When are we supposed to stop fighting?

[Cleretic]

The message was not about being inherently safe, is that true perfection and unity leads to destruction, the lack of motivation, just existing. No room for anything interesting, nothing to strive for, nothing to work towards. That's what caused them to collapse, they had absolutely nothing left to live their lives for, nothing that they needed to push towards, no real dreams. Just an empty existence. Striving towards it is one thing, but one can never grasp it. It's essentially akin to the tale of Icarus. Get too close to the sun, and you get burned and fall to your doom.

Or from an alternative angle: a world without suffering cannot exist, and any civilization that thinks it's achieved it is only getting there by ignoring or setting aside the problems rather than actually solving it all.

Endwalker's whole angle on suffering is very Buddhist, which inherently does mean it gets a tiny bit lost in translation to western audiences. Not that we aren't capable of understanding the story, but rather that Buddhist outlooks are a much more present part of the cultural background in Japan, so they're a little quicker on the uptake for this stuff.

[YianKutku]

Or from an alternative angle: a world without suffering cannot exist, and any civilization that thinks it's achieved it is only getting there by ignoring or setting aside the problems rather than actually solving it all.

Endwalker's whole angle on suffering is very Buddhist, which inherently does mean it gets a tiny bit lost in translation to western audiences. Not that we aren't capable of understanding the story, but rather that Buddhist outlooks are a much more present part of the cultural background in Japan, so they're a little quicker on the uptake for this stuff.

There's also the analogy with Francis Fukuyama's "The End Of History", which assumes a certain form of government (liberal democracy, according to Fukuyama, but the concept can also apply to any other system) is the Final State from where there will no longer be any progress, like the ending point of a Civilization tech tree.

And the message of FFXIV (and criticisms of Fukuyama's thesis) is that civilizations don't work like that, and if you think you've achieved perfection, you are blinding yourself to alternatives and pitfalls. Always keep striving to be better, but never assume that you're perfect or anywhere near. And there is no "endpoint" or "linear progression" where one civilization is "more advanced"/"better" than another, like steps on a tech tree.

Personally, I also agree with the Buddhist interpretation of Endwalker (as in I agree that Endwalker's message is inspired by Buddhist thought), but that's just my own opinion.

(EDIT for clarity: Fukuyama doesn't actually think liberal democracy is "perfect", but just thinks that there will not be any further progression from it. Which I would say is still mistaken, but that's going into a tangent.)

[Fenral]

Or from an alternative angle: a world without suffering cannot exist, and any civilization that thinks it's achieved it is only getting there by ignoring or setting aside the problems rather than actually solving it all.

This, actually. One needs only look down in the third stage of the Dead Ends to see it. They may have thought they achieved perfection, but their world got trashed.

[AlysanneVrannai]

Or from an alternative angle: a world without suffering cannot exist, and any civilization that thinks it's achieved it is only getting there by ignoring or setting aside the problems rather than actually solving it all.

This is how I understood it as well, "to live is to suffer" is a statement of fact, though what you define as suffering can be wildly different depending on where you are. The "perfect" society at the third stage of Dead Ends shows that even without 'regular suffering' there is still a form of suffering either way, living becomes a curse where existance feels meaningless.