Capto Iugulum Background Thread

[Lord of Elves]

In discussions with EQ in the past Scandinavia has been described as a very nice place to live, perhaps one of the nicest places to live in continental Europe, with several caveats. Stockholm is almost wholly residential and commercial, with large plazas of government buildings, public housing and a significant port. It is probably the nicest city in the Workers' Commonwealth, followed by Helsinki which is probably dominated by pre-Union, late 1700's/early 1800's aristocratic architecture and older. There is likely a significant presence of modern architecture at Helsinki's port, and in newer sections of the city, but it is probably very "old Europe" the way Jehoshua describes Rome. In Stockholm many manors and palatial houses for the wealthy were destroyed in the late portion of the November Uprising. To the exception of middle class/working class residential districts the entire city was rebuilt from 1909-1915.

The remainder of large, palatial homes in Helsinki and elsewhere are used as public apartment housing.

Oslo, Narvik and Umea, however, are all probably industrial and smoggy in the style of Victorian London, Pittsburgh, etc. Oslo is more upscale in some places, but is a port and factory town above all else. Narvik and Umea are basically steel boomtowns and are almost wholly worker housing, mines, factories and industrial port facilities.

Everything is public transport. There are a number of military highways that run across the landscape, but outside of the metropoles and significant settlements/townships that surround them or exist in isolation, the land is open and bare. Probably fairly scenic. Civilian and military rail networks run throughout Scandinavia and are the primary mode of transportation. Stockholm has a subway, last I checked, that connects to the civilian rail lines. Private automobiles are considered decadent plutocratist status symbols and are illegal, insofar as you have to have a permit to own one, and very few are issued.

Streets are wholly pedestrian except for trolley cars -- which are common throughout all major cities (Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki, Narvik, Umea, Uppsala, Malmo) -- and government-owned automobiles.

There is a state radio broadcast network which consists of a BBC-esque news team, reporting primarily on international events from the perspective of furthering the Revolution, and various radio shows which apply to government departments to be broadcast on state radio. All other radio stations must apply to the government in order to broadcast and are subject to strict regulation.

 

[Jehoshua]

Its amusing that Scandinavia and the Papal States have arrived at the same destination with regards to private vehicles, albeit for different reasons. (Scandinavia lacks them due to de-facto bans them due to the perception of private vehicles as plutocratic, the Papal States lacks them since the built landscape is not intuitively conductive for private vehicular transport, and because the inherent traditionalism of the ruling establishment means the state is not inclined to facilitate private vehicles [they probably think of cars as dirty, noisy uncivilised contraptions, which of course is precisely what they are if you consider what they have done to the social life of the street IRL])

EDIT: As to heavy industry, its mainly located "out of the way" around Ostia (the port of Rome), Rome itself has cottage industries, but no big smoke-belching factories. The landscape around these two urban centres is mainly farms and the like, probably a bit more densely utilised than when the Roman Campagna was the most painted landscape in Europe though.

 

[Luckymoose]

Scandinavians don't have cars. Brazilians can drive from the Guyanas to Uruguay on the same highway.

 

[EQandcivfanatic]

Technically, thanks to a similar Argentine project (the Public Development Fund), there's a united highway going from the southernmost tip of Argentina all the way to Venezuela. One heck of a potential road trip. When the Peruvian project is done, the highway will be transcontinental too.

 

[Lord of Elves]

Scandinavians don't have cars. Brazilians can drive from the Guyanas to Uruguay on the same highway.

Scandinavians can ride the best passenger rail in the world to any part of the Fatherland

 

[Luckymoose]

Technically, thanks to a similar Argentine project (the Public Development Fund), there's a united highway going from the southernmost tip of Argentina all the way to Venezuela. One heck of a potential road trip. When the Peruvian project is done, the highway will be transcontinental too.

Hell, even going from Brazilian Guyanas to the Uruguayan border is farther than going from Lisbon to Moscow. If you want to a hardcore road trip, you better come to South America.

Scandinavians can ride the best passenger rail in the world to any part of the Fatherland

Brazilians have cars and can go where they want. No proletarist rail-based movement dictations for us!


Since the borders of continental Brazil + Guyanas are the same as OTL, finding the total size of the empire is easy.

Brazil (Continental) 8,978,029 km2
Argentina (Continental) 2,780,400 km2
Europe (including European Russia) 10,180,000 km2

 

[Lord_Iggy]

Vinland, similar to Scandinavia, makes heavy use of rail (for long-range transportation) and trams, for public transit. However, we've adopted an increasing degree of automobile culture, due to the increased flexibility and lower cost of roads. Also, several less conventional forms of transportation are quite common, like the Snöbandfordon, a track-and-ski type of vehicle used in snowy conditions. Also, particularly in the more remote portions of the country, wood-burning paddlewheelers continue to see heavy use in areas where the rails have not yet been laid. Finally, there are a few small airlines, such as Pavelski Flygbolag, who provide rapid mail and passenger flights cross-country.

 

[ChiefDesigner]

I suppose the unique characteristics would be the overabundance of clergy and the absence of liberal/prole views in the media thanks to the inquisitorial censor.

...or if you're a woman.

 

[Jehoshua]

...or if you're a woman.

What a meaningless statement, if you have a point to make, make it intelligibly like a sensible person rather than uttering insubstantial one-liners like yet another mindless ill-educated drone. You're better than that surely.

Either way, considering you referenced women, a perennial obsessive leitmotif within the warped philosophies of feminism and liberalism, I will just say that the Papal States does not kowtow to emasculating feminist misandry, or to the absurd proposition that woman are functionally equivalent to men (and vice versa). The Papacy respects femininity, women as women, not women aspiring to be just like men.

 

[Lord of Elves]

What a meaningless statement, if you have a point to make, make it intelligibly like a sensible person rather than uttering insubstantial one-liners like yet another mindless ill-educated drone. You're better than that surely.

Either way, considering you referenced women, a perennial obsessive leitmotif within the warped philosophies of feminism and liberalism, I will just say that the Papal States does not kowtow to emasculating feminist misandry, or to the absurd proposition that woman are functionally equivalent to men (and vice versa). The Papacy respects femininity, women as women, not women aspiring to be just like men.

I can never tell when you're being IC or OOC with this antediluvian drivel. If the latter your beliefs on gender/gender roles are kind of disturbingly medieval.

 

[Jehoshua]

The first paragraph is completely out of context. Basically its me telling him to make his point clearly. The second is semi-contextual in that I'm pointing out the papal view (in a propagandish exaggerated sort of way, a means of making statements not perfectly contextual you yourself have done as well), but also in that Its not totally divorced from my own RL position (although you seem to be responding not to what I said, but in a purely reactionary reflex, the following paragraph should help clarify things for you in that regard).

On that latter point, yes I am guilty of observing that in reality men and women are different (biologically and psychologically) and that a great swathe of feminists hate or at least are contemptuous of men. If you think to the contrary, than you are simply deluding yourself, and have sadly diminished your own intelligence through conformist acquiescence to the zeitgeist. If furthermore you think that I think via me stating all this that women are inferior to men, are incapable of say working in a factory or running a business, or somehow have less dignity than men than you are letting emotion and a perverse sentimentality overrule your natural rational ability to reasonably interpret the written word and are reading things into my position via this sentimentality that do not exist in reality.

-

PS: I would urge you to recant and repent of the intellectually absurd teleology implicit in your statements of the idea of linear moral/civilisational progress. Just because something is "medieval" or "antediluvian" does not mean it is wrong of bad, and just because something is "modern" does not mean it is right or good. Furthermore civilisation and morality do not inherently travel in one direction.

EDIT: Oh and Chiefdesigner/Lord of Elves, I fully appreciate that you may be offended by my demeanour, Crezth and others have had issues with how I state things before for example. But I uphold honesty in discussion and will not mollycoddle you out of some inane fear that your "feelings" may be hurt, or for any other reason. You are entitled to the truth and I won't lie to you with regards to my opinion and deny your right to the truth by stating anything other than what I think.

 

[Quisani]

Yeah, that's been my trouble with some of the submissions, they felt too dark for the era we had. I mean, realistically I'd say that what would probably be popular right now would be espionage stuff, fantasy, and probably a decent helping of invasion stories.

Perhaps I'll rewrite the story for Helvetica Rising. It doesn't have to be a Japanese contribution.

 

[ChiefDesigner]

On that latter point, if you think that women are functionally equivalent to men (surprisingly men and women are biologically and psychologically different, they are not the same thing), or that feminism and feminists are not possessed of a vein of misandry than you are deluding yourself. If you think I said that women were inferior to men or somehow have less dignity by stating the reality of things, than you are sadly emasculated, and have been abused by those who have brought you to reactively uphold such lunacy whenever anyone challenges the feminist/liberal leitmotif that exists around women (as I have so obviously done)

Oh, no, I think you've quite made my point for me, thank you very much.

And why should I bother typing out an argument? You clearly don't accept my premises, and as such we have no basis to argue from.

If I /were/ to make an argument, I would say that you have no idea how condescending and presumptuous it is for someone in the dominant group to tell a member of a minority of any kind, "This is what it means to be X." I would say that this is why most of the people I know have left the Church -- because the only people still doing the work of ministry are the nuns, and they are shat upon daily by the bishops, and by men who claim to define what it means to be a woman, and who have somewhere forgotten what the Gospels have to say about Pharisees.

I'd also say that there is a difference between sex -- phenotypic differences between males and females of a given species -- and gender, the social roles that are assigned to males and females, but since that doesn't involve God there's really no point, is there?

 

[Circuit]

Discussing feminism as it does not relate to CI probably is best left for WWW thread. So you may want to move that discussion there.

 

[Jehoshua]

In answer to the question of typing out an argument (in reference to the first point, where you made a one liner with no contingent meaning). Because you're an intelligent human being who should act as such.

-

As for the rest of your statement, it seems clear you uphold the feminist narrative that men are the oppressor of women and that this remains so. Obviously I disagree albeit I do agree that since society is never perfect women had legitimate grievances (for example in early modern England sometimes women's legally guaranteed rights were ignored due to local conceptions of women of the time) but in the present it seems to me the pendulum has over swung itself.

As to the rest, considering you do not seem to want an argument I won't bother to comprehensively make a counterpoint against everything you have said other than to make two points. Firstly, that sex is an objective and unchosen characteristic and is essential to a persons character and substance. One cannot be a man in sex, and be a "woman" in gender, one cannot be something other than what he is. Thus its my opinion that a man who thinks he is a woman has psychological problems, just as a person who thinks he is say a demon or an alien is considered to have delusions about himself. One cannot be, what one is not. Society however following the narrative that everything about someone has to be autonomously chosen (rejecting the unchosen, since liberalism exalts "freedom") collectively seems to turn its head at the confusion in a person who thinks he's a woman, where it would as an unprincipled exception (since in liberal principle it would presumably accept such a persons "identity") put in therapy someone who thinks he's a demon, or an alien or anything other than what he is, where it would instead allow a man who thinks he's a women to have mutilating surgery on himself so he can "feel" like a woman.

Secondly I would also say that people leave the Church because the Church has done a piss poor job of teaching, with vast swathes of the clergy (in the west) being openly heretical on this or that point, or not actually believing in the faith at all (one bishop in Ireland actually said after his retirement that for most of his time as a bishop he did not have faith). The Church has also failed to impart or even utter the actual faith in many areas nor clearly and with authority explain the reasons behind its teachings. Ergo the "apostasy of the clergy", and a selling out of the faith at a broad level amongst the hierarchy is why there is a crisis of faith at present in the west, it is not because the laity some day decided to walk out in disgust at pious and orthodox clergy or because the Church is supposedly "anti woman".. (indeed every heresy and apostasy in history has started with the clergy, from arius to luther to the present). Those people you know who left the Church, did so because having being denied the faith by those charged with teaching it, they lacked a reason to stay. Why stay in the Church of nice when you can get the same "just be good, and care about peoples feelings" stuff anywhere?

Wherever tradition and the faith is actually taught, ergo wherever you get actual Catholicism (which often manifests itself in the latin mass) rather than watered down sentimental tripe, you find vibrant spiritual life, and many many more young people than where the liberals reign, with this phenomenon being such that it was actually noted in the decidedly not Catholic friendly mainstream media (in Britain) recently. I've also personally noted it when I went to both the "novus ordo" and "traditional latin" masses of a certain parish immediately after each-other. Twas a very enlightening experience.

-

Circuit is also correct that continuing this discussion here would be relatively poor taste. Twould also perhaps be poor taste to burden the WWW thread with discussion. If you want to continue this discussion or make a point, I am happy for you to PM me and we continue discussing our disagreements privately.

 

[Crezth]

Jehoshua is the perfect person to play the Pope since he's a reactionary nut IRL, it seems.

Thank God for that.

 

[Jehoshua]

Jehoshua ... he's a reactionary nut IRL, it seems.

Thank God for that.

Perhaps not as much as you think, forum discussion does tend to make one appear more radical than one actually is I find. I just think gender "identity" is self-evidently delusional and that biological and psychological differences between men and women, being real, make it self-evidently true that the two sexes are not functionally identical. (men are physically stronger than women for example, and are thus in my opinion naturally better suited to those spheres of life where physical strength is a requirement, such as say soldiers). My statement that many feminists hate or are contemptuous of men is just simple fact and is quite apart from any political opinion.

At any rate I have no problem with women in the workplace in principle (and most definitely do not think they should be paid less [or more] for the same work), and I most definitely do not think they are intellectually inferior (in fact I think they are intellectually more developed than men as a norm, exceptions on either side of the intellectual scale not cancelling out the general reality), or have less human dignity (all human beings being equal before God). I would also be positively "progressive" compared to a female acquaintance of mine who once made me do a double-take by saying that she thought men are inherently better leaders than women.

 

[Crezth]

I didn't mean to disparage you, I just think its convenient that you actually oppose modern liberalism so that your actions as pope don't lack versimilitude.

 

[Jehoshua]

I didn't mean to disparage you, I just think its convenient that you actually oppose modern liberalism so that your actions as pope don't lack versimilitude.

fair enough, and true as well. I actually joined as the Pope here because someone who was playing Capto Iugulum explicitly asked me too because they thought I was the most "pontifically attuned" person on the forums.

At any rate, if disparaging me was not your intent perhaps next time you can avoid referring to someone with a different point of view than your own a "nut". I didn't call Lord of Elves of ChiefDesigner "nuts" or question their sanity just because I think their positions are objectively contrary to reason and reality.

 

[EQandcivfanatic]

No need to get personal from anyone here. I have to say, I agree with the assessment that Jehoshua has been easily the best possible person for the position of Papacy. I've been thoroughly impressed to date, and whether or not the views he espouses on the thread as the voice of the CI Church are his own views or not, is not a matter of relevance for the NES at this point.