Why does emet selch consider us not to be alive?

[Darkstride]

In a much simpler sense, Emet believes that we never should have existed in the first place, hence not being truly alive. His world is one where we would never have been born, and that is the world he wants to return to.

[SilverArrow20XX]

He basically sees us as broken pieces of real people that have taken up minds of our own and are trying to stop him from putting the real people back together.
Why should he care about the opinions of small fragments of souls, formed from minds that can barely last 100 years before being reset upon death and reincarnation?
As far as he's concerned, once the rejoining is done, everyone will be put back together, their immortal souls complete again, and we'll thank him for it. We just lack the capacity to comprehend that now, and he's making the decision for us.
Sure, we'll lose a few decades of experience from those fleeting mortal lifespans, but what does that matter in the grand scheme of things?

[Elissar]

Emet Selch is not racist.
First, to reach any reasonable conclusion we need to draw parallels between his persona and many others that we know outside of FFXIV.



At our current time, Emet Selch can be seen like Morgoth/Melkor from Silmarilion (Tolkien), Lucifer (Genesis) or Enki (Annunaki theory): He is so arrogant that he see us like a different species and he is not completely wrong. We can even compare our IRL story with homo sapiens versus homo neanderthalensis or homo sapiens versus rhesus.


Back in his days, people were born with exceptional capacities and their lives had a determinate meaning - to serve and serve well for the will of the star. Our time is chaotic, we are so stupid that we can't even draw a meaning for our lives and live it fully. We live because we don't have a choice and we are constantly running away from any danger instead of dominating our emotions. Hell, WOL can't even control the light in Shadowbringers. The ascians were the complete opposite: they dominate life fully, created and destroyed it as they wanted until they found themselves dealing with something unknown and beyond their control - for the first time ever "A rare occurrence always fleeting....but not this time" Elidibus.



Endwalker criticize such arrogance and force Emet to recognize his defeat once more in Thule.
Meanwhile, Venat is Prometheus and she use the knowledge of the old times to help us find a way forward and overcome limits they were unable to understand. She got punished by becoming the crystal and living for thousand years at the center of the star, sustaining the world like Atlas. Most of his anger - Emet - came from the incapacity to understand why the world was dying, he didn't believe Venat or Hydaelyn's summoning, his memory was erased and he had no reason to doubt his own faith. Reducing such complex as "duuuh he is racist" is simply wrong.

[SeiyaSoiya]

He basically sees us as broken pieces of real people that have taken up minds of our own and are trying to stop him from putting the real people back together.
Why should he care about the opinions of small fragments of souls, formed from minds that can barely last 100 years before being reset upon death and reincarnation?
As far as he's concerned, once the rejoining is done, everyone will be put back together, their immortal souls complete again, and we'll thank him for it. We just lack the capacity to comprehend that now, and he's making the decision for us.
Sure, we'll lose a few decades of experience from those fleeting mortal lifespans, but what does that matter in the grand scheme of things?

so let's say hypothetically there is a race of beings capable of seeing up to 100,000 years of lifespan, that seemingly have a consciousness that is completely inconprehensible to humans
let's call them dragons.
would the ascians respect those beings as equals?

[SilverArrow20XX]

so let's say hypothetically there is a race of beings capable of seeing up to 100,000 years of lifespan, that seemingly have a consciousness that is completely inconprehensible to humans
let's call them dragons.
would the ascians respect those beings as equals?

If the dragons came to Etheirys pre-sundering, they likely would.
Post-sundering, they are focused on resurrecting their people and evidently value those lives above dragons.
Emet never said he doesn't consider dragons to be alive. Just the sundered races.
I imagine if called out on that, he'd admit to it being bad, but that he had a responsibility to his people.

[Lyth]

In Shadowbringers, Emet doesn't particularly care if his actions are ethical or compassionate. Mitron was an Ascian and yet Emet abandoned Mitron in an unresponsive wakeful state as Eden for a hundred years. He knew full well that if he ever needed another Mitron, he could just recruit a replacement shard. Even his former friends were tools to be discarded at will for the sake of Amaurot. We also know that he perpetrated Allag's invasion of Meracydia, so there's little there to suggest that he would have afforded the dragons additional respect.

Emet's justification in the Ocular around how 'it's not really murder' if he destroys populated worlds is a textbook illustration of antisocial behavior. He's able to read expressions and recognize that everyone in the room is horrified at his words, yet he is now devoid of the empathy required to relate with their emotion. The '12000-year-old wraith' is an apt description.

It's worth remembering that his character exposition happens in reverse. Endwalker shows us the values and virtues that Emet originally stood for, as a hero of his people. Shadowbringers shows us the monster he was ultimately destined to become. The dissonance between those two states is what makes him a tragic figure, and an excellent villain.

[Cleretic]

so let's say hypothetically there is a race of beings capable of seeing up to 100,000 years of lifespan, that seemingly have a consciousness that is completely inconprehensible to humans
let's call them dragons.
would the ascians respect those beings as equals?

No, because the Ascians aren't thinking about this so logically.

Dragons are not Ancients. Therefore, to the Ascians, they are beneath the Ancients. This is where the Ascians would start in their perception and outlook; any 'logic' stated by them in doing so would ultimately be justification rather than actual evidence. This is especially true with the fact that Midgardsormr, the only fully-powered dragon any of them know about, is an ally of Hydaelyn, so they're innately coming from a place of hatred. However, the exact same would be true if we were instead talking about Omega.

They are not going to see the dragons as equals, because to the Ascians, the Ancients have no equals.

[WhiteArchmage]

I'd need to mention that "I don't consider you [a person]" has historically been used to further -ist and -phobic schools of thought, propaganda, and outright violence. The more correct term would be "othering", and it's generally meant to, well, paint other people as something "other" than human (and by necessity "less than" human), and so any crimes against them wouldn't really be a crime. In this case it's simply that Emet considers us "less than" Ancients and thus not worthy of living.

Now, yes, the sundered are "less aetherically dense than" Ancients, but the whole theme of the story is that they're still people. They have feelings and lives and hopes and wishes, and deserve to live said lives to the fullest so their lives aren't worth less than the Ancients.

[Cleretic]

I'd need to mention that "I don't consider you [a person]" has historically been used to further -ist and -phobic schools of thought, propaganda, and outright violence. The more correct term would be "othering", and it's generally meant to, well, paint other people as something "other" than human (and by necessity "less than" human), and so any crimes against them wouldn't really be a crime. In this case it's simply that Emet considers us "less than" Ancients and thus not worthy of living.

Now, yes, the sundered are "less aetherically dense than" Ancients, but the whole theme of the story is that they're still people. They have feelings and lives and hopes and wishes, and deserve to live said lives to the fullest so their lives aren't worth less than the Ancients.

Yeah, this really needs to be said directly, and was what I was trying to get at. As someone who gets that sort of treatment in real life, this stood pretty obvious and starkly, and is why any justification of his view on any level comes in distant second to the intention of the statement itself.

He calls us 'not really alive' specifically because it makes us acceptable targets. We can't and shouldn't instead come at it from the other direction of 'what evidence could he have that we aren't really alive', because to do so is to legitimize an inherently illegitimate argument made solely for the purpose of Emet's own moral justification.

His feelings don't care about facts.

[Luizgazen]

In the case of the dragons, i believe that if they had reached Etheirys before the sundering Emet and his people would have been more than happy to share the world with them and learn from each other, but they arrived post sundering and immediately allied with Hyedalyn thus becaming the Ascians enemies, and so their respect, if you want to call it that, for the dragons manifested in how they viewed them as a real threat to be removed, as in the meracydian campaign and the Dragonsong War.