11 KiB
A Surprisingly Rational/Humanist Quote from Dragon Ball Super
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Author: u/EmceeEsher *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/8n1lv7/a_surprisingly_rationalhumanist_quote_from_dragon/
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Score: 51
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Created: 2018-05-29T18:51:23
Post:
"There are deities who exist to protect life. But the opposite is also true. Some deities exist only to end life. Beerus the Destroyer is such a being."
"Yes, but as detestable as it is to us, there is a reason for his destructive ways."
"No! There is no reason at all. The inevitability of his existence does not give meaning to what he does."
Comments:
u/DaystarEld [+6] Pokémon Professor (22 minutes later)
I only skimmed in and out of Super, what episode is this from?
u/Joshless [+9] (2 hours later)
I only skimmed in and out of Super, what episode is this from?
Episode 3
u/FunFunFunTimez [+5] (5 days later)
It's still kind of unclear why each Universe has a God of Destruction. However, it's somewhat suggested that their purpose is to assist with the normal other gods in order to cultivate universes to produce lots of stable life.
One thing a god of destruction might be important and necessary for is to destroy threats like Majin Buu. Maybe they ignore universal tyrants like Frieza, but it seems to be within their job to destroy threats that just want to annihilate everything (like Kid Buu). They should also be destroying and keeping an eye on anyone who commits any extremely serious crimes like time travel or anyone at large who just seems to be gaining massive amounts of power.
It's worth noting that Beerus is generally considered an incompetent God of Destruction who spends way too much of his time sleeping rather than doing his job. This is also kind of the case for most of the Gods of Destruction in the end and one of the reasons for the entire Multi Universe tournament in the first place... lol
u/EmceeEsher [+3] (5 days later)
One thing a god of destruction might be important and necessary for is to destroy threats like Majin Buu. Maybe they ignore universal tyrants like Frieza, but it seems to be within their job to destroy threats that just want to annihilate everything (like Kid Buu).
I'm not 100%, but I could have sworn this is explicitly stated at some point. Something along the lines of "Beerus should have killed Buu, but he was too lazy."
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+4] Dai-Gurren Brigade (2 days later)
A lot of Super's theme seems to be "Gods are dicks, but what you gotta do, they're Gods". Their portrayal, while mostly in jest due to the lighthearted nature of the series, is all but flattering. They're either incompetent and weak (Shin), total assholes (Beerus, Champa, Quitela, the list goes on), crazed psychopathic fanatics (Zamasu) or drooling childish morons who can't even begin to appreciate the horrifying magnitude of their actions (Zen-oh-sama, namely the God of All). The only reason why people cope with these entities is because they have to, since they're mostly too strong to kill. They're basically anthropomorphic forms of the forces of nature: sometimes they could favour you by accident, sometimes they will kill the fuck out of you, neither time they will care in the least about your fate.
u/DuplexFields [+6] New Lunar Republic (2 days later)
...Which, in context, is very Japanese in philosophy.
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+6] Dai-Gurren Brigade (2 days later)
It's very pre-Christian in philosophy. In the West it used to be like that too, then Abrahamic religions came around and replaced all that with a single omnipotent God that's always on our side (be it the Christian God or Allah, later). Think of the Greek gods, or worse, the Norse ones. Total utter dicks, the only reason to worship them was that they were the guys in charge. I feel like it says something about a shift in our attitude towards nature that those pagan religions ended up replaced with religions focused on human beings, and with a perfect, moral God that brings order and justice into the world instead of embodying its chaos. We probably started feeling like we could tame and shape the world to our liking instead of being passively subject to its whims, and that's where our religious and philosophical attitudes changed.
u/EmceeEsher [+2] (5 days later)
I agree with most of this comment, but there's no way the Norse gods are worse than the Greek ones. Norse mythology at least includes gods who unconditionally protect mankind, like Thor. As far as I know, there's no equivalent of this in Greek Mythology besides maybe Prometheus, who isn't a god.
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+2] Dai-Gurren Brigade (5 days later)
Well, mostly because by the time the "modern" times roll around, there's just no external threats to mankind any more, in Greek mythology. So what would they protect them from? In the Gigantomachía, when the giants rise from Gaia to avenge Chronos and the Titans, Zeus and the other gods fight against them next to Heracles, a human. But the main threat was to them, not to humans, so yeah.
u/1jl [+9] (5 hours later)
I can't help but disagree with... whoever is saying that there is no meaning in what he does. "Destruction" is directly tied with life in almost every aspect. I'm not just talking about the inevitability and utility of human death (that's a discussion for another time, it gets hairy) but of death in all aspects. Cell death, for example is extremely important to all living creatures. Without cell death, cells with corrupted DNA can become cancerous. Many life forms die so that their offspring may live. The death of members in one species brings balance to their role in the lives of other species. You prune and kill branches off a bush to raise the health of the entire plant.
I wouldn't go as far as to try to kill half of all life to try to bring balance, but even if we somehow discover immortality, we will still have an intimate relationship with death and destruction in some capacity. This isn't mysticism, this is reality.
Although I haven't watched the show so maybe this guy is just a dick and likes killing. Who knows.
u/None [+24] (6 hours later)
It's more of the latter than the former, by far. Beerus, the force of destruction in question, is supposed to be working with the supreme kais in dealing with threats to the universe and working to improve the civilizational development, or mortal level, by carefully pruning existential threats and (on rare occasion) destroying civilizations and species that have gone too far towards evil. The gods are supposed to utilize the minimum direct intervention possible, although this approach does cause some problems that end up getting addressed in the series.
Beerus, however, is lazy, arrogant, enittled, and callous, and as a result does essentially none of this. He becomes an indiscriminate force of destruction in the universe; his first two onscreen appearances are him destroyign half a planet because the food a group of chefs gave him wasn't up to his gourmet standards, and his second is him destroying another planet because one of its people had the nerve to try and stop him from stealing their food. He alsoe fails at the other half of his task, and as a result causes many of the previous problems in the series; Maijin Buu came within a hairsbreadth of destroying the universe three times as a result of his laziness, Zamasu succeeded in destroying the future universe as a result of his actions, and indeed he almost causes the end of the universe himself in his introductory movie.
"No! There is no reason at all. The inevitability of his existence does not give meaning to what he does" isn't entirely accurate because he doesn't do it at random, but it's essentially true. I think the connection the Op drew is actually quite insightful: Much like real death, even if you accept that some destruction is necessary, that doesn't make all the deaths any less pointless and tragic. He's also capable of a veneer of civility and normality, and is essentially immortal and unbeatable.
u/1jl [+5] (6 hours later)
Ah ok, that makes a lot more sense. So he's supposed to be this god of death and balance, but he's misbehaved and thus there isn't a lot of meaning in what he does. If it's personal and specific to him though why did they call his existence inevitable. Doesn't seem very inevitable to me, since he's deviant to the norm for gods and such. Overall I don't see how these quotes from OP are "surprisingly rational" or inspiring in any way. They are just a dude saying this god is good for the service he provides and another dude saying nah man, don't confuse what he should be with what he actually is.
u/EmceeEsher [+22] (8 hours later)
If it's personal and specific to him though why did they call his existence inevitable? Doesn't seem very inevitable to me, since he's deviant to the norm for gods and such.
Beerus isn't deviant to the norm, at least not to his norm, which is what matters here because he's been around basically forever and no one's managed to beat him. So as far as the character speaking is concerned, Beerus's continued existence is inevitable.
Overall I don't see how these quotes from OP are "surprisingly rational" or inspiring in any way.
It may not be surprising to you, but it's certainly surprising in the context of a mainstream anime. To quote hpmor:
"If people were hit on the heads with truncheons once a month, and no one could do anything about it, pretty soon there'd be all sorts of philosophers who found all sorts of amazing benefits to being hit on the head with a truncheon once a month. Like, it makes you tougher, or it makes you happier on the days when you're not getting hit with a truncheon."
A lot of anime tends to have the attitude of these philosophers. So it's surprising that, in a mainstream anime, there is a character portrayed as good and wise who directly rejects this attitude.
u/None [+8] (10 hours later)
Beerus is >75 million year old, and far stronger than anyone else; outside of his teacher, there has literally been noone in the universe who has ever been able to even make notice their attacks, much less damage him; the first time we encountered his handiwork was when we learned about how he had humiliated the nigh immortal supreme dieties - 14 generations ago, of their time. The importance of the quote in question is that when faced with this seemingly immutable and eternal existance, shin doesnt try to accept it, or rationalize it away, or any of the standard techniques people use to avoid confronting the question, or even try and exposit some deep widon onto the audience, but instead gives us this.