drayfish wrote...
If you were disgusted by a morally repugnant act, why would you think that it was you who was in the wrong? Why would you feel compelled to change your morality to suit that of a piece of fiction?
Genuinely, I am curious.
Because it isn't morally repugnant. BioWare actually did something clever. For the Mass Effect series they were playing up to the popcorn flick audience most of the time, and dropping anti-Reaper propaganda wherever they could. Now, this actually had me raise an eyebrow at multiple occasions, but others (like yourself) seem to have had your thinking successfully altered.
The ending presents a clever paradigm shift where everything you know is wrong. That's a really fun literary device and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. To pull the rug out from underneath the player and then force a choice on them which they have unlimited time (but limited, from the perspective of the game) to think about is absolute genius. It's the kind of thing you'd only expect from Deus Ex, which
has done similar. The disconnect here is that the mainstream were ready to believe in absolutes. That the Reapers were an absolute evil, that the player was an absolute good.
Except it turns out that it wasn't as simple-minded as that. The endings represented different ideas and ideologies. Basic black & white classifications such as 'it be good' or 'it be evil' just don't fit. It's like trying to fit a square peg in a tesseract-shaped hole. To a degree it might work, but ultimately the ending is meant to be parsed differently and actually requires some reflection on personal philosophies. Each ending is an ideology. Destroy is very much a mix of Nietzschean and Darwinian beliefs, Control represents a 1984-esque fascist ideology of absolute control over everyone (Shepard is essentially Big Brother), and Synthesis is more representative of ideologies like transhumanism and the Singularity.
I can't help but hear Bush's words echoing in my ears when someone condemns Synthesis, because I'm reminded of his 'special little snowflakes' rants, and how Abortion should be illegal because it tampers with the natural order. This is silly. Everything we do tampers with the natural order, as I've pointed out. Read a book? You grow intellectually. That's tampering with yourself beyond what nature intended, since you now know something you otherwise couldn't have known, and you're familiar with viewpoints and perspectives you otherwise wouldn't have been. Had a successful operation? Your life has now been prolonged further than nature would have intended, you are now essentially an unnatural creature because you didn't die when you were supposed to.
Using synthetic medicines or supplements? That's also unnatural. Technology for global interconnectivity? We weren't born with it, so... unnatural! And it goes on. See, this always happens. You'll always have people, like you, who'll scream at any kind of advancement that they don't actually understand. I've pointed this out before, and I've also pointed out that this problem even exists on the consumer level. Basically, your argument is grouping you in with the likes of 'Stop the Cyborgs!'
Google Glass is a cool bit of consumerist tech that will likely be helpful to a lot of people. It's got the potential to be the new iPhone in a way, since it allows for hands-free connectivity. Yet, as I mentioned, you have people reacting to this as though it's somehow interfering with the natural order. That life will be irrevocably changed, that this device shouldn't even be allowed in many public venues because you're 'spying' or whatever else. You have very luddite-minded people who feel threatened by it. You have people outright claiming that just because someone has a Google Glass device, that privacy will be outright impossible. GASP!
I'm not making this up.
In the UK, we have lots of cameras everywhere for our protection anyway. So that this is an issue in the UK is absolutely ridiculous. Providing that you obey the law outside of your home, how can this be a threat to privacy? Stepping outside your door every morning then is a threat to privacy. But you can't talk to people like that, because they se it as repugnant, so unnatural, and a threat to their way of life. Everything we do brings us one step closer to a technological Singularity, transhumanism drives many scientific minds. I have a number of engineer friends who're all big fans of transhumanism, Deus Ex, and Synthesis.
There's nothing repugnant about Synthesis. It's just an idea, an ideology, and a potentiality for our future. It's symbolism. To see it as anything else is to group yourself in with the 'Stop the Cyborgs!' people.
But some people will always be smarter than others. I'm guessing that people who find Synthesis so very repgunant aren't actually doctors, scientists, or engineers. It would be very hard to find something that is essentially a cure to the organic condition as repugnant, when the suffering of so many would end. Under the Hippocratic Oath, you'd actually be loathe to choose anything other than Synthesis as it would make you a hypocrite.
So there you go.
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