Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

I hated that scene so much, since the speaker was born into the upperclass of a prosperous country. The only suffering that she ever had to endure was the line at Starbucks.

Honestly, that series was pretty tonedeaf in general, which undercut a lot of the interesting philosophical questions it tried to bring up.

Also, learning by trial and error isn't inherently better than learning things by being taught. We don't let every engineer, doctor or architect figure things out by trial and error what we have already solved. That's just stupid.

A similar question is brought up in the latest expansion for Final Fantasy XIV; this is spoilers for patch content after Shadowbringers and stuff in Endwalker too. Basically, in the past, the setting's super-advanced precursors, in order to forestall a cataclysm, made a god out of half their population's souls. The ones who survived are implied to have wanted to set up an Omelas-type situation, whereby they would farm souls to sacrifice to the god to eventually get their loved ones back (by trapping other souls in their place); this is stopped by the setting's Big Good, who metaphysically shatters the god and the Ancients into lesser forms. Notably, it's never argued that suffering is good or moral; she knows she's bringing untold suffering into being by creating a world of mortals who have to contend with sickness, deprivation, and disparity. It's just that, to her, the misguided search for a world without suffering - and the lengths her people would have gone to chase it - was unacceptable.

Edited by RedSavant on Jan 15th 2022 at 7:29:11 AM

also, said Big Good was created as a response to her counterpart's emergence, born from the wishes several of the people having the same opinions of their kin's methods.

I feel like the while "suffering is good and necessary" thing may be the result of some sort of cultural aesop telephone over the course of history. The early Christians, the Stoics, and other philosophies had various messages about bearing your suffering and such, which may have mutated into the current misguided opinion that suffering is some universal good.

Edited by danime91 on Jan 15th 2022 at 1:14:40 AM

To Raziel: This is also the why there is some criticism towards the fact that Shinji's Earn Your Happy Ending in the Rebuild movies is to Live in our world.

The fun fact is that this view is actually using media that is pretty negative towards Christianity's ideologically wise

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jan 15th 2022 at 4:17:00 AM

I'm certain I brought up Misery Builds Character very recently in this thread and that does seem to be related to this.

Yeah, the scenario is basically Misery Builds Character applied to a societal / macro scale, with all the Unfortunate Implications of this baked on the concept.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jan 15th 2022 at 8:15:49 AM

"When you take that from a micro to macro scale, you can end with the idea that humanity needs suffering because otherwise life would become artificial. Again, this does seem to fit into the 90's counter-argument against the "End of History" bit and echoes how cyberpunk works depicted the use of technology as a way to escape problems.

I think the reason why this rings hollow right now is because we are all living through the COVID pandemic, so a lot of folks have already filled their "quota" of pain for a lifetime and now need to counter that pain with something nice."

I think is more on how challange and stuff need to drive humanity, in a way because is how we are wired, is hard to said what would happen if something could magical away all humanity problem, the dystopian novel a brave new world tackle this.

Also covid is not a good example because a lot of anti vaxer argument are rooted in a desire of comodity: the idea that mandate are evil mostly because it interfiere in their life and most of their argument bold down "I wont surrende my lifestyle to others".

"We don't let every engineer, doctor or architect figure things out by trial and error what we have already solved."

Sure but that is just bulding on other people trial and error, we still learing on that, we just build a base of result.

But anti vaxxers are explicitly refusing to help others or themselves.

Brave New World is quite a odd example to mention as it's explicitly about how Capitalist promises of happiness via consumerism isn't real happiness. They still have poverty and death; in facts; they exile people to that

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jan 15th 2022 at 12:42:13 PM

They refuse to help in large part because they dislike the change it bring the mandate or the vacunation and all that, is very root on their desire to continue their lifestyle as is pandemic just dosent exist.

And brave new world what it atack is more the idea of utopia base on the concept of "make everybody happy", is not poverty that is outlaw, is the whole concept of not submit to the idea of unapiness as we know it.

Except that everyone quickly points at how a world where everyone is a drug addict isn't really a happier one.

And Anti Vaxxers really do belong as a counter argument of why some people need to have their freedoms restricted or at least acknowledged as a negative?

I dont remenber someone saying that, just the protagonist who is always at disconfort because and accident make him look ugly(or not as atractive as other), I will said part of his disconfort from simply because he want to be part of something but he cant, is other parner(a alpha double good I think it was) is like that but overall everyone in the system are pretty happy and feel nervious when not surronde by it.

And I will said the issue with anti vaxer and other anti science conspiracy is that it come as awfull truth for them: I have lost the number of time i have seen the whole "you live in fear, I live free" or some similar.

You mentioned the why Brave New World scenarios are not what this class of complains are directed to, because its not a improvement over the current status quo at all, but rather a focus in some specific flaws.

Also, this copypasta really defines the point of my complain with this type of stories in general

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jan 16th 2022 at 10:49:34 AM

ypu missunderstand me, so i will explain this.

In general, a lot of japanise works have this instrumentality types of plots(Obito, the villian of caligula, etc,etc) and other similar is because they use negative utopianism(I dont remeber the exact term), arguing that in general rather in making people better, they want to reduce suffering and negative element, evangelion deal with that in the same as it deal with a lot of thing like loneliness and abstraction.

Brave new world is like that, unlike other dystopia it did really get rid of wars and many problems, but it deen by pretty much reprograming human people.

I will said the comparation with covid is not a good one because many people like anti vaxer does have a hitn of escapism in their argument, specially in unwilling to face the awfull truth on how dire covid is and its needed to get over it instead rallying in feel good narrativie that are more pleasing.

Edited by unknowing on Jan 17th 2022 at 5:18:09 AM

I think you're misunderstanding this complain, this isn't for cases of Negative Utopianism (no pain, but also not real/ tangible goodness) but for cases of Positive Utopianism that involve a tangible, material improvement of living conditions.

Using the covid analogy, it would be like denying a anti covid magical pill because it was made for Aliens and instead saying that only humans should create the covid cure.

Comparing then to anti vaxxers is strange when the usual characters proposing this type of measure are either Lawful Neutral or Lawful Evil ideologues whose view of anti vaxxers would be wondering why we even consider Human.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jan 17th 2022 at 12:36:09 PM

I think we were dealing this on escapism and is anti escapism stories isnt? at least that was the gist of it.

I tangentially brought up the COVID pandemic in the context on how some anti-escapism stories rely on Misery Builds Character and thus how the situation for most of us -I didn’t intend to include the antivaxxers- is crappy enough that if there was a “quota” of pain so to speak we would all have filled it up, which is why the message can come across as barren.

I was mentioning more on cases of Utopia Justifies the Means type of characters where the Utopía is actually somewhat archievable instead of just hollow speeches

So I think we are speaking past each other.

I will said covid is a bad idea because like I said, a lot of people reject reallity and what it entail because is to grim for them(rather, that many govermenet have not idea how to handle covid, the vacine will have to be forced and many will have to do thing they dont want to) instead they escape into a made feel good narrative.

Something about people not wanting reality to be "grim" is quite funny to me, considering the large amount of people, who dream and gloat about wanting apocolypse to happen and "Mad Max" like future to happen, so they could become "kings of the wasteland" or something. Usually the alt-right types.

And usually the same people who would definitely not become "kings of the wasteland".

Although, considering that you did say "alt-right", saying that might be redundant.

Edited by djoki996 on Jan 17th 2022 at 2:29:47 AM

The good old Original Position Fallacy. The people who fantasize about a Fallout verse imagine themselves as the plucky badasses who survive and carve out kingdoms for themselves. The reality of course is that they'r far more likely to be eaten by Ghouls, eaten by a rad-scorpion, eaten by a Deathclaw, eaten by cannibals...

Edited by M84 on Jan 17th 2022 at 7:44:41 PM

Or just getting plain ol' radiation poisoning.

Because for many people, the grimmness does have a sort of charm in a viseral way, is just many people pretend that is not true because they come as inmature.