A game for 4 year olds

[Lurina]

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Feel like you're kinda talking past me here, or at least reducing what is really a pretty complicated philosophical dichotomy to surface-level tropes. Like, what do you mean when you equate what I'm saying to promoting "wallowing" in suffering? Wallowing means lying around impotently, which is certainly not what I'm saying is helpful for anyone. I am advocating pushing forward in the face of strife in the same way that EW does. The difference in my outlook versus the game isn't about how people should act, at least not broadly, but rather what the game considers to be the nature of the human condition in the face of reality.

Equally, at no point have I said that Endwalker promotes passivity in general, just in regard to how it processes the idea of trying to fundamentally transcend hardship rather than situationally overcome it. Endwalker advocates "making peace" with suffering, that people ought to stop hating death and loss and understand these are ultimately necessary parts of life even as one fights to minimize their influence. To me this feels like magical thinking; like trying to treat something disgusting as beautiful because it makes the situation easier to cope with.

In both cases, what we (meaning me and the developers, though also me and you, apparently) fundamentally disagree on is just this:

And this is where you lose me. Well, not the last sentence; that is true. Misery builds character is an old adage that has some truth to it. It's less about what the suffering being good and what we take from the suffering. Yes, it's unavoidable, but wallowing in it doesn't do jack. The game, and many other stories, tell us that you have to 'grin and bare it because if you just suffer instead of just moving on, you're, well, dying in one form or another. We learn from suffering. We learn to have empathy, we learn to make better choices is that suffering was self-inflicted, and we learn what the red flags are on other people so we can avoid them. We learn our limits, and we learn how to push past them. We learn about ourselves. We grow from suffering just as much as we grow from good things.

We learn that the world is unfair, and we want to make it better for our progeny. They'll have a better life and better living conditions, hopefully, but they'll still face suffering; it'll just be a different kind. Suffering is unavoidable, and yes, it's not good. But good things can come from it.

While I agree that good things come from struggle (which as I already talked about, can be more safely experienced artificially) I just don't agree that anything essentially good comes from unwilling suffering.

Yes, hardship can make people better. But it's even more capable of making them worse. Instead of more empathetic, it's just as likely to make someone more defensive and selfish. It emotionally deadens people, turns them cold and indifferent. And ultimately, it makes people turn to escapism. It makes people less likely to try and help the next generation because they've internalized the strife they've faced as good and natural. I don't know about you, but I know far more old people who are ending their lives filled with bitterness and regret than I do ones who managed to grow into their best selves.

Suffering has at times made me grow, but I don't believe it's ever been strictly necessary for that growth to happen. Again, it doesn't make me happy to say it, but I think it's a comforting myth. A way to instill some meaning in the inherent tragedy of our lives.

Endwalker wants me to 'grin and bare it', to smile in the face of death and find a kind of beauty in it. I do not find it comforting to be told this. I want to grimace and snarl and scream in the face of death. I want to find it absolutely revolting, because it is revolting, and because it is exactly that revulsion that will compel me to act with the greatest passion for change and care for other human beings.

I believe that, despite EW's moral, there's nothing in physics that precludes the possibility we might eventually remove suffering altogether - ultimately it's just resources and brain and body chemicals - but even if that was impossible, I reject the thesis the game has about pursuing perfection (at least on a societal, if not individual level) because I think it's worth continuously striving towards that future, Nibirun style, for its own sake. I do not believe it would make us lose all sense of meaning and kill ourselves. Cookingway is wrong and I will eat him.

[Brinne]

I believe that, despite EW's moral, there's nothing in physics that precludes the possibility we might eventually remove suffering altogether - ultimately it's just resources and brain and body chemicals - but even if that was impossible, I reject the thesis the game has about pursuing perfection (at least on a societal, if not individual level) because I think it's worth continuously striving towards that future, Nibirun style, for its own sake. I do not believe it would make us lose all sense of meaning and kill ourselves. Cookingway is wrong and I will eat him.

Once again, (and to be clear, I'm chiming in on mostly agreement/throwing in my two cents!) the question of how we see certain coping mechanisms with the fundamental injustices of the world is completely different depending on if we're talking on an individual level or a societal level. There can be a certain beauty and nobility to a person interpreting the horrors of their experiences in a way that makes them into a better person or help them to continue to live through their pain (though it must be noted that as you observed, this is only one possibility amongst many, as just as if not more often, those experiences can also make them worse or more toxic.) And in terms of personal grief, everyone's journey is going to be different and valid and shouldn't be policed. However, on a larger societal level? I would say it's incredibly rare at best if the "suffering is just a necessary part of life and you must simply deal with it and actually, it's good and beautiful to endure suffering" ever winds up as more than manipulative rhetoric that exists to serve the interests of those already in power and discourage the "suffering" from thinking too hard about their situations and potentially rising up and affecting change.

[dynus]

Probably not as unhealthy as someone killing them all, though.

And I continue to be baffled at the stance some people take that the necessary self-sacrifice the Ancients make to save the world - which is in-game cast in nothing but a positive and admiring light, even throughout Endwalker itself - being yet another piece of evidence as to why it was necessary or earned in any way that they all be eradicated.

The game doesn't really give a good explanation of what 'sundering' actually entails because I honestly don't think it was killing everyone. From how Emet-Selch explained it in Shadowbringers, it sounded to me like she split the world at the time into fourteen equal parts, still alive but lesser. Which, I agree, is heinous, but until the game says otherwise, she didn't implicitly kill anyone when she sundered the world.

Just made death a thing they had no choice in anymore. Your mileage may vary if you think it's worse or not.

The initial self-sacrifice of the Ancients wasn't the issue, it was the act of forcing that sacrifice onto others was the new life or 'new souls' as Emet-Selch put it. And the continued 'this is the solution we're going to use from now on.' It baffles me that people forget that part. That the Ancients turned Zodiark into a fix it at the cost of life.

"Wallowing" in it also often allows one to call attention to injustice and unnecessary suffering, and thus address it and initiative positive change for the better. There are countless places in history where people initiated positive social change for countless people because they absolutely refused to just "grin and bear with it" and "just make the best of what we have" and "move on" from their stations in life and the suffering that came with it. This is something you cannot generalize on the level that Endwalker did, and it's one of the reasons Endwalker feels incredibly irresponsible when it comes to this topic. There's a degree of truth to this when applied to individuals who may be harming themselves unnecessarily via personal grief or grievances, but Endwalker itself is the voice here overwhelmingly tell us to apply this on a societal, existential level.

Hence, Lurina is right. It's nonsense and garbage that, regardless of intention, manifests as affirming the status quo and that if we try to imagine anything better, it's actually probably bad.

You misunderstand me. Wallowing means not doing anything about it. Calling attention to it is not wallowing. Wallowing is throwing yourself a pity party and not doing anything.

I disagree with a lot of what you're saying. I'm not going to go into my personal history, but things have happened to me that I really wish didn't and still damage me to this day. Have I experienced war and starvation firsthand? No. I am I doubt many of us on the forum have (and to those who have, my heart goes out to you). But I know people who have; my grandfathers fought in World War II, and through my grandmothers, I know how it changed them, not always for the better. Your use of disease, however, given the recent pandemic, rings hollow, however.

Endwalker wants me to 'grin and bare it', to smile in the face of death and find a kind of beauty in it. I do not find it comforting to be told this. I want to grimace and snarl and scream in the face of death. I want to find it absolutely revolting, because it is revolting, and because it is exactly that revulsion that will compel me to act with the greatest passion for change and care for other human beings..

And I disagree with you on that. Does death scare me? Absolutely. But it's part of life. It's unavoidable, and that makes me want to do everything I can to make sure when I meet it, I'm ready, and that those who love me are too. I want to leave this world better than I came in before I have to leave it.

This acceptance of death is a very Japanese mindset, and is also a big part of FFX, so it's not surprising it's here as well.

...I'm saying to promoting "wallowing" in suffering? Wallowing means lying around impotently, which is certainly not what I'm saying is helpful for anyone. I am advocating pushing forward in the face of strife in the same way that EW does. The difference in my outlook versus the game isn't about how people should act, at least not broadly, but rather what the game considers to be the nature of the human condition in the face of reality.

Apologies, I was getting passionate when I wrote that, and ended up talking past you. My bad.

[Brinne]

The question of if the Sundering can be equivalent to literal killing is one that has been litigated and re-litigated over and over again on these forums; I'm not particularly interested in rehashing it, so I'll just say trying to lessen the impact of and dress up in prettier, less harsh-sounding rhetoric what she materially did to masses of living people (that you at the very least can't argue didn't result in extremely premature death for all Ancients) will always feel pretty tasteless to me in context of similar historical maneuvers when it comes to destroying peoples' identities and cultures.

Your use of disease, however, given the recent pandemic, rings hollow, however.

Only if you want to seriously make an argument that something like the pandemic was actually for the greater good in making people 'strong' and hence societally worth putting us through, millions of deaths included, because suffering like it is necessary for us to 'grow' and 'discover ourselves.' The primary point of conversation here is Endwalker's rhetoric and framing, not judging anyone's personal experiences - as I said in my last post, I think whatever anyone is able to draw for themselves from any tragedy to enable them to keep living is valid and should not be policed - but Endwalker would argue on an entirely different scale that a world without the pandemic should be destroyed and replaced with a world with the pandemic, because it would in the long run make humanity 'stronger' and 'better.' That something like the pandemic on a societal scale is actually a blessing in disguise because it at least keeps us from growing too 'bored' and thus wanting to kill ourselves, or something.

Whether someone's individual personal experiences in coping with the pandemic left them in a personally better or worse place is, once more, a different conversation altogether. I am not looking to invalidate anyone's personal experiences with coping with any tragedy and how they pulled through the losses incurred by it. What I strongly object to is Endwalker's thesis is that, broadly, a pandemic-ridden world is preferable to a world without a pandemic on the basis of "making people stronger."

[Eisi]

Only if you want to seriously make an argument that something like the pandemic was actually for the greater good in making people 'strong' and hence societally worth putting us through, millions of deaths included, because suffering like it is necessary for us to 'grow' and 'discover ourselves.'

I think Endwalker and FFXIV as a whole makes the opposite argument. I don't think that the calamities that the Ascians inflicted on Hydaelyn or all the world ending catastrophies from the Eighth Umbral Calamity (which was explicitly unwritten) to the apocalypses that befell the other stars were in any way portrayed in a positive light.

The primary point of conversation here is Endwalker's rhetoric and framing, not judging anyone's personal experiences - as I said in my last post, I think whatever anyone is able to draw for themselves from any tragedy to enable them to keep living is valid and should not be policed - but Endwalker would argue on an entirely different scale that a world without the pandemic should be destroyed and replaced with a world with the pandemic, because it would in the long run make humanity 'stronger' and 'better.' That something like the pandemic on a societal scale is actually a blessing in disguise because it at least keeps us from growing too 'bored' and thus wanting to kill ourselves, or something.

Endwalker argues no such thing. Do you remember that we stop the final days from happening? We don't embrace them or welcome them as a sort of neccessary evil or blessing in disguise.


"But the Sundering and Venat!" Yeah, yeah.

What you're doing is you're taking the bad and confusing writing around the Sundering, dynamis and the timeloop, which didn't properly deal with the fundamental issue that Endwalker actually set out to deal with at all and you're making it out to actually mean anything when in reality it already contradicts itself in multiple ways, even outside of the context of the rest of the game.

You make it seem as though the sh*t and nonsensical plot was actually the stringently following result of a coherent world view that you happen to disagree with, not just a poorly thought-out mess of contradictions.

Which means that you - at the end of the day - are an Endwalker defender.




Edit: Censored a swear word.