Well I just watched the end of Evangelion. My conclusion? Their premise blows. Despite writing and animating a full two hours of their ideas, the basis for these ideas was flawed. They basically outlined their ideas on life, the universe, and everything. But they made one simple mistake:
Their entire argument was basically that: One choses to percieve the universe and that becomes reality for that person. The way that one defines themselves is through the perception of others, and so without others, you lack existance. They go on to fill in some gaps. Things like why people are insecure and that the only solution is complete and total annailation, but we'll glaze over that for now. Here's the break in their ideas though:
If one truly defines their own universe based on their own wishes, then they run into the problem that to maintain existance, you require others. Because by yourself, you lack self-image and therefore cannot exist in a recognizable form. Therefore, to exist, you need at least two people. But if this happens, then there is a flaw in the premise: you are no longer defining your own reality if there are two people. You also run into confliction: what is this other person? Can they exist as people themselves? Or are they shells desinged to define yourself as you wish to be seen? Well, asuming that we want to keep the premise of "You define your own reality," the latter must be true. But then these are just facets of oneself, no better than if you were in a solitary reality. This would also imply, that current existance is all facets of the same person. And here's where we run into trouble: Does this imply that this is our own universe? Or are we facets of an original, and the original has just spawned all possible facets of his personality in every degree and combination to facilitate existance? If the latter was true, then this explains the "emptiness" that all humans feel and is another basis for their conclusions:
They said towards the beginning of their philisophical ramble that we are part of an "instrumentality" and that the only way to complete this was to have the fundemental structure of our universe completely and utterly annahilated, and have everything return to a universal "oness." But there's a flaw here as well: This implies that the original flaw is true! We are no longer individuals capable of defining our own existance, but facets of one who created the existance. There was an attempt to come up with a viable phiosophy, and much to my dismay for many people it was a very good philosophy, but the flaw still remains: To create your own existance, one must be alone. But to be alone is to not exist, so how can one create their own universe without others?
Goddamnit. Why couldn't they have just thought up a good ending and fucking explained Lillith and Lillim?! Their philosphy was shitty, and their psychoanalysis was interesting at the beginning, but I'm not stupid, and I didn't need to have you spell it out for me for four episodes. I wanted you to realize that you created a complex bunch of characters who needed conclusion. They didn't need a bunch of questions thrown at them until they broke down crying in non-existance. GAH! GAAAAAAH!
I hate you Brian (and if you don't remember why: I hate you more)
Posted by Kickmyassman at December 19, 2004 04:35 AM