Instrumentality, making gods, and returning from the LCL sea

[EvaBrothers]

. . . but there is a self.

Yep! Even though it might be a little more "vague" than it used to be. Left my two cents on the topic a few replies ago.

[NemZ]

. . . but there is a self. Once the anti-ATF dropped people were individuals again.

The AATF reduced them to this state, yes, but what makes you think it was needed to maintain people this way or that dropping it (assuming it was even still up at that point, which isn't at all certain) would undo what was done? You can't unbreak an egg. What makes you think all that raw blended up soul-stuff would be able to put itself back together correctly, or that anyone who theoretically climbs out of the sea has either the same body or the same soul that a former person did? And if not, in what way are they the same person? How do you know that the memories you remember are actually yours after such an experience?

Besides, you still can't have self awareness without a self that is aware and vice-versa, so neither can create the other. These statements are essentially identical, implicitly implying the other. Certainly it can't be said that there is a person capable of making a choice to return to life without self awareness though, and if self-awareness causes re-embodiment then it can't be a choice, it's simply a fact.

My point is for any of this to make sense pretty much requires outside interference from Rei. Or possibly Yui I suppose, though by the time Asuka shows up she already be long gone.

[Bagheera]

The AATF reduced them to this state, yes, but what makes you think it was needed to maintain people this way or that dropping it (assuming it was even still up at that point, which isn't at all certain) would undo what was done?

When Rei pulled Shinji out of Instrumentality she asked him if it was alright to let ATFs come back. This suggests she was actively suppressing them at that time. Once the ATFs are brought back the people governed by them would necessarily have to return as well.

You can't unbreak an egg. What makes you think all that raw blended up soul-stuff would be able to put itself back together correctly, or that anyone who theoretically climbs out of the sea has either the same body or the same soul that a former person did?

Because Lilith sorted them out when she let the ATFs come back. That's kinda her job.

Besides, you still can't have self awareness without a self that is aware and vice-versa, so neither can create the other.

All you need is a self; as long as an individual being is there (and the fact that ATFs exist again means that is necessarily so) the act of coming back is akin to waking up.

These statements are essentially identical, implicitly implying the other. Certainly it can't be said that there is a person capable of making a choice to return to life without self awareness though, and if self-awareness causes re-embodiment then it can't be a choice, it's simply a fact.

That is correct. Rei never said anything about people choosing to come back, simply that they had the ability to and would if they could imagine themselves in their heart. People will come back for the same reason the trees we see at the end came back -- not by choice, but by necessity.

My point is for any of this to make sense pretty much requires outside interference from Rei. Or possibly Yui I suppose, though by the time Asuka shows up she already be long gone.

Rei's interference is what made it possible to begin with, but she was pretty explicit about how the process worked once she was done with it. Arguing with the text at that point seems kinda pointless to me.

[Chuckman]

Point of order. The trees never went anywhere. The eighteenth angel is humanity, not terrestrial life collectively. Every squirrel on Earth did not experience a profound existential crisis.

Lilith is, and I am loathe to describe her so crudely, a terraforming machine. Part of the terraforming process is creating an ecosystem to support the eighteenth angel/humanity. This means reordering the environment to convert energy from the sun into chemical energy to fuel life via the ecosystem, which was established the old fashioned way. Otherwise the series makes no sense; if creationism were literally true in the Evaverse it would be mentioned somewhere.

If everything has a soul, then asking Shinji what to do is monumentally unfair. Rei didn't ask the dolphins what they wanted.

Adamic life doesn't need this, as those life forms have a built-in battery.

[Bagheera]

Point of order. The trees never went anywhere. The eighteenth angel is humanity, not terrestrial life collectively. Every squirrel on Earth did not experience a profound existential crisis.

Nope. It all came from the same source. The 18th Angel is everything Lilith created, trees and squirrels included. Those things may or may not have souls, but they most assuredly were tanged along with everything else.

Lilith is, and I am loathe to describe her so crudely, a terraforming machine. Part of the terraforming process is creating an ecosystem to support the eighteenth angel/humanity. This means reordering the environment to convert energy from the sun into chemical energy to fuel life via the ecosystem, which was established the old fashioned way. Otherwise the series makes no sense; if creationism were literally true in the Evaverse it would be mentioned somewhere.

Of course, but that meant creating the conditions necessary for life, not creating trees and such whole cloth. She spewed LCL in the form of amino acids into the primordial soup and let things find their own way from there. The only point that's unclear is when and how she started sticking souls into the beings that thus evolved, or how that would even work; I mean, it's not clear how or if something can maintain its ATF without a soul, and if souls are necessary for ATFs that would mean she was sticking human souls into bacteria. Which is . . . odd. But who knows, maybe souls are divisible? Iruel and Israfel certainly make a compelling argument in that regard.

If everything has a soul, then asking Shinji what to do is monumentally unfair. Rei didn't ask the dolphins what they wanted.

It's no more unfair to them than it is to the other three billion Lilin souls she sucked up. She pretty much entered bitch mode when she opted to tang the world because a broken little kid told her to.

Adamic life doesn't need this, as those life forms have a built-in battery.

Doesn't need what?

[NemZ]

When Rei pulled Shinji out of Instrumentality she asked him if it was alright to let ATFs come back. This suggests she was actively suppressing them at that time. Once the ATFs are brought back the people governed by them would necessarily have to return as well.

Not exactly. My copy of the script has it as:
"If you wish once more for the existence of others, the barriers of the heart will separate everyone once more... And the fear of other people will begin again."

There's nothing there about allowing them to come back that implies she's actively holding them together. She's just saying that if individuals exist people will be individuals again, along with all that entails.

There's also nothing there about people necessarily coming back as themselves... just people in general. Rei seems more concerned with the big picture of the species than with individuals in all cases but his, so it wouldn't especially surprise me if she didn't bother making sure everyone was back in more or less the same shape. Rei was kinda dead at the time this happened anyway, sort of, so who knows if she'd even be capable of that? As far as I can tell what actually separates all the soul stuff is just the pressure of Yui's ATF scattering the whole mess. I'm not convinced Yui would care about individuals other than Shinji either.

I don't know where I'm going with this. Just thinking 'aloud' at this point.

[Bagheera]

Not exactly. My copy of the script has it as:
"If you wish once more for the existence of others, the barriers of the heart will separate everyone once more... And the fear of other people will begin again."

Right. The "barriers of the heart" are ATFs by definition. What she's saying here amounts to "I'll separate everyone back into individuals if you like." She's already done that with Shinji by this point, so we know she can do it. And she has to do it, because ATFs can't exist without individual beings to produce them.

So what we're looking at is:

1. She separates everyone into individual entities (which might be complex, or might be as simple as dropping the anti-ATF so the individual memories can self-organize; the anti-ATF was probably still active at that point since otherwise the new being would have its own ATF, which doesn't seem to be the case. She probably keeps it up while she's futzing with stuff, and drops it when she's ready for things to take off on their own).
2. These individuals now have ATFs.
3. Individuals with a strong sense of self use their ATFs to shape their bodies into familiar forms.
4. You may now proceed with strangulations.

There's also nothing there about people necessarily coming back as themselves... just people in general.

I think the appearances of Asuka and Shinji himself pretty thoroughly put the kibosh on that idea.

[Chuckman]

Nope. It all came from the same source. The 18th Angel is everything Lilith created, trees and squirrels included. Those things may or may not have souls, but they most assuredly were tanged along with everything else.

I didn't say they don't come from the same source, only that everything that is not human is simply part of a lengthy process to create and support the eighteenth angel. Is dirt part of the eighteenth, too? It's organic.

We never see a tree spontaneously burst into orange goop, so it's entirely up to the viewer to decide. Frankly, I see assuming that trees tanged and then came back is the result of overthinking/pushing the scifi elements of the show where they don't belong. I wouldn't raise a stink about it, but you incorporated it into an argument about people reconstituting themselves post-3I.

Getting to scientific about people spontaneously popping into a uniform translucent liquid is silly anyway. People actually liquefy when their biological processes stop and the resulting fluid is... not orange and clear, to say the least.

There's something more subtle going on with Lilithic/terrestrial life than at field = physical form. The process of having one's soul yanked out and the body collapsing into liquid form is clearly different than dying and the body decomposing from bacterial activity and natural breakdown.

AT Fields are pretty clearly related to a soul/consciousness, so I'm going to continue assuming that all the trees in Tokyo-3 are held together by the cellulose in their trunks, not their True Will.

NemZ's interpretation of Rei's words is a shoehorned theory clearly designed to prop up EoE as a bad end compared to the supposed singularity of EoTV, but I'm starting to like it anyway.

The idea that Lilith decided to be a jackass genie and drop Shinji and Asuka on the beach to wait for evolution to catch up to them and spit out new people is hilarious. When she said she'd restore the barriers between hearts and the fear of other people she didn't mention the process would take three billion years.

That's what happens when you don't Think Fifth Dimensionally.™

Edit: Maybe the plants have one soul, like, collectively, per species. That's why Shinji and Asuka are alone on the beach. Everyone else is hanging out with the Oversoul of Marijuana getting cosmically baked in six dimensions while they Play House: The Neighbors Keep Calling the Cops edition.

Edit 2: I tanged all human life, because I got high

[Mr. Tines]

There's also nothing there about people necessarily coming back as themselves... just people in general.

In other words, more like standard model reincarnation than resurrection. ("It's a uterus, not a clown car!")

[NemZ]

I don't know... I'm starting to like the idea of people showing up with their memories a mishmash of different people's lives and having no fucking idea who they are or what to do with themselves now. Humanity is back, but there are consequences to global brain orgies. All manner of chaos could come from these patchwork people trying to kickstart a broken world.

This would presumably include Ms. Not-Quite-Asuka, btw.

[Bagheera]

Chuck: That's biology fail. All of Earth's life comes from the same origin, and they're all (mostly) living organisms. The question at that point is what gets souls and what doesn't, and given the precedent of Gaghiel, Iruel, and Bardiel I'm hard-pressed to think that anything living today would be excluded. Since souls are the source of the ATF, and the ATF is what gives an organism its shape, it's tough to see how anything would survive exposure to an anti-ATF for any length of time.

IOW plants and squirrels have ATFs because they're part of the group that gets them, and there's no particular reason for them to be excluded.

NemZ: Nothing in the story particularly suggests that interpretation, though. It doesn't even really suggest things were mish-mashed together to begin with; you're acting like the souls are play dough, when they could just as easily be lego bricks. Apply anti-ATF, bricks come together. Drop anti-ATF, bricks fall apart, unchanged. Given the fact that Shinji doesn't appear to have been changed by the process, and that we know Karoru remained Kaworu even after he (literally) became one with Rei, it's hard to see the mish-mash interpretation as the intent of the film.

[NemZ]

Since when have I ever cared about Anno's intent?

[Chuckman]

Chuck: That's biology fail. All of Earth's life comes from the same origin, and they're all (mostly) living organisms. The question at that point is what gets souls and what doesn't, and given the precedent of Gaghiel, Iruel, and Bardiel I'm hard-pressed to think that anything living today would be excluded. Since souls are the source of the ATF, and the ATF is what gives an organism its shape, it's tough to see how anything would survive exposure to an anti-ATF for any length of time.

Why do you keep telling me I said the opposite of what I said?

I already said I'm not disputing that all life shares a common origin. I said those exact words in my last post.

Also, you're using the gigantic seed-spawns of Adam to argue what Lilith gave souls.

We have crossed the line here from fanwankery into advanced wankery and dragons.

[Sorrow]

Since when have I ever cared about Anno's intent?

Surely since when you ever tried to make sense of the series, in any way?

I would also be of the opinion that all life on Earth, except of course the Angels, are part of the Lilin. I thought it was implied somewhere that all non-Adam life belonged to Lilith. Though I may be wrong.

It does seem conceivable, however, that separate life already existed on Earth, and other planets, in some way--after all, the first ancestral race existed without seeds--and Lilith based life co-existed with the kind of life that already inhabited Earth and assumed, until Seele discovered the truth, that humans belong to the same kind of life as the animals, plants and bacteria.

Back to what NemZ was saying: Why would it sit well with you that, despite Asuka and Shinji looking and acting quite in tune with their previous selves, they would actually be abstract versions, or amalgamations, and therefore not really Asuka and Shinji?

It seems to serve no purpose in delivering a point or is ever implied. Though I would agree in real life, where story driven purposes don't exist, such a thing could occur if instrumentality were possible.

[SoryuUberAlles]

Chuck: That's biology fail. All of Earth's life comes from the same origin, and they're all (mostly) living organisms.

You seem to be describing ATFs as the persistent force are what sustains physical stability in all living creatures. I don't know. The 'humanity is the eighteenth angel' - 'fruit of knowledge makes science the power of man' - 'ATF's are sould boundaries of existential loneliness' makes the relevent quality of life seem more exclusive. It could be that non-human live evolved independently from SoL stuff on the show.

NemZ: Nothing in the story particularly suggests that interpretation, though.

Well, there is the 'this is the me in your mind' stuff and the metaphor of people dissolving into a telepathic sea of LCL.

Maybe that's what kept the "Final Girl is Misa-Asu-Rei" theory alive.

[Bagheera]

Why do you keep telling me I said the opposite of what I said?

Where did I claim you said anything?

You're ignoring the main point here: there is no reason to assume any particular group of life forms on this planet don't abide by the same rules as the others. There is no reason to assume any life forms on this planet do not have souls, or do not project ATFs. Trees did not evolve to support the Lilim, because they are human beings as well. Angels are human. Lilin are human. The FAR were human. Everything that comes from the Seeds and uses FAR souls is human, even if they're microbes like Iruel or animals like Gaghiel Why would trees be any different?

On a related note, since we know that merely dying does not cause living things to be tanged we have to assume the anti-ATF actively caused this to happen. Merely suppressing the ATF wouldn't do it, since that happens when something dies anyway (no soul, no ATF). Why would that effect not affect trees just like anything else?

Your argument causes far more problems than it resolves, and your incredulity does nothing to change that.

[Chuckman]

The reason it would be different is because this is a work of fiction and the Instrumentality of Chipmunks is stupid.

Seriously, you don't need to explain your position again. I read it. I did not misread it, I simply disagree with it. You're filling in gaps by assuming that Ritsuko's pronouncement that the angels are human implies that everything that comes out of a seed is also human. I get that.

Your interpretation is not supported so much as not contradicted by the text. The same is also true of mine: Nothing in the show says that all terrestrial life is "human" in any meaningful sense, only that the angels are different from humanity yet represent what humans could be, being identical metaphysically but not physically, much like the host becomes the flesh of Christ in substance but not in accidence and remains a cookie.

You are essentially arguing that 1. Humans have souls and AT fields. 2. Humans are living things. 3. Trees are living things. 4. Trees have souls.

There is no proof.

I will admit that your interpretation is plausible. I just think it's silly and mine is actually a wee bit more science fictiony. Mine is also equally plausible because the soul-ness or metaphysics of plant life and lower order creatures is never once discussed in the show.

Gaghiel is not an animal, Gaghiel is a fish-like alien with an infinite energy generator lodged in its body. The angels don't even meet all the common criteria to be considered alive, they're more like mobile structures, some of which happen to resemble living things. They are a completely different thing and the fact that Adam did not create an artificial ecosystem to support them does not undermine my point in anyway because they don't need an ecosystem, they derive all their energy internally.

Your argument causes far more problems than it resolves, and your incredulity does nothing to change that.

You like to bust out this stock argument every time you argue with me about anything, but my arguments only "cause problems" if you take your interpretation prima facie. Mine is internally consistent, just different from yours. The text supports both, unless you can show me the scene in EoE where a tree sees its lost love and explodes into goo. Or the bit in the show where Kaworu walks up to a birch tree and be like "You, whatup Lilin"? Lilin refers to people.

By the way, what problems it I'm causing, again? Tell me a problem that my argument causes. Why does Lilith gradually creating a support system for her angel-spawn over time, using available materials and energy from the environment to compensate for the lack of a Fruit of Life, contradict or cause a problem or undermine anything? Nobody talks about tree souls in the show!

You don't want to accept it? Fine, I will admit that the text does not explicitly state that all life is not equal to lilin, but you're the one saying trees are people too, dude.

Oh, and if you're satirizing all this, you got me. I fell for it.

This is actually pretty funny, though, I have to admit.

@SoryuUberAlles

Just to be clear, I'm not arguing that other life evolved independently. I'm arguing that Lilith didn't dispense her souls to any species but humanity. All other life is essentially a mechanical process. LCL is a self-initiating terraforming tech that molds the planet being seeded into a self-sustaining ecosystem for the ensouled Lilin to inhabit.

[SoryuUberAlles]

I'm arguing that Lilith didn't dispense her souls to any species but humanity. All other life is essentially a mechanical process.

That'd be more life how it works in the Bible.

And the Lord God said, "Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever, we must send him forth." Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

Definitely sci-fi's favorite Bible quote.

[Bagheera]

You like to bust out this stock argument every time you argue with me about anything, but my arguments only "cause problems" if you take your interpretation prima facie. Mine is internally consistent, just different from yours.

How is it internally consistent? You're arguing that trees and squirrels, despite being derived from Lilith, for some reason do not have souls or ATFs because . . . it's stupid? How is that internally consistent? If Adam would let Iruel have a soul why wouldn't Lilith do the same for bacteria? Your argument amounts to "I don't like this and I think it's stupid, so no", but that's not a valid argument.

By the way, what problems it I'm causing, again? Tell me a problem that my argument causes. Why does Lilith gradually creating a support system for her angel-spawn over time, using available materials and energy from the environment to compensate for the lack of a Fruit of Life, contradict or cause a problem or undermine anything? Nobody talks about tree souls in the show!

Your argument creates problems because it's clear that Lilin-shaped humans are not privileged in the show. Gaghiel and Iruel are as valid as Lilin, so it should follow that treas are as well. You're offering no rationale to your position beyond "I think this is stupid, so duh!" But the precedent in the show says it's not stupid, so problems.

But more importantly, trees got tanged and came back, so coming back ain't rocket science, so Asuka came back because she did, not because she had iron will or anything, and thus topic!

[Tumbling Down]

I imagine Instrumentality would be pleasant but ultimately unfulfilling. That's all my imagination can muster.