orcot wrote:To be honnest the idea is less bad then you imagened, take for example the idea that in the future people could scan your brain and put a working model into a computer. first taught is yay inmortality, but let's say you are split in choosing a carreer or becoming a family man. Or how different your life would be between playing it safe and going out all wild. The end result being that you make multiple copies of yourself, that if their life turns out succesful you plan on recombining again into yourself into the future. Now imagen you choose a particulairy career and are offered to join up with a professor in that field, would you do it?

A similar story ones happens in warhammer where a strong warrior is allowed to soul bond with the emperor becoming one single being, however this is like a single photon being added to the sun. It would be suicide that said, look at pictures from when you where a child, what happenend to the kid in a way it died to make place for you, sure it is still in their somewhere but not completly and now you are more. To be alife means you change and inmortallity will change people a lot.
Onces we have inmortality the next question will probably be how much do we allow ourself to change. Because eventually we become something unrecognisable, would a cave men recognize us as human dressed in textiles on our computers fridges filled knowing what we know?

No offense, but I am having a hard time understanding your perception on LCL. Are you trying to say that because Evangelion is a timeline that repeats itself, when humanity accepts instrumentation, they experience or perceive infinite timelines of themselves simultaneously?

After hearing the song, “Imagine” by John Lennon, I feel more comfortable on the idea of instrumentality via LCL. In fact, I see the song as a metaphor for LCL.

Another concept that lingers is that of perception. Everyone’s perception is limited because their souls are housed within separate bodies and minds. The fact that instrumentality supposedly eliminates that factor is mind boggling.

There’s a quote by William Blake which I believe applies to this scenario. “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”

One of the ultimate messages of Evangelion is that, “You’re not alone”. And yet the characters say to Shinji that he is the only one in the world who can understand himself.

Some people say loneliness is one sided. But in reality it’s two sided. On one hand there are those who say they cannot live alone, only to end up overly reliant. On the other hand, you have people who say they can live entirely on their own, only to end up feeling emotionally empty.

Then again, does loneliness have to be a bad thing?

Loneliness is inevitable, it’s going to happen one day, although it doesn’t last forever.

Loneliness is something that few people in the world. Fewer can make peace with loneliness still. To befriend lonliness, and find inner balance, to know that you are your best company...

Perhaps everyone is alone, because nobody can be anybody else, nobody else can see through the eyes of anybody else but themselves. But they’re not alone in their experiences. As Billy Joel said, “They’re sharing a drink called loneliness, but it’s better than drinking alone”. If you really think about it, loneliness is like a balancing act. Without loneliness, how would we know when we were lonely?

There’s an old quote I like to live by. It’s my meaning of life. “I am a part of all that I have met”. - Alfred Lloyd Tennyson. To me, it means that while I am alone in this world, I am also not. I am the only person who can be me. Shinji is the only person who can be Shinji. Nobody can truly compare themselves to anyone when it comes to emotional rationale. I am unique, I am a bohemian, a black sheep of the family, born to stand out of the crowd just like everybody else. But to know that I am a part of something greater, bigger, to know that all the elements that created me have also created countless other things in life; it’s truly enlightening, the ultimate paradox, yin and yang.

It is acceptable to be alone, because you aren’t.

I thank you all who read this, and helped me out. Even though I sometimes keep falling into this hole, it’s getting easier for me to climb out of.

In all honesty tho, the US should’ve rated the movie NC-17. Believe it or not, End of Evangelion was at one time rated TV-14. Maybe they should put mental health warnings on some movies.

Not sure about NC-17, since those ratings are primarily more about the events in the film than any kind of overall tone(the opening sequence of Up is extraordinarily sad in a film that's very much PG and I have no doubt that there are dozens of other examples out there)-though, admittedly, tone and atmosphere should kind of be viewed too, except that they mostly aren't. TV-14 is a bit low, I'd say, what with the violence, sex(ual imagery) and general dark tone/atmosphere.

Worse still, there’s no epilepsy warning for the movie, and it continued to be, “Not Rated” in the U.S.

There’s a quote I like to turn to. “Everything will be alright in the end. If it’s not alright, it’s not the end.” Reflecting upon that, I can find comfort that Shinji and the rest of humanity have a future. The End of Evangelion is only the beginning. The fate of (its) destruction is the joy of (its) rebirth.

Maybe a rating of TV-MA would be appropriate? So anyway, how far have you gotten in the anime now?

Hopelessromantic made it clear in a recent new topic (that broke one of our main rules so badly it had to go into immediate psycho-hazard containment) that prattling on sanctimoniously about Evangelion while referring to its main theses as hearsay is much easier than actually just sitting his butt down and watching the damn thing. He's taking a forced vacation to sort this issue out. Or not. Up to him.

Meantime, this thread has served its function, so I'm giving it a merciful bullet in the brain box.