Neutral Ground - an Open Discussion Thread

[The North Polish Union]

I would disagree, at least when the word is used in a political sense. Perhaps nation-state (no pun intended) would be a better word for what I'm thinking of.

State, maybe, not not every state is a Nation-State

(and can I say I hate how the word 'Nation' technically referrs to ethnic identity instead of... well, a government and its people? Really feels counterintuitive )

But not every state is what I'm referring to (like the states of the USA). I'm referring to a self-governing political entity that exercises supreme authority over its territory, but I don't know what a good word for it is...

(and can I say I hate how the word 'Nation' technically referrs to ethnic identity instead of... well, a government and its people? Really feels counterintuitive )

Quasi-related: you guys are so lucky I don't write NS Essays anymore, I was reading a book on Canadian politics recently* and was introduced to the concept of a Region-State. I could have spent TREATISES of my life on that subject.

* "From Heartland to North American Region State. The Social, Fiscal and Federal Evolution of Ontario." (Courchene & Telmer)

I'd actually find a shorter-than-essay-length explanation of your views on this subject interesting. Your posts earlier in the thread seem to point to you agreeing more with me than with Kylia but you don't seem to go as far as I do ideologically.

[Mostly Benevolent Tyranny]

Quasi-related: you guys are so lucky I don't write NS Essays anymore, I was reading a book on Canadian politics recently* and was introduced to the concept of a Region-State. I could have spent TREATISES of my life on that subject.

* "From Heartland to North American Region State. The Social, Fiscal and Federal Evolution of Ontario." (Courchene & Telmer)

I'd actually find a shorter-than-essay-length explanation of your views on this subject interesting. Your posts earlier in the thread seem to point to you agreeing more with me than with Kylia but you don't seem to go as far as I do ideologically.

That would be really interesting!

[Kylia Quilor]

State, maybe, not not every state is a Nation-State

(and can I say I hate how the word 'Nation' technically referrs to ethnic identity instead of... well, a government and its people? Really feels counterintuitive )

But not every state is what I'm referring to (like the states of the USA). I'm referring to a self-governing political entity that exercises supreme authority over its territory, but I don't know what a good word for it is...

I know what you mean, NPU, In the realm of international relations, the states of the US aren't States, they're provinces. A State is the US (because the US int' a Nation-State) or France, or Bosnia and Herzegovina, et cetera. A Nation-State is a state that is largely ethnically homogeneous. A nation doesn't need to have a state (see many subjugated South Slavs before WWI).

I just don't like the word 'Nation' to describe what is essentiall an ethnic group, but I didn't make the rules, so that's the word we need to use.

[Unibot III]

I'd actually find a shorter-than-essay-length explanation of your views on this subject interesting. Your posts earlier in the thread seem to point to you agreeing more with me than with Kylia but you don't seem to go as far as I do ideologically.

That would be really interesting!

I'll do a 'short' post up with some thoughts.

[Unibot III]

That would be really interesting!

I'll do a 'short' post up with some thoughts.

Gah, you asked for it.

The first question that has to be answered is what do we mean when we say "legitimacy"? I would define legitimacy as the exclusive right to govern over a region.

It's actually quite rare that legitimacy is challenged in NationStates - it typically only occurs in crises in Game-Created Regions.

We're not concerned here with the "descriptive" application of legitimacy (I.e., the politics behind who recognizes who as legitimate) but rather the normative understanding of legitimacy as a concept. Simply equating the normative and the descriptive in the case of legitimacy is naff, in my opinion, because the word becomes valueless and incommensurable, irrational even - on what grounds does one first come to identify a regime as legitimate if legitimacy depends on others doing the same? Without an objective standard, legitimacy is a chicken-and-the-egg paradox.*

So let's discuss legitimacy as an objective concept...

It's my belief that legitimacy, exclusive rights to govern a region, follows from the collective right of native residents to govern their own region. Rationally, self-government should engender considerable personal freedom, equality, security and opportunity - or so the logic follows.

The aforementioned abstraction is rosy and all, however, but it's less helpful in messy conflicts and crises where legitimacy is unclear or when authoritarian or quasi-colonial regimes have governed for long periods of time exclusively with a prominent community element. It's for that reason that I don't recommend binary judgements over legitimacy (legitimate / illegitimate) but rather I would ask "how" legitimate is a government or ask comparatively how legitimate is a government.

It's also why I look for "red flags," practical indicators for legitimacy:

1. Does a regime appear rogue? That is to say, is the regime behaving in a way that's consistent with norms of good governance?

2. Is the regime authoritarian?

3. Does the regime not appear to possess self-rule?

Meeting any of these conditions raises concerns of legitimacy. A good test for 'rogueness', in my opinion, was the UDL test as a part of its "Rogue Delegacies and Administrations Policy."

Both sides in the Lazarus power struggle, for instance, I would argue, implicitly recognize that this is by and large the test upon which their legitimacy is judged - which is why they both are spending so much time on defending their nativeness, their respect for the rule of law and their democratic practices.

* An extreme 'descriptivist' view of legitimacy is also, at its logical conclusion, radically cosmopolitian to the point of hollowing out a region's own capacity to self-govern. World powers could broker deals with an unpopular regime to prop them up "legitimately."

[Kylia Quilor]

Hey, so, what has Harmonia written apart from the False Independence? I'm trying to remember/find some sort of something she wrote, I wanna say for the NS World's Fair in 2015 or maybe 2014? All I remember about it is that she wrote it and that it was utterly bamboozling to try to understand, and I'm curious as to *why* it was so confuzzling.

unrelatedly:

World powers could broker deals with an unpopular regime to prop them up "legitimately."

You say 'Could' like both sides of the Cold War didn't do it all the time. Or that countries (the US included) don't still do it.

[Unibot III]

Hey, so, what has Harmonia written apart from the False Independence? I'm trying to remember/find some sort of something she wrote, I wanna say for the NS World's Fair in 2015 or maybe 2014? All I remember about it is that she wrote it and that it was utterly bamboozling to try to understand, and I'm curious as to *why* it was so confuzzling.

Harmonia did not write the False Independence. This was her NS World Fair essay. In my opinion, the response she received was far, far too hostile for what she deserved. Yes, it was an esoteric piece - she's was a doctoral candidate at the time with a great deal of expertise in continental philosophy. She and I had long discussed the lack of variety in NS philosophy - lamenting, as any doctoral candidate on the subject would, that I was very much a Kantian / Analytical philosopher. So I encouraged her to write something continental and the response - a bunch of ghoulish men slagging her - was embarrassing for me and for the World Fair (imo). I don't remember a lot of constructive interaction with the text at the very least. Essentially, Harmie was advocating maternalism as a political philosophy like Carol Gilligan might, but in Hegelian terms.

[Kylia Quilor]

Hey, so, what has Harmonia written apart from the False Independence? I'm trying to remember/find some sort of something she wrote, I wanna say for the NS World's Fair in 2015 or maybe 2014? All I remember about it is that she wrote it and that it was utterly bamboozling to try to understand, and I'm curious as to *why* it was so confuzzling.

Harmonia did not write the False Independence. This was her NS World Fair essay. In my opinion, the response she received was far, far too hostile for what she deserved. Yes, it was an esoteric piece - she's was a doctoral candidate at the time with a great deal of expertise in continental philosophy. She and I had long discussed the lack of variety in NS philosophy - lamenting, as any doctoral candidate on the subject would, that I was very much a Kantian / Analytical philosopher. So I encouraged her to write something continental and the response - a bunch of ghoulish men slagging her - was embarrassing for me and for the World Fair (imo). I don't remember a lot of constructive interaction with the text at the very least. Essentially, Harmie was advocating maternalism as a political philosophy like Carol Gilligan might, but in Hegelian terms.

Hm. I thought she wrote False Independence.

a bunch of ghoulish men slagging her

Unibot, you'd fit right in on Tumblr.

There's nothing gendered about triggering or spotting, and as countless female coders could tell you, there's nothing gendered about coding. (albeit there is something gendered about the way society at large and many workplaces treat women in coding and whatnot. As I remembered, her essay was a lot of psuedo-intellectual hogwash that, like you, would fit right in with the SJWs and (ironically) a lot of TERFs.

And irrespective of the argument of the essay, it was written in a uselessly obtuse and unhelpful manner - if Harmoneia was trying to advocate a political philsophy, she'd have been better served writing something comprehensible.

[Unibot III]

You're talking to the author of The False Independence...

There's nothing gendered about triggering or spotting, and as countless female coders could tell you, there's nothing gendered about coding. (albeit there is something gendered about the way society at large and many workplaces treat women in coding and whatnot.

I believe the point that Harmie was making was that there is something gendered about leadership, authority and politics, however. And we have a lot of that in NS.

I'm not sure how popular Harmie's essay would be with today's "SJWs" tbh, maternalism could be characterized as essentialist which receives its fair share of detractors from more contemporary feminists in the 'third wave' like Iris Marion Young. It's interesting you mentioned triggering though, because there was a very good roundup of women in NS from the NS World Fair III about how the military ranks had been a path to success for so many of NS's female players specifically because of its meritocratic, apolitical structure.

her essay was a lot of psuedo-intellectual hogwash that, like you, would fit right in with the SJWs and (ironically) a lot of TERFs.

*Pseudo-

[Harmoneia]

Hi Kylia,
Thanks for taking interest in my writings. I did not write The False Independence nor have I ever claimed to, though I did post it as one of the official works (among many) of the what was then the PRL.
As for the essay in the world fair, all disciplines have a technical language, and if you were to be presented with a theoretical physics article without developing prior skills to navigate through it, I suspect it would be mostly be incomprehensible as well. This applies to both Continental and Analytic philosophy - most of the time, these two factions in philosophy don't even share the same language and so dismiss each other as useless or incomprehensible hogwash.
Though I digress, as I was simply using the language I was comfortable in, and if you know me as a gameplayer, I like to experiment in a literary and narrative style. In other words, I treat both my NS character and its lifeworld as fiction. You can see this in how I write, though unfortunately I can't be bothered to find others that are probably lost by now during my long but erratic play, there is one left that Unibot managed to reference in the UDL's library, which can be found here: Class Struggle in NationSates.

[Ramaeus]

what has happened in gp since last year

[Pollaetorian]

what has happened in gp since last year

um, err, well..*shifts nervously* there another single word R-starting nation around now....Ransium so you em

[Drasnia]

what has happened in gp since last year

um, err, well..*shifts nervously* there another single word R-starting nation around now....Ransium so you em

Ransium's been playing a long time (10+ years as Forest's WAD) but has only really gotten involved in stuff outside his region and NS environmentalism recently. He started writing issues, became an editor, and now has taken to writing proposals in the SC.

[Flanderlion]

what has happened in gp since last year

Drama, salt, and the odd getting back together.

Really, same old same old. I started writing something below but tbh. none of it is stuff that really is worth reading let alone me writing.

Laz had another 'government change' surprise surprise, Osiris might've been couped again, and Balder + flunkies and TSP broke up. Empire scares, BBD quitting over TWP conflict, various small gov changes, UCRs coming up and dying again.

Yuno's delegate of TEP, TEP/TWP are good friends now, TSP fell out with TWP, NPO and TSP/TNP are all good (ish) again.

[Minoa]

I know it is nearly time for the bidding for the NationStates World Fair, and Minoa as a standalone nation has decided to proceed with trying to host the NS World Fair this year.

However, the Minoan bidding committee is looking to promote it as the NSGC (NS Gameplay Conference) because NSWF looks too much like NSFW.

[G-Tech Corporation]

I know it is nearly time for the bidding for the NationStates World Fair, and Minoa as a standalone nation has decided to proceed with trying to host the NS World Fair this year.

However, the Minoan bidding committee is looking to promote it as the NSGC (NS Gameplay Conference) because NSWF looks too much like NSFW.

I've always quite enjoyed the fact that NSWF looks like NSFW.

It gives discord chats about the topic a certain frisson of hilarity.

[Minoa]

I know it is nearly time for the bidding for the NationStates World Fair, and Minoa as a standalone nation has decided to proceed with trying to host the NS World Fair this year.

However, the Minoan bidding committee is looking to promote it as the NSGC (NS Gameplay Conference) because NSWF looks too much like NSFW.

I've always quite enjoyed the fact that NSWF looks like NSFW.

It gives discord chats about the topic a certain frisson of hilarity.

Not for a brand conscious nation, especially when the flag has specifications.

https://nsindex.net/wiki/Flag_of_Minoa#Symbol

[Reploid Productions]

what has happened in gp since last year

Drama, salt, and the odd getting back together.

Really, same old same old. I started writing something below but tbh. none of it is stuff that really is worth reading let alone me writing.

Laz had another 'government change' surprise surprise, Osiris might've been couped again, and Balder + flunkies and TSP broke up. Empire scares, BBD quitting over TWP conflict, various small gov changes, UCRs coming up and dying again.

Yuno's delegate of TEP, TEP/TWP are good friends now, TSP fell out with TWP, NPO and TSP/TNP are all good (ish) again.

And I'm currently the mod riding herd on the GP forum, so... that's a thing now.

[Ikania]

Yuno's delegate of TEP

Wait, what?

[Fauxia]

Yuno's delegate of TEP

Wait, what?

Delegate-elect, it appears, as one could tell by looking at the WFE More raiders in power

[Kanglia]

Wait, what?

Delegate-elect, it appears, as one could tell by looking at the WFE More raiders in power

Yeah, because Yuno totally doesn't defend more than I have ever seen you

[Fauxia]

Delegate-elect, it appears, as one could tell by looking at the WFE More raiders in power

Yeah, because Yuno totally doesn't defend more than I have ever seen you

Well, yes, I haven't defended in forever. That doesn't make me a raider. Also, I don't completely take GCRs seriously, and that was mostly unserious. I have nothing against Yuno.

[Mostly Benevolent Tyranny]

Yeah, because Yuno totally doesn't defend more than I have ever seen you

Well, yes, I haven't defended in forever. That doesn't make me a raider. Also, I don't completely take GCRs seriously, and that was mostly unserious. I have nothing against Yuno.

The point being that Yuno has been seriously and actively defending for a while now. Lower case "I" independent is a much more accurate classification.

[McChimp]

Well, yes, I haven't defended in forever. That doesn't make me a raider

The defenders have abandoned such disgracefully moderate ideas as these.

[Kanglia]

Well, yes, I haven't defended in forever. That doesn't make me a raider

The defenders have abandoned such disgracefully moderate ideas as these.

McChimp, I can assure you that Fauxia is not a raider, nor is anybody who doesn't participate in R/D, to claim that defenders truly believe that is a fallacy that you & others push to make defenders look like the "bad guys" of the spectrum. And to be quite frank with you, the lot of you need better material. It's all getting stale, repetitive, & more uninspired each time you talk about it.