When are we supposed to stop fighting?

[Necrotica]

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.

I would 100% agree with this IF the cutscene with Venat did not make it very clear that she Sundered the world because the Ancients wanted to undo the damage done and bring back their friends stuck inside Zodiark. To go back to the way things were. Venat judged that the wrong answer and enforced her will on all existence.

[Lyth]

Every society that Meteion encountered achieved their own narrowly defined standard for 'perfection'. But that's not the same thing as happiness. Chase perfection if that's what you enjoy doing, but don't be disappointed when it doesn't live up to your expectations.

Hermes was not the only one asking existential questions about his society. Other Amaurotians were as well:
'But even inspiration has its limits. For all the wonders we have wrought, I do wonder if there will come a time when we have fully explored the potential of our powers - when there is nothing truly left unmade, and only iteration and imitation and stagnation remain.'

People will always encounter setbacks so long as they have expectations. You need to have resilience in order to survive. Rather than blaming the world for giving you hardships, improve yourself to become strong enough to overcome them. 'Oh, b-but if everything always happened the way that I wanted it to and nobody ever did bad things to me, I'll never be sad.' That's a child's way of thinking. Stop looking for scapegoats to explain away your faults. Grow up and sort yourself out before you try to sort out the world.

[Necrotica]

One society achieved their idea of perfection.
Another wanted to achieve immortality but learned it was impossible. (Not true but they lacked imagination)
Another was wiped out by disease.
Another was wiped out in war with one guy left.
Another had 1 guy think they were perfect and made all the others sit and do nothing. (Omicrons had their own version of Venat!)

[Lyth]

If your references are based off of the Dead Ends, here are the three civilizations that we get to see in detail:

Tessera ('Four'): Edifices surmised to be abandoned residences found. No extant life-forms detected. Deadly plague or extreme environmental degradation likely to have lead to mass extinction.

'Beneath the waves we knew only peace and plenty. We wanted for not, and yet craved more, that our progeny might someday flourish as we never could. Eventually we ventured to the lands above bearing flame and iron, toppling any who dared oppose our might. The world was ours for the taking.'
'This world is not the boundless paradise we were promised. Our population quickly outstripped the habitable land, while seas we thought would shine forever blue ran dry, spoiled in forging the tools of conquest. Cramped homes turned to squalor, and then came the sickness. Our undoing - and the final blessing this star has to offer. We are no longer the fools we once were. Wheresoever life goes, death will follow. Indeed, existence is but the most painful path unto nothingness - and the wise embrace their obliteration willingly.'

The Tesserans lived in the sea and dreamed of expanding outside of it to conquer the entire planet. They achieved their goals and did. The plague and famine that wiped them out is in is a consequence of population expansion and overcrowding after they destroyed all their natural resources.

Okto ('Eight'): Star found in state of violent conflict. Contact successfully made with inhabitants, but deployment of weapons of mass destruction resulted in total annihilation of local population shortly thereafter.

That otherworldly beings should first grace us with their presence is a sign. Indeed, they understand that we - the Global Community - are possessed of the wisdom and compassion needed to guide this star back to the path of righteousness. Yet the Freedom Fighters dare to undermine us, inviting chaos to disrupt the order we labored so hard to build. They have forgotten the history of this star and its once myriad nations. The wars waged, the countless lives lost. They must be brought to heel, the world united under a single standard, no matter the cost.'
'We constructed the Peacekeeper, the pinnacle of engineering and technology. This mighty war machine was designed to rid us of the Freedom Fighters, as well as any other potential threats to the peace we have so long pined for. Its artificial intelligence ensures that this singular function is carried out with cold and calculating precision. Indeed, the 10,000 Peacekeeper units we created have now routed every threat to peace... including us. All that remains is to stand and fight.'

The Global Community of Okto dreamed of unifying the country under one banner. To do so, they created a powerful AI, that even found a cure to prevent disease, in addition to destroying their enemies. They achieved their goal - and then the AI tried to eradicate them, drawing them into one last battle where they destroyed each other.

Unnamed final planet: (This has some similarities to Deka-Pente's description, but it doesn't quite match up).

'A curious traveler visited our star - a bird which proffered these questions: "What meaning does life hold? For what do you strive?" I could find no satisfactory answers, only bittersweet memories of an age long past. There was a time when we were lesser, and in our nescience sought purpose - struggled to justify life's worth. That was, of course, before we achieved perfection. Now, condemned to our paradise, we understand the fatuity of existence. Like the fledglings we once were, the poor bird could not accept the truth. It asked us again and again - hoping, perhaps, our answer might change.'
'There was a time when we yearned to explore the heavens, found purpose in the hope of unveiling life's mysteries. A dream shattered when we reached enlighten, and found it empty. There was a time when we believed in our legacy, thought ourselves marking a worthy path our successors might follow. Efforts rendered futile when we discovered the keys to paradise and immortality. As individuals we struggled to know what was right, yet in today's perfect unity there is naught left to question. We are infinity constricted by the finite, but no more - Ra-la shall grant us the mercy of annihilation.'

The inhabitants of this final world achieved perfection, immortality, and unity in a collective consciousness. And then they got tired of that and created Ra-la to put them to sleep for eternity.

It's all well and good to set off in pursuit of 'perfection', whatever that may mean to you, but you also have to ask yourself why you're doing it. How will this make you happy? If your starting premise is flawed, then your success will be meaningless. And everyone has to find that answer on their own. For example, the society described in the final planet doesn't sound appealing to me regardless of what they've achieved. The conformity sounds miserable. But maybe that's your thing. Bottom line is, no matter how well you achieve your goals, if you're miserable to start with, you're going to stay miserable on achieving them. By contrast, no matter what your hardships are, if you're resilient, you'll always find some small piece of happiness even if everything else gets taken from you.

[KizuyaKatogami]

snip.

I think my question here is then what was it exactly the ancients did that warranted their extinction? They had something to strive for, the betterment of their planet. For all we know after that occurred they could have moved on to another planet to better that one as well. Some had doubts and existential problems but as we see via the side quests, they kind of resolve their vows and take the time to remember why they do this and express joy with it.

[Lyth]

Did the Tesserans 'deserve' to be wiped out by a plague? Did the Global Community 'deserve' to be destroyed by a rogue AI? These are not questions with an objective answer. You can identify contributing factors post-mortem, but that's about it.

Even if Hermes didn't exist and the Final Days had never occurred, what's to say that some other misfortune wouldn't have befallen them? You have someone else completely independently fusing together souls and creation magic in Pandaemonium. What could possibly go wrong?

Irrespective of whether you fetishize their glamorous lifestyle or not, they're still just a society of people. Why are we so surprised that they are capable of developing dangerous and self-destructive applications for creation magic? Why would we believe their society to be intrinsically free of anger, fear, and despair? If they didn't have these experiences, I'd have a hard time believing that they were our ancestors.

[EaraGrace]

I think my question here is then what was it exactly the ancients did that warranted their extinction? They had something to strive for, the betterment of their planet. For all we know after that occurred they could have moved on to another planet to better that one as well. Some had doubts and existential problems but as we see via the side quests, they kind of resolve their vows and take the time to remember why they do this and express joy with it.

And that’s a beautiful goal, one of many in the universe at the time the Ancients lived. As Lyth points out and as Meteion says so clearly, they’re is little separating them from the number of civilizations that end up singing the song of oblivion. The only connection, the only thing uniting all these different perspectives was one thing.





Venat recognized the problem.

1. Inevitably all civilizations would face suffering in some form or another. Whether born from war, disease, or simply apathy, there was no escape.
2. Believing one could escape suffering would require either being willfully blind to reality, or worse, unprepared for the harsh truth.
3. Despair and hopelessness was the end result of being unprepared or unwilling to accept this truth, as one would either not be able to withstand the pain of existence, or give up entirely once they realize the futility of it all.
4. Meteion would not just be impossible to resist should one give in, she would be, in the eyes of those she kills, the one in the right. Death and oblivion would be preferred to life.

So the question to ask is not did the Ancients deserve to be destroyed, but would they be capable of finding meaning knowing their end was assured, knowing their paradise would end and knowing that they would suffer, that they had only been “spared it’s biting sting for a time.”

[KizuyaKatogami]

snip

Which we know, many of them understand their end is assured, so much so they actually see life in death what with reincarnation. They acknowledge that many a time. They still found meaning in doing what they could, and when they were done they would retire, they would be fine with dying, and would have someone else take up their mantle. Regarding what Lyth says about how do we know some other misfortune may come along, yes of course but that’s my point. We can argue that for any society anywhere, that something *could* happen in the future. It doesn’t matter when or where it is. The problem here is when we bring up how they fought against said misfortune. They did what most anyone else would do, and something that even the scions themselves speak about against the final trial. They will fight against fate no matter the cost. Both Alphinaud and Alisaie state this. This is what the ancients did. They fought against their fate of being destroyed like the countless other civilizations that did crumble. The problem here is when Venat takes it upon herself to then play god, and decide no, they don’t get a chance to try and move on. and possibly combat Meteion all the way. But this just loops back to the original topic. When will we stop fighting? We won’t stop striving to better the world and it’s no different from the ancients so i’m just curious exactly what the message with the ancients is. What exactly did they do wrong to warrant all of this. We see with the other civilizations(outside of the dragons i suppose) that each one had some kind of major flaw that led to their downfall and they couldn’t recover.

[Lyth]

We are the descendants of the people of Amaurot. It really doesn't matter if we're not as pretty as your fictional spouses with their luminescent eyes. It doesn't matter that our lives now involve more hardship than our ancestors did. We're one and the same, down to the same character flaws and the susceptibility towards making dumb mistakes.

'And so, as a show of respect to the last of us, I make this declaration. You will not end our journey! That is our answer! The answer of all lives of Etheirys, past and present!' Hope will ever counter despair, so long as you have the resilience to look for it. In Greek Mythology, 'Elpis' is the spirit of hope, and is also intrinsically linked with suffering.

And did you catch the transition in Emet's phrasing as he comes to terms with this fact? We went from 'You cannot be entrusted with our legacy,' to 'Do not squander it. The legacy I leave you.' If even he of all people can do it, so can you. You have the answer to your very own question.

[KizuyaKatogami]

We are the descendants of the people of Amaurot. It really doesn't matter if we're not as pretty as your fictional spouses with their luminescent eyes. It doesn't matter that our lives now involve more hardship than our ancestors did. We're one and the same, down to the same character flaws and the susceptibility towards making dumb mistakes.

'And so, as a show of respect to the last of us, I make this declaration. You will not end our journey! That is our answer! The answer of all lives of Etheirys, past and present!' Hope will ever counter despair, so long as you have the resilience to look for it. In Greek Mythology, 'Elpis' is the spirit of hope, and is also intrinsically linked with suffering.

And did you catch the transition in Emet's phrasing as he comes to terms with this fact? We went from 'You cannot be entrusted with our legacy,' to 'Do not squander it. The legacy I leave you.' If even he of all people can do it, so can you. You have the answer to your very own question.

Thats not the answer to my question though. It was argued long ago that the sundered and unsundered people are treated as two different people. This was where a lot of the arguments regarding the eden storyline stemmed from. People argued that gaia was her own person and had nothing to do with loghrif. We arent necessarily the descendents, we're fragments of them. My question though was what did they do to warrant meteion's wrath and venat's sundering. They fought just like us, they never stopped fighting. Emet is for more or less dead, we're basically the last resort he has lol. But youre logic is strange to me. You say that for the ancients any other misfortune or events could have harassed them, but is this not true for any society ever? Whats the difference between them and the sundered?I mean, they already did wipe themselves out in the other timeline, but then it was undone.