Definitely. Unfortunately I can only imagine us going into the latter situation.Originally Posted by SirGauoftheSquareTable
Definitely. Unfortunately I can only imagine us going into the latter situation.
Yeah but nasu has also railed against all immortality several times, with no nuance attached unlike what you have said just now
Honestly the vibe i get from nasu works at times feels very 'kill the past' in a way which as you ca probably guess I dislike as someone who likes that type thing, plus the whole 'leave the planet' is always a tad odd to me as i think 'but cant we leave the ppanet and preserve the earth as well?'
There's still hope, but only in the sense that we have to make the alternative happen.
Nasu's idea of human progress is a never-ending quest to reach a yet to define "correct answer" (I guess space travel as it's what Gilgamesh dreamed of). Civilizations which progressed far more than ours but have become static are also considered wrong in his stories as seen in the Lostbelts, Olympus even tied it back to "immortality bad" once again as Nasu associates it with the loss of stimulus & the boredom derived from it.
So basically he is pro-human progress but only as long as humanity can keep a purpose and never stops going forward. Immortality is considered the end goal and thus you may end up losing that very drive at the basis for human progression, which is why it's seen as wrong.
If humanity could achieve immortality in the future without losing their drive I doubt Nasu would see it as bad (in all cases of "immortality bad" I remember/know of it was always when it was being given or when it featured an unchanging society as the result), but it must be achieved through a more proper evolution. iirc wasn't it a major point in Apocrypha too? It's been a long time but I remember something about Amakusa being wrong because humanity wasn't ready yet for his utopia or something like that.
Immortality aside, I doubt he's against transhumanism as he seems to really like the idea of an "ascended" and changed humanity. Just look at Notes or Olympus.
The major point of Apocrypha is if humanity was incapable of any evil action, they are also incapable of good. As ascended souls, they no longer have the capacity for free will.
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Amakusa's idea of freedom is very medieval in concept, that is, humanity would only be free to do good/follow God.
Was that really his plan? I only remember the part that as incarnated souls they wouldn't have any material needs like hunger or thirst, not necessarily that they'd be incapable of committing evil as such. I recall some people here even criticizing his plan since it was naive to assume all evils stem from material deprivation/fear of death so people might continue to commit evils (like out of greed or desire for power) even in his "perfect world".
In any case, I don't think "free only to go good" is necessarily a contradiction because you can make a plausible argument that nobody actually chooses evil as such, but only as a mistaken means to some good (for instance lusting after a woman is wrong, but it's a means to pleasure/intimacy which is in itself good, just pursued through a disordered means). So someone with a more perfect will would only desire that which is good and avoid mistaken shortcuts that lead to suffering. In that case it wouldn't be so much a matter of being "incapable of evil" as just seeing no reason to do it. Like you could dunk your head in a toilet-bowl but just wouldn't because the idea itself is totally ridiculous and gross. Perhaps for an "ascended soul" all acts of evil would appear equally obviously self-destructive... at least I'd imagine that's what an advocate of such ideology would maintain.
You could be right about Amakusa's specific plan being to eliminate evil by eliminating material needs, but I was under the impression that he thought that as immortal souls, such concerns as power and greed would be rendered irrelevant, something I sort of agree with since even those goals are rooted in ideas of scarcity and finite energy. Nonetheless, they wouldn't have any drive to do anything, good or evil, if they were immortal souls with no real needs, which would lead to stagnation. Besides, I think I remember several times how Amakusa thought his plan to save all people would eliminate any drive to evil itself and not just material suffering.
Regardless, if one believes that "freedom to do only good" is not a contradictory statement and that people don't actively choose evil, then that person doesn't believe people actually have free will. I half agree, in that I think people's choices and perspectives are heavily influenced and directed by their circumstances, and that no choice is independent of all the factors around it, but people do have their own will to ultimately decide based on what has defined them their actions in the moment. Besides, all the qualities we have can be assets and flaws in different situations, and depending on what the consequences of our decisions are, they can be good or evil. The only way to truly avoid any evil or destructive outcome is to just not do anything because if you don't act, there are no consequences, good or evil. Several religions have come to this conclusion, so I'm not coming up with this out of nowhere.
Sort of depends how you define "free will" in that case. I wasn't saying that people don't choose evil, but that they (generally) don't do so in full knowledge that it's evil and purely for the sake of evil. Evil actions (let's say) are born from incomplete information and rationalizations (you do evil because you believe it's a means to some greater good or convince yourself it actually is good), and while people are definitely culpable of how they act under those conditions you could imagine a more disciplined will would always do the right thing while still acting freely. Again, would it be any contradiction to have a will that's free to choose evil but would simply never do so? (In the same way you'd never do many things you're perfectly capable of but find obviously self-destructive or absurd).
Last edited by RoydGolden; September 1st, 2021 at 07:35 PM.
Wasn't it also that physical souls are so immortal that it would be literally impossible to harm others?
Except there are people who will do horrible thing to others but the only outcome is one that benefits only them. They don't think they're doing good, they just believe that only their happiness matters. Like that drug guy who raised prices 1000% because he could. All he cared about was getting the one copy of that Wu Tang album, and fuck everyone else who suffered.
Binged All Of Gundam In 4 Years, 1 Week and All I Got Was This Stupid Mask
FF XIV: Walked to the End
Started Legend of the Galactic Heroes (14/07/23), pray for me.
I guess you could say that happiness is good in itself so they still are seeking a good, just in a way that neglects the wider good by coming at the expense of those who are suffering as a result of their actions. But I'll admit at that point the argument becomes much more pedantic and questionable. I wasn't so much endorsing that line of thinking, as merely presenting how it would be outlined.
Last edited by RoydGolden; September 1st, 2021 at 10:50 PM.
The reason this happened is because we live in a system that incentivizes the concentration of capital in the hands of a few wealthy actors. Just because Skhreli was a uniquely terrible human being doesn't mean he did an outsize amount of harm compared to what a bunch of other wealthy capitalists have done who are not as openly shitty as Martin Shkreli. The only reason he was punished is that what he did was so cartoonishly evil that even the system could not ignore it like it usually does.
I suppose in a system where everyone is an immortal soul where no harm can be done and there's nothing to be gained by hurting others because there aren't material needs, the chances of a Shkreli-type or a Beryl-type character doing real harm is minimized. Still, I do think that the world Amakusa envisions is quite stagnant.
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I knew there was a difference between his plan and Kirschtaria's. Honestly, I mostly disagree with Kirsch's plan on matters of praxis. He sought to empower humans without seemingly affecting any change in human social relations, unless he assumed that his new humanity would automatically organize in a way that maximizes human welfare and freedom, which might have been the case?
On another note, the results of Amakusa's plan seem like they'd match up with the results of Kama-Mara's plan. That is, a humanity without any real drive to do anything.
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Also, if we're talking Amakusa, the reason why I think his idea of freedom is one where humanity can literally not do bad is because that was the predominant Christian view of freedom in the early 17th century, and Amakusa, as a devout Catholic from a period of wartime, probably subscribed to this view. Historically, it led to many people's freedoms, at least from our perspective, being taken away and restricted because to the Christians of that time, freedom was freedom from sin, which meant you needed to know your place and find freedom in knowing where you belong on the totem pole.
It's interesting how that argument very directly undermines the free will defense to the Problem of Evil. I guess Christians from that time didn't think in those terms?
No, they didn't really. If you read texts like Jan Hus' De Ecclesia, you can see that to them freedom simply meant freedom to do the ultimate good, which is follow the Gospel the way they interpreted it. Anything else is evil. Martin Luther also believed it because he was all about freedom from sin, but when it came to people using his teachings to challenge the nobility, he urged them to be crushed. Yeah, the only freedom early modern and medieval Christians cared about was from sin, and not personal autonomy because a choice not to follow the Gospel was considered as a person's inability to not sin (non posse non peccare) that remained after the Fall.
We cant really say much on amakusa plan as i dont think that part was fully trasnalted
True. On the bright side, castor seems to be back.
And here I was thinking I should really get around to finish the Apocrypha light novels for good lol. Forgot the TL wasn't done yet.
Last edited by Kubera; September 2nd, 2021 at 06:05 AM.
Apocrypha is in this weird place for me, I like a lot of the servant concepts and designs barring like one or two
But the plot sucks, even though seig as a servant i dont mind as a concept
Siegfried has the best looking sword In fate I think
They don't think they're doing good, but they don't think they're doing anything wrong, either. "That's just the way the world works, playa!" "Don't blame me, blame the government/the cartels/free market economy/the green people from Mars!" is what they'd say. "Ουδείς εκών κακός" - "No one is willingly/consciously evil" is a saying attributed to Socrates that I really like, because it's a lot deeper than it seems at first.
shit BL says
Once and always and nevermore.
Isn't that what the person you quoted said but with more words? Personal happiness trumping other people's happiness or a nebulous moral good?
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