Who knew the 6.15 Omega Quests… (Spoilers)

[SannaR]

I mean Goku and Vegeta are spikey haired adrenaline junkies. Goku more so than Vegeta as he doesn't think beating up someone who isn't able to fight at their maximum is fair. Why later on even when friends think it foolish he gives enemies magical beans. Vegeta only gets better once he becomes a dad and gains a dad brain.

[SentioftheHoukai]

It's like the difference between how Superman normally doesn't use his powers at full strength cause just punching someone like Lex Luther or the Riddler would most likely kill the person versus when punching Darkside. Or like the times Goku is being even more of an airhead and doesn't realize he used more force than needed. Like if he thought he was only lightly poking a car but instead of a light touch that doesn't do anything the poke makes the car get flung down the road a few feet. It would be like how in the original version of Freeza meeting Goku; Goku is thought of to be really slow and thus not a threat. Which he is. Until he realizes that he's still wearing his very heavy weighted training top and takes it off and shows how fast he really is. Just because Goku can fight someone with said shirt on doesn't mean he's able to fight as good as he can without it on. Hope that makes more sense.

Why would veering off into a tangent about Dragon Ball Z with a single sentence about FFXIV suddenly make things make more sense? Magic doesn't even translate well in Dragon Ball, and power levels are bullshit.

[EaraGrace]

If that "drastic action" was wiping out all humans as a species? Good lord, I cannot emphasize enough absolutely positively NOT.

Now I'll have to log in and check, but I think... and this is crazy I know, I think I may have seen some humans running around Ul'Dah.

Your question already makes my point for me: Why did the aliens warn us instead of invading the planet and killing everybody?

Because remember, that's what we're discussing. Someone deciding to kill millions of lives and all of civilization because of "future warning signs" they believe in.

Aliens giving a warning, and letting us decide what we want to do about it, is instantly more humane than just killing everybody and saying "You're welcome".

The point of the example was to show that we can reasonably expect action in order to prevent a future outcome despite not being prophets. If we want a closer analogy to the Sundering, then we would need to change the analogy to include the fact that many humans would act to ensure nuclear Armageddon, and would likely be able to succeed.

Eara, do you see how these bolded parts contradict each other?

Ok, let me try to make this clearer.

I believe

1. That democracies and dictatorships have important differences that make democracies the objectively more moral system of government
2. However, those differences does not include avoiding entrusting individuals to make decisions that effect billions globally
3. I do not believe this because I live in a representative democracy that could, on the decision of an individual, begin a nuclear conflict that could kill humanity.
4. This would be a decision made by an individual that would effect billions globally.
5. Thus on this particular axis dictatorships and democracies are the same

Is that clear?

If Real Life Hydaelyn-sama decided to Sunder the Earth because she watched millennials and Gen Z kids care more about getting views on Tik Tok than what goes on in the political or business spheres, and decided to destroy it all to stop humanity from being "distracted by frivolous pursuits rather than saving their dying planet", then there would be nothing we could do to stop her. If she decided to do it out of jealousy or spite or even just because, we still wouldn't be able to stop her. Hell, she could even do it on a complete whim and later justify it to herself for "noble" reasons. Again...that's what dictatorships allow.

Do you believe that me saying that a person can be morally right in deciding something unilaterally if its done for the right reasons, is equivalent to me saying any unilateral decision is justified? I support Venats actions because I believe the reasons for doing so are right. If they weren't then I wouldn't support them. Now we can move on to discuss those reasons with more focus, but I do want to make clear that just because I support a specific action in certain cases, doesn't mean I'd do so in other ones. I don't support unjust wars, but I can support a just one.

The MSQ quests also explain that many dragons DID flee like he did, and all of them except Midgard eventually got wiped out by the local populace. And even in Midgard's case, he was also followed by Omega.

Sure, and they made the right call to do so.

If we take this back to Meteion's quote: "In the course of which, they learned the truth. That they would never be free of fear and sorrow, anger and despair-of loneliness-so long as they yet lived." The problem with equating the dragons or the Grebuloff with the Plenty is that the former two were killed by external forces which destroyed their "paradise". I realize that the text seemingly implies that the Grebuloff polluted their own world or something like that,

It's not "something like that." It's stated, directly and clearly, that the Grebuloff polluted their own seas in the construction of weapons to invade the surface. You can go look at the logs and dialogue in the Dead Ends if you want to see it for yourself.

but this once again is a different beast altogether than the reasons the Plenty died off. The Plenty did not get invaded or become riddled with rot and disease -- their deaths were based on a subjective opinion that they were bored. In fact, the Plenty would probably have WELCOMED a plague or a robot invasion if it gave them something to do.

I think believing life to be meaningless and purposeless is a bit more than boredom. But maybe they would've! They did some cynical on the entire idea of life having any purpose however.

This statement only means they didn't find anyone with an answer. It does not mean that the reasons for no answer were the same.

Sure but the societies that had no answer do not invalidate the conclusion that Meteion comes to.

Meteion never disputes a word that the Plenty say. The Plenty define "perfection" as elimination of all strife and sorrow, and Meteion acknowledges that they did this multiple times.

So Meteion agrees the Plenty achieve meaning 1 of perfection, ok.

As I've said before, it really does not matter if the Plenty achieved any "further perfection" besides this, because eliminating all strife and sorrow is ALREADY an impossible feat, as you have agreed to. Arguing "perfection is impossible thus you shouldn't try to get it" doesn't work if the characters achieve other impossible things, such as eliminating all sorrow and strife.

I don't believe the Plenty eliminated sorrow for the record, as I said before. Meteion states they eliminated strife, but sorrow remained. On the strife piece I did say I believe it truly impossible, I'll fully recognize that. I don't believe, however, that that is enough to undermine the narrative here however.

If one person literally decides the fate of an entire planet for 12,000 years, that is a dictatorship. If your argument is that the person is doing this to "preserve good" (a subjective value), then that is a "benevolent" dictatorship.

I don't hold that what is good is subjective and I think that believing so makes one incapable of making any moral judgement at all.

I use that same language because, for me, it makes no difference. You can call this a "dictatorship" or "happy royal fun time", but I still consider it a dictatorship.

Cool, why bring up changing the language then if you actually don't care. You might just as well tell me to cope and seethe.

Again, the fact that you CAN have a democratic ruler that manages to gain absolute power does not change the fact that absolute power is built right into dictatorship from the start. Based on what we know of the Zodiark debate, literally everybody got to vote on whether or not to take that course of action, which automatically makes it more fair than the Sundering.

So my problem is not that its possible to gain the power to make unilateral decisions in a democracy, but that it is again built in to the system itself to allow for that. A President can again make decisions for people who do not have a voice in the discussion, and this is baked in. To a much lesser extent of course, but still there are clear examples of that happening and it being the right thing to do. Abraham Lincoln utilizing war powers to keep fighting in the Civil War was the right choice, even if it wasn't something that those living at the time agreed to in the majority.

The argument of "but democracies CAN be corrupt, therefore there's no difference" is like claiming that because you CAN still die while wearing a seatbelt (or, hell, there have even been cases when it was the seat belt, air bag, or some other safety feature that killed a person who would have otherwise survived) , there's no difference whether cars have them or not. The entire point of democracy and Rule of Law is to PREVENT that sort of abuse of power; democracy can lead to its own flaws (tyranny of the majority), but once again: that sort of tyranny is baked right into a dictatorship from the start.

But I don't think it requires corruption for a democratic leader to exercise unilateral power. Historically that's not necessary.

Is that the conclusion is "Dictatorships are great when I agree with them, but not when I don't". But the entire problem with a dictatorship is that your disagreement is irrelevant. No one's opinion matters except for the dictator.

And in a democracy no one's opinion matter except for those who make up the majority. If the majority held that a human right is not actually so would you hold that they are more than within their rights to do so?

That's not why they did the rejoinings, but I mean...

they kinda ARE superior to the sundered in every way.

Hmm, yeah gonna say a hard no to do that.

[AwesomeJr44]

Hmm, yeah gonna say a hard no to do that.

Unsundered godlike beings that are practically immortal and wield the power of creation to such an extent, the developers had to pull an entirely new concept specifically designed to counter the Ancients out of their rears (Dynamis) just to explain why we could survive the Final Days but they couldn't (seeing as we have to survive everything for the story to go on), versus the sundered, a group of relatively short-lived people who kill each other constantly in pointless conflicts and are weaker in every capacity than the Ancients unless fighting the specific thing designed to counter said Ancients. If you don't believe that the Ancients are more powerful than a sundered, anytime we fight an unsundered its not a fair 1v1 and we have advantages like the lightwardens' light or Azem's crystal. And even then it's still a massive challenge in-universe for our character. It's like challenging someone to a fist fight then showing up with 7 other people all with knives, and still almost losing because your opponent is just that much stronger than you.

And even you want to point out 'but muh dynamis' as one slight advantage, the Ancients could have probably found a way to fight Meteion or other dynamis based entities on their own or with dynamis familiars. (Hermes made one so its clearly not impossible) Venat just never gave them a fair attempt to try it as she left them in the dark about the whole thing. It's very possible that if the Ancients weren't screwed over, the ONLY tiny advantage the sundered have might not even grant them that much better of a chance against dynamis compared to an unsundered.

So yes, the unsundered are superior in nearly every way, and if EW wasn't so hellbent on insisting that the incredibly intelligent Ancients were too stupid to figure this out if told about meteion, that 'nearly' wouldn't even be there, it would just be an 'absolutely'. You can say a hard no to that if you want, but it's true.

[KariTheFox]

I think the entire point is that having more power than someone does not make you "superior" to them.

Don't conflate physical/magical prowess with moral worth or superiority.

[Enkidoh]

I think the entire point is that having more power than someone does not make you "superior" to them.

Don't conflate physical/magical prowess with moral worth or superiority.

^This. The only 'superior' aspect to the Ancients was their ageless physiology (but they weren't literally immortal, in that they could still die from misadventure or injury, or by their own hand, they just didn't die from old age), and their near limitless reserves of aether, which allowed them to use creation magic. It seems creation magic as an ability is still possible in the present day (I mean, Venat gave the loporrits that power, and it seems this is also how the elementals are able to manipulate the forest and create the padjal, they're using creation magic themselves, and when you get right down to it, modern magic is essentially a watered down version), the limiting factor is aether, and a severe lack of it), but the lack of aether naturally as a Sundered hamstrings that.

And an irony is that it seems even back in Ancient times aether levels were not naturally consistant with everyone - it's not stated outright but it seems Hythlodaeus suffered from a low aether level by contemporary standards. This is why he turned down the seat of Emet-Selch in favour of Hades despite having the more potent soulsight of the two, he couldn't use magic effectively, but his clarity in Soulsight gave him unusual ability as a bureaucrat in the Bureau of the Architect. A case in point is why he had to use butterflies to create your robes when you first arrived in Elpis, and stated why he's utterly incapable of opening an aetherial rift, he lacks the aether in his body to do so, namely, use Creation Magic willynilly.

So really there is little seperating an Ancient from a sundered mortal other than the immense aether levels and having a limitless lifespan, and especially from a psychological perspective, the Ancients had a lot of suppresed emotional baggage they were barely containing (their society being so conformist with anything that did not fit that ideal, was shoved under the rug) - I mean, look at Pandaemonium, it's very architecture and design clearly states that it was not the work of a sane man - as if we didn't need further proof Lahabrea was short a few candles in the chandelier).

So when faced with an emmense crisis, their immediate response was not to try and adapt to the situation or changing circumstances, their response was to look backwards or run away, rather than fight to survive and embrace the change. And this is the fundamental point EW's story was actually trying to make, which everyone keeps forgetting or ignoring, thinking it's a statement that utopias are unatainable. That change is a part of life and comes whether you want it or not. Despairing about it doesn't solve anything, and that only by embracing it and adapating to it, do we floruish, rather than running away and living in the past in denial like the Unsundered did.

[CrownySuccubus]

The point of the example was to show that we can reasonably expect action in order to prevent a future outcome despite not being prophets. If we want a closer analogy to the Sundering, then we would need to change the analogy to include the fact that many humans would act to ensure nuclear Armageddon, and would likely be able to succeed.

No, if we wanted a "closer analogy", then we'd have to basically assume that somewhere, at some time, some human MAY ensure nuclear armageddon or some other type of apocalypse. And frankly, I have no idea what you're talking about in regards to to the "many humans" argument -- again, the Ancients didn't destroy themselves. They were murdered.

1. That democracies and dictatorships have important differences that make democracies the objectively more moral system of government
2. However, those differences does not include avoiding entrusting individuals to make decisions that effect billions globally
3. I do not believe this because I live in a representative democracy that could, on the decision of an individual, begin a nuclear conflict that could kill humanity.
4. This would be a decision made by an individual that would effect billions globally.
5. Thus on this particular axis dictatorships and democracies are the same

Is that clear?

No.

Because the difference still remains that there are a number of massive steps that need to be undergone before any of those persons in democratic countries could actually start nuclear annihilation. Your belief still makes the assumption that a President or Prime Minister with the ability to launch nuclear weapons could do so just as easy as a literal dictator. That argument is defeated by the existence of America's previous president who, according to the ex-Defense Secretary, mentioned that said President wanted to launch missile strikes against a particular country, but was stopped and talked down from that action by other people in his administration. Imagine, if you will, that said leader was a dictator who never need to tell anyone anything before he just pressed the button.

Again, the problem with your argument is that it's reductive to an actually DANGEROUS level.

Do you believe that me saying that a person can be morally right in deciding something unilaterally if its done for the right reasons, is equivalent to me saying any unilateral decision is justified? I support Venats actions because I believe the reasons for doing so are right. If they weren't then I wouldn't support them. Now we can move on to discuss those reasons with more focus, but I do want to make clear that just because I support a specific action in certain cases, doesn't mean I'd do so in other ones. I don't support unjust wars, but I can support a just one.

Again, that isn't how it works. "I support a dictatorship when it agrees with me" is exactly HOW you get dictators that you don't agree with.

Sure, and they made the right call to do so.

Not sure what they has to do with anything.

It's not "something like that." It's stated, directly and clearly, that the Grebuloff polluted their own seas in the construction of weapons to invade the surface. You can go look at the logs and dialogue in the Dead Ends if you want to see it for yourself.

Okay, sure.

I think believing life to be meaningless and purposeless is a bit more than boredom.

Their reason for why believing was meaningless was because they had nothing left to achieve. Therefore, boredom.

Sure but the societies that had no answer do not invalidate the conclusion that Meteion comes to.

Only if you assume Meteion's conclusion was correct -- which even the PLOT of Endwalker doesn't do.

So Meteion agrees the Plenty achieve meaning 1 of perfection, ok.

Again, the story actually tries to muddle the argument to make it seem like BOTH meanings.

I don't believe the Plenty eliminated sorrow for the record, as I said before. Meteion states they eliminated strife, but sorrow remained.

Nope.

Meteion: One race had discarded all things that gave rise to sorrow, hoping to have only joy. They found joy lost its savor in the absence of sorrow, and lost their will to live.

I don't hold that what is good is subjective and I think that believing so makes one incapable of making any moral judgement at all.

That sounds like a Fallacy of the Beard, to me.

Cool, why bring up changing the language then if you actually don't care. You might just as well tell me to cope and seethe.

Whether or not you seethe is on you. For the record, I was perfectly willing to call it something other than a dictatorship if you had suggested anything, but now I'm forced to question exactly WHY it upsets you.

So my problem is not that its possible to gain the power to make unilateral decisions in a democracy, but that it is again built in to the system itself to allow for that. A President can again make decisions for people who do not have a voice in the discussion, and this is baked in. To a much lesser extent of course, but still there are clear examples of that happening and it being the right thing to do. Abraham Lincoln utilizing war powers to keep fighting in the Civil War was the right choice, even if it wasn't something that those living at the time agreed to in the majority.

See my response about the real-life missile scenario above, which outright disproves this argument.

But I don't think it requires corruption for a democratic leader to exercise unilateral power. Historically that's not necessary.

...Unilateral power is literally a corruption of democratic system. I have NO IDEA what you're talking about here.

And in a democracy no one's opinion matter except for those who make up the majority. If the majority held that a human right is not actually so would you hold that they are more than within their rights to do so?

Again, there's a real life precedent for this: slavery. The reason why overt slavery was capable of being abolished in most democratic socities was because democratic systems literally INVENTED the concept of a "human right" to begin with. The idea that people fundamentally have inherent rights is actually relatively new to humankind; absolute authoritarian societies like dictatorships usually don't bother, because whatever the ruler says is law. It was democracy, in general, which created the Rule of Law rather than absolute law.

So your question is literally mooted by the fact that human rights as we understand and know them today, would not even EXIST without the establishment of democratic systems. No doubt -- as the existence of slavery and similar systems into 20th century North America proves, you can definitely still have people denied equal or even basic rights...but there would be no rights to give them under a system where one person has ALL the power. Under a dictatorship, everybody is literally the slave of the dictator.

[Vyrerus]

Despairing about it doesn't solve anything, and that only by embracing it and adapating to it, do we floruish, rather than running away and living in the past in denial like the Unsundered did.

While that certainly was the theme, the sticking point for most people is the fact that the Unsundered were ignorant of what they were actually facing, even after building god.

That, and as far as they were concerned with a history we never get to see, the past for them was the pinnacle of what any society could hope to attain. It's more or less, why embrace change if the change is for the worse? In every way? Do people who break their legs not go through physical therapy to ensure that they will walk again, if their wounds can heal to that degree?

So, the problem isn't with the theme. The problem is with how the theme was delivered.

Meteion broke the Ancients' legs, but Venat noticed they could still fly. Instead of telling them who broke their legs, and helping them to fight her, she clipped their wings and broke them further. She forced them out of upright posture to be animals, obsessed only with the instinct for survival.

Rather than delivering the theme gracefully, eloquently, expertly... it was delivered within a psychotic fever dream. What we actually get delivered to us in Endwalker is the word that Thancred willed out with his last moment, the clarion call of his soul, "Survive."

[Silverbane]

So your question is literally mooted by the fact that human rights as we understand and know them today, would not even EXIST without the establishment of democratic systems.

That's not true. The idea of innate human rights predates any democracy that embraced the notion. In fact, pure democracy is contrary to the idea of innate human rights, per J.S. Mill's "Tyranny of the Majority."

And that's why the group of people that penned the US Declaration of Independence, one of the earliest declarations that people have "inalienable rights" and perhaps the first that wound up a foundational document of a nation, didn't even attempt to create a democracy.

Instead, they created (eventually) a democratic republic, in the hope that the worst features of pure democracy (oppression of minorities by the majority. a.k.a. mob rule) would be forestalled by the intermediation of representatives who would hopefully be a little wiser and little less viscerally motivated than the electorate. And then they created an unelected and insulated judicial branch -- hoping they'd be the next-best-thing to the ideal of the benevolent philosopher-king -- just in case the elected representatives didn't live up to that expectation.

I think they might be a bit disappointed by how it all turned out, but to paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill, it's still "the worst form of government, except for all the others."

[Lyth]

...

Here's the thing, though. You don't know nearly enough to pass judgement on the situation at present, and 6.2 looks to have some fairly important missing pieces. We know how the index transformations occurred in the modern era, one for every nation. We don't know the first thing about Amaurot's index transformation. We don't know how the Convocation responded to it. We don't know how Azem responded to it. We don't know if there was any bad blood between the Convocation and Azem or the Convocation and Venat. We don't know exactly what the Amaurotian people were told. And in the absence of the necessary information, you've assumed that the characters are acting in bad faith in order to justify your incorrect prediction from last expansion.

The only thing that you can pass judgement at present is what the Convocation, which is to say the Ascians, did to our society. And there's absolutely no justification for what they did. If you want to take issue with Amaurot as a whole, that makes sense. But pointing fingers at Venat isn't going to render the Ascians any less culpable.