Why does emet selch consider us not to be alive?

[SeiyaSoiya]

if soul sundering causes you to lose soul aetheric density, and therefore make you less alive...
then are dragons more alive than the ancients? they certainly have much more aetheric density than any other creature, to the point that their scales are used as protection against meteion

if being less alive means being able to feel less things, or being at a lower level of consciousness than ancients (such as what animals are like), then that's not properly portrayed, as we can see that the inhabitants of elpis are just... bigger humans
they don't have a higher understanding of the self than what humans can achieve and they don't seem all that different from regular eorzeans in their range of emotions

once again, only dragons are portrayed as beings on a higher consciousness level than humans (until vrtra that is, who is just a human)
yet ascians still wanted to murder them using the allagan empire just as much as they wanted to murder the lesser beings

[Heroman3003]

if soul sundering causes you to lose soul aetheric density, and therefore make you less alive...
then are dragons more alive than the ancients? they certainly have much more aetheric density than any other creature, to the point that their scales are used as protection against meteion

if being less alive means being able to feel less things, or being at a lower level of consciousness than ancients (such as what animals are like), then that's not properly portrayed, as we can see that the inhabitants of elpis are just... bigger humans
they don't have a higher understanding of the self than what humans can achieve and they don't seem all that different from regular eorzeans in their range of emotions

once again, only dragons are portrayed as beings on a higher consciousness level than humans (until vrtra that is, who is just a human)
yet ascians still wanted to murder them using the allagan empire just as much as they wanted to murder the lesser beings

Dragons are basically aliens. He judges current 'people' of the world as less than alive because thats what they are compared to what people were like pre-sundering. It's not about it being some scale of 'personhood' based on aetheric density, its about the fact that once they were much more and aren't anymore. As for opinion of Dragons on Ascian end, we never really get to see it. We know they're more than willing to cause death and destruction involving anything and anyone as long as it fuels their goals. And I doubt they, seeking to restore their perfect paradise, see the alien species that settled on the planet after coming from outer space as any more favorable than the splintered husks of what once was humanity in their eyes.

[Cleretic]

The answer is that he's racist. (or whatever '-ist' you want to describe this as, I've seen a decent case for ableist.) I know that's a really blunt and brutal description, and might feel a little mean to people who like the character, but it's really just where we have to start here: he is making this argument out of prejudice and feelings, not out of facts and logic, and we shouldn't look for the latter in it because it's just not there.

The Ascians' view of 'I don't consider you truly alive' largely comes from them starting at the conclusion of being superior and then backfilled their justification; there isn't logic to it, or at least not logic that would hold up or be in any way agreeable or sympathetic. Yes, the dragons fly in the face of this statement; no, that doesn't put any more logical holes in his statement than there already was, because it already wasn't a statement made with logical grounding.

Some argue that when Emet's saying this, he doesn't really believe it and is mostly just convincing himself. I've never seen clear proof of this, nor do I necessarily think that makes it better (might actually make it worse, in fact, because now it's just him knowingly dehumanizing and justifying the murder of humans)... but also most of the Ascians seemed to be on the same page on this, so it's not exactly dismissable just because Emet might be lying.

[Tarrinus]

I wouldn't consider a humanity that is lobotomized at birth to be as human as the humanity we have now so I have no idea why you'd think Emet's perception is baseless. It's not like the sundered are an entirely different species they are transformed Ancients. Going from being immortal and choosing when you die to having to die against your will every 70 to 200 years is a pretty drastic change in the human condition.

[Cleretic]

I wouldn't consider a humanity that is lobotomized at birth to be as human as the humanity we have now so I have no idea why you'd think Emet's perception is baseless.

Thank you for making the aforementioned case that his view is ableist, so that I didn't have to.

[Yuella]

Because he's a pompous, arrogant ass who think the Ancients are so much better than the sundered beings.

[Tarrinus]

Venat described what she did as casting people out of paradise. In order to think Emet is baseless you have to think her statement was as well. In ableism terms people who otherwise could be in wheelchairs are now crawling on the ground. The whole reason why Emet behaves the way he does is because our "condition" is ultimately reversible and the sundered humanity inflicts harm on itself either way. The crawling paraplegics are torturing each other to death anyway so why not do it yourself but in a way that gets them back in a wheelchair down the line.

[SaberMaxwell]

Emet Selch is a deeply depressed man who'd lost his whole civilization and over the millennia since, cursed himself with the burden of always remembering, of tacking every agony onto his soul because he's afraid that if he falters for even a moment, everything will come crashing down. He creates a facade of himself so none ever see the burdens he carries, partly out of necessity because he could never explain it to the sundered people he frequently lived with and partly out of pride.

He says that he doesn't consider us human, ergo we're free reign to kill. But he doesn't kill us. He has every reason to and every ability to; he even goes sk far as to resurrect Y'shtola, and that was before he began putting the pieces together on who we were. Heck, he's delighted at the prospect that we might be able to handle the Lightwardens; it would mean he's that much closer to being done rejoining and that much closer to being done with the blood on his hands and millennia of scars on his heart.

He has had families with the sundered, led them, lived with them, and surely has their tragedies engraved on his soul too no matter how much he would strive to not admit it. So he has to believe that they're not truly alive, or at the very least, that through their death they will be made more whole, because not even he would be able to bear the burden of all the deaths he's witnessed and been the cause of. Nobody could.

Of course, that all assumes he even did mean it when he said it. Recall his tone; "Yes, yes. Moral relativism and all that. I don't believe you're truly alive, ergo its not murder if I kill you." (Paraphrase) It's dismissive, not even really being presented as an argument but more of "I really don't care to get into the weeds on this topic with you lot." I personally like to believe the former; the tragic tale of an immortal whose heart is burdened with memory, fighting always in the direction he thinks is right and hoping beyond hope that all the death means something and trying to find the strength just to wake up every day.

[Kakurady]

Some argue that when Emet's saying this, he doesn't really believe it and is mostly just convincing himself. I've never seen clear proof of this, nor do I necessarily think that makes it better (might actually make it worse, in fact, because now it's just him knowingly dehumanizing and justifying the murder of humans)... but also most of the Ascians seemed to be on the same page on this, so it's not exactly dismissable just because Emet might be lying.

Ascians deceive. And Emet-Selch deceives even himself, for he is Tempered*, and has no choice but to carry out Zodiark's plan to revive the ancients. This requires him to cause widespread death and destruction, contrary to his skills as a builder of civilizations. Dehumanizing mankind is how he can cope with the cognitive dissonance, because for Emet-Selch, even bringing back his brethren cannot justify murder of mankind.

* At least, considers himself to be Tempered. There's some argument on whether Ascians are in thrall of Zodiark, and I believe they are.

[Cleretic]

Ascians deceive. And Emet-Selch deceives even himself, for he is Tempered*, and has no choice but to carry out Zodiark's plan to revive the ancients. This requires him to cause widespread death and destruction, contrary to his skills as a builder of civilizations. Dehumanizing mankind is how he can cope with the cognitive dissonance, because for Emet-Selch, even bringing back his brethren cannot justify murder of mankind.

* At least, considers himself to be Tempered. There's some argument on whether Ascians are in thrall of Zodiark, and I believe they are.

Yeah, that's also not really better, is it? It adds more factors, but not really in a way that absolves anything, or gives the line any greater weight in any particular direction; it's still post-hoc justification for why he's okay with what he's doing, which is absent of any actual facts, evidence or logic.

For what it's worth here, the way I read the Ascians being tempered is that yeah, they are--there's a line in 5.3 that describes the process of it--but that it's not really a 'full' tempering like we saw from people tempered by Ifrit and Lakshmi. I don't know where the OP actually is in the story (the characters listed in their profile top out in the 50s and don't even have jobs, so that's clearly not usable to figure it out), so I'll spoiler-tag the explanation so I can freely pull in later evidence.

Clearly Emet's of sound mind, and mentally is actually not particularly different than he was when we met him in Elpis (neither is Lahabrea; Elidibus and Fandaniel are but those are whole different situations). Instead, I think the Ascians are tempered in the way described by Tiamat in 5.5: it's a constant voice in their head, but one they externalize and can even dismiss to some degree. Consider Mitron in the Eden storyline, clearly off doing his own thing, and especially Fandaniel, who seems to go completely against what his tempering would probably be directing him to do. So while their tempering is pretty much an undisputed fact as far as in-universe information, it's clearly not strong enough to override any other desires, plans or priorities they might have.

Perhaps you could argue that's an element of Zodiark being a primal of darkness; a major part of the tempering process as we learned about it in 5.4 was an aspecting towards light removing the sense of self, so Zodiark as a primal of darkness... well, maybe just wasn't nearly as good at that part. But regardless of the 'why', I think the end result is pretty clear: Zodiark did temper them, but to such a light degree that it's easily rebelled against, as neither Mitron nor Fandaniel express much difficulty in doing so. Which, if that's true, casts a bit of a shadow on Emet using it as an excuse; given that those two can shirk the influence of tempering when it doesn't suit them, then perhaps Emet never actually disagreed with it.