Hrothdane wrote...
Ieldra2 wrote...
Crossposting this thematic description of the ending options to prevent it from getting lost:
Ieldra2 wrote...
Philosophically, the differences in the endings are mainly these:
(1) Destroy affirms the human condition. It affirms karma. Wherever we go, be it into a bright future or into extinction, we do it as free people and sticking to what we are and have always been. Any future advancement will happen within these boundaries.
Destroy also affirms the organic template with its chaotic evolution as the original, "true" form of life. It is an implicitly pro-organic choice, even though most people choose it for other reasons.
(2) Control affirms an order that holds our nature in check. Survival is more important than freedom, at least for the foreseeable future. Sapient life is as children and needs to be guided to adulthood. Some freedom is denied until we've learned how to use it. Or forever, depending on your viewpoint.
Control is also a pro-Synthetic choice. Synthetic intelligence is the type that can guide us into the future and prevent us from destroying ourselves.
(3) Synthesis is embracing the unknown, radically stepping beyond the boundaries Destroy seeks to affirm. If we cannot make a bright future as we are, then we must change ourselves. "There are infinite possibilities, but not for Man" (quote from the top of OP). Synthesis affirms that transcending the human condition is the only way to truly grow and asserts there is a (non-Reaperized) ascended future which will remain forever beyond our comprehension if we stay as we are.
An interesting read. I like the more philosophical approach. That said, I would like to provide a counter-point, if I may.
The problem I see with viewing synthesis as the pure futurist position is that the trappings of the old ways still remain, albeit in a more benevolent form. With the Reapers sharing the secrets of lost ages, the people of the galaxy are once again are relying upon the knowledge and technology of old rather than learning and developing it on their own. The answers to life's questions remain in the past. There may be a new spirit of cooperation, but the Reapers and the huskified remains of family and friends stand as constant reminders of the past conflict. The technology to improve everyone's lives will be there, but will they be ready to use it? The situation reminds me of something Sartre said, "Everything has been figured out, except how to live."
I see how you can see it that way, but technological development is always like that: we can do what we can do because we're standing on the shoulders of giants. I think the argument "It's better to develop things completely on our own" is fundamentally flawed. Just consider that technology exchange has been part of human culture for ten thousand years (and probably longer, only we don't know of it), and plainly we wouldn't be where we are without it.
The specific technological problem in the ME universe is that civilization depended on a technology they didn't understand, not that they depended on a technology they hadn't developed themselves.
As for the more philosophical point: Ascension lies in the future, as told by EDI. The old civilizations were bound up in the cycle just as we were, they were, as a whole, neither less nor more advanced than the current cycle. What they add to the new civilization is a number of ways to do different things. They add options, cultural and technological diversity, and the future ascension will stand on a broader base and be more stable base because of it.
Also, for the symbolic binding to the past: Synthesis is the only ending where we see neither a mass relay nor the Citadel. As I see it, post-Synthesis will take up ideas for FTL travel abandoned by the civilizations who conceived of them when the relays were discovered in their respective cycles. How many different ideas were abandoned? How many of them were true dead ends? As I said, a broader base of ideas will lead to a higher probability of success. As I see it, the post-Synthesis galaxy will see quite a lot of new and exotic things that were never developed because the mass relays funnelled all effort into one direction.
To me--and I'm not expecting you to agree with me--destroying the Reapers gives a fresh start, free of the old constraints but with new perspective. With the repairing of the Citadel and Relay Network without the help of their creators, the young races of the galaxy can finally command the technology that once was a method of control. They can make that technology their own. The galaxy can self-determinate, just as Legion once said was the right of all sentient life. We can finally see exactly how far we can go in a galaxy without the Reapers or their AI. We have a chance to figure out how to live.
I agree that Destroy is the ending that stresses freedom and self-determination most. But it does so by cutting civilization off from part of its history and destroying part of itself. Post-Destroy civilization may be more free than post-Control or post-Synthesis, but it stands on thin air and has an unstable base. To use an analogy: it's the kind of freedom you get by removing yourself from society, cutting everything off that might make you dependent for no better reason than it makes you dependent. Many social movements have been created on that principle, but I could never see anything of value in that kind of attitude.
As a side-note, when I think of the synthesis ending, I usually end up thinking of Hegel's dialectic. He believed that all of history was a continuing process of movement between three processes, the common (and now accepted as not fully correct) translation being "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis." This process would lead to a single logical end in which contradictions would be "sublimated" into a new unity or whole. I would recommend anyone here giving some of Hegel a read because of the similarities to the ideas I see here, though I warn you it can be quite an endeavor.
Yes, I've touched on that very shortly in my first Synthesis thread. Specifically after the EC, Synthesis doesn't create a new unity that could be described as an end, though some elements of that remain. Rather, the future is unknown and opens limitless possibilities.
As for reading Hegel - I like to say that doing that makes you go insane. I have a high tolerance for abstraction, but this is too much even for me.
I don't subscribe to Hegel's views myself. In fact, I find myself most closely aligned with his own "antithesis," the existential movement. This contradiction of views lies at heart of why I dislike the synthesis ending myself.
I see. That does explain your dislike, and the point you made about Destroy above. I don't subscribe to Hegel's historical determinism, but generally my personal philosophy is strongly rooted in Enlightenment ideals. I strongly dislike (classical) Romanticism for anything but its art. Which may go some way to explain why I like Synthesis.
Modifié par Ieldra2, 05 septembre 2012 - 01:36 .
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(that probably made me sound like a warmonger but whatever 
