On Venat's Role in the Story

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Originally Posted by Lyth

No, Eara is correct. The situation has changed.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

There are two issues on the table now. One, if the report gets out, Hermes' response is unpredictable. Perhaps it triggers the memories that were erased on Kairos. Perhaps he gives in to despair in the middle of the Final Days. Second, there are plenty of people who would still be effected by the news, and the Final Days is a bad time for them to go through an existential crisis.

This is why I asked for the exact citation. If you try to do it just from memory, the meaning gets distorted by your reaction to them. And people also leave out critical parts that make you lose context.

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There's nothing about the context that changes what Venat said. Venat said two things:

1) Some people may react badly to hearing Hermes' report. Others may not.

2) Hermes is one of the people who will react badly to the news.

The Final Days changes nothing. The same fact is true now as it was then. The only real difference is that now, thanks to Hermes, nobody will know WHY the Final Days are happening, but it will happen nonetheless. Again, her statement is that the report cannot become common knowledge because some people will not be able to handle the news, and Hermes himself almost certainly would not.

Whether or not the "Final Days" is a bad time for an existential crisis is irrelevant, because the existential doom is going to happen regardless. However harsh the truth is, though, that truth is the ONLY way that anyone has a prayer of stopping the Final Days outside of Zodiark. The ONLY reason you could have for not revealing the truth is to ensure that the current timeline goes on the same course as the one before, which Venat basically admits to.

So no, it changes absolutely nothing.

There's a difference between "the answer to the Fermi Paradox is that intelligent life destroys itself" which is what Venat knew before entering Ktisis Hyperboreia.

And "there is a gestalt conciousness at the edge of the universe, actively trying to kill us by sending the suicidal despair of dead worlds towards us." which is what she knew after.

It's reasonable for Venat to believe that one is going to cause more panic than the other.

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Originally Posted by KariTheFox

There's a difference between "the answer to the Fermi Paradox is that intelligent life destroys itself" which is what Venat knew before entering Ktisis Hyperboreia.

And "there is a gestalt conciousness at the edge of the universe, actively trying to kill us by sending the suicidal despair of dead worlds towards us." which is what she knew after.

It's reasonable for Venat to believe that one is going to cause more panic than the other.

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What also tends to cause panic is the world blowing up and not knowing why.

See, this is my problem with Endwalker. It assumes all of humanity has a functionally anti-buddhist mentality to existential dread.

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

What also tends to cause panic is the world blowing up and not knowing why.

See, this is my problem with Endwalker. It assumes all of humanity has a functionally anti-buddhist mentality to existential dread.

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Well, not quite - Venat assumes that the race of god-beings who do not meaningfully experience suffering would not be able to handle it.

The story ultimately seems to fall on the side of "people are capable of enduring existential dread" since, we, y'know - won.

Timing is always important. Releasing a report on how all civilizations eventually go the Ozymandias route probably wouldn't surprise many people. Following that up with a report that this has already happened to every other civilization in the known universe might raise a few eyebrows, but we could live with that. Following that up with 'Oh, by the way, we just set in motion our own destruction which is now imminent, but don't panic or you'll get eaten by a gru-' might not be such a good idea.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

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No, you very definitely did misquote her. This is completely unambiguous.

Here, let me bring it up again for you:
'Bleak as the contents of Meteion's report might be, many could hear it and remain content with their lives. But not Hermes. For him, the veneer of perfection has long been cracked, and it was to the distant heavens he looked for the means to repair it. I understand his anguish after a fashion─my own refusal to return is in opposition to the world's established order. Yet for me, the imperfections only enhance the fragile beauty of our star. I will fight to see it delivered from destruction, warts and all.'

So this is why context is really important. There's no discussion of 'living' or 'dying' here, so I don't know where you got that from. Venat is saying that many people (i.e. on average) would hear Meteion's report and just continue on with their lives. Hermes is different in that he had pinned what amounts to his last hope for humanity on this venture. I think that these are both very fair statements to make. And the first isn't specific to Amaurotians, either. I don't think that most people would be impacted all that much, because it doesn't change their own lives directly.

What I find truly mysterious is that you've chosen to rely on Venat's judgement to try to establish the Amaurotians' resilience, when you've already spent so much time and effort trying to prove that her judgement is questionable.

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Originally Posted by KariTheFox

Well, not quite - Venat assumes that the race of god-beings who do not meaningfully experience suffering would not be able to handle it.

The story ultimately seems to fall on the side of "people are capable of enduring existential dread" since, we, y'know - won.

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It’s almost like we won because we told people what would be coming and didn’t keep it a secret. Now imagine if we said nothing about what was coming and played dumb….yeah

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Originally Posted by KariTheFox

Well, not quite - Venat assumes that the race of god-beings who do not meaningfully experience suffering would not be able to handle it.

The story ultimately seems to fall on the side of "people are capable of enduring existential dread" since, we, y'know - won.

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Yes, which is literally a buddhist argument. Buddhism's entire core belief is that life is suffering. Mankind, in Buddhist purview, is the only form of life capable of reaching enlightenment because they are the only ones who know can know suffering. In Buddhism, even Deva and Asura (their deities) cannot escape dukkha (suffering) specifically because their lives are so blissful that they don't understand it.

What I mean by saying that FFXIV assumes that humanity has a "functionally anti-buddhist mentality" is the assumption that all the masses (the anti-buddhists) must follow the super, special, enlightened few (the buddhists) in understanding suffering to truly save themselves.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Timing is always important. Releasing a report on how all civilizations eventually go the Ozymandias route probably wouldn't surprise many people. Following that up with a report that this has already happened to every other civilization in the known universe might raise a few eyebrows, but we could live with that. Following that up with 'Oh, by the way, we just set in motion our own destruction which is now imminent, but don't panic or you'll get eaten by a gru-' might not be such a good idea.

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Almost like she should have warned people before that started happening, or told the Convocation in confidence.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

What I find truly mysterious is that you've chosen to rely on Venat's judgement to try to establish the Amaurotians' resilience, when you've already spent so much time and effort trying to prove that her judgement is questionable.

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This isn't a "Gotcha moment" that you think it is. Venat's judgment is being mentioned because said judgment is the only evidence we have of whether or not warning people would have been a good idea. The issue is that, even following her own logic, her reasoning just isn't sound. Your statement here is like trying to call out someone for saying, "How mysterious. You say the killer is a liar because stabbed his wife 32 times in self defense the day after he put a life insurance policy out on her. If you say he's lying about the self defense, then why aren't you also saying he's lying about the insurance?"

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

Yes, which is literally a buddhist argument. Buddhism's entire core belief is that life is suffering. Mankind, in Buddhist purview, is the only form of life capable of reaching enlightenment because they are the only ones who know can know suffering. In Buddhism, even Deva and Asura (their deities) cannot escape dukkha (suffering) specifically because their lives are so blissful that they don't understand it.

What I mean by saying that FFXIV assumes that humanity has a "functionally anti-buddhist mentality" is the assumption that all the masses (the anti-buddhists) must follow the super, special, enlightened few (the buddhists) in understanding suffering to truly save themselves.

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Oh, I see the issue. I don't believe the ancients are "humanity" they are essentially - the Deva and Asura, incapable of escpaing suffering because thier lives were too blissful to meaningfully understand it. They would have become like the Plenty - at least that's what Venat believes.

In this view, Venat is essentially creating a mankind that is capable of escaping suffering by sundering the ancient dieties into mortals.

Venat as a god is responsible for the world we live in, she had faith in us, and comparatively little faith in her fellow ancients. I think condemning her for that is as meaningful as condemning Prometheus for betraying Zeus and giving fire to humanity. I guess that's where I'm struggling with this discussion, yes - you can argue that Venat did a wrong to her fellow ancients, she would even agree with you. So what?

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

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It's hard to tell exactly where Ishikawa's influences come from, and it probably isn't just one place. Many world religions try to grapple with the inevitably of suffering and need for resilience on some level, because its often the question that drives people seek the comfort of spirituality in the first place. You can't even pin the terminology down as being exclusively Buddhist because of its close historical ties both Hinduism and Vedantic philosophy in general, which is also where Akasha originates from. If you want a comparative Western angle to wrangle it from, you could say that it also strikes a chord with Stoic philosophy, which in turn later became an influence within Christian philosophy. I'm sure that there are plenty of others that I haven't mentioned.

But if you really want to know where the recurring motif comes from in game, it's actually a Dark Knight philosophy.

I think that this 'What if...' business of telling the Convocation or altering the timeline in other ways largely comes down to how risk averse you are. Venat outlines some of those possibilities herself. The problem is that we don't actually know what effect any of those changes will actually have downstream in the timeline. And this isn't a Radiant Historia scenario where we can test out every possible bad end at our leisure. But we do know reliably what happens in one very specific case: the current timeline.

This is also a fairly standard convention in time travel writing in general. The protagonist is usually required to keep their knowledge of the future a secret from everyone else, because once it becomes common knowledge, people try to alter it to their advantage, and the knowledge ceases to be useful because you've now diverged from the original.

You're also making a false equivalence here, but this should be self-explanatory to anyone reading your post. These are not independent variables. More specifically, if you don't think that Venat's judgements on the Amaurotians are reliable, then why are you trying to use them to defend your point?