*Spoilers* Anyone feel joining Emet would have been better

[Lauront]

Emet-Selch: 'Once the rejoining of worlds is complete, Zodiark will regain His full strength and shatter his prison. Then we shall offer up the Source's remaining inhabitants in sacrifice, that we might resurrect our brethren who died to bring Zodiark into existence.'

You're claiming that the Ascians went from 'Let's think about sacrificing all the non-Amaurotians on the star' to 'Let's sacrifice the souls of all the non-Amaurotians left on the star'. That's fine, but that transition itself shows why they shouldn't have the power to make that decision in the first place. Emet is still Emet, and his arguments for eradicating humanity are still predicated on the belief that his friends lives are more valuable than your own. There's no 'responsible use of soul sacrifice to bring back loved ones' here. Just don't do it.

To be precise, non-ancients, albeit it is unclear because every single source on it is deliberately vague beyond the possession of souls. I am not arguing that that stage was necessarily a good idea. I don't know what was involved in that stage of sacrifices (i.e. what type of beings) or how they'd modify their plan if they were given the full truth as to what Hermes had learnt via Meteion. Their society was originally divided on this plan, which we know from the Sources I posted. We also can see very clearly from the Elpis sidequests that the ancients are quite readily open to modifying their practices where they see the merit in it. What I am disputing is that the plan, based on the knowledge they had, was idiotic, especially given that those souls inside Zodiark would be unable to return to the star, something the ancients valued - this may well explain the emotional gravity to it. Furthermore, he had to be maintained to avoid a repeat as far as they knew, thus the exchange of unspecified life. Venat's entire plan is dependent on stages 1 and 2 of the sacrifices completing, and she only knows 3 may end poorly because of what Meteion's report says of what we now know to be the Plenty. So I am open to the view that that stage is a bad idea, but not so much persuaded by the idea that they couldn't have been persuaded to re-think the plan if they were given more context...

[Lyth]

To be precise, non-ancients, albeit it is unclear because every single source on it is deliberately vague beyond the possession of souls. I am not arguing that that stage was necessarily a good idea. I don't know what was involved in that stage of sacrifices (i.e. what type of beings) or how they'd modify their plan if they were given the full truth as to what Hermes had learnt via Meteion. Their society was originally divided on this plan, which we know from the Sources I posted. We also can see very clearly from the Elpis sidequests that the ancients are quite readily open to modifying their practices where they see the merit in it. What I am disputing is that the plan, based on the knowledge they had, was idiotic, especially given that those souls inside Zodiark would be unable to return to the star, something the ancients valued - this may well explain the emotional gravity to it. Furthermore, he had to be maintained to avoid a repeat as far as they knew, thus the exchange of unspecified life. Venat's entire plan is dependent on stages 1 and 2 of the sacrifices completing, and she only knows 3 may end poorly because of what Meteion's report says of what we now know to be the Plenty. So I am open to the view that that stage is a bad idea, but not so much persuaded by the idea that they couldn't have been persuaded to re-think the plan if they were given more context...

That was some seriously convoluted writing.

Was it noble for the Ancients to sacrifice their souls to save the star and bring new life to it? Absolutely. Emet makes the point that society post-sundering wouldn't have made that same sacrifice. He's probably right; we're unlikely to do so collectively. It would have been fine if they stopped there. But you can't seriously mean to contemplate whether 'stage three' of the plan (i.e. let's trade in non-Ancient souls to Zodiark to free the ones who were previously sacrificed) was a sound one. And the fact that it's still being put forward in their master plan years later raises some serious questions about their value system.

[Lurina]

That was some seriously convoluted writing.

Was it noble for the Ancients to sacrifice their souls to save the star and bring new life to it? Absolutely. Emet makes the point that society post-sundering wouldn't have made that same sacrifice. He's probably right; we're unlikely to do so collectively. It would have been fine if they stopped there. But you can't seriously mean to contemplate whether 'stage three' of the plan (i.e. let's trade in non-Ancient souls to Zodiark to free the ones who were previously sacrificed) was a sound one. And the fact that it's still being put forward in their master plan years later raises some serious questions about their value system.

At the risk of being facetious, would you murder a dolphin to save a loved one in an unrelated situation?

[KariTheFox]

At the risk of being facetious, would you murder a dolphin to save a loved one in an unrelated situation?

Maybe, but I don't think I could be considered a morally just person if I did so. Given the scientific consensus on dolphin personhood.

Although given the scales likely involved if the sacrifice was of non-sapient life, a better question to ask might be "Would you burn the entire Amazon Rainforest to the ground to save a loved one?" and... "do you think someone trying to stop you from doing that would be acting immorally?"

[Slatersev]

Maybe, but I don't think I could be considered a morally just person if I did so. Given the scientific consensus on dolphin personhood.

Although given the scales likely involved if the sacrifice was of non-sapient life, a better question to ask might be "Would you burn the entire Amazon Rainforest to the ground to save a loved one?" and... "do you think someone trying to stop you from doing that would be acting immorally?"

Considering the scale involved, if it was just plants animals and fauna, or really the life Zodiark brought back into the world with the second sacrifice, wouldn't that make the Third one redundant?

"Thanks for healing the ecosystem of the planet big Z, now please trash it immediately, it will put us right back to Square 1"

Which doesn't feel like a sound idea whatsoever.

Like its crazy just how bad the Ancients plan looks if the third was all about non sapient life. Sure it makes them more sympathetic in that moment but at the cost of making all there actions before and after idiotic.

Why heal the ecosystem first if you were just going to trash it again immediately?

Why does Emet never bring it up as the worlds easiest trump card ever? Seriously, Emet just saying 'Venat did it to protect chickens and some pretty flowers" immediately undercuts every argument against him.

There simply isn't any argument for a Non-Sapient sacrifice that doesn't make the Ascians look like morons for never mentioning it. I don't understand how you could be a fan of them and want it to be that way. You want to retroactively turn Emet into the biggest idiot ever? Why?

And as someone who likes both the Convocation and Venat equally, I can't imagine looking at there conflict and thinking what it needs is something that so thoroughly undercuts both sides like that.

[Lurina]

Maybe, but I don't think I could be considered a morally just person if I did so. Given the scientific consensus on dolphin personhood.

Although given the scales likely involved if the sacrifice was of non-sapient life, a better question to ask might be "Would you burn the entire Amazon Rainforest to the ground to save a loved one?" and... "do you think someone trying to stop you from doing that would be acting immorally?"

My point in making the post wasn't that the Ancient's sacrifices were morally good or acceptable, but rather that they were morally banal in a manner that's a far cry from Lyth's assessment of them as a culture anyone should understand as twisted. It is extremely normal for humans to prioritize human life at the expense of all other forms, sapient (dolphins, great apes, elephants, some birds) or otherwise. While they might be correct that not many people would directly slit the throat of a dolphin, my guess is that most would press an abstracted dolphin-killing button to cure their child of cancer.

That you bring up the Amazon is interesting because, well, we are 'burning it down', and not even to save lives, but just because it's useful in keeping the wheels of our industrial complex turning and preserving our current lifestyles. All over the world, real-world mankind is essentially doing the most extreme interpretation of what the Ancient's planned - killing the entire biosphere, intelligent and unintelligent life alike - for a much more flippant reason.

I think we can probably agree this is not a good thing, but with that said, would you be comfortable with having our whole civilization destroyed to put a stop to it? In the real world, how much effort and sacrifice do you, personally, put into trying to put a stop to it?

I think people are very hasty to judge the Ancients as an entire people for an action that is ultimately pretty unexceptional, wrong or otherwise.

[Lurina]

Which I guess brings us to this (since I ran out of characters, lol):

The "Venat's actions are morally unjustifiable" argument has to rest on a central pillar of the third sacrifice being of non-sapient life. It is the difference between Venat being a raging enviromentalist extremist and her attempting to prevent her own people from committing genocide.

A lot of people's arguments here seem to frame the situation as binary. Either the Ancients weren't doing a sufficiently bad thing and so Venat wasn't justified, or that they were and she was.

I think you're missing what actually predicates redheadturk's opinion, which is the idea that both can be wrong at the same time. Even if the Ancients were about to overrule the agency of a bunch of innocent beings, that doesn't per-se make an action to prevent this morally justifiable if it also involves the same evil, which it implicitly does - obviously not every Ancient on the planet would have had a say in the conflict at all. What about the children? What about the ones living far away in the New World, who are referenced in Amaurot? Or hell, even for the ones who did want to do the sacrifice, is it acceptable match violence with violence at such a scale?

To bring it back to the real world, very few people would find destroying modern society an acceptable answer to its inherent evils. Overturning an established order, even for the better, often has a cost in suffering even greater than the problem it hopes to resolve. You can't boil it down to just saying, 'it's doing something wrong, so it must be stopped'.

[Lauront]

Which I guess brings us to this (since I ran out of characters, lol):



A lot of people's arguments here seem to frame the situation as binary. Either the Ancients weren't doing a sufficiently bad thing and so Venat wasn't justified, or that they were and she was.

I think you're missing what actually predicates redheadturk's opinion, which is the idea that both can be wrong at the same time. Even if the Ancients were about to overrule the agency of a bunch of innocent beings, that doesn't per-se make an action to prevent this morally justifiable if it also involves the same evil, which it implicitly does - obviously not every Ancient on the planet would have had a say in the conflict at all. What about the children? What about the ones living far away in the New World, who are referenced in Amaurot? Or hell, even for the ones who did want to do the sacrifice, is it acceptable match violence with violence at such a scale?

To bring it back to the real world, very few people would find destroying modern society an acceptable answer to its inherent evils. Overturning an established order, even for the better, often has a cost in suffering even greater than the problem it hopes to resolve. You can't boil it down to just saying, 'it's doing something wrong, so it must be stopped'.

My point in making the post wasn't that the Ancient's sacrifices were morally good or acceptable, but rather that they were morally banal in a manner that's a far cry from Lyth's assessment of them as a culture anyone should understand as twisted. It is extremely normal for humans to prioritize human life at the expense of all other forms, sapient (dolphins, great apes, elephants, some birds) or otherwise. While they might be correct that not many people would directly slit the throat of a dolphin, my guess is that most would press an abstracted dolphin-killing button to cure their child of cancer.

That you bring up the Amazon is interesting because, well, we are 'burning it down', and not even to save lives, but just because it's useful in keeping the wheels of our industrial complex turning and preserving our current lifestyles. All over the world, real-world mankind is essentially doing the most extreme interpretation of what the Ancient's planned - killing the entire biosphere, intelligent and unintelligent life alike - for a much more flippant reason.

I think we can probably agree this is not a good thing, but with that said, would you be comfortable with having our whole civilization destroyed to put a stop to it? In the real world, how much effort and sacrifice do you, personally, put into trying to put a stop to it?

I think people are very hasty to judge the Ancients as an entire people for an action that is ultimately pretty unexceptional, wrong or otherwise.

Well put, I would say this is more or less my take on it as well. Both in terms of "what was it" (because even we as humans do not rank all living beings as equal to us, with arguments to do so only convincing a few and requiring the acceptance of particular moral frameworks, themselves contentious) and "still not good enough to justify wiping them and everything else on the star out". IMO the sentiments of the ancients inside Zodiark were probably a factor in why this was initially divisive (i.e. would they approve of this), but bearing in mind that being inside Zodiark was like a limbo that did not allow for return to the star, that could explain the emotional push to do it. Elidibus emerged from Zodiark to mediate the dispute so it's entirely possible he could've given an account of this. I'm of the view that if they had been given a full account of what could happen to them, with actual evidence to probe, they could've re-evaluated this stage, and either left release of the ancients until Zodiark was longer needed, or at least adapted their plans in other ways to avoid the fate of the Plenty. For the time being it is all very vague and EW did not really touch on the topic of these sacrifices.

Also you can circumvent character limits by posting an initial post and then editing it.