Brotherhood is a two-way street

Day 1,632, 00:37 • Published in China China • by mihail.cazacu

This is a follow-up to the previous article.

I will start with the comment made by TheManiacBG to that article (comment #130, you can find it on the second page of comments).

He wrote:

"mihail You wrote that it was a stupid request from Bulgaria to want turkey out of EDEN. Well who says it is not a sutpid request? See it doesn't matter if it was a stupid or smart request!! It was a request from a loyal EDEN member to the alliance that should have respected that request..not like it or accept it..just to respect it!! To respect Bulgaria and Bulgarians because EDEN still exist mostly because of Bulgaria!! EDEN didn't show the respect that Bulgaria and Bulgarians deserve!!"

There points he is raising are worth a very in-depth discussion because they hold the key to everything really interesting which happens in this game.

Let's begin with the game itself:

- The economic module is crap;
- The political module is garbage;
- The media module is crippled since the Admins decided to make it impossible to publish in other countries;

The only module which makes this game still playable is the military module. So this game is a war-based game. A game of military strategy.

No country in this game is strong enough to win all the battles alone. So all the countries need to make alliances.

What is the reason to form alliances? To become strong enough to defeat the opposition.

Now here is the interesting thing: even though the goal of forming alliances is to defeat the opposition, there are different ways to form alliances.

During the history of this game two different philosophies emerge😛

A. We form an alliance based on strength only. If a country which was strong once becomes weak, she loses her influence inside the alliance. That what happened to Indonesia and Russia in PEACE and Phoenix and what is currently experiencing Spain and Hungary in ONE. The founders of such alliance openly and repeatedly stated they want to bring together a small number of very strong members. The weak members join at their own risk (see the statements of Kampec and DesertHamster when the smaller members of those alliances were wiped out).

B. We form an alliance based on universally accepted moral principles. Each member is treated as equal. Large countries sacrifice their immediate interests to bring back on the map, at least for the election day, even the least powerful member of the alliance. Large countries risk to be wiped out instead of building empires only because they are committed to those universally accepted moral principles. So instead of deserting their allies to join the other camp, like Spain and Poland did, they stick to their comrades and take a collective plunge into the routine: wipe out - RW - wipe out - RW.

At first glance such approach goes against the essence of the game, which is to form alliances strong enough to win wars.

But if we look closely, this approach is just another route to the same destination: forming a dominant alliance.

Most of the human beings are fundamentally good and decent. Had most of us been rotten to the core, we would be today just another species of apes, unable to form sophisticated societies and incapable of scientific and cultural developments. Everything really important can only be achieved through joint efforts. And cooperation requires good behavior towards your fellows.

Since most of the human beings are fundamentally good, it means that most of the eRepublik players are also fundamentally good. This in turn means that in time most of the players would want to be in that alliance which is built on sound moral principles. That alliance would be bigger and stronger, even if it takes a much longer time to get there.

If we are clear about the two models for forming alliances in eRepublik we can now look at the Bulgarian - Turkish conflict triggered by Turkey's application to join EDEN.

The Bulgarians who say EDEN should have respected Bulgaria's decision, even if it was a stupid one say this:

"We put our self-interest above the common interest and all of you should sabotage yourselves so we can feel good".

Did the Turks enslave and maltreated all the Balkan countries for about 500 years?

Yes they did. But none of those Turks is still alive today. Nor is any of their victims still alive.

OK, so the nowadays Turks aren't responsible for 500 years of savagery. But are the Turks of today ashamed of what their ancestors did? Some are. Some aren't. But let's look at the fundamentals of a true conflict:

Turkey today has a Real Life territorial dispute with Greece over some rocks in the Aegean Sea. The Turkish players and the Greek players are in the age bracket which makes them eligible for military service. This in turn means one day a Greek player and a Turkish player might shoot at each other with real bullets or fire real bazookas at real tanks.

Yet the Turkish players and the Greek players did in this game what other sworn enemies had already done in real life: joined forces for the common good. In Real Life the German-French conflict lasted 4 times longer that the Turkish-Balkan conflict and yet the Germans and the French finally realized that killing each other was idiotic and both nations were better off cooperating. It took them 2000 years but, just like I said, since most of the Germans and most of the French are decent human beings, eventually they have come to the obvious conclusion that joining efforts for the common good is a much better strategy.

So where does that place the Bulgarian rejection of Turkey based on "500 years of slavery"? For sure nowhere in the realm of decent human behavior.

What about the objection "Turks are cheaters"?

The Indonesians, the Russians, the Poles and the Serbs are other proven cheaters in this game. But here is the thing: when the last Turkish president was banned for cheating, many Turks wrote: "cheaters have no nationality". I know at least the Poles and the Russians were actively hunting down the cheaters in their own countries. Since the majority of the human beings are decent everywhere I can safely assume that was the case also in Indonesia and Serbia.

So if you consider the other proven cheaters legitimate allies because only a fraction of them are really dishonest, then the same should apply to the Turks, shouldn't it?!

What about the objection "we don't hate the Turks, best proof is we were allied with Inci"?

Everybody in EDEN was allied with Inci because that was damaging Turkey at the time Inci was sabotaging the rest of the Turkish community. Inci had a combination of motives to turn against their fellow countrymen. Some motives were ideological, some were "4 teh lulz". But what really mattered was Inci was bad for Turkey. Are you guys still allied to Inci now?!

By all generally accepted moral standards those 62% of the Bulgarians who opposed Turkey's membership in EDEN were wrong. Decent human beings join efforts to build something together. Idiots are at each other's throats instead of cooperating for the mutual benefit.

And what is true in real life is true also in this game. When Bulgaria was still in EDEN she had a stable source of bonuses. If the Bulgarians would have done the right thing and signed that MPP with Turkey, the number of bonuses would have increased even further. That is a clear in-game proof that joining forces for the common good is indeed the natural option.

So what happened when Bulgaria decided to go against the profoundly human behavior of cooperating? For the last 3 months she left the alliance she had to struggle to defend her core regions, never having an additional bonus for at least 3 days in a row.

Yes, Bulgaria had the right to veto Turkey. The real question is this: if the Bulgarians considered themselves the brothers of the other EDEN countries, should they have sabotaged those brothers by exercising their right to veto?

Every Bulgarian player had this option:

1) To act selfishly, sacrifice the possibility of the whole alliance to win wars by pushing Turkey away;

2) To act generously and be a team player, working with the rest of EDEN and Turkey, for the common good.

Just like in real life, selfish behavior didn't pay off.

The only good thing is that since EDEN is built on cooperation, EDEN can find solutions to accommodate Bulgaria's strategic need for resources as soon as Bulgaria decides to join forces with the other EDEN members, for the common good.

The same is true for the other members of the new alliance Bulgaria is in: Chile and South Korea. In each case arrangements can be made so each country can work out a mutually beneficial arrangement with her neighbors.

All what is needed is the willingness to cooperate. And since most of the Bulgarians are decent human beings, like everybody else, cooperation will happen as soon as that noisy minority who sabotages cooperation loses the grip over the Bulgarian community.