Glory is for Fools
10 Dec 2024Rawnu
Epsilon Eridani is quieter now. The fight’s over, for the moment. The wreckage of another battle drifts in the void, and I can finally hear my own thoughts again. But sometimes, I think the comms chatter bothers me more than the sound of Thargoid interceptors bearing down. It’s not the banter—pilots trying to keep their spirits up. I get that. We’re all dealing with this in our own way. It’s when the words turn sharp and ugly, like when someone called the Thargoids “bugs” over the comms today.Bugs.
I know what they meant. And I understand the heat and rush of battle. It’s easier to fight something if you strip away its complexity, reduce it to something simple, something less than you. Bugs are pests. You don’t think twice about squashing them. And in a fight to the death, there's no time for reflection. It's you or them. But after the fight, we need to be careful with our words. The Thargoids aren’t bugs. They’re a species, ancient and advanced, as much a part of this galaxy as we are. That kind of language doesn’t just disrespect them—it blinds us. If we keep seeing them as vermin, we’ll miss the bigger picture. The Thargoids are more than we know, with designs beyond our grasp.
And then there’s the other one: “Glory to mankind.”
It echoes in my head long after the comms fall silent. I hate it. It’s more than arrogance—it’s pride without reflection, a declaration that humanity stands above everything else, that we deserve the galaxy just by virtue of being here. What’s glorious about billions dying in Sol and beyond? What’s glorious about tearing ourselves apart to fight an enemy we barely understand? I don’t mind the original Lakon slogan: “Defend Humanity.” It’s honest. It reminds us why we’re here, why we’re fighting. Defending humanity is not just about survival, about protecting the people we care about and the lives we’ve built. It's about our very own nature, our personal humanity. Being human, even and especially in the face of an enemy we know barely anything about.
But “Glory to mankind”? That’s something else entirely. It’s twisted, a celebration of power for power’s sake, of conquest instead of survival. It’s the kind of thinking that leads to things like the Proteus Wave—to hubris, to overreach. It’s the voice that whispers, “We are the center of the galaxy, and everything else exists for us to take.” I don’t fight for glory. I fight because I have to. Because somewhere on Earth, my old commune is watching the sky, hoping that someone out here is holding the line. I fight because I believe we can survive this, with our humanity intact–not because I believe we’re entitled to the stars.
The Thargoids don’t care about our slogans anyway. They don’t care what we call them or how we justify our actions. But I think words matter. They shape the way we see the war, the way we see each other, the way we see ourselves. If we start to believe the lie that this war is about glory, about dominance, then we lose sight of what really matters. We lose sight of the people we’re trying to protect. We lose sight of the fact that survival isn’t just about crushing what stands in our way—it’s about understanding the galaxy we share, even with those we fight.
So call it what it is: defending humanity–in all its facets. Fighting to to protect what we love and what it means to be human. That’s enough. It has to be.
Because glory? Glory is for fools.