Who knew the 6.15 Omega Quests… (Spoilers)

[Lurina]

Ok here is where we disagree then. I hold it as self evident fact that without novel experiences all people will experience ennui and discontent.

I'm trying to find a way to word this in a way that won't come across as rude, but I feel like you just aren't grasping what I mean when I say 'self-evident truth'.

A self-evident truth is just that. It's something you can empirically or logically prove beyond a shadow of a doubt. Belief doesn't factor into it.

The premise of "all people will experience ennui and discontent" by definition does not meet this criteria because it's impossible to prove. In fact, you can actively disprove it to a limited degree; some people simply do not experience boredom at all because the attention center of their brain doesn't behave normally.

What you are saying is that Endwalker having an unspoken premise to its argument based on a subjectively believed truth rather than a self-evident one does not bother you because you share that belief. And that's great. But it's not a defense of how it constructs its argument-- The fact and inference aspect should only be based on that which is provable. Unless, again, you don't believe it's reasonable to hold stories to this standard.

I'm very glad we've included the Good Place in this discussion, and you've specifically used it as a contrasting example to Endwalker, because it actually doesn't support your position on this. Ennui in the Good Place is inevitable, universal and absolute. All the major characters immediately agree that boredom is the core problem with the actual "good place," with our main insight into heaven immediately stating that "when perfection goes on forever, you become this glassy eyed mush person." The characters then immediately worry they'll become like the everyone else, and look to find a solution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23IHH2E38Ec

Now perhaps I'm missing where they suggest this is only a thing some of the denizens experience, but to me the show makes the exact same leap you're criticizing Endwalker for. And their solution is Ra-La in door form! I don't see how this is anyway less absolute than what Endwalker is saying with the Plenty.

The Good Place is very obviously an anti-hedonist show, and I disagree with some of what it ultimately tries to suggest just as I do with Endwalker. But I think the key difference is in how it shows people responding to a perfect world. In the original Good Place (as in the location, not the show) people exhaust all new pleasurable experiences and become placid, but aren't presented as actively miserable - a life predicated on nothing but pleasure has led them to being kinda numbly content. The characters frame this as terrible, but that's more them being the voice of the thesis than that being part of the premise of the argument.

Ultimately, the show ends up having a pretty nuanced take on a hedonistic paradise. The door isn't created as nothing more than a mass-suicide device to end the inhabitants pleasure-induced suffering, but because it asserts that eternal pleasure becomes more meaningful when the possibility to end it exists. It even provides an alternative to eventually choosing death in Tahani's ending - rather than pure indulgence, it's possible to still find purpose and meaning in pursuing a goal even in a world without suffering.

That said, I can see an argument that I'm reaching here and that the initial state of the Good Place is still predicated on an assumption, just a milder one, in which case I'd apply my same criticism to it. Still, I feel like seeing you invoke it in this way has kinda helped me understand the way you think about this stuff, and why we don't really seem able to understand each other, even beyond this specific discussion.

Like I said earlier, it feels like you have kind of an absolutist way of thinking, and you're sorta projecting that absolutism in how you judge fiction. EW and TGP are both saying X=Y at their core, but the way they get there couldn't be more different - in general, The Good Place is quite reserved in its philosophical judgements, and always takes a lot of time to qualify them in a way EW kinda doesn't. That's why I liked it and found it convincing despite not already agreeing; life is complicated, and I don't think any outlook has all the answers.

Very little is universally true when it comes to people, and I appreciate deeply when writers don't try to assert what is true to them as fundamental without first qualifying things and expressing a little self-doubt, both tonally and in their reasoning. But if you don't value that in fiction so long as the core philosophical assertions are the same, then there's no distinction between Endwalker's argument and The Good Place's and, thus, no rational reason to like one and not the other.