8/18/2021 - Proposal for New Game & Community Rules

[namukara]

On 8/19/2021 at 4:34 PM, Alex said:

I believe that the Confederate flag is essentially very symbolic of racism & slavery in the United States, and it certainly makes people very uncomfortable. I don't see any reason it needs to be used in the game, and I believe with it typically comes roleplay themes of racism and slavery.

That raises a whole other point though. I totally understand banning actual racism OOCly, as it's almost impossible to do that without trolling. What I'm less convinced by are any arguments regarding banning 'hateful' ideologies when entirely confined to IC. Personally the way I see roleplay, particularly the more freeform style of roleplay that comes with nation sims, is that the environments that are open should really only be restrained by the limits of human imagination, with an exception for erotic roleplay of course. For example, on another game I have been successfully roleplaying a slave-trading state for getting on for 12 years now, albeit a slave-trading state that doesn't work along racial lines. Other relatively well-respected roleplayers have roleplayed states in which being gay is punishable by death, or in which different races are treated with varying levels of privilege as a matter of law. This is absolutely fine, it's all in character. The symbols and language they use are confined to obvious roleplay spaces, not to messages between players etc, and a flag is obviously a roleplay space. There's a difference between banning hateful users and banning hateful themes, and I think we stray far too heavily into the latter category at times.

[brendan]

On 8/24/2021 at 9:57 PM, Zephyr said:

To be fair, your original comment vaguely identified communism to be banned...

 

There are a range of communist ideologies with varying opinion on the specifics of the end goal and how to get there, and they don't all advocate violence. It is defective reasoning to assert that all communists advocate violence due to one's ability to point to specific violent regimes that identified as communist, because not all communists hold those views. As such, I think it's ridiculous to push for an outright ban on communism. It would be more reasonable to ban roleplaying specific violent regimes.

but all communist regimes have committed atrocities of some sort 

[Guest Zephyr]

11 hours ago, brendan said:

but all communist regimes have committed atrocities of some sort 

There's never been a communist country, and "communist regime" itself is an oxymoron. Communism is a stateless, classless society in which there is no property ownership but everything is freely accessible as needed. There's no need or use for money; you work and in return receive a fair cut from the collective goods produced to satisfy your needs (the exact details vary depending on your flavour of communism, but they all have the same basic end goal and sound like a silly pipe dream). You cannot have a "communist regime" as communism abolishes the state.

You've doubled down on faulty reasoning; the implication that an alternative result is an impossibility because you have not personally observed it in your sampling, however there is no logic that establishes this to be necessarily true. Your argument is further troubled by your sampling of "communist regimes" that are not actually communist.

[DJ Kate Bush]

On 8/29/2021 at 9:31 AM, Zephyr said:

There's never been a communist country, and "communist regime" itself is an oxymoron. Communism is a stateless, classless society in which there is no property ownership but everything is freely accessible as needed. There's no need or use for money; you work and in return receive a fair cut from the collective goods produced to satisfy your needs (the exact details vary depending on your flavour of communism, but they all have the same basic end goal and sound like a silly pipe dream). You cannot have a "communist regime" as communism abolishes the state.

You've doubled down on faulty reasoning; the implication that an alternative result is an impossibility because you have not personally observed it in your sampling, however there is no logic that establishes this to be necessarily true. Your argument is further troubled by your sampling of "communist regimes" that are not actually communist.

However, someone could easily say that there hasn't been a truly fascist state either, because the aims of fascists were never truly fulfilled. Which is an equally ridiculous argument because it doesn't matter what their aims were, it's what they did. 

Essentially, neither fascism or communism should be banned, however, as highlighted in the rules, nations and players who do heinous things on the game or towards other players should be punished. 

 

-edit- I am using fascism in its broadest definition here, I of course think that !@#$ nations should be removed from the game, as much as I think Stalinist nations should. 

Actually, !@#$ nations are worse than Stalinist. There, I said it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 7, 2021 by DJ Kate Bush

[Guest Zephyr]

17 hours ago, DJ Kate Bush said:

However, someone could easily say that there hasn't been a truly fascist state either, because the aims of fascists were never truly fulfilled. Which is an equally ridiculous argument because it doesn't matter what their aims were, it's what they did.

Faulty reasoning/irrelevant argument:

"Someone could say something about this other subject, which would be ridiculous, therefore your argument is ridiculous".

I didn't make a case about the definition and use of fascism, only communism. It is of no consequence to the definition of communism or my point whether or not someone, somewhere, uses the word fascism improperly.