[EVA] Concurrency tangent (WAS: Alternate Rei on DVD cover)

[V V]

"definitively establish the nature of the soul, in order to see that
powers beyond human exist in Evangelion, and that, even as this power
encounters and enters into conflict with humans who utilize the most
advanced science and technology, it is constantly described and
associated by those humans not only with the scientific language one
would expect, but via Judeo-Christian religious symbology
and terms which, as scientists and technicians, they have no particular
reason to be using...except, of course, that for some reason, they are
choosing to use them in this story."

The First Ancestral Race are the 2001 Monolith aliens, the Firstborn - they make the Seeds of Life, Adam and Lilith are Seeds of Life, Angels and Homo Sapiens are both "humans";

Yes, as scientists, they have no reason to be using Angel-names as codenames, "Adam" etc.....because Seele (and thus, their lackeys at Nerv) are presented as religious fanatics with no grounding in reality.

No, "the characters" do not interpret the story in Judeo-Christian terms:  at points, Shinji openly questions why the heck they call them "Angels" etc. and Misato and Asuka have no idea either.  The "normal" characters don't know why.

Keel, Gendo, and Ritsuko know why (rather, Gendo and Ritsuko know that Seele calls them that and are forced to themselves).....but they're not presented as rational people.

Seele seems to be a direct stand in for the Aum Shinrikyo cult which initiated the Tokyo Subway Sarin Gas attack of 1995....a cult which oddly mixed science and technology.

But "the religious overtones" have no more relevance than a UFO cult that says "Jesus is flying our spaceship!"

There simply was no overt religious meaning to the show....well, in the sense that one can read moral meanings into practically any narrative, there's always that.  But there was never specific meaning.  

It is irrelevant, one way or the other, if Gainax actually "believes" in religion personally:  they could still write things meant to have a religious slant...but the point is, they stated they *didn't*.  

"in order for Man to approach God, he must confront the Angels along the path"

No.  Gainax are a bunch of Arthur C. Clarke junkies, as well as Solaris/Stanislaw Lem junkies (old school  scifi)...and part of the "quest for identity" that Shinji and the rest have, of "what is it to be human?"....involves meeting the other being that are well, truly and utterly "alien"....i.e. when talking to Armisael, it has difficulty grasping the difference between emotional/physical pain, doesn't at first grasp the concept of "loneliness" etc.  Kaworu acts as a foil for humanity itself, commenting from a point of innocence on the insanity going on in Shinji's life.  They're "a mirror" - much like Solaris, their attempt at communication was to hold up a mirror to us, and we saw ourselves as we are, not as we want to be.  All the inner fears of the psyche....

The point of the show wasn't "a battle against Angels".  It never was.  The whole point, the twist, was that *Nerv IS the bad guy* and it isn't really a generic "shoot space monsters" show.

"in order for Man to approach God?"  you mean Instrumentality?  Instrumentality is presented as a *bad* thing in the story, a direct metaphor for when Shinji puts on his headphones or when Asuka mechanically plays video games:  "shutting out the world and living in a world of fantasy"

That's not God, that's hell.  Shinji rejects Instrumentality and chooses to live as a human being:  and of all the weak creatures in existence, so flawed...what being could also be so noble?  Such a piece of work is man....

The plot of this show wasn't "Fighting through metaphysical angelic beings to achieve Instrumentality, the path to union with God".....it was "we got tricked into fighting giant space aliens who were in a warped way a reflection of ourselves, tricked by our own parents who robbed us of a future they don't care about (like in Gundam), who want to just give up on the world...but we don't want to give up on all of that"

I mean,...it was either Sadamoto or Tsurumaki who said that the reason the Angels are so...abstract/ethereal, is because the problems facing Japan in the 1990's were so abstract:  as "Grapes of Wrath" said, during an economic collapse...who do you shoot?  The problem they were facing was a social problem that they couldn't fix with guns.  Thus, the Angels can't usually be fought in a traditional Giant Robot way.  They're abstractions to represent abstract problems, and also highlight how "humanity could have gone another way; what is it to be human?"


Mr. Horn, as Gwern here has also pointed out....well, you keep repeating "it means something to the characters or else they wouldn't call them that"

Which "characters"?  Not Shinji, Asuka, Misato...only Keel and his flunkies, Gendo and Ritsuko...who are not presented as, objectively, "sane" people.  

Seele is a religious cult that learned science and technology to further their apocalyptic goals, like Aum Shinrikyo.

The Kabbalah imagery was just to highlight "dude, they're a religious cult"....same as all of the Freemason and Illuminati imagery.  

-- V

--- On Fri, 2/5/10, Carl Horn <once at ix.netcom.com> wrote:

From: Carl Horn <once at ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: [EVA] Concurrency tangent (WAS: Alternate Rei on DVD cover)
To: "The english-language evangelion mailing list." <evangelion at eva.onegeek.org>
Date: Friday, February 5, 2010, 8:20 PM


On Feb 5, 2010, at 9:42 AM, Gwern Branwen wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 12:53 AM, Peter Svensson <sun1jack at hotmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>>  If we don't know immortal souls, we must proceed as if there
>>> are no immortal souls. Burden of proof, neh?
>> 
>> But given the existence of souls, and that immortality is an attribute that is by default associated with them, it is in fact you who have the burden of proof that Evangelion is a setting that has souls, but ones that don't survive the death of the body, which given that's rather the entire point of a soul...
> 
> We know 'souls' exist in NGE in the same way 'Angels' exist. We can no
> more infer that NGE 'souls' are immortal than we can infer that Angels
> are the good guys, acting under orders from an omnipotent bearded
> dude. Souls are traditionally considered to be unmixable and eternally
> separate, too. Christianity isn't the only religion name-checked in
> NGE; Buddhism's 108 sins and the shell corporations, anyone? One of
> the most significant doctrines early Buddhism used to differentiate
> itself from Jainism & Hinduism & the various philosophical darsanas
> was the doctrine of anatman - *no eternal soul. No need to point out
> which religion Japanese would be more familiar with and believe more.

It is true the number 108 entered Asian folklore through Buddhism; it is also true that in Eva, it is used not in reference to Buddhism, but to the many front companies of Marduk, which is mentioned several times in the Bible ("Marduk is broken in pieces"—Jeremiah 50:2). If I may say so, I don't believe it is necessary to establish that Angels are "the good guys," or that they they are acting "under orders from an omnipotent bearded dude," or to definitively establish the nature of the soul, in order to see that powers beyond human exist in Evangelion, and that, even as this power encounters and enters into conflict with humans who utilize the most advanced science and technology, it is constantly described and associated by those humans not only with the scientific language one would expect, but via Judeo-Christian religious symbology and terms which, as scientists and technicians, they have no particular reason to be using...except, of course, that
 for some reason, they are choosing to use them in this story.

I don't mean to caricature your arguments, but mention of "Angels are the good guys" and "omnipotent bearded dude" perhaps get at why you seem to be reluctant to credit these Judeo-Christian ideas as having any internal relevance to the story's characters (I make a continuing distinction between what the characters think and what Gainax thinks about these elements, just as Gainax presumably doesn't believe giant, manlike beings are real and run about and fight, yet it doesn't follow that any appearance of the same in their fictional story, Evangelion, should be dismissed as irrelevant). You are describing what might be called an everyday, mainstream view of Judeo-Christianity. I don't like to use philosophical terms ("Philosopher X said this in his self-consistent system >  your personal experience, knowledge, and the evidence of your senses") but I believe this is a straw man.

Evangelion's religious elements are not conventional (broadly speaking, the show suggests--and by "suggests," I mean, "throws it into the opening credits and onto the floor and up on the ceiling and into the sky"--a Kabbalistic framework, in which, by one interpretation, God, Man, and Angels are really different points on the same continuum, and in order for Man to approach God, he must confront the Angels along the path)--which does not make them unable to carry meaning for their characters. Even the most mainstream denomination only does what all religions do--manipulate words and symbols to present a certain mood or meaning. Furthermore, even mainstream denominations are not consistent in these systems they construct--that's why there are denominations, and people aren't simply generically "Christian," or "Jewish." If the history of religion shows anything, it is that one person's crazy belief is another person's devout belief, and that one person's
 heresy is another person's dogma. If one then throws up one's hands to say, "But then you can just spit out whatever gobbledygook you want to describe whatever you want, and as long as you seem to take it seriously, it counts as religious belief!" I would reply, "Well, yes...that's how religions work in the real world."

What trips us up is that, whereas very few people believe in 80-foot tall anthropoids, very many people believe in religion. It doesn't occur to us to equate lack of personal belief in giants to mean that anime shows can't employ giants fighting as a fictional element with internal relevance to the story, because they are seen as a properly fictional element anyway. But many, and perhaps a majority of people in the world, do not regard religion as a properly fictional element, but actually do believe in a religion. Therefore if people such as Gainax say they have no belief in such religion (as they have), it is more natural to assume it therefore can have no meaning as a fictional element. In other words, that if they do not actually believe in this religion, then it cannot be valid for their fiction to use elements of this religion mythologically. That, I think, does not follow.

--C.
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