Revelation about the universe (SPOILERS)

[Lium]

Something always bothered me about the Ea. When you get to their section of Ultima Thule, every Ea you meet hints at some great knowledge about the universe they gained and how it's a terrible secret that they don't want to share with you, because it would take away your ignorance.

When they finally acquiesce and share their knowledge with you, it's...all the stars will eventually blink out and the universe will freeze over. Everything dies.

I immediately thought as I was watching this, "So?" I mean, humans in real life have known about this for decades. We even know roughly when our world will die, when our sun will become a white dwarf, and that our galaxy will collide with the Andromeda galaxy. We are even beginning to calculate when all the stars, planets, galaxies etc. in the observable universe will "blink out".

And do you know what the collective reaction humanity has had to this "shocking" information? "Hm. Cool. Anyway..."

It seems strange to me that such an advanced civilization like the Ea would be thrown into such a state of nihilism and despair after discovering that the universe will end someday. That all their achievements will be for nothing and that they, like everyone else, will be forgotten. To me that seems rather trivial and immature. Of course everything dies. Including the universe itself. Trying to attach meaning to all of that is, in my opinion, the inherent flaw.

Life has no meaning at all. Neither does the universe. It's not supposed to. Whatever meaning exists has to be defined by the individual. The drama of life plays out wherever life exists. It is not for existential debate. It is for living and nothing more. I think that's what Emet-Selch meant when he said that Hermes' question he tasked the Meteia with asking was flawed. "What is the meaning of life?" Uh...absolutely nothing.

So, if lowly humans can figure this out and can get on just fine (relatively speaking, of course; some would say we are not getting on fine at all) then why can't the Ea? Why was this revelation treated as such a big deal? Enough to break an entire civilization's will to live?

If there was some detail I'm not remembering I'd love to be reminded.

[Canadane]

They not being human may have reacted to this information differently than we did. Being a type 2 or 3 civilization may have also had something to do with it.
You can't always apply human-level understanding to non-human species.

[elioaiko]

Yeah agree with Canadane, they're not human and not even from the same time period as us, we don't know what they value as important.

But I get what you're saying OP, because constantly worrying about the world eventually dying is pointless–all good things die eventually.

The Ea is an ancient race long past, and like many other ancient civilizations, they were trying to prevent the world from dying and couldn't and this frightens them because it's a grim fate for the final generation to witness it.

The whole angle of "the whole universe is ending" isn't new and it's not something that can be answered, even irl.

[Enkidoh]

Part of the issue is the underlying theme that Meteion 'discovered' during their travels, that 'perfection' (as in, ascending to a higher plane of existence where the mind/soul no longer needs support of a physical body, and/or immortality) is actually fairly easy to attain. The problem is that in their haste to attain effective godhood, civilizations usually sacrificed something more tangeable in the process (as in, mental fortitude and wisdom to stave off boredom and apathy, and to comprehend the truths of the universe without slipping into despair and nihilism.). This was reflected in the Ea, a species who had attained perfection where their bodies became effectively just aether and immortal, and their minds hungered for knowledge at the expense of wisdom to make sense and effective use of that knowledge, hence they were ill-equipped to understand the 'revelation' about the universe's eventual demise by entropy.

Speaking with the Ea in Ultima Thule one gets the feeling they were effectively little more than vessels for information (much of it becoming eventually useless or trivial), information which they increasingly were unable to correlate or understand (look at how they treated 'eating', thinking it was simply an absorption of aether, having long forgotten what it was like to physically eat and could no longer understand the concept). No wonder that they were unable to comprehend the eventual heat death of the universe.

And it was not just the Ea who fell into that trap, the third civilization visited in the Dead Ends was also trapped in that way of thinking - having apparently sacrificed their actual planet to create a false Vauthry-like paradise where their every need was met and their lives fell into meaningless ennui, their lives stagnated to the point they became completely apathetic and the boredom soon drove them insane, only wishing for death, but apparently could not or would not euthanize themselves and so created a Primal-like false god to do it for them, probably just to "feel" something again.

The Elpis quests and FATEs actually hinted that even the Ancients were not immune to this and were starting to show signs of this way of thinking too (many of the researchers in Elpis lamented about a lack or stifling of creativity and that creation magics were reaching their limit about what they could do and so they were starting to despair over it - hence the WoL and their post-Sundering ways were considered a breath of fresh air (at least one researcher actually stated it in those exact words), injecting some much needed originality and inspiration into their work.

So one wonders if the Final Days hadn't occurred, that the Ancients too might have slipped eventually into a similar decadence and eventually, nihilism. It's a disturbing thought in any event.

[Veloran]

I think part of it for the Ea was that they made themselves effectively immortal, so they had to live with the knowledge that they'd personally witness the end of the universe and everything they learned and did would cease to be.

Whereas all of us will be long, long dead by the time that stuff happens in the real universe, so it feels easy to brush it off and go on with our lives.

This. I will say though, it is kind of baffling that the Ea could really find no solution to the entropy of the universe at all. Even the concept of heat-death seems pretty incongruent with the existence of magic to begin with. It's not like this is reality where the laws of physics operate as we know them.

Something I've been thinking about recently is the nature of the sampling bias involved in the civilizations Meteion shows us. Not only were they chosen to paint the most hopeless picture possible, but by the nature of her powers they were also obviously susceptible to her attacks. The worlds that we see don't account for any other beings that might have had the ability to shield themselves from Dynamis, or operate on fundamentally different levels somehow. For example the Omicrons didn't exactly succumb to despair, it's more like they fell into a logic loop. In a similar way without the shield protecting Etheirys humanity also would have been consumed by Meteion's attack and been relegated to her example pile of failed societies, in the past or the present. So I wonder if there's more out there that we simply don't know about at the moment.

[Lium]

I think part of it for the Ea was that they made themselves effectively immortal, so they had to live with the knowledge that they'd personally witness the end of the universe and everything they learned and did would cease to be.

Whereas all of us will be long, long dead by the time that stuff happens in the real universe, so it feels easy to brush it off and go on with our lives.

I think this is the answer I was looking for, and something I hadn't thought of. Thanks for the post.

[SilversLyu]

The Ea are probably the most advanced race in the whole universe when it comes to knowledge, atleast at this point. Having dedicated their whole being, meaning and existence into this singular striving only to have this crumbling revelation about the universe.. would be quite the disaster for them as a whole to say the least. Who knows what else besides the "casual" immortality have they uncovered. All would be a matter of dust in their eyes. Cant really apply human terms to them.

[Jandor]

So, if lowly humans can figure this out and can get on just fine (relatively speaking, of course; some would say we are not getting on fine at all) then why can't the Ea? Why was this revelation treated as such a big deal? Enough to break an entire civilization's will to live?

If there was some detail I'm not remembering I'd love to be reminded.

They're immortal.

I don't really care about the heat death of the Universe because I'll have already been dead for trillions of years when it happens, they will theoretically live to see the end.

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Edit: I should have read to the end of the thread before replying, it's not even that long

[Lauront]

This. I will say though, it is kind of baffling that the Ea could really find no solution to the entropy of the universe at all. Even the concept of heat-death seems pretty incongruent with the existence of magic to begin with. It's not like this is reality where the laws of physics operate as we know them.

Especially since the setting has a made a point thus far of converting virtually every physical law into something mediated via aether instead - down to the functioning of radio waves. Stars (in the sense of the sun) being no different, consisting of fire aether - but with not much else known about them. I think it was virtually copy/pasted as a slightly nerdy reference for those aware of it, but thought hasn't yet been given to how it actually makes sense given the setting's very different laws for how things work. And because it's spun as a problem that is only ever going to arise in the very long term, they've little need to even return to address it, although perhaps they will come back to how this is to be interpreted in the setting.

[Gemina]

The human race hasn't even been around a million years. Not even half of that. We can't even begin to comprehend the thought processes of a type 2, or 3 civilization that's been around as long as as the Ea. We're talking over a billion years here. It's hard enough to imagine a civilization being around that long without collectively destroying themselves, or undergoing a massive extinction event. Plus, they are not even human.

Be that as it may, acceptance of our inevitable end is what separates both us, and mankind in FFXIV from immortal beings. What is a true shame about the Ea is that they forsook the gift of life and the pleasures of the flesh to come to the conclusion that they did. Those who pursue the meaning of life always lose sight of it along the way. The less time you have to experience life, the more precious it becomes. Truth be told, beings like the ancients or the Ea can't even begin to grasp onto the meaning of life the way we do.

In their defense though, how would you handle knowing you would be around to witness the obliteration of our home world? Can you feel your attachment to the planet as you think about that? There's an older animation out there called Titan A.E. and is one of my favorites from when I was a kid. I remember watching the Earth get destroyed and just how devastating that would be to witness from a distance far away from the destruction. That sinking feeling in my gut was bad enough just thinking about it. I couldn't even imagine actually witnessing it.