It was Mother’s Day yesterday, and honestly I felt compelled to write about my own mother, and my relationship with her. I will hold off on that however, as another entry seems to have consumed my mind.

I had recently heard from an old friend out of the blue, and we had arranged to meet for breakfast the morning after Mother’s Day. I woke up in a pleasant mood, today’s artificial weather showing sunny skies within the station. I had decided to make the 20 minute walk to the magtrain station by foot, and must confess that even simulated weather can leave one in quite the uplifted mood, which was the point I suppose.

I arrived at the station in my military formals. It was by request of my old friend, whom was surprised to find out that I was indeed the same Roc Wieler he had shared many years with in an Amarr slave camp. There weren’t many of us left from those days, and though I wasn’t one for revelry, I was still looking forward to the meeting.

Upon entering the station I noticed immediately a much larger and more irate crowd than usual.

The trains were cancelled indefinitely, while an investigation was made into an incident involving a pedestrian. They had been crossing the tracks illegally, and were struck by a magtrain. No other details were being released at this time.

Being blatantly militia, I was asked by the private station security team to lend a hand. At first I was confused as to why they would need me, but it soon became painfully obvious.

I’d like to interject here about what we’ve become. I still held to the naive belief that while capsuleers and military personnel dealt in lives as currency, that regular folk weren’t as desensitized to the experience. I couldn’t have been more in error.

Not one of the would be passengers I dealt with that morning asked the most humane of questions, “Are they all right?”, “Was it intentional?”, “What was their name?”; nothing. Each and every one of them could only care about one selfish thing; the delay and inconvenience it was causing them.

Now I understand our own lives are important; we have jobs to do, people to see, places to go. But at what point did we become so calloused that a few lost hours of our lives takes such high precedence over the death of another that we neglect to indulge in the most basic of human empathy?

What if it had been your mother? Or someone you knew intimately? Would you be so nonplussed then? And was I any different?

Shamefully, I wasn’t. I was used to death; I had delivered death personally many times, and experienced it far too often for it to affect me as it should. As I said, I assumed that was the price of militia life. 

Yet still it was wrong. In my recent historical readings of our people, I was familiar with how we used to be not so very long ago. When we were more tribal by nature, an entire community would pay respect to a lost one with a moment of silence. Businesses would pause, play would cease, and we would commemorate our fallen brother or sister in the respectful way of tradition.

Perhaps it was the media. Perhaps it was growing antipathy as society continued to spiral ever downwards towards eventual collapse. Perhaps we needed to stop blaming all the stereotypical reasons and begin taking accountability for own individual selves anew.

Perhaps I was too idealistic for my own good. Perhaps not.

A magtrain hit a passenger, and my life was too important to care. That was the attitude of the day, and it left me feeling nauseous and disgusted with myself and my people. I tried to comm my friend, but there was no response. For a moment I had the critical thought that maybe it was my friend of years past that was the victim of today’s tragedy. I suppose I would find out along with the rest of the public when the details were released via the newsfeeds.

Even that made me feel a twinge of shame. With my position, I could easily have found out the details of the incident and the current state of the investigation. I could’ve lent my weight to pushing things forward, but I didn’t.

Instead, I simply began walking back to my quarters once the enraged mob had dispersed to a manageable level by the security team. I was crossing the magtrain concourse when a group of women inquired as to what was going on. In a deeply regretful voice I informed them of the incident. I expected annoyance. I expected some type of ignorant disregard for the loss of life. I wasn’t disappointed.

“Home day!” the woman shouted triumphantly, beaming at her friends. From behind the anonymity of my sunglasses, I buried daggers into her, and turned my back on them in revulsion.

If we are to prosper, nay to survive as a society, we could not continue on this path of selfishness. When being put out of our way a few hours is of more import to us than the loss of even a single life, something in our life view has gone askew. We’ve strayed from the path of morality. 

Life is precious and sacred. Life is not a commodity. We are not Amarr, we don’t trade in life for gain, and yet in some ways, we are worse than them. At least they attach a value to life, albeit a monetary one. Were I to stand behind a podium and preach that philosophy to the masses, I wouldn’t even have time to watch my political career disappear, so quick would it occur, and yet that didn’t make the statement any less true.

We needed to start remembering who we are, where we came from. We needed to start drawing many lines in the sand, and stand defiantly, daring any to cross them. We needed to do that with ourselves before we could hope to make a greater influence in New Eden.

New Eden; right then it didn’t feel like the new paradise our forebearers named it to be. Perhaps it never was, nor ever would be again.