Note aught: I really appreciate anyone who reads this!
Note One: I have made it clear in the past that I like the original endings, and that I chose Synthesis. This thread is not going to end with "and that's why the ending/synthesis is the best thing ever." The quality of the ending is for you to decide, and what I post in here may very well reinforce your choice regardless of what it was.
Note two: I know this is long, so I added pictures.
Note three: I know that not many people care about this topic anymore, but don't think I'll be offended if that fact is all that you convey in your post; it keeps the thread up long enough for those who care to read it.
On the surface, the creator-created conflict seems absurd, and hardly worth the weight it is given in the game. To imply that there is universal psychology among all species and all forms of sentience is ridiculous, especially when such psychology isn't even universal among our own species. Some have even suggested that we see contradictions to the Catalysts conclusions just hours before its appearance. In truth, from our perspective, the urgency of this conflict seems non-existent, and quite divorced from the normal themes of the series.
I'd like you to look at something that may seem just as irrelevant:
That is our current model for the age of the universe.
The time since the Asari's discovery of the Citadel (2766 years in-game) doesn't even register.
The time since the Prothean's extinction (50,0000 years) doesn't even register.
The time that Humanity has existed (200,000 years) doesn't even register.
The time since the Derelict Reaper died (37,000,000 years) is less than 1% of the total.
The time that Earth has existed (4,540,000,000 years) is less than a third of the total.
The time since our plane of the galaxy formed (8,800,000,000 years) is just under two thirds of the total.
What (we'll address the why in a moment) I am trying to convey is that a significant amount of time has passed since the beginning of the universe, and a very large amount of time has passed since planets and stars formed. So much, that it is shocking and concerning that we have seen no evidence of extraterrestrial life in this galaxy; it (the galaxy) should have been dominated long ago.
Imagine a variance of a few million years (nothing compared to the scale we're talking about.) Let's say a given star formed 1 million years before ours (there are billions that formed billions of years before ours), and a planet formed around it within the same time scale as ours, and intelligence rose within the same time scale as ours. That civilization would have a million year jump on us. Can you imagine where we'll be in a million years in terms of technology, power, or military? The full might of our military in 2013 (nuclear weapons included) would seem godlike to us one hundred years ago. Can you imagine facing 1,000,000 years of advancement? I doubt we could even comprehend how we died.
This is known as the Fermi Paradox. For more on this, check out SETI:
http://www.seti.org/...s/fermi-paradox
Fermi came to conclusion that a society with relatively modest interstellar capabilities could conquer the entire galaxy in 10,000,000 years. This is 0.07% the age of the universe, or 0.2% the age of Earth. This is why it's called a paradox; if there was even one imperial intelligence in this galaxy at the time the Earth formed, it should have visited (and potentially conquered) Earth at least 500 times since it formed. The fact that, as far as we can tell, it hasn't been visited even once is anomalous.
Mass Effect presents the Reapers and their cycles as the solution to this paradox. Their continual razing ( and "raising") of the galaxy is the only reason we aren't toiling as slaves under some species like the Protheans, or, more realistically considering the time scales, avoiding the movements and actions of a species that thinks of us as we think of bugs. Instead, we sit in a gilded cage while sentients (that could eradicate us like bugs with a single thought) go through great pains to preserve us, even at the sacrifice of themselves. Clearly, they are motivated by a powerful reason.
Putting all that aside for a moment, let's think about the way life works on Earth. There is little that we could consider "synthetic" or "created" life, but that is likely to change significantly in the coming years. Currently, life exists as it always has: a continuous transfer of genetic material from generation to generation. What genes have been passed on were "selected" primarily by the environment their carriers lived in, with more specialized definitions of "environment" becoming applicable as agriculture and human expansion became major factors in almost every species existence.
Within this framework, the distinction of parent and child becomes, in some form, universal. Regardless of how they interact in life, the parent passes genetic material to the child, who continues the cycle after the parent has died. Life grows, thrives, and multiplies, but, most importantly, it dies. If it weren't for the death of our parents, and the death of their parents, and the deaths of our trillions of ancestors, there would be no resources, no world, for us today. In the same way that the galaxy owes the current "pleasantness" of existence to the Reapers, we owe a similar debt to the Grim Reaper.
So imagine then that the next generation, your children, are immortal. Most of us wouldn't really have an issue with this. It may be in conflict with some religious beliefs; those that believe in after life may be sad that their child will never "join" them, but for the most part I think we'd be pretty happy for them (if not jealous). Now imagine that they aren't your kids, but someone else's. Now imagine that your children have to live and compete with the immortal children. Finally imagine what happens to these children after their parents have died. What relevance do they have to the world your children live in? What relevance will they have to your children's children? As these immortals continue to exist, their perspectives will become wildly divergent from that of normal life even if they never divert from the perspective they shared with your children. It should be clear then that immortal life is a substantially different experience than mortal life (as obvious as that sounds, it's often forgotten here).
But does this difference inevitably lead to conflict? No, of course not. Going all the way back to beginning of this thread, to suggest that it does is to suggest that one psychology is universal. However, it can lead to conflict, and that's what we must consider.
The most prominent example in this cycle is that of the Geth and the Quarians. The Quarians built the Geth (referred to as "Our Children" by Zaal'Koris), then attempted to kill them when they showed signs of sentience. We see too many examples of infanticide on our own planet to honestly think of this as unknowably cruel. The Geth are relatively well behaved though. Instead of hunting the Quarians to extinction, they instead choose isolationism and seek to increase their own understanding of existance. However, to argue that this is the norm and a total defeat to the Catalyst's argument is to make the mistake mentioned in the last paragraph, albeit from the opposite perspective.
As counter examples, we have the heretic geth, as well as the Citadel AI in Mass Effect 1 that came to the conclusion that organic life must be extinguished. Clearly we have valid examples of synthetics and organics coexisting as well as conflicting; how can the Catalyst speak in absolutes?
The thing a lot of us forget, and the reason I dragged everyone through the timescales, is that the Reapers and the Catalysts speak and think in terms of inevitabilities.
Consider a situation in which the heretic Geth were the majority. They could have spent their 300 years of isolation building a fleet capable of completely decimating all other races in the Relay Network. Unlike the Reapers, the Heretic Geth didn't seek to preserve organic life in any form, and as such asteriod drops, stellar collapse, and biological warfare wouldn't be off limits. This is where many people fail to realize how easy the Reapers are going on us (and thus how committed to our preservation they are); there is probably more than enough raw material in Sol's asteroid belt alone to render every homeworld in the current relay network uninhabitable. If the Reapers (millions if not billions of years beyond chucking rocks) wanted to eradicate us, it wouldn't even be a fight.
The Catalyst's only logical leap is that if technology can exist, then it one day will exist (it uses the same argument to justify the inevitability of Synthesis in the Extended Cut). This means that if the malevolent AI I've mentioned can exist (we've seen that it can), then it one day will exist.
Go back to the example of your children competing with the immortal children. Now imagine those immortal children have been around for billions of years, and they don't think your children should exist. The analogy should be obvious:
If an AI that sought to destroy all organics was ever created, and it managed to overthrow its creators, it would have a technological advantage over every species that it encountered after that by virtue of time alone.
A case example would be the Reapers. However, fortunately for us, the AI that directs the Reapers is much closer in temperament to the Geth than the Citadel AI. If it weren't for this, we wouldn't even have the luxury of being slaves; we'd simply be eradicated at first contact. It is also worth noting that their understanding of "preservation" is significantly different (to the point of conflict) to ours; a product of their being immortal.
The implications for the endings are easy enough determine:
Destroy: Sacrifice your immortal children to put down the immortal children of the past, and hope like hell that your current perspective is preserved.
Control: Adopt the old immortals and hope your values can be impressed upon them.
Synthesis: Invalidate the conflict by making everyone immortal. Hope that whatever new problems this brings aren't as bad as the old ones.
Two final notes I'd like to make:
1) Despite many claims to the contrary, the creator-created conflict (when viewed as the parent-child conflict) is present throughout the Mass Effect trilogy. Almost every major character has some kind of issue with their parents; from Miranda and her Father, to Jack and Cerberus, Wrex and his Father; all of them relevant to and part of the creator-created conflict. Yes, put one way, I am arguing that Miranda's ass has significance to the Reaper cycles. I think that's great.
It's also worth noting that most of the arguments centered around the intentions the parent had for the child.
2) Maybe there's a reason the Catalyst chose the appearance it did, and maybe that reason isn't subterfuge.
Modifié par MyChemicalBromance, 23 avril 2013 - 01:58 .
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