When are we supposed to stop fighting?

[SineNomine]

It is impossible to jump into this conversation at this point. I think a few people may be very slightly misremembering some points or are assuming things unsaid...or perhaps I am. I need to go back and rewatch and read some stuff perhaps to narrow down what, EXACTLY, is said but I think it's fair to say that this expansion's story could've been delivered in a more definitive and explained manner for sure.

[Ayche]

I don't know how universal the saying is, but "The world is not yet complete." as I sometimes hear muttered.
"Progress is not linear" might be more common.

[Absimiliard]

Hydaelyn was removed from the wider world for most of Her existence, a myth and legend only interacted with in the most dire of circumstances. Did She offer aid? Sure. But never did She willingly engender worship, or shift peoples faith away from themselves and onto Her. The closest to what the Amaurotines were to Zodiark was the Church of Light on the First, and they’re as much Hydaelyn worshippers as the Nights Blessed are Zodiark believers.

That's uh... not entirely accurate. She very much did actively encourage faith at one point. This is made abundantly clear even as far back as ARR. What Venat says is not always what she does.

The above aside, might we now return this thread to its intended subject matter? Not every topic needs to be hijacked by the Venat global fedora initiative or the Zodiark neckbeard association.

[Necrotica]

If you read beyond the title of the question OP put up, they appear to be pointing out how they dislike that the game puts forth as a universal truth that to end suffering is to embrace annihalation.

"One thing that's bothered me since beating the story is the whole we need to suffer to learn and live angle.
Or how the last dungeon and meteon pushed that things got too good and people just gave up.
Our whole deal is fighting to solve issues and make things better, we've traveled through time, space and reality to make things better, to win, to keep marching toward a world where things are better and we're not needed, one where no one needs to fight.
So doesn't that mean our endgame would lead to annihilation?"

And they are right. The path of the WoL would doom all existence to death because they fight to try and make the world a better place without suffering. And per the lore in the game that is bad.

[andrealfus]

And they are right. The path of the WoL would doom all existence to death because they fight to try and make the world a better place without suffering. And per the lore in the game that is bad.

"We should strive to make the world a better place to live" =/= "We should eliminate every even mildly negative aspect of life and ascend to a state of perfection and borderline godhood"

The WoL doesn't have the ability to rid the world of suffering forever, and they never will

[KageTokage]

There are too many factors involved in truly ridding the world of suffering for such a thing to ever be reasonably attainable for Etheriys.

Physical factors like disease and aging would need to be eliminated, as well the myriad sources of strife that divide mankind.

Even the pre-sundering world seemed to have its own share of problems festering beneath the perceived "perfection".

[KariTheFox]

The WoL isn't trying to make the world a perfect utopia either, they just help people with thier small scale problems in between dealing with large scale threats to the stability of the world.

[Veloran]

It's very obvious that if the world continues to improve, suffering will be lessened and eliminated in many ways. It may not happen in WoL's lifetime, but if humanity doesn't destroy itself it will eventually advance to near-utopic levels of existence. The super-science of Allag, for example, will someday be attained again so long as people like Cid and Nero want to innovate and create - Should they be told to stop because someday in the future people will be too sheltered from suffering and be forced to face existentialist questions? I think this sort of idea is what OP is getting at.

[KizuyaKatogami]

It's very obvious that if the world continues to improve, suffering will be lessened and eliminated in many ways. It may not happen in WoL's lifetime, but if humanity doesn't destroy itself it will eventually advance to near-utopic levels of existence. The super-science of Allag, for example, will someday be attained again so long as people like Cid and Nero want to innovate and create - Should they be told to stop because someday in the future people will be too sheltered from suffering and be forced to face existentialist questions? I think this sort of idea is what OP is getting at.

Not to mention, thanks to the examples Meteion gives us, other civilizations have been able to eradicate things like diseases, so even that could potentially be rendered obsolete in the future. That’s what makes this whole theme feel so shallow, when are you supposed to stop? Why is it wrong to want to make the world as better and as perfect as can be? It’s just so weird to me lol. Eventually the sundered world may hit a dead end, but who’s to judge whether it’s wrong or right? Meteion’s logic and Hermes’ by extension is incredibly flawed. I don’t think any society is destined to last forever, but you can make it last as long as possible and that’s what i saw with both the ancient world and the sundered world. They’re both working towards the betterment of their world. Hermes and by extension Venat were just mentally ill it seems and couldn’t grasp that rationale.

[Selvokaz]

honestly, a lot of people seem to be forgetting there was nothing wrong with Etheirys in the first place, there WAS something wrong with how Hermes perceived Life on Etheirys, and in what drives his fellow man, <== that was the problem all along. Etheirys WAS in fact a mixture of what it needed to be in order for life to continue on as normal, Hydaelyn only remade the world differently because she needed mankind to become something more, something able to stop Meteion. She couldn't rely on mankind as it had been in her time because those humans couldn't perceive Dynamis, or use it. So she sundered it into small chunks and the humans that came after were thus sundered but also now capable of perceiving and manipulating Dynamis and thus able to combat Meteion. Will Etheirys ever become like it was before? Probably not, but there wasn't anything fundamentally wrong with it beforehand either. As for when will the fighting stop between new Etheiry's societies, not anytime soon, and definitely not in our heroes lifetime, so the fighting for us if we so choose to get involved will never stop.