To end this break in posts The Heralds next C-suite interview will persist of our very on Chief Legal Officer, Buryasia. Continuing off of our series of interviews with other officials Yawehs Chosen Peoples conducted this interview:
Yawehs Chosen Peoples (YCP): Tell us about yourself and what brought you to nationstates and to the position you are now for those in LE who don't know who you are.
Buryasia (BA): Hi YCP! I'm just a person who's very interested in history and in how societies work, and I also have an interest in gaming and simulations, so I ran into this game a few times. I think I first tried it about 7 or 8 years ago, but I didn't really stick with it at first. I had been playing a game for Mac called "Democracy," and when I switched to PC, I was looking for something to satisfy my need to better the lives of my people, whether they like it or not. So I don't remember what my first nation's name was, but the BA nation I'm running now is the first and only one I've kept going for a long time. I'm also a history teacher. (Cue the "boooo"s!) and after trying the feeder region West Pacific, and spending short stints in a few player-created regions, I landed in Lands End and I couldn't help but give this region an "A+."
YCP: Tell us a little bit about your NS journey before finding lands end.
BA: Yes, it really didn't take me all that long to find Lands End; I've been in LE longer now than all my other experience before. So I "spawned" in the West Pacific, which fit my nation's theme since the Buryat people live in the Russia's far East (in the RL West Pacific.) At first I just played the issues and lurked on the RMB, but I gradually got involved commenting. They had karaoke events once a week and I was just slowly figuring out what was going on. So the critical event was when I decided to start training in R/D. I joined a server where their army did training, and I started to at least get familiar with discord and read the forum posts about how R/D works. All of a sudden, I checked NS one day and BAM, I was in the rejected realms! I was wondering, WTF?, and a started TGing people and learned someone in the WP gov had a problem with my motto (which is fine) and unilaterally dropped the banhammer (which is not fine.) My motto at the time was "Grab her in the . . ." Not completed, just Grab her in the . . . Now, I'm a teacher, I try to be sensitive to diverse genders, races, everything else. We had a presidential candidate who actually said that, and I thought it was worth satirizing. Now that I'm a CLO, I know what I would do in a similar situtation, if the roles were reversed. I'd contact the person before acting against the nation. And I still feel that's what they should have done. After learning it was satire, Davelands reversed the ban, but I had kind of a bad tase in my mouth over the whole thing and happily I decided to check out other nations. I went through a few that weren't very active before I came to LE. I really latched on to LE because its a region that honors diversity of opinion but isn't a forum for a lot of disgusting comments.
It's a fine line, making sure your region is not a forum for hatespeech, bullying, or anything else really foul, but remaining open to people's opinions. So I don't hold any ill will against anyone. I just think its especially important in feeder regions, where people's gameplay experience begins, that they find better ways to walk that line between hosting vile speech, and censorship.
YCP; Alrighty, moving off of your journey to Lands End let's talk about how you view yourself in your position and how you think you impact the region.
BA: I wouldn't really overestimate my impact on the region. I've been the CLO long enough to have some experience now in drafting bylaws, gaining consensus from the board to get them passed, usually with modifications from everyone else's input. I'm finally getting better at keeping up with the bylaws, putting them out in dispatches. I haven't really been called upon to arbitrate much of anything, but I think I keep a neutral take on disputes so we can do right by everyone, if there is some kind of disagreement. The region keeps going because we occupy a place that isn't very crowded -- we generally stand for capitalism with minimal government intervention, and especially for honoring diverse viewpoints. You don't have to agree with our ideas to comment on the RMB from an embassy region or even to join our region. As long as we stay true to that, LE will be a valuable part of the NS landscape, no matter who occupies senior management. But I'm always looking for new people with new ideas to complement the great people already contributing to the region.
YCP: What are some of your biggest dreams for the region?
BA: Oh, I can dream big. I'd like LE to rival the feeders. Look, I'm not 100% committed to capitalism all the time, personally. I think it's the least bad form of economy in practice, but if you stick to purely capitalist dogma all the time, I think you leave a lot of room for the rich to exploit the poor. Society probably needs protection from that in some, even many instances. But, once you decide you are a socialist, in favor of government intervention, that creates a lot more problems, so I lean towards our regions take, even with some misgivings. At the end of the day, it's because we are willing to debate our standpoint over and over again with those who lean a different way that we continue to have interesting discussions that are relevant in the real world. That's what we do better than the feeder regions. I don't know everything that happens in every region, by a long shot, and there are some great people involved in the big regions, but I also think there is an oligarchy with an echo chamber effect in most of the big regions, while our board is just more open and not dominated or controlled by a few people's ideas. So I think we need to get bigger, just so that when people notice the stifling influence of a few officers in other regions, they notice ours, and how we are different, and they can come feel at home here, too.
YCP: Final question, what do you think sets us apart from other AA regions? Or what do you think we need to put LE ahead of the other Alliance Regions.
BA; The AA is a great and unique system, and I have nothing negative to say about the other AA regions. I like ours, and I love it when the other AA members (or other embassy regions) have nations who post on our RMB. It adds to that diversity of opinion. I guess I like our unique system, although I have to say the system in RF is at least as unusual in
NS as ours. I guess ours has the out-of-the-box thinking that started with August, but also fits well with the character of NS.
YCP; Well its been fun...
BA: TL/DR: Buryasia says everyone should join LE.
