I am not sure about something:

This is more or less the "Angel Life Cycle" in which Life culminates in Instrumentality:

Adam--->Angels--->Return to Adam--->Instrumentality

Adam creates its progeny, the Angels, which then go out in the world and grow and mature....apparently not eating or anything, the only energy they get derived from their S^2 Engines, all it takes is time.

After a given amount of time (15 years apparently) the Angels mature, then return to Adam.

The reunification of Adam with one of its mature progeny results in the Angel-dominated version of Instrumentality, elevating Angels to the next evolutionary level of existence, and killing all non-Angelic life that might be on the planet (i.e. humans).

I'm not sure why Adam needs a mature Angel to do this, but okay.

Still, the Angel-version of Instrumentality seems like it is "naturally occurring": how does the Lilim-version of Instrumentality occur, *naturally*?

That is to say, it seems that Seele tried to force the hand of evolution, rather than a natural process.


....then again, Angels can't really think that much, and it makes sense that their version of Instrumentality would be rather simple.

****Perhaps the progeny-Angels are supposed to compete for who gets to reunite with Adam, i.e. Zeruel will probably get to Adam and be the focal point of Instrumentality, while Matarael (ha!) is left in the dust.

Maybe the "Lilim-version" of Instrumentality is SUPPOSED to involve scientific manipulation, because Lilim are sentient? That is, if the whole point of Lilim is "they're not very powerful but their sentience allows for intelligence and scientific knowledge and [gendo]science is Man's strength[/gendo]...maybe the First Ancestral Race intended it that Lilim would only achieve Instrumentality by rediscovering Lilith and reuniting with her.

In which case.....why doesn't Seele simply reunite man with Lilith?


Interesting question.

My theory is that Seele's line of thinking was "Some is good, but All is better"

That is, why reunite with Lilith....when they could cause the forbidden fusion (forbidden even by the FAR) of Adam and Lilith (both fortunately on the same planet)....and thus fuse to become a god-like being rivaling the power of even the god-like First Ancestral Race?

While under NORMAL circumstances, Lilim-dominant Instrumentality, achieved simply by reuniting with Lilith, would elevate Lilim to the "next stage of evolution" but NOT "true godhood"

Meanwhile, the Angel-dominant version of Instrumentality would thus actually not elevate the Angels to "godhood" either, though it would kick them up to the next evolutionary step, and kill all humans in the process.


What do you think?

I think all of Angel-Instrumentality was an attempt to kill off all Lilith-derived life on Earth so that they could repopulate the world in peace. It might have been an emotional condition set by the catastrophic mess that 2I left behind. Instead of coming to a blank slate of a world, they came to a world already populated by their antithesis, and chose to return to their mother to fix things for them.

Seele probably overreached with the process of steering mankind's evolution, but in the absence of the FAR we'll never clearly know if evolving to a superorganism really was the evolutionary path they had in mind. The fact that Adam-derived life was roped in to complete the evolution of Lilith-derived life suggests that this shouldn't have happened or at least should have happened a few hundred million years later.

How do we even know that Angels returning to Adam would instigate Instrumentality? Instrumentality was created through the forbidden fusion of Adam and Lilith. Not Lilim and Lilith. So, maybe Adam-based life wished to return to Adam in order to resurrect their mother. It's never explicitly stated what WILL happen when Adam's progeny reach Adam. Perhaps Adam's progeny would use their S2 engine somehow to restore Adam from her embryonic state. Perhaps it would create another 2nd Impact.

So what happens in the natural "Angel Cycle"?

"An Angel returning to Adam would kill the human race"....do we know if this would elevate the Angels to the next evolutionary step?

And why did Seele think humanity was at an evolutionary dead end?

V wrote:....then again, Angels can't really think that much, and it makes sense that their version of Instrumentality would be rather simple.

You're going to contend a species that can turn itself into such things as the embodiment of an abstarct mathematical formula or a living super computer doesn't think?

@topic, what Shiro said.

Yay! I was right for once!

You're going to contend a species that can turn itself into such things as the embodiment of an abstarct mathematical formula or a living super computer doesn't think?

The Angels can "think" only on an animalistic level for the most part. A few like Leliel or Arael were sort of intelligent but Armisael was the only one who showed true "sentience". (Tabris doesn't count).

"Intelligence" and Science is Man's strength, just as incredible super-powers are the Angel's strength.

Animals can't create mathematical equations most Lilim can't comprehend. Just because Armi was the only one given a voice doesn't make her unique. And Kaworu does count cause it's just Adam's soul in a new shell. Take what you learn at the end and apply it to the begining.

Anonymous_Evafan wrote:Animals can't create mathematical equations most Lilim can't comprehend. Just because Armi was the only one given a voice doesn't make her unique. And Kaworu does count cause it's just Adam's soul in a new shell. Take what you learn at the end and apply it to the begining.

I put Seeds of Life like Adam/Tabris and Lilith in a different category.

Nonetheless, Angels don't benefit from scientific knowledge the way humans do.

So? It's something they have no need for but that doesn't make them stupid.

Anonymous_Evafan wrote:So? It's something they have no need for but that doesn't make them stupid.

What made them stupid was how they all lumbered (or floated) into Tokyo one right after the other, and got soundly beaten by the Evas, with no strategies for self-preservation whatsoever.

So plot device=stupidity? Anyways you're wrong. Ireul tried to blow-up NERV HQ, Sahaqiel tried an orbital bombardment, Bardiel hijacked an Eva and used it against them, etc.

typo

Don't forget the nanomachine tried to blow it up.

They really didn't just lumber in, each one had ways of subverting Nerv's pre-established security, but the Lilim's greatest strength is adaptation and science.

That was Ireul

Damn, I always forget his name. (I never liked that episode much anyway...:P)

It isn't that Angels aren't intelligent, they seem to lack imagination. (This answer, oddly enough, props up in one of Michael Chrichton's weaker works, Sphere). The Angels, for all their prowess, do not have the level of understanding or imagination that human beings have. Ireul was as intelligent as the Magi, and possibly close to sentience as well. But was Ireul (Or even Armisael) equipped with the same intelligence as humans have? It's very debatable.

If the Angels were truly as intelligent as us, if not more (Leliel, Armisael, Ireul and possibly Arael), then what keeps them from being Gods and not Angels? Something is screwy. What do we have that Angels lack? We know what we lack- an S2 engine and that screwy Particle-Wave Matter. What does an Angel lack?

What you have to keep in mind is they can't think the way we do. They have never been forced to adapt with the exception of Ireul. They can't use their powers to their full potential because they have a fundimentally different way of looking at the world. This doesn't make them stupid, it's just their nature. We think the way we do because of 50,000 years of evolution coping with our shortcumings as we go. They didn't have to do this so they think differently.

Yes, the Angels are "stupid". Well, some are sentient many only on an animalistic level.

Angels benefit from the Fruit of Life, thus with S^2 Engines they have unlimited power.

Humans don't, but they do benefit from the "Fruit of Knowledge" and intelligence. Humanity's strength which the Angels do not possess is intelligence and science.

Anonymous_Evafan wrote:What you have to keep in mind is they can't think the way we do. They have never been forced to adapt with the exception of Ireul. They can't use their powers to their full potential because they have a fundimentally different way of looking at the world. This doesn't make them stupid, it's just their nature. We think the way we do because of 50,000 years of evolution coping with our shortcumings as we go. They didn't have to do this so they think differently.

It's like AEF has some sort of information source about the Angels nobody else has access to. Have you secretly been living amongst the Angels, and studying them for the past few years? Have you been accepted into Angel society? If so, I want an autographed copy of Angels in the Mist, whenever you write it.

no need to gang up on AEF Brikhaus