One problem I have with Naoya's ending (and the way Kaido's is so similar to it) is that you'd think someone who was around for thousands of years would know better than to start a war on two fronts.
"We're about to go to war with a near-omnipotent being and his army of divine-type demons that can refill their MP and often have diarahan and samarecarm, so the first thing we should do is piss off the entire human race."
Yeeeah. That's going to end well.
Of course, just because someone is a genius with thousands of years of life experience doesn't mean they aren't a complete idiot.
"I still don't understand why Hiro didn't side with me," Yamato said to Naoya in the clearing by the spring, before the wedding and after they'd discussed a few options. "Just because he intended to replace Polaris with Alcor didn't mean he couldn't have instituted a merit system."
"Setting aside your grudge against Alcor and Alcor's determination to create a world where humanity would have freedom for the moment," because Naoya knew Yamato would assume Yamato had the intelligence to set aside his own grudge because it was the smart thing to do and Hiro said so, even though he hadn't before. Not to mention the fact that while Al Saiduq was certainly weak against Seth's-Hiro's determination to do the best for his descendants, Naoya was quite sure that he would have put up some resistance to the idea of releasing mankind from Polaris just to put another set of constraints upon their free will, "Allow me to give you a piece of advice based on thousands of years of experience: never hatch a plan that requires that human beings act intelligently. That's the flaw in both capitalism and democracy: they both assume that humans will make rational choices. The simple fact that poverty and inequality exist despite both those systems proves that humans don't. And your merit system would have encountered the same problems."
"Yes, I'm aware that most humans are fools. That's the point of a merit system: to ensure that only the strong and intelligent would rise to power." Honestly, did Naoya think that Yamato was blind, that glare asked.
Naoya put a hand on his forehead. "I suppose I should begin at the beginning. I'll leave my grandfather out of it because I'm sure you know I'm not a neutral judge of his intelligence, but keep in mind that my father was made in his image: a spiritual clone of God, in a body created from solid matter. Now, one of the things the Bible does get right is the reason Eve was created and sexual difference came about in the first place: my father needed a babysitter. After around the dozenth time he fell out of a tree or drowned because he was talking to the birds or the fish and forgot he wasn't one of them, Grandfather realized that he needed a minder. Obviously this minder had to be created more intelligent than Adam was so they wouldn't make the same mistakes: are you with me so far? The first had enough intelligence and independent thought to decide that she didn't want to spend the rest of her existence looking after her intellectual inferior, so she married a snake. Since reducing the intelligence would defeat the purpose, Grandfather created Eve from Adam, or rather from a portion of the divine essence within him, but placed her in a body that was made not from dead earth but from already living, organized matter. The two of them were the same being in two bodies, except that one of them was much smarter. Females were created smarter because they didn't just have to look after themselves, they had to look after children. She looked after Adam, loved him as though he was herself, because he was.
"After she did her job for… time was a little disorganized back then, Lucifer decided to sneak into the garden disguised as Eve's brother-in-law and tell her that God had changed his mind about eating from the tree of knowledge: now he wanted both of them to do it, so Adam would stop being an infant and Eve would be better able to take care of him. Proving that even an instinctive grasp of physics, ecology and biology that would put Stephen Hawking to shame won't keep someone from being completely gullible. My mother would believe absolutely anything even after she ate the fruit and knew that lies existed."
"I know that humans are fools."
"Yes, but you clearly don't realize how bad it really is, or you wouldn't have created the plan you did. Pay attention: you'll learn something. Fortunately for males like you and me, after the two of them were exiled Grandfather still wanted them to be able to have children, so he invented pregnancy. This involves the genes being mixed around, so these days men and women are equally intelligent thanks to my mother's genes, although there are more extremely stupid men than extremely stupid women. It also allowed evolution to come about, the change of the physical body over time, and although genius is a property of the soul, I can testify that there have been significant hardware improvements over the millennia. Competition among humans means that mutations for superior intelligence spread fast. Since your genetic mother was selected, I'm sure you're smarter than your ancestors, and they were very skilled engineers." Which was not a compliment Naoya gave lightly.
"On top of that, you should know that all the intelligence in the world is useless without knowledge. Both raw information and training in how to think." Logically, skeptically, understandingly. "You realize that you're smarter than those around you, but have you realized that those around you, both those you selected for JPs and the people in charge of you, were far above average? Yes, even the ones who gained their posts by favoritism and the manipulation of others: that's still a kind of intelligence. Those people were still superior to, oh, ninety-five? Ninety-eight? Percent of those around them. 100 is the average IQ, meaning half the population has less raw ability to understand what they observe than that."
Now he pointed at Al Saiduq, who was silently observing the conversation. "Would you say that he's intelligent? Or that he was? Smarter than you? Before this he had access to the near-infinite information of the Akashic Records, the genius to create a summoning application equal to mine and the ability to think independently enough, despite coming to existence as part of something like a hive mind, to end up with an opinion of humanity opposed to that of all his kin. He even had the intelligence to realize that despite this he was still incapable of understanding humanity well enough to make good decisions for them and the best thing he could do was to let humans make their own choices, even their own mistakes. Humans also have fundamental limitations and are incapable of understanding each other. This is because we are the same type of being as the Creator, who is unknowable. No human will ever perfectly understand another human being: there are several reasons this is absolutely impossible. By most measurements Alcor would be counted among the greatest geniuses in existence, and he's still a fool. Knowing that he was a fool who knew nothing was what made Socrates a genius."
That was why it had so depressed Socrates when the Oracle at Delphi said that no one was wiser than him.
The smarter someone was, the more they knew how little they knew. Anyone who would claim they were wise was by definition a fool. Oh, someone could be wiser than those around them, but that wasn't saying as much as Yamato seemed to think it did.
Yamato also knew the tale of Socrates. "So you're saying that even the smartest and strongest humans are too stupid to be trusted to run society?"
"Absolutely," Naoya agreed. "Even a benevolent dictator can't do perfectly for his subjects: again, look at Grandfather. Even I will admit that he had good intentions and near-perfect knowledge, if not understanding. That didn't keep him from aiding and abetting murder, rape and genocide – even his own Bible admits it. Individuals are better able to make decisions for themselves than any other individual is, given what they know. The least terrible system is one where individuals are nurtured while allowing them to screw themselves over so the survivors learn what not to do, and where it's not possible for anyone to gain too much power. No human is capable of understanding everything, and it's almost impossible for someone who trained hard enough to become the strongest and win control of a world of merit like yours to have spent time learning anything about delegation. Experts can get as good as they are in their fields because they specialize: look at your Fumi. What do you think she knows about conflict resolution?"
"Exactly nothing."
"Exactly. Ronaldo's system would have prevented humans from learning how to conduct their own affairs by separating them from consequences, and since everyone's business would have been everyone else's, all the good will in his world wouldn't have saved them from destroying each other. Your system would have removed the leashes humans put on the free will of those around them, which seems like a good idea except those leashes are all that protect us from the ignorance of others. Do you know what the social contract is?"
That, Yamato didn't.
"John Locke – the key component of a working human society is minimizing how little we infringe on each other: trading the right to rob others for the right to not be robbed. Read Hobbes as well before you try to reshape the world again. English. He thought of humans more as sinful than stupid, and believed that a benevolent intelligent dictator was possible, but he was thinking about how to construct a society that would be minimally terrible to live in despite the fact that we are a race of fools cloned by a fool who wanted some company that possessed independent thought and didn't even realize that this meant that we, by definition, had to be independent. In short, we humans were out of luck at the moment of our creation. The person who coined the word 'utopia' made it mean 'nowhere,' because he was less of a fool than most." Naoya sighed. "For that matter, even Grandfather didn't have a fair chance. He arose out of the universe: he is the universe observing itself, and as poor Pathygoras figured out, the universe is fundamentally irrational. Another Englishman said it best: a rational universe would have a decent value of pi."
Naoya leaned on his pitchfork, looking up at the fluffy white clouds. The ones that looked so soft and blissful, but there was nothing there real enough to touch. "I've heard Makoto talking about you and your management style. You treat your employees well because you realize that's only the smart thing to do. Most people aren't so smart, or you would have been allowed enough freedom to be happy and wouldn't want to leave the Japanese government's service in the first place. Yes, a merit system would work if everyone was intelligent, or at least rational. The trouble is that even a dictatorship will work if everyone's rational, or even the man at the top. Sadly, no one is rational, and even a complete restructuring of the universe couldn't make it that way. Otherwise, I would have tried that already," he said wryly. "And I'm sure Alcor thought of it at some point, since he'd have his family still if they weren't fools. Yet he didn't even bring them back."
"They wouldn't be themselves if I changed them, Ancient One." And it was his family he missed.
"As I said, you're unusually intelligent," Naoya complimented him. "So, Yamato, it was very nice of you to try to create a utopia where the best would rule, instead of just a world where you ruled. And your naivete is adorable. But the sooner you become realistically misanthropic, the happier you'll be and the safer the rest of us will be, since you did destroy the world trying to create a paradise. What I'm telling you is that it's just not possible, even for someone who controls Heaven's Throne, so don't do it again."
Al Saiduq stared at him. "That wasn't theoretical, was it, Ancient One?"
"You're surprisingly perceptive." This time Naoya frowned.
"I wondered… the Akashic Record is a record. It shouldn't have been able to contain anything that didn't exist in the original. A record isn't the same as the original," as the septentriones were different from the primal beings that shaped the original universe, "but Heaven's Throne… Polaris' power came from somewhere. And the concept of transfer of that power existed." It was part of the history written out in the Record.
"Yes, I do hold that power. I wanted to overthrow heaven… Well, what really happened was that Abel wanted to have a discussion with Grandfather about the curse he put on me for killing Abel." Abel thought it was excessive even though he was the victim. "And the Ordeals." The Lockdown itself. "Then Grandfather told him that he was the one that made me lose control of myself and actually kill Abel: I was certainly furious enough, but it turns out I would have been able to calm down instead of actually acting on the impulse if Grandfather hadn't wanted to set an example for future generations. By deliberately inflicting the sins of Envy and Wrath upon humanity, not to mention depriving our already grieving parents of both their children."
Naoya's hand made a fist around the shaft of the pitchfork. "He'd lost Lucifer, Adam, Lilith and Eve, after all. Or perhaps he hadn't relearned enough compassion or fairness yet to think it through that much. That's what happens when someone casts part of their knowledge outside their mind, sealing it in a tree so that good and evil wouldn't corrupt his children: Grandfather still had those selfish impulses, but he couldn't realize that they were wrong the way we humans can because of Lucifer's trollery and Mother's gullibility." Anyway, "Telling Abel that was another mistake: my brother put him down like a mad dog. Grandfather still exists: you can tell by the way the universe is still here, but I hold the throne of heaven now because my aunts and uncles need someone to serve. They don't have free will, you see: if they don't have a god they'll need one so desperately that they'll create an illusion of Grandfather and then obey that. So yes, I could reshape creation. I'm just far too cynical to believe that would do anyone any good, which is probably why Abel's let me keep it to begin with."
"You've forgiven him, haven't you? Because he couldn't be expected to do any better." The way Yamato had forgiven that employee that screwed up and apologized to Yamato for his failure, expecting to be punished. Yet a punishment was supposed to be a lesson, to teach someone to do better next time, and Yamato didn't think that one was capable of doing any better, so he'd just told him to forget it and go.
"We are all flawed beings. And I can't throw stones, can I? Humans do have free will, after all. If part of me hadn't wanted to kill my own brother, even Grandfather couldn't have made me do it." That was part of why the idea hadn't occurred to Naoya after all this time, after all he'd been through because of the curse. He'd grown to hate Grandfather, but he still couldn't help but love him, couldn't help but think better of him than that. He was still family. "The road to this hell called earth was paved with good intentions and love. That's why I'm never having children. What am I supposed to tell them when they accuse me of creating a terrible world for them and then screwing them up? That it was inevitable?" That it just wasn't possible to do otherwise? True, but still excuses. "That's why I can't stand people who ruin everyone else's work to make their lives and the world better, for the sake of their own grand plan." Grandfather's ordeals, Polaris' destruction. Yamato's own attempt to reshape the world. "So grow up, because next time you try to smash the board to make the game fair, you'll face Abel and-the three of us," Naoya corrected himself. "Hiro expects better of you than that, too."
Hiro was still innocent that way.
And Yamato was more than innocent enough to want to live up to Hiro's faith in him, young enough to want to prove Naoya wrong, that this world could be changed.
That was the real trick of gardening: the plants wanted to grow, so all you had to do was put them in the right places, with the right conditions, so they gave you what you wanted.
The angel-generated illusion of god happened in Shin Megami Tensei I. Gotou is from the Raidou Kuzunoha games: the Ayakashi Monthly is from Nocturne. I don't own any of those, either. Nor do I own Terry Pratchett: the pi quote is from Pyramids.
I would really like to see Naoya interacting with Methos or someone like that Highlander character. So many different lives, so many places, so much experience with how people are & live.
Of course, Naoya's real reason for trying to educate Yamato/make him lise his faith in mankind is that Naoya doesn't want the world erased, it's where he keeps half his stuff.