The Necessity of Violence

on a channel devoted to analyzing stories we've seen a lot of violence because it's the easiest presentation of the conflict necessary to move a plot forward watching two people on a debate stage for 12 episodes could be entertaining but only with extremely careful wording and framing a task so looming it would be downright insane to tackle AA butcher might be able to make 12-minute conversations entertaining but 12 episodes is a bit more of a stretch but half a season of characters coming to literal blows over their ideals complete with an expression of themes both in why and how they fight is a much more entertaining way to still get across the same message even the premise of writing in a notebook to become God relies on the ability to enact violence even if it's very detached from its source there is a sort of inevitable nature to violence's inclusion in stories because it is in many ways inevitable in the world itself we can only express it in what we write because we experien or witnessed it in some way in our own world for all of our advancements and lofty goals and ideals exhibit a right here we still can't avoid what feels like a barbaric Instinct of brutal creatures so we must understand this further to know what we can do about it what really is violence is it necessary and if so how could we express it to change it into a positive force what are the factors causing its continued grip and what about it can make it so appealing to some this and more is what we'll be exploring today as we dig into the necessity of [Music] violence psychopath is a very interesting world one where a supercomputer known as the Civil system is able to read human intent before even that human may know what it is this means that a central Authority with these readings can both determine the best life for any given citizen while also preventing crimes before they occur while peering into the human soul like that any and every time in a total surveillant State certainly has some ethical considerations we do see Stellar results from it in a world where Japan is the only stable country left on Earth this is a city where one disgruntled man in a mall who hasn't even bothered anyone yet is a Cause worth dispatching two officers over think about that how much Manpower is devoted to something so small because any kind of incident is just that rare it can be easily afforded to send that much Manpower and it's even more mindblowing when you know that the entirety of their department is comprised of no more than 18 people since there are three divisions of six each 1/8 of their entire force is dispatched to deal with a slightly angry man in a mall it might have some serious considerations this overall civil system but there is no doubt that the average citizen under it is not just free from violence but is never even second or third hand experienced it in their life so what happens when there is an incident well well in the case that automatic scanners and drones can't handle something inspectors and enforcers are dispatched to handle the situation with their dominators guns patched directly into cibil allowing for instant ratings if someone's crime coefficient is over 100 they receive a non-lethal paralyzer shot taken into custody where they become a latent criminal subject to prolonged Rehabilitation most often never seeing the outside world again although this isn't exactly how the average person would view it as it's seen as a sort of personal fault as the rookie inspector aane says on her first day when learning about their target why would somebody choose to let their Hue get so cloudy over receiving treatment Cil is just and some people are just wrong however one of the small ways that they can regain some semblance of freedom is by becoming an enforcer the inspectors are citizens like anyone else but the enforcers are latent criminals themselves allowed out for one purpose this is a world where thinking like a criminal means being one so regular citizens are awful at understanding and catching criminals so detached from it they simply can't comprehend what's needed and so they become leash holders instead encouraged to use the enforcers like dogs ordering them to do the heavy lifting while they prepare to fill out reports back at the office throw your subordinates into Danger to save yourself pure citizen after all they made the choice to be a criminal and throw away their life so surely they must be awful people and if nothing else this labor is to atone for their actions right but in reality they're some of the most relatable and likable people kager is a funloving goof whose room is full of pinball machines he plays with the others after having some drinks in his delicious cooking and that sounds like the best night you can have so what was his potential crime well no one actually knows he was flagged as a lant at the very young age and confined ever since masaoka as a former detective before the traditional police force was disbanded and unable to keep up with the Modern Age he slowly grew more and more angry with how things had changed never acting on it but having enough potential to he was designated as a threat as well when he's not on duty he Paints in the soft light of his simple room and when he is working he does all he can to take the brentt for the inspectors one of whom is his son yoy was a musician but was flagged sometime after falling in with the unauthorized artists in the boredom of confinement she grows truly irritable as her requests to take solace in playing music are denied again and again and again until she's bitter over the whole process we never actually saw what her potential crime was either and what happens to people like them who aren't enforcers well anyone with a crime coefficient over $300 doesn't get paralyzed it doesn't get taken to a containment facility they get the lethal Eliminator mode where a shot causes rapid expansion followed by a rupturing explosion it's an absolute display of Gore bursting someone's body to death after a few seconds where they feel well whatever kind of pain that would be it's something those holding the dominators never question it simply is the methods in Judgment of syo which can't be fought people with these same designations as these likable and relatable characters turned into piles of Gore on the cold floor by their same class since my first watching of psychopaths this contrast has been on my mind Cil is a world so truly free of violence and yet part of the method to achieve that piece is so opposed to it for these average citizens to live their happy and carefree lives so many suffer behind the scenes they're confined forever their families moving on to save their own Souls medicated into Oblivion or pushed even further towards the thing they weren't but we're told they were and those are the lucky ones the lethal Eliminator is generally reserved for people performing truly horrific genuinely awful actions but even that it simply fights violence with ultra violence if anyone witnessed the illumination of course they'd become unstable and be flagged themselves you can't have anyone but someone who's already a criminal doing this inspectors often become enforcers themselves or at least become latent criminals themselves because the worst parts of the job are legitimately horror a select few people are made to witness the violence of an entire Society bound into a few seconds criminals killing criminals so that the general populace can live on almost entirely unaware of the Gory underbelly responsible for their daily lives this excessive method of death is not a mistake it is the concentration and palletization of violence to create a supposedly peaceful Society now this idea relies on something else Psychopaths delves into which is the very point of society I did an entire Deep dive into this in some of my favorite videos I've ever produced so I'll link to them if you want a much bigger picture of this idea and can deal with me looking a lot worse in front of a green screen at the time but the core of the point of society is something Aon explains in the final episodes when she said is the law doesn't protect people people protect the law people have prayed for a better world since the dawn of time hoped for a better future sacrificed their own freedoms for its sake those feelings the accumulation of society's feelings are the law what this is expressing is the limitation of Free Will for greater Freedom that is giving up endless possibility for many guarantees in a society you can't say run red lights or speed down resid itial roads but because you agree to give up those potentials you gain the roads themselves a state paves and maintains them and connects them to other across an entire country so that we're able to go where we please as we please in relative safety by discarding a few possibilities we guarantee ourselves many great things this is a pacta we make in the hopes of a better future seeking to escape from the cruelty of nature going from a kill or be killed world to a live let live world without our Collective efforts to obey this principle without our own desires to live these kinds of peaceful lives there is no society and the law is powerless now the escape from nature is what's really important for us here today contrary to how it can often be portrayed nature is not a kind parent watching over its beloved Creations by its principles one dies to sustain another one acquires the limited resources based on physical advantage and the others die to strengthen a species based on the random whims of mutations and passed on genes it is an intricately crafted cycle of all these interconnected beings and things but that doesn't reduce how brutal the actual workings of that cycle are the romance of giving your body back to the cycle of life would lose its charm if you saw the decaying bodies which do so all around you I don't believe this is an excuse to do horrible things though as we've just said Society is an argument to not Nim nature and so anyone who justifies their behavior with the idea of well that's what nature says is really acting in bad faith and I felt it was necessary to address that little Point here before we moved on however this does mean that some level of violence is inherent to the meeting of living things this is exactly what we join together against Society does not remove this aspect of life but simply tempers it and changes its form rather than conflicting over Resources with weapons we share enough of these resources for all to survive and meet in spaces of debate to convince others of our vision for how they'll be utilized in the future we debate which horrific action should be discarded and which should be kept because the concept of Good and Evil is dependent on the Observer everyone on the stage of debate can be believing themselves to be upholding the best intent of society but reach wildly different conclusions for example you can have aane who views this toil ility granted by Cil and the people's acceptance of it as important aspects of society even if she personally disagrees with some of its harshest truths or you can have shogo makima who believes that Free Will is the soul of a human being and a such desires a lesser extent of this limitation Society offers and both of these people will be acting in accordance with what they believe is good against what they believe is evil this is the constant state of tension which defines the interaction of human beings since we are banded together against violence we are held together by what we decide the base violence is expressed in and create laws against so what simple has done is not rid the world of violence since that is impossible but has simply made the violence so concentrated it is almost invisible it has taken anyone who made dissent and labeled them as criminals to protect the idea of a peaceful Society leaving only the people people who either think the same or have learned to think the same in forcing the ones who don't to capture and kill ones just like them it's taking it all out of view creating the illusion of utopia and that their society has no visible conflict about its Direction no Humane expression of violence but in doing so created one so much less Humane in these executions and this Rehabilitation so that many can live unfettered it turns all the violence on one group and homogenizes the other to an extreme degree so that no conflict will appear there yes they seem to live happy lives but they only do so as long as they don't question the world around them with their purposes and Futures determined by cibil it creates an illusion of perfection so that no one has a reason to wonder so that the homogenized group will stay such to be controllable once doubt is introduced the entire premise is threatened so everything they do is designed to prevent this and this begins to explain the leth Eliminator a bit more it is this cold efficient to the point violence method of control because it is made to remove the threat of Doubt as soon as possible they don't want a latent criminal getting into the wider world and shattering the precarious illusion that siil has created because doing so is exceptionally easy the first case Psychopaths presents us with is one of the rare violent crimes with an interesting note in it that the victim of the crime becomes labeled a criminal herself from the torture she was put through the hands of this legitimate criminal she became unstable which only grew worse as she witnessed the lethal elimination she felt the body of someone else be splattered across her she became a wild card acting in unpredictable and irrational ways as a being whose life is threatened does she had seen what they Bel and now knew the LIE well Aon manages to salvage the situation introduces a principle which is abused in full later violence is like like a disease without immunity without preparing against the worst it spreads like wildfire eventually the antagonistic makima distributes a helmet which allows the wearer to bypass the scans required for civil's judgment which creates a reign of chaos remember when we said how the entire force was just about 16 people that works well when you only have to respond to minor incidents here and there but if even just 16 people begin to break the law your entire force is stretched thin this shows the principal cibil operates by it expresses total control but has nowhere near the means to actually do so the idea that it is in control and can't be fought is the only thing which keeps it as such so with these helmets in just a few hands their entire Society becomes overwhelmed with crime since there is no effective way to stop them on the scene as the formerly isolated or close to isolated members of society get their hands on these helmets they begin to attack the others in aggressively violent methods and why would they do anything else these are the people who have been subjected to the concentrated violence so these acts are simply what they've been exposed to themselves expressed in a slightly different way all they have ever been shown is a form of violence so that is what they know and this in turn drives the regular citizens who've never experienced an ounce of vience in their lives entirely insane when they fight back they begin to do it madly as if the fate of the entire world depends on them killing the people in the helmets and just as well for them that's basically true since they've never faced this kind of hardship before this makes it the worst thing they've ever experienced and is such something worth becoming a maddened killer over it's just fighting fire with what they believe fire to be they lack a frame of reference for anything but what told them what we see here is how the concentration of violence backfires it simply creates at its most minimal two camps the ones you made into monsters and the ones who have no resistance to becoming monsters themselves one man and some helmets almost tears down their entire Society because it was easy to tear down a castle built on sanding which relied on perceived perception to function at all once the curtain is pulled back it pretty much collapses it was doomed to the second it discarded the strengthening principle of a society the Humane conflict we engage in to drive progress declaring Perfection also means a halt to progress for Progress would simply state that you were never perfect everything stays as weak as it began and this brings us to the necessity of violence a society without it is the ideal but it is unattainable and the closer we come to that ideal the more likely it will collapse how do we balance these fact factors to respect the collective hopes and dreams for a better world one possibility is what we discarded in the transition to cble there's a minor character whose story is told by shogo makima later on who is roii Oreo he was an artist who used violent motifs with the human body for the purpose of allowing The Observer to question the darkness within their heart the base violence implanted by Nature by confronting it and the fears associated with it he believed could come to terms with it and control it becoming the kind of people who were prepared for a better Society however with the Advent of the Civil system which peered into the human heart for them he found himself unnecessary and gave up his artistic Pursuits however facing the stress of losing his purpose he becomes progressively more and more medicated against stress to prevent a latent criminal status to the point that he's simply a shell awake but unable to feel anything ironically what rigi dies from is the lack of exposure to a necessary evil while stress is not generally a positive thing believe me I know that it is felt for a reason without it we would have no reason to act against that which is unhealthy for us nothing to drive us through the important times is a part of us which can easily become un healthy but if controlled is not just good but necessary for a better world you kind of want the people who are pushing for positive change to feel a little bit of stress to get it done because it's something pretty important you don't want them to just go about it lazily thinking I'll get to it when I get to it it is akin to violence a dark necessity without conflict there is no way to develop a fair world there's no way for a society to grow at all because there will be no Force pushing growth a society which is free of all conflict is a society which is already dead simply waiting for its collapse too much of it or an expression of it in an inhumane way is of course bad but we must be aware that such things are the origins of all life and if we are not prepared to deal with that we will fall to it we can never be rid of violence we can never reliably remove it all from our view all we can do is peer into our own hearts and understand it express it in our modern and Humane ways when we debate good and evil our Visions for the future and what is important to our lives now we exercise everything which is needed to save the present only the energy of those negative forces directed well can drive true [Music] progress give a gun to an ordinary civilian and see what happens nine times out of 10 he'll wind up doing something he never thought he was capable of that's the kind of Twisted power weapons have these are the words of Jonah from yman gond a former Child Soldier Now The Bodyguard of an international arms dealer he was made into a Child Soldier because his home was attacked by its enemies once they received the bigger more powerful weapons to efficiently kill their enemies without risk to themselves from high up in a squad of new fighter jets they blanketed the area below with death this leads the orphan Jonah to wind up on the military basis of a war torn area where he sees two kinds of people The Vicious Soldiers with guns and the kind orphans without them both in contrast to himself one of the latter who became one of the former once a weapon was placed in his hand it makes sense why he believes in this statement the people with weapons are the awful ones driven to Evil by them as he was but Koko the armed stealer he protects despite hating all weapons and people who use them refutes his point with a little quiz she asks him what group owns the most of the world's guns to which he replies of course the military does but he's wrong as she continues civilians yep 60% of all the guns in the world are owned by ordinary citizens official military makes up most of the remainder and unofficial armies the tiny fraction that's left and this is an anime from 2012 since then the figures have changed now 83% of the world's small arms that is portable Firearms anything a person can carry are in civilian hands every single day guns are placed in the hands of people just like you and me they're accessible anywhere at any time the glove box of the car next to you probably has a gun in it the shop 20 minutes down the road can get you one within a couple days if not the very same day and any bag any pocket can be holding a little bit of awaiting death well most of the anime focuses on the large scale arms trade so militaries or military likes one of the early arcs features an assassin Duo going by Orchestra shiso and chinatsu who are just regular people purchasing the most insane weapons they can to them it's like a form of art the sound of gunfire a music more valuable than the lives lost in it shiso was as far as we know before the original founding of Orchestra just a regular man not ex-military or Le Sur Mafia like most of the others we have no idea what happened to make him this way but we know what happened for his partner she was a Survivor from one of his previous attacks witnessed to the horror breaking her and then she joined in herself because she had nothing left whatever made him evil we don't know but we witness the only way that it's able to affect someone else that it's able to duplicate itself how it's able to ruin other lives and that's down to one thing the commodification of violence the weapons he can acquire there is some truth between Jonah and Koko's statements are they technically the source of evil itself like Jonah believes no sitting alone unhandled they are nothing at all like any human told their morality is only in the hands wielding it a hammer can be a weapon just as much as it can push a nail into a board there are complex factors at play in society behind the scenes of human happenings that creates little bits of evil in our lives and occasionally those Vester and grow into something awful people bicker and argue and fight because of these they come to blows when they find the words incapable of expressing the negative emotions they feel and sometimes a tool is right there to make that expression easier from the dawn of humanity this is a fact we've dealt with as we covered it in psychopath there is a tension inherent to the bonding of human spirits but where Jonah is right is the unexpectedness of it all these weapons and amplify what one can do they magnify the bits of Evil Within people and allow it to become so deadly the ease and accessibility of weapons a literal commodification of violence is just that it makes it something easy to trade one doesn't have to become strong to enforce their will against another they can just get a weapon and do it one doesn't have to take the time to calm down while they search for another solution to their ills they have one in their pocket that is quick and easy they cut out the middleman of time and pleasantry they remove the barriers against destructive Deeds they are against the point of society itself we are supposed to limit the potential for evil for a better Collective future and these things amplify it of course also in that statement is the truth that we should address the issues which cause people to feel so negatively the root causes of evil are something we all agree on defeating but that does not in any way invalidate a stemming of the tide when we work on such a complex issue imagine your house burning down and when the firefighters arrive they say wow we should really get to work on teaching fire prevention shouldn't we and then they just leave the scene to work on that instead when we see something which is so clearly negative continue to flow throughout our supposedly peaceful worlds of course we have to wonder why just as there are roots to human conflict there are roots to the commodification of that conflict why is evil not only allowed but promoted so heavily well the answer is obvious it's extremely profitable Coco is worth billions of dollars as someone probably just as old as you are because weapons are one godamn Cash Cow of a market little complex machines to disperse death missiles full of intricate sensors and Tech all destroyed on impact millions of dollars put into avoiding Radars and dropping bombs from above none of this is cheap and people will pay that top dollar for it Koko points this out by referencing the un's Millennium development goals specifically numbers two and four focused on achieving Universal primary education and decreasing the child mortality rate as she explains these goals alone will cost a projected $220 billion far less than the amount spent annually on weapons worldwide but the idea that conflict is profitable is common knowledge and I have no interest in repeating what you already know so let's look deeper then if profits cause more conflict what's one step back from that what causes that profitable nature to persist there is always a lay before the one we observe and here we find one of the saddest facts of the human race which is that violence once weapons and their Innovations are introduced is a Pandora's box from the very first moment they were introduced the ability to remove them became almost impossible there will never be a way to rid the world of weapons with ideals alone consider the context of the very first episode of yanon It's a government leader attempting to kill Koko to prevent her from selling Advanced weapons to his very own military he knows that once they have those weapons which are greater than their enemy weapons there will be nothing holding those generals back from starting War the balance on both sides the fear that neither could win easily was the only thing preventing a wider conflict and Military Innovation is made to destroy that balance it's the same case as why Jonah's home was attacked it was able to be done so easily a strike from above with no risk the superiority of technological violence creates an even colder even more detached evil one much easier to look in the eyes and accept with that balance becomes the most effective way to create in extremely heavy quotes peace as long as you evenly match your enemies they never get to wage war in that detached and easy way and the same on you this is something Koka herself is acutely aware of whenever plans to get ahead of a rival arms dealer who is starting to best her is to not sell to the same clients but first to their enemies by providing the people they are at war with or could be at war with different or better weapons she changes what those countries then need to buy if you're a Warhawk neighbors just got a new shipment of phyter jets well you don't need rifles anymore you need anti-aircraft weapons or your own phyter Jets or whatever you think would keep that balance and you need them right now to maintain it suddenly everyone backs out of the deals with her rival and runs back to Coco who conveniently has everything they need ready for them right now arzos don't just start or inflame conflict sometimes they prolong the stalets Koko's brother Casper sitting in these same profession is her expresses it as such we start wars when it's convenient and when it's not we maintain the peace sorry that I was the one reading that and it wasn't in his voice but for the life of me I somehow couldn't find exactly where the quote was said in the anime so it's something along those lines not exactly that but same exact idea I just couldn't find exactly where it was very frustratingly somehow if one side wipes the other off a map in Conflict then well the conflict is over and the trade stops world wars will eventually end attrition will always get the best of human bodies spirits and inventions alike War itself is not a Perpetual cycle but is a series of highs and lows but peace The Fragile piece of fear and everpresent retaliation that is a cycle that could continue forever with careful selling if one person can press the button to destroy everything then the rest of the world ends but if everyone can press the button then no one dares so everyone has to always maintain the ability to press the same button everyone needs to have their guns their missiles their nukes enough to match whatever else exists so there can always be the famous phrase mutually assured destruction the ideal state for an arms dealer is to keep the world always on the brink of ending with a desperate and peaceful need for the latest and greatest means of violence this is why I call it a Pandora's box once one person opens it the others have to catch up or be greater which means the first has to do the same so the others have to follow suit and as long as there is a new form of violence to Hawk this never ends the potential for violence becomes a necessity for peace there's a sense of inevitability to this all which feels so crushing a horrible thing creating all this opportunity for evil which is so profitable it will never be given up by those who have it and good people will never want it we do see some good people in Norman gond like the outspoken doctors for Humanity who Coco smuggles into a country whose military leader refused their aid if they're found out it's more than likely they'll be killed and yet they still pile into the cramped cargo hold of an arms dealer's plane and head off nonetheless without ever lowering themselves to the methods or profiteering of War they fight against it to do something genuinely and undeniably good but their ability to do it still relies on the money of wealthy people or even armed dealers like Coco who in part create what they fight they still have to be smuggled in cargo base worry if dictators will kill them and every Soldier they patch up will probably be sent back to the front to kill or be killed once again like this they will never end war or even halt it it's a small bandage on a massive wound and that's people with good intentions who can only cause minor effects what about neutral ones who accept Casper's principle of use one of Koko's closest allies is Dr Miami a robotics expert Who develops the latest and greatest toys from mechanical butterflies to ninja Bears without fail each and every advancement she makes will be used in weapons just the same in a statement that's both comical and completely horrible at once she mentions how a toy was turned into a warhead The Joy she brings to Children is the same thing that could take their parents away from them or their own lives on a battlefield because the nature of this sustained violence propping up the world is so delicate those manufacturing violence need every step ahead they can get it's not a question of if something will have military benefit only of how quickly they'll make one for it whether or not Dr Miami agrees to let them use the design or not is relevant it will become theirs and the only difference is whether she takes some of their money in the process is there a reason to moral objection if it only benefits the very thing you're objecting to if she didn't someone else would because of how guaranteed and profitable all of this is if you can't stop it the only option might be ensuring that others at least won't feed it worse and this works all the way up back to Coco if she wasn't the one selling arms the abundance of other dealers we witness makes it clear someone else would from British tycoons to former Russian actresses there is no shortage of people hoping to Pro it here no matter what she chooses people will die the difference is if she wants the blood on her hands or not when we consider that it will always happen and that there are such massive benefits to doing so do we accept that sometimes good people have to do awful things so those benefits can be in the name of something better disgusted with the profession she was born into Koko develops a plan on that exact principle what if she uses the arms tra to one day stop War itself whenever she takes all that wealth and power and everything usually reserved for evil and uses it for a moral end goal as she explains to Jonah in the end it's all about what you believe in what makes you pull that trigger her ultimate end goal is known as yond a quantum computer isolated from danger in space which is able to control all Global logistical systems in achieving this she would gain control over all the world's Transportation being able to solely determine trade the transport of weapons and troops and everything alike as such leaders would be forced to bend their whim for Necessities as well as being unable to transport all the necessities of conflict leading to a supposed end to War what Koko has done up to that point is horrid and this plan going to action would also lead to the deaths of all people currently in air transit a figure of some 700,000 lives but how many more would die in the wars she goes on to prevent if evil must occur if evil must profit do we accept putting that profit into better hands do we play the game of evil to mitigate it everything inside of me wants to say no but we must remember that this is an open Pandora's Box we're not trying to keep a pristine World clean we are desperately attempting to clean up the mistakes of the past to just be able to survive there is no ideal solution and the crippling issues we Face demand Swift immediate action not the slow objection of ideals in their world everything quickly spirals into World War III with Nations fighting over not just the usual resources but also clean water and everything else Under the Sun things kept getting worse dealers kept selling leaders kept sending other men to die and everyone profited their way into the end of the world to fight such a great evil you need an equivalent weapon you might need the power of evil to destroy it but Casper has his own take on this plan as we never actually see yanon take effect when Koko explains it to him he appears unfazed and replies back in part with the chilling words do you really believe our world will ever be free of weapons Koko you could rid the world of iron and I'd sell wooden clubs there is always a bigger stick before we had Jets we had rifles before we had rifles we had swords before we had swords we had rocks and sticks and clubs ever since the first person sharpened a stick into a spear we've unleashed the necessity for Mutual destruction as we open the section on Norman gun with violence is not a result of weapons even if it amplifies it to such an extreme degree a lack of weapons doesn't mean no expression of violence it just means there's a more visceral but smaller scale expression of it instead of being obliterated by drones oceans away You're beaten by a club 0o Ines away once again reaching a depressing necessity feels like defeat is there really no way to stop the base factors that motivate the opening of violence's box we know from our discussion and Psychopaths that violence is a necessity that it can be expressed well but with all these weapons out there with with all this violence that has so much more power could we ever actually reach that Humane conflict entirely I'm not sure I don't know if one day we could solve the issue of conflict's physical expression or not nature is not kind and so our base conditions are against that Quest but all of this is no excuse to not mitigate it for how much more efficiently slippery slope of War has become we have also risen above nature in many ways many of us make the active choice to abstain not just from violence against other humans but even against animals entirely we spend hours debating the course of the future rather than forcing what we want even when we buy weapons we spend time debating whether we should or should not who we should send them to how much they should cost all of those things we build our cities and towns not to prevent Invasion but to welcome life right now we might not be able to stop a few clubs from striking down here and there but we can CH as hell work to prevent the worst of it and much more with enough effort if it is a guarantee create benefits from it however you can if evil must occur use its power against itself maintain the ideals that drive us to be perfect but compromise them with reality there is always a worst to be avoided and we always [Music] can we mentioned the brutality of primitive War lightly in the last section but simply witnessing Vinland Saga makes a much better presentation against it than I ever could featuring during turn of the Millennium Vikings things we hate to even imagine today are common place for them it's a world to describable in many ways vicious cruel cold callous but I think one does it best simple the guiding principle of this world is Simplicity I say this because violence is the simple answer the reasons behind it can be very complex and vinaga shows this the king of Denmark's fan uses an of Wales the home of his son Cano's most valued adviser as a bing chip to try and get that adviser to turn on his son because that son is actually out to kill the king because the king is pretty evil but he can't outright do so obviously so he relies on setting up false assassination attempts to pin on the king will feeding him false information from secret meetings since they know that one of their Inner Circle is a spy the political realm of even the Viking world has quite a lot to take in these Solutions reached through conversation and debate will always have a lot of compl complexity to them that's part of why we had the discussions of our previous sections at all why weapons are needed and why psychopath was about simplifying Society because the opposite is complex and that's why violence can be such a guarantee it's simple this is how that advisor Escalade solves the issues of choosing between rails or Cano he chooses both by killing the King and losing his own life in the process Cano ascends to the throne calls off The Invasion and goes on to carry asal's ideals the best outcome for him was achieved through the Simplicity found in death in killing off the complex agents known as human beings there is no state of the world which has only can or only whales can exist there is only the human mind which can cause such a conflict with less emotions and Desires in the mix to cause such conflicts the situation is more manageable at the most basic this shows the principle that if two men disagree that's two set of reasons two set of histories and feelings and relationships and everything influencing their decisions but if one kills the other all those twos become ones it is simpler to kill what this does is creates a breed of simple person as well unquestioning with basic desires you can't create a city on your own with violence but you can pillage food and alcohol and slaves on your own stealing away every pleasure survival and wealth and money using that last one to get more of the first two this is what life is for the Vikings they pillage and kill because to live is to pillage and kill and this violence has become normalized because its Simplicity makes a cycle the one negotiating is easily cut down by the one with a big Axe and so no one wants to negotiate and everyone wants a big axe the only way to overcome this is to offer them such an advantage that their pleasure tells tells them not to kill you in the First episodes a dying slave is bought for eight healthy sheep because the man tracking down his slave didn't want value or negotiation he wanted to teach a lesson to the others through violence against a runaway he wanted to rule them all on a basic principle he found more profit in that than in a bunch of healthy cattle until it reached excessive proportions and this premise this mentality then perpetuates things even more of course twofold as everyone Witnesses someone who's wealthy and wellfed living in a nicer house with everything taken care of and of course wants to be the same way in Envy when soldiers return home from Conquest with full Pockets bounding around the town in drunken celebration everyone wants to be a soldier and then the twofold comes in because if everyone is a soldier or a warlord or cruel you want to negotiate even less because being the kind of person who delays and P on the battlefield means death the ones who survive are the ones most suited to brutality it all feeds into itself to keep things simple no one in the world questions it because why would they they can't in a simple World which doesn't grow any more complex there is no room for thought there was almost no opportunity to be a better person to escape violence in fact the only way someone is able to do this is through already being accustomed to and strengthened against it taurs once the most Adept of the ens Vikings is one of the very few we witness choose peace in a world driven by War he makes this Choice despite being the ideal of everything we discussed that it can bring to someone he lives a life of status Comfort once the Battle Is Over assuredly wealthy as well and he leaves this all behind to live in the cold of Iceland a harsh cold that never lets up where constant fires are needed for warmth where show is snuffled from the roof where drinkable water is a long walk away and a careful Supply needs careful management it's a life where each day is a conflict against life itself it's the exact opposite of the Viking lifestyle where one makes nothing thems and instead steals it all Taurus has to learn to build his own house Forge his own utensils raise his own cattle many different and varied skills much more than just knowing how to fight it is a life which is more complex which takes in the many factors and wonders and struggles of life rather than hacking away them to take what someone else had instead of the basic life that is short periods of turmoil followed by long stretches of comfort it is a constant and unending turmoil it is a respect for what life truly is so how did a vicious Viking come to this realization well T really didn't but his wife Helga did when they have their first child and it's a girl Tor refuses to name it and asks for a boy the next time before preparing to leave the next Conquest but in what he says is the only time he could remember her angry Helga firmly insists on one thing give her a name he gives it his mother's name and in that moment life itself changes for him where he was ready to scoff off this responsibility and get back to the simple life he led suddenly he now feels responsible for much more complex things for nurturing life rather than destroying protecting rather than killing it's no longer tearing down life and reducing it to the most basic it can be but taking it from that simple State into a full-fledged bundle of thoughts and feelings and emotions and history it's no wonder he sought to avoid this at first it is not something simple at all it is a much harder fight than ending life it's at least 18 years of a fight it also changes the dynamic of what his own life means everyone is replaceable at the end of the day but since Taurus clearly wasn't helping out at home and since Helga was the daughter of their leader and so well off herself it didn't really matter if he came back or not he wasn't a part of their economy or crucial to their Community he was right on the battlefield sure but being home changed nothing now it meant the world if he didn't come back the entire life of another being is completely changed he has a true reason to be for the first time ever and when you have this simple life reads differently well it makes for Easy Living it also makes for easy dying if you achieve everything through combat you can be reduced to nothing just the same as everyone you do it to the Simplicity of violence is not reserved for one side or another it is unyieldingly indiscriminate when of its own devices and now facing a consequence to this fact for the first time tus later says when describing this whole experience now that I think about it that was when it started I truly began to fear going into the field of battle one of the uncomfortable parts of complexity is just how difficult it could be to communicate with others since we are all hopefully very fleshed out and complex characters everything we take in from others is shaped by our own lens unlike the simple Warriors we witness who all operate on the same few principles tor's children share many of his good traits but each has their own little flaws within that his daughter Yola will shovel snow off the roof but really wishes they had a slave who would do it for her and his son Torin will walk the long distance for water but along the way he'll be dreaming of combat it can take an entire lifetime to impart good ideals on someone and even then outside forces will always be doing the same imparting things on them so when taes is tracked down and killed in an underhanded ambush of course a six-year-old child like torid wasn't prepared for dealing with this witnessing firsthand that violence and dishonor won the day tor's words to his son that a true warrior needs no sword or that he has no enemies begin to ring Hollow that was an enemy who just killed his father right there his entire life was ripped away from him by a man who represents the exact opposite of his father and asolod and this leaves him with something that makes no sense so he makes it make sense in the way a warrior does Simplicity or violence or Revenge this is always a part of its danger a simple solution to pain is appealing whether or not the end will truly bring relief or not doesn't matter because in the moment its Simplicity assures us it will a life for life makes sense right A Simple Solution makes for a worse future but an easier present this leads toin down the darkest possible path in that moment where his life was robbed of complex he committed to never regaining it his entire being is devoted to killing oscal so much so that he works for the man he hates in exchange for constant duels which torphin always loses he grows his skill as a warrior more and more never thinking about something else never becoming more than his desire for Revenge his actions lead to the slaughter of villagers who were kind to him and he chokes down the emotions of such a thing with a glance of horror turning into a cold stare he forgets that to refocus Fus on the single action justifying and driving his life he pushes everything else out he keeps it simple so when asolod guarantees his own death by killing the King and canut is the one to return the favor torfin loses everything once again the Simplicity which drove his life guaranteed he would never become a person with options in life because options are of course more complex his reason to exist is dead and he has nothing left no no skills but fighting no family or friends and nowhere to go he only ever had violence and now he doesn't even have a reason for that so when he's sold into slavery he has no objection tasked with clearing out an entire Forest to build a farm given nothing but minimal scraps to eat he simply goes about his business without question all but waiting for the day when he dies naturally or someone else takes his life as he questions while being essentially tortured do we only live because we don't don't want to die does something good come from living he has no concept of what could be positive in life at all he simplified the world down so much that he truly believes not a single good thing has ever happened to him this is to The Rage of and in contrast to the man he works with inar a former farmer sold into slavery when vikings attacked his village he understands the process of growing crops to an extreme degree toring torphin throughout the entire process it's much more intricate than stealing your supplies from another Village as they have to clear the land remove the roots till the soil spread the seeds hope for good weather hope for lack disease and maybe months later they would be rewarded with some wheat to use for food and sell to pay to do it all again the next season with all the same worries rather than the fight scenes which exerted Torin before we now see a much more intense struggle even though the result is usually only a single step of a lengthy process of course the point point is clear nurturing life is harder than taking it complexity is more difficult so why would anyone choose it how can we decide to struggle against life itself every single day when violence is easier it's because an unchecked violence an unchecked Simplicity will consume us having taken an immense number of lives in this Quest who take a single one torphin becomes tortured by nightmares of a hellish Place full of eternally fighting soldiers and the zombie like remains of the people he killed these corpses either cry out in pain or destroy each other eternally while laughing never knowing arrest from the one single action which defined or ended their lives just barely hanging on from above is torphin seeing the world blow him which he fed so much this is a dream he has after being forced to fight once again seeing his return into violence as a failure to ever grow and this is exactly what it is much like him all these Warriors never learned how to do something else if an afterlife was real it wouldn't be paradise because it would be full of these kinds of people it could only ever be hell as torfin confronts these images of his past he's compelled by ascad to push forward to do what isn't available to these dead men to live a better life now go carry The Souls of those you killed with you I to become something Beyond a monster a true warrior he wakes up and affirms this desire he never wants to harm another human again but this isn't an easy task he's often backed into a corner where he has to choose between letting someone do an evil deed or fight to protect the innocent in his world is still one which operates on violence he secures a meeting with the King Cano but only by taking 100 blows from one of his soldiers without ever fighting in back violence is not gone whenever he chooses it is still a necessity it just means he's at a supreme disadvantage and it shows on his beaten and bloodied face every single day of his life from here on will be a fight and a damn hard one but it isn't a fight against others it is a fight against life itself a fight to survive and make the world a better place to convince people like the man who struck him 100 times that there is something mightier than combat that it is the harder more complex fight as his father tried to teach him long ago but it is the only one when secures a future outside of this hell he witnessed it is the only one which allows us to become anything of value and we Circle back to the beginning of the video because this is what we see in the very explanation of society itself that when enough people make this decision together we changed the form of violence to make the world a much more habitable and peaceful place the initial stages will always be the hardest but they are necessary and we see that both extremes are much the same the Vikings never questioned their totally violent World in a way that the citizens of civil never questioned their totally nonviolent one either even in the middle there isn't quite an ideal future but possibly just a fragile peace achieved only through the constant threat of violence where the marginalization of false Perfection isn't quite so simplified to just two camps but instead split across borders all across the world at no point in this video did we offer a solution because there is no solution and I would not be arrogant enough to claim I know it we are always locked into a struggle against the factors of our birth we are creatures too advanced for a world which never intended us to be our fight is against the very fact that nothing ordained our existence and so we are forever in a world which cannot achieve a Perfection we seek I'm fearful of what drastic changes would make a truly peaceful world in the same way I'm scared of one which makes no effort for peace but I'm happy that I have this fear I'm happy that we have the ability to be aware of these facts through that awareness we alter violence and we debate the future and we prevent the worst which itself is always changing in a forever fluid World it will be tiring and it will never end it is a fight against life itself but that is the only thing which guarantees we have a reason to push forward well the expression of it is certainly different than what this term usually denotes that itself is the necessity of violence as I'm getting much more used to saying recently I don't think of much of rambling at this video would do any better than the probably hourong it already is so I'll just let you know that there are important links in the pinned comment most notably my patreon for these lovely people above me help me keep make mad ramblings like this every single week but a big thank you to everyone of course for your time and I hope I'll see you again soon

Channel: ProfessorViral

Views: 446,215

Keywords: anime, manga, professorviral, analysis, discussion, explained, video essay, psycho pass, psycho-pass, akane, makishima, kogami, sibyl, jormungand, jormangand, koko, jonah, vinland saga, canute, thorfinn, viking anime

Id: xmIOroDFhsg

Length: 57min 41sec (3461 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 28 2023