: " Victor Davis Hanson argues that western culture, comprising of ideals such as freedom, debate, capitalism, and consensual government, are what make western society so successful at waging war. These ideologies create a warrior who's direct participation in government, ability to think freely, and desire to remain free, fights harder and is willing to suffer more than his conscripted foe. Though a military must remain a structured oligarchy to fight a war effectively, why in a world where military conflict is as familiar as breathing are there so few alliances that embrace these ideologies when governing their members?"

A scholary banter, just the thing for Zargyl I guess, will try to stay IC this time as well:

Capsuleer culture is probably not the most traditional culture as it has only recently emerged with the technological breakthroughs possible through Jovian "seeding" of their Capsuleer technology to Caldari scientists and the adaption of said technology in all four empires.

This tech makes us capsuleers effectively immortal while flying in a capsule-equipped vessel. With the threat of violent death looming at us taken away, quite a lot of things do change. One of those things that change is motivation. The most vital human motivation changes from survival to something else. That something can be as varied as we as humans are varied. Examples would be: duty, honor, friendship and fun. These new motivations supersede survival.

Another thing that must be taken into account that for those planet-bound cultures and governments are much more ingrained into society than for those that can travel near instantly between stars. This makes it easier as well to just fly to the place/culture that is most appealing to us capsuleers.

Alliances as well are for the most part "just" the sum of their member corporations. Meaning a capsuleer can become a member of a corporation. And corporations are probably not the culture or government that the above mentioned Victor Davis Hanson mentioned in his theory. So the question is probably: How do capsuleers choose their corporation? That depends on 3 factors:

Firstly it depends on their personality. For the most part capsuleers will just chose a corporation that fits their style of living (be that industry minded or more combat orientated, be that more peaceful or more aggressive).

Secondly it depends on their friends. Friendship is always a powerful motivation and friends do like to spend their time together and therefore will quite likely join the same corporation.

And thirdly it depends on their motivation. And only in this – last – part does the actual style of government in said corporation fit in at all. One such motivation is Fun. And if the corporation-culture can supply that to its specific capsuleers it will prosper.

So for capsuleers standard ideologies are not as vital as in planet-bound culture and their governments therefore have to provide different necessities than for planet-bound cultures. Hanson's argument therefore is applicable only in a different way. Those capsuleer corporations or alliances that do bring forth warriors who fight harder and are willing to suffer more are those that hold true and support their member's motivation (like Fun and Friendship).

One thing I would like to mention as well that can also make quite a difference is: Luck/Fate. Just watch the cool Butterfly video. The hero of which most likely found himself a corp. He did so not by anything as complex as trying to find the corporation/alliance with a corporate-culture that fits him the best, but found his by pure and simple luck/fate:

Butterfly Effect in EVE - YouTube Video

PS: Allow me two questions please: Any ideas how best to post that long list of other bloggers and not having to link to all those pages manually? And with what code do I embed that video directly?

If you like to see how others have answered that (quite a few not too dissimilar to my answer I saw, just go to CK's bookmarks.