Philosophy Spotlight: Tsuga, Dragonblood
“Each of us will rejoin the Earth. In death, our bodies live past us - reforged by the flow of time and reborn in an unceasing world. We suffer during our lives when we clutch on to what we have, because we depend on a stage of the world that cannot last. But life's great irony is that the source of our suffering also grounds our purpose.”
Tsuga's philosophy highlights the progression from Nagarjuna's Buddhist metaphysics to psychology and ultimately to ethics. Nagarjuna says all things go through a process of "samsara" or continual rebirth. Nothing comes into existence out of emptiness, and nothing disappears from existence into emptiness. Instead, all things are in a continual process of disbanding and forming new objects.
Nearly 2,000 years before atoms were proven scientifically, Nagarjuna used logic to deduce that the parts that make up all things, including people, must continue to exist as new objects in a continual cycle of reformation. This insight led Nagarjuna to a radical interpretation of the Buddhist teaching of nirvana - there is no difference between nirvana (the cessation of suffering) and samsara, as our suffering ends when we are reborn.
Nagarjuna's metaphysics naturally motivates a detached psychological perspective. The world continues on indefinitely, and our entire lives are a brief perception of how the world looks during our lifetimes. Everything we are attached to - people, animals, creative projects - are temporary forms in the world. From this detached perspective, we can infer the psychological conclusion that our attachment to temporary things in this world is the source of our suffering. We suffer when we fear our death, when we mourn the death of others, and when our desires are frustrated.
Although this psychological point is associated with the idea of extreme detachment, it does not entail it. Once we recognize attachments as the source of our suffering, it is still an open question whether those attachments are worth the cost. The latter question is the key to understanding ethics within a Buddhist framework. Buddha himself did not advise apathy or total detachment, and neither did Nagarjuna. Both left the ethical question largely unanswered. The psychological point simply informs the ethical analysis, and it is up to the individual thinker how to be selective with their own attachments. Is total apathy preferable to suffering? Can attachments give our life meaning even if they expose us to harm?
Philosophy Spotlight: Z-Virus
“The virus was created to suppress dissent when our Parliament feared revolts. We were told to create an invisible poison that could inhibit humanity’s aggressive instincts, so we designed a virus that seemed to make our test subjects more agreeable. After we unleashed the virus on the public, its effect changed - inhibitions eroded and victims began uncritically attacking their neighbors. The symptoms continually get worse with no cure in sight.”
-Unknown Chemist
Inspiration: Paternalism, Propaganda
The Z Virus backstory is a metaphor for propaganda from the perspective of those who use it. It is easy to understand how propaganda can serve their self-interest, deceiving others in a way that benefits them, but the more interesting mindset occurs when those in power use propaganda for the benefit of the people being deceived. Although self-interest is a powerful bias, people are complicated and it is likely that world leaders envision how their ideals would create a better society despite what others think.
The paternalistic mindset here is naturally off-putting. It is arrogant to tell others that I know what is good for them better than they do. Propaganda has to be nuanced to be effective, so that it convinces people that the leader’s cause aligns with what they already believe. The extent that the truth differs from the projection determines how paternalistic the leader has to be to feel motivated by anything other than self-interest.
At a meta level, propaganda is a destructive force that stalls humanity’s collective progress. It’s impossible to know how much knowledge is prevented, or creativity stunted, due to the false worldviews it spreads. Like the virus, the more effective it is at its original goals, the more damaging it is.
Philosophy Spotlight: Sierra, Queen of Antarctica
“Society imposes its customs and values on each of us, telling us who we are and how we should live. It is all irrelevant noise. I need no one’s permission to choose my own path.”
Inspiration: Constructivism, Christine Korsgaard, Nietzsche
Sierra’s philosophy demonstrates the self-assurance needed to exercise your own free will. Freedom entails that we choose our own actions, but at a deeper level we must also choose the values that motivate those actions. Constructivism is a family of ethical views that affirms our individual will’s authority to judge and determine what is valuable to us.
While this freedom is accepted on an applied level - we each naturally choose our own career paths, hobbies, personal priorities, and relationships - it is more controversial on a meta level. If we can freely choose our own values, what stops us from choosing malice, sadism, or indifference? If society demands self-sacrifice for the sake of others, is it morally wrong for us to be selfish or cruel instead? Especially in extreme cases, most people believe that there is at least some minimal value we must place in each other before we have the freedom to choose our own values.
The most poignant depiction of the audacity of free will comes from Nietzsche’s Metamorphosis. After growing resilient from a life of hard work, the individual is confronted by the Dragon of Thou Shalt, the imposing metaphorical embodiment of society’s values and culture, created from the sum of history, that we are expected to adopt. The Dragon declares that the question of value has been answered, and there is no room left for the individual to create their own. To reject the Dragon, denying the values that society compels us to absorb, the will must have the strength of a lion and boldly declare its own authority.
Philosphy Spotlight: Sir Thomas
“Only power commands respect. People want what they do not have, and they will kill you to get it. My dragon grants me power to suppress the ravenous masses and keep human nature in line. The weak may hate the gods who rule them, but they survive only under our protection.”
Inspiration: Hobbes’ political philosophy
Hobbes argued for the necessity of government to save people from the horrors of anarchy. In Hobbes’ view, anarchy is a constant state of war where each person has good reason to fear everyone else, because anyone stands to gain from using violence for their own ends.
The government’s power to enforce laws is a deterrent against the potential profit of violence. Peace can only be possible when people fear the punishments for theft and murder, and this peace is worth sacrificing the freedoms that a government limits.
Sir Thomas embodies Hobbes’ philosophy from the perspective of the monarch. Thomas recognizes the danger created by human self-interest and justifies the total power of his own rule as a necessity for maintaining peace and order.
Hobbes’ philosophy was particularly groundbreaking because it was the first influential argument for a monarchy that appealed to each individual’s self-interest rather than a divine right to rule. This reasoning developed over time and became the idea of a social contract, which imagines that we would all agree it is worth restricting some freedom for the safety of a governed society. Sir Thomas connects this ethical theory with his own aspiration for power, highlighting the tension in the role of government and the self-interested people who want to rule.
Philosophy Spotlight: Kodame
“Our behavior defines our character. If desires rule our actions, we are the subjects of nature's whim, and we have as little control of our actions as we have of our desires. To experience true freedom, you cannot allow your unfiltered instincts to dictate what you do; instead, you must carefully reflect on each decision to ensure that it aligns with your better judgment.”
“Our behavior defines our character. If desires rule our actions, we are the subjects of nature’s whim, and we have as little control of our actions as we have of our desires. To experience true freedom, you cannot allow your unfiltered instincts to dictate what you do; instead, you must carefully reflect on each decision to ensure that it aligns with your better judgment.”
Inspiration: Kant’s Ethics
Kodame’s philosophy is an application of Kant’s ethics, particularly inspired from a seminar taught by Ermanno Bencivenga. Kodame is one of the oldest characters in our game, responsible for creating the forest that spread across Africa, so I wanted her quote to demonstrate a big picture mindset that Kant suits perfectly.
Kant’s ethical system is incredibly ambitious. He wants to explain how ethics apply universally while respecting each individual’s free will. In order to be universal, ethical laws cannot depend on what we desire. However, to respect our individual freedom, we must each be able to set our own values and priorities, and we must have the free will to causally determine our own actions.
The key challenge for Kant is the unpredictable influence of our desires. We do not choose our desires, and if we simply act on whatever desires we feel, we are passive subjects merely reacting to our given nature.
Kant believes our true identity is defined by our ability to reason. We have the unique ability to reflect on our desires and think through what we should do. Although reason does not tell us what we should want, it can help determine what limits we have to respect in order for our desires not to conflict with each other. This ability is what makes ethics possible. We mutually acknowledge our individual freedom to choose our own values and limit ourselves to actions that do not compromise our ability to live together peacefully.
The second requirement for freedom is satisfied by the same approach. Kant, agreeing with his predecessor David Hume, believes that causation is simply universal correlation. Our reasoning causes our behavior if and only if our actions always follow the limits imposed by it. Even a single instance of failure would prove that our decisions do not determine our actions and we are not ultimately free. But if our actions never stray from our best judgment, then we can truthfully say that our actions are directly attributable to our will.
Philosophy Spotlight: Maluhia, Bristlecone Pine
“Reality is filtered through our eyes. Space and time, color and shape, beauty and meaning - we see only what our minds can construct. What could lie beyond the reach of our minds? Some confuse what they see with what is, others deceive themselves because they do not trust their own sight. The truth is not so simple. Observer and object are like two sides of a coin - neither can be represented without depending on the other.”
“Reality is filtered through our eyes. Space and time, color and shape, beauty and meaning - we see only what our minds can construct. What could lie beyond the reach of our minds? Some confuse what they see with what is, others deceive themselves because they do not trust their own sight. The truth is not so simple. Observer and object are like two sides of a coin - neither can be represented without depending on the other.”
Inspiration: Nagarjuna’s Buddhism
Maluhia’s philosophy is an interpretation of sunyata, the Buddhist concept of emptiness and the origin of our game’s name. An object is empty if it has no traits without depending on external conditions such as an interaction with another object or a reaction from our senses. Nagarjuna argues that all things are empty, and the key to learning Buddhism is to understand what sunyata means for different schools of thought.
Colors are the easiest category to understand emptiness. The colors we see are not traits of the objects themselves. They are representations our minds use when reacting to the limited range of wavelengths we can see. If we imagine what each color would look like independently of our perception of them, we are left with an empty, indescribable concept.
Shapes are a more difficult category. The shape of objects we see matches what we feel with our hands, so shape does not initially seem to depend on the interpretation of either sense. However, consider the role our size plays in our perception - we can only see objects that are relatively large enough to be relevant to us, and we feel objects as solid when the gaps in them are not wide enough for us to pass through. But at an atomic level, neither shape is retained. The object’s surface is not the smooth layer it looks to be, and the gaps of empty space in each atom make up the majority of the object. The solid surface we can touch is a representation our senses use that matches our inability to pick through the tiny pockets of empty space.
Emptiness applies to ethics and personal values as well. Values are empty because there is no objective fact independent of us about what should matter. This view is a type of moral anti-realism, and as a result it can be confused with the nihilistic view that nothing matters. However, this reduction to nihilism would be a failure in applying sunyata to anti-realism. There is no objective truth that nothing matters, as the nihilistic claim is itself empty, and so nihilism is at most a personal view like any other moral framework.
From Nagarjuna’s view, moral questions become incredibly difficult to answer. How do we determine what we should do if there are no objective moral truths we can appeal to? Some philosophers, such as Plato and Derek Parfit, think this approach inevitably fails and devolves into tyranny or apathy. Nietzsche, one of the few philosophers to attempt an answer, likens it to a child-like state of free play that can enjoy and value anything the world has to offer. Buddha himself did not worry about this problem and instead gave practical advice to help people find peace and meaning through simple tasks such as spending more time outside or eating a moderate diet.
These arguments are just a sampling of how the philosophy of sunyata approaches different fields. Emptiness applies equally to thoughts about aesthetics, causation, personal identity, and Buddhism itself. In both ethics and metaphysics, emptiness is an alternative to realist and nihilist philosophies. Contrary to traditional realism, we cannot know or conceive of anything about the world that does not depend on our limited representations of it. But this does not imply the nihilistic conclusion that the world we interact with exists only in our minds. Instead, the world, as we perceive it, is the result of a mutually dependent reaction of our senses to our surroundings.