American philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich observed that the advent of the nuclear age shook the very foundations of Western Civilization. In The Shaking of the Foundations, Tillich responded to this existential threat by examining those foundations. Those old foundations, as it turned out, offered enduring meaning even as circumstances changed radically.
Europeia faces no existential threat as imminent as nuclear war must have seemed to Tillich’s audience (he wrote at the height of the 1950s “Red Scare”). With the coming retirement of HEM, however, we are in a time of profound transition. Surely, an examination of our own “foundations” is in order.
The ultimate foundation of this game is the group of RL people who play it. We are here because our lives afford us the luxury of leisure time, and an Internet connection. We come here because we find spending a portion of that leisure time in the company of the other RL people who play this game.
We in Europeia are especially mindful of this foundation. Because the ultimate foundation of this community is the RL people who comprise it, we repeat the refrain “RL comes first” whenever a fellow citizen informs us that circumstances require that he/she take a temporary or permanent respite from the life of our region. It is, after all, just a game.
The next layer of our foundation is the systems that make the game possible, together with the rules governing those systems. NationStates enables the creation of nations and regions, allow for raiding and other forms of military game play, and provide for a World Assembly, discussion forums, and other inter-regional institutions. Off-site forums allow each region to have a true community where the vast majority of game play occurs. We operate within the rules that are set by NationStates, by our forum service provider, and by the people who administer those systems.
Layered on top of those systems and rules are the laws of our Republic. Like the ultimate foundation of RL people, this foundation profoundly reflects our values. From the Constitution that establishes the framework by which we govern our community, to the Charter of Rights, that articulates our most deeply held values to our treaties that lay out our commitments to our friends and to the wider community, to our laws that set the basic expectations of how we are to treat one another, these rules are part of who we are. Our in-depth reexamination and rewriting of those laws in the past year deepened our connection to this foundational expression of our values.
We should keep our foundations in mind when we make policy.
Because the ultimate foundation of this game is the RL people who play it, we should always endeavor to treat others in the game with an appropriate degree of courtesy and respect. We should expect our allies to do the same. We should recognize that our contempt for bigots and forum-crashers whose raison d’etre in this game is to deny basic courtesy and respect to others ensures that those miscreants will forever be our enemies, because they stand in opposition to our most foundational values. We must never tire of condemning them, and we must remain vigilant against conflating our deep-seated opposition to them with our more mundane disputes with raiders and defenders.
We should remember that although rules of game play are foundational, they are tools rather than values. There is nothing inherently evil about playing by the rules of the game; rather, the measure of any policy should be whether it advances our interests and conforms to our values, including the foundational value of courtesy and respect for others. This is a profound area of difference between us and our defender friends – for them, tactics are their foundational value; for us, tactics are merely a means to advance foundational values. We should not let our superficial agreement on matters such as “griefing” obscure this profound difference in perspective.
We should be mindful of who our friends are – our treatied allies. Their causes are not always our causes, but there should never be any doubt where our sympathies lie. We do not share in TNI and LKE’s war against defender organizations, but we support their right to pursue their agenda without being defamed. We do not share NPO’s “Francoist” view of the world, but we stand with them in opposition to supraregional organizations’ efforts to turn GCRs into their personal trophy collection.
In the days ahead, HEM will surely wax nostalgic about the early days of Europeia. A lot has changed since those early days, but our values – our foundations – have endured. And like Tillich’s examination more than half a century ago, I am confident that our examination of our foundations will prove that our values are as vital and relevant as ever. A new era will bring new challenges, but our foundational values will always be the touchstone for all we do. They are nothing less than what we are.
Europeia faces no existential threat as imminent as nuclear war must have seemed to Tillich’s audience (he wrote at the height of the 1950s “Red Scare”). With the coming retirement of HEM, however, we are in a time of profound transition. Surely, an examination of our own “foundations” is in order.
The ultimate foundation of this game is the group of RL people who play it. We are here because our lives afford us the luxury of leisure time, and an Internet connection. We come here because we find spending a portion of that leisure time in the company of the other RL people who play this game.
We in Europeia are especially mindful of this foundation. Because the ultimate foundation of this community is the RL people who comprise it, we repeat the refrain “RL comes first” whenever a fellow citizen informs us that circumstances require that he/she take a temporary or permanent respite from the life of our region. It is, after all, just a game.
The next layer of our foundation is the systems that make the game possible, together with the rules governing those systems. NationStates enables the creation of nations and regions, allow for raiding and other forms of military game play, and provide for a World Assembly, discussion forums, and other inter-regional institutions. Off-site forums allow each region to have a true community where the vast majority of game play occurs. We operate within the rules that are set by NationStates, by our forum service provider, and by the people who administer those systems.
Layered on top of those systems and rules are the laws of our Republic. Like the ultimate foundation of RL people, this foundation profoundly reflects our values. From the Constitution that establishes the framework by which we govern our community, to the Charter of Rights, that articulates our most deeply held values to our treaties that lay out our commitments to our friends and to the wider community, to our laws that set the basic expectations of how we are to treat one another, these rules are part of who we are. Our in-depth reexamination and rewriting of those laws in the past year deepened our connection to this foundational expression of our values.
We should keep our foundations in mind when we make policy.
Because the ultimate foundation of this game is the RL people who play it, we should always endeavor to treat others in the game with an appropriate degree of courtesy and respect. We should expect our allies to do the same. We should recognize that our contempt for bigots and forum-crashers whose raison d’etre in this game is to deny basic courtesy and respect to others ensures that those miscreants will forever be our enemies, because they stand in opposition to our most foundational values. We must never tire of condemning them, and we must remain vigilant against conflating our deep-seated opposition to them with our more mundane disputes with raiders and defenders.
We should remember that although rules of game play are foundational, they are tools rather than values. There is nothing inherently evil about playing by the rules of the game; rather, the measure of any policy should be whether it advances our interests and conforms to our values, including the foundational value of courtesy and respect for others. This is a profound area of difference between us and our defender friends – for them, tactics are their foundational value; for us, tactics are merely a means to advance foundational values. We should not let our superficial agreement on matters such as “griefing” obscure this profound difference in perspective.
We should be mindful of who our friends are – our treatied allies. Their causes are not always our causes, but there should never be any doubt where our sympathies lie. We do not share in TNI and LKE’s war against defender organizations, but we support their right to pursue their agenda without being defamed. We do not share NPO’s “Francoist” view of the world, but we stand with them in opposition to supraregional organizations’ efforts to turn GCRs into their personal trophy collection.
In the days ahead, HEM will surely wax nostalgic about the early days of Europeia. A lot has changed since those early days, but our values – our foundations – have endured. And like Tillich’s examination more than half a century ago, I am confident that our examination of our foundations will prove that our values are as vital and relevant as ever. A new era will bring new challenges, but our foundational values will always be the touchstone for all we do. They are nothing less than what we are.
