EDEN, how deep are your roots?

Day 1,803, 09:03 Published in Croatia Croatia by Arrlo

I apologise in advance for the lack of images, humour and usual anti Poland stuff in this article. I take the topic quite seriously, and don't want anything to distract from the sincere message of my article. I will begin.

When first I started doing more than just my two clicks, I didn't get EDEN. I didn't understand a brotherhood in a stupid game, and I was completely perplexed at the choice of name. Now that I've been playing for some time - and understand that things we do or say, and friendships we make in the game can mean something - the more I think about the name EDEN, the more I think that choosing it was a masterstroke. I'm not sure if the acronym or the full name was chosen to fit the other, but the biblical allusion works so well. In what can be a pretty dull game, or a social experiment which can at times show human interactions in a very negative light, the name has uplifting connections to the story of a perfect place created in an imperfect world. EDEN literally means paradise.

The Erepublik Defence & Economy Network came into existence some three years ago now, which, in the context of eRepublik alliances, is something of a miracle in itself. In striking contrast to almost every other alliance founded ever since, it was established as a defensive grouping with a very clear purpose. PEACE was systematically destroying everything in its path. At the time there was a marked difference between the aims of each alliance: PEACE conquered, EDEN liberated. Whatever you think of the path it has taken since, however much you dislike us, EDEN was born as an alliance of friendly nations brought together in a desperate struggle to face an all conquering enemy.

This auspicious beginning is significant, since it created high expectations of the alliance in neutral countries, and even in enemy nations. Where PEACE represented fun in taking over the world and crushing anyone who got in the way of this conquest, EDEN took the cause of freedom. While I think that most players in EDEN believe in these same principles, I acknowledge that this could have been nothing more than the product of circumstance and superior propaganda. However these values became attached to EDEN, I, and many others, take these lofty ideals very seriously to this day. Where other alliances (not all, I must add) have come and gone, with openly ignoble, mercenary intentions, EDEN has endured. For some countries the words "friendship" and "brotherhood" are means to a 100/100 resource collection end. EDEN, I want us to pursue exactly the reverse.

Much like the biblical story, flaws in human nature sometimes come close to ruining our paradise. We are not perfect. Greed, selfishness, ignorance, anger, lust for power: these are the antithesis of what EDEN is supposed to be. I'm certainly not saying that this is what EDEN is or is not, but I am trying to illustrate what we should all be striving for.

Cynical and hateful people will inevitably accuse me of hopeless naivety or peddling propaganda. The former could be true, but the latter is not. I mean every word that I say, and EDEN has problems and internal conflicts which I can see as well as any hater. I have not given up on us yet. We are by far the biggest alliance in terms of member nations, which gives us a fantastic wealth of diverse peoples fighting under our flag. But this great strength is sometimes a great weakness, since having so many presidents and voting populaces to please makes any complex decision a lot more difficult to reach. In my opinion we have also made enormous errors of judgement in the past.

The past cannot be rewritten, so we can only deal with the present.

It's time to have a set of clear aims again, like the EDEN of the past. Just like at our alliance's birth, we are very possibly facing total defeat, and we are outgunned. Let's not waste time looking for someone to blame, let's make a strong statement that we are EDEN, we ALL fight together for the liberation of our member countries, and that we will leave caring about bonuses, resources, or real life hatred to other countries. In future, I want all of us, myself included, to consider the following:

If wiping an enemy is more important to you than liberating Portugal and Ukraine you don't belong in EDEN.

If hoarding resources is more important to you than liberating Colombia and Romania you don't belong in EDEN.

If PTOing a country is more important to you than liberating Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Belarus you don't belong in EDEN.

If you fail this test, you should leave EDEN.

If you agree that allies are more important than enemies, then it's up to you now. HQ, CPs, MoDs, MU leaders, captains, all soldiers and citizens, you will have to fight together in the same battles, and very often they will not be your own country's. The leaders of government and military units must communicate with each other to set priorities, and then it is up to us to give everything we have to win these fights. It will be hard. Our enemies are strong and committed, and victory might take a long time to achieve for some or all of our members.

But making EDEN something worth fighting for will be a stronger call to arms than winning a battle here and there. Losing battles we fight in all together against bigger enemies is less of a defeat than losing hold of our principles. Is this moral faggotry? No, it is making EDEN stronger in the long term, by once again making us an alliance people WANT to fight for. What good is compromising our values for damage if countries lose faith in us, and disillusioned citizens sell their damage or hunt medals or simply become 2 clicking zombies?

If an EDEN country is wiped, we will ALL fight for them. If a group of PTOers from an EDEN country begins to trouble an ally, we will denounce them and work with our ally to do everything in our power to STOP the PTOers. If a member country attacks another, that country will be ejected from EDEN immediately, regardless of their strength, and only readmitted if they guarantee that it won't happen again. If it does, EDEN should be closed to them. I think these things should go without saying, but it seems that somehow we have let things slide. Well, no longer. Only then will we be a Brotherhood, and once again unquestionably the best, the only true alliance in the game.

Albania
Argentina
Belarus
Bosnia and Herzegovina
China
Colombia
Croatia
Greece
India
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Netherlands
Norway
Portugal
Romania
Taiwan
Turkey
Ukraine


Do you care about EDEN as much as I do? How deeply rooted in you is EDEN? Show me!

Arrlo,
EDEN soldier