[Milly]

For Humanity
How many of us do they have to kill to set us free?

by Desante in 2191AC

There has been much talk and to do about the subject of 'Humanity'. I don't like working with ill defined terms, and so within this paper I will refer to 'Humanity' as the general populace of our world. The idea of a person, one who toils, struggles, and pushes through day by day like any other. If this is horribly vague, it's because it is. A nebulous term invented by those who claim to serve a common good, while in the same breath disavowing them of any particular allegiance to anyone or anything. A twist on the strawman argument that relies on the idea that someone, somewhere, at some point will eventually benefit from their actions while ignoring the people actually in front of them. A way to unify us under a common banner (Or to purposefully exclude people for not being 'real people') and sell us on the idea that there is someone who is benefitting from this, even if we do not know who they are.

Humanity has no creed, no tenets, no goal save for existing. And for many, existing at the cost of others who do not fit the mold.

I have lived through much war in my lifetime, as have we all. Meranthe has only known peace for brief, fleeting periods. And to say that there can ever be such a thing as a 'meaningful' war is something I have come to resent. There is ultimately no glory to be found even in the most necessary of pursuits. The Crusades singlehandedly displaced hundreds of thousands, Aetian and Delphinan soldiers salughtering citizens en masse and forcing the populace to stay on the sinking island when Pscaela fell. I saw families weeping, I saw parents desperately trying to save their children, pleading to please just let them escape. But few ever did.

I ask again, how many people did we need to kill to keep them safe? I ask again, and again, and again- I look in my own reflection and I find no answers. I do not think there is one. It would of course be reductive of the problem to say that we should all simply drop our arms, because we all know it's more complicated than that- and pretending it doesn't benefits no one save our own ego. But is this the hill we wish to die on? Sacrificed like sheep for an oppressed class that was conjured up by warmongers, glory hounds, and grifters?

We already have actual oppressed classes of people. We already have existing tyranny that needs to be pushed back against and dismantled. We don't need to 'save humanity', because you know what most of 'humanity' is doing? They get up at the crack of dawn. They work themselves to death in the fields, or the mines, or maybe they're merchants or scholars. They earn their daily bread, they spend time with their loved ones, they go home, they go to bed. All these things we talk about, the Lifestream, the Pantheon, combatting 'stagnation' in Meranthe. Every single one of these things is a Magi delusion. Nobody except for the smallest fraction of the populace gives a shit about any of these things. They are completely and utterly immaterial in their lives, and it is rarely 'humanity' that is benefitted in these conflicts so much as the vanishingly rare few Magi who perpetuate it.

Is this ideological war in the name of 'humanity' going to make them the masters of their own destiny, too? Or are they merely the grease for the wheels in another's ambition? Because right now, all I have seen and all the future holds is yet more lives uprooted and tragedy perpetuated in the name of 'freedom'.

This author encourages you to actually look at who these people seek to benefit, and ask yourself-
Just how long it will be before they decide to 'liberate' you from the things you care about?

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