Final Fantasy and Philosophy: The Ultimate Walkthrough (5 page)

Confused by Culture and Blinded by Our Dispositions

When we view art from other cultures or time periods, we need to keep in mind for whom the art was created and when. We can’t adopt a perspective antithetical to the audience that the art was intended for. Take the first
Final Fantasy
, for instance. By today’s standards,
Final Fantasy I
looks fairly dated, its story is very linear, and it is less emotionally involving than more recent installments in the series. But judging
Final Fantasy I
by today’s standards would be very unfair because the game was produced without the technological advances we have now for an audience that was substantially younger demographically, in a medium (video games) that was still in its infancy.

The Malboro’s curse of blindness still afflicts us, even with the eye drops of reason. Although reason can deal with many types of biases, some level of bias is inescapable simply because we are human. To deal with our more fundamental biases, such as how we were raised or our idiosyncratic dispositions, we can only recognize that we have them and take them into account whenever possible. Hume believed that these biases are innocent and natural because they don’t completely impede the ability to judge art and there is no way to fully eliminate them. By making sure that our assessment of art is about the art itself and not about what our mood happened to be or what the weather was like, we can avoid most other bias that would undermine our ability to judge.

In this way we walk a fine line between our biases and the feelings that arise from the experience of art. We’ll never be quite sure exactly whether the feelings arose because we witnessed something in the art or because we harbor some bias or predisposition to react in a particular manner. One thing we can do to sort out these feelings is to pay attention to whether we have some reason to explain a feeling—a reason that is founded in the work. If we don’t have a reason founded in the work (or at least more than tangentially related to it), then the feeling may have simply arisen from some bias that we have. As Hume made clear, a focus on reasons helps us to stay vigilant against our errant emotions.

Our assessments should be focused on what makes the art good or bad and should not involve incidental, ancillary, or accidental elements. These elements need to be ruled out and accounted for in our final judgment. This is not to say, however, that we should approach art with a cold and calculating detachment. Doing so would be a failure to truly appreciate the art, because we would be preventing ourselves from feeling the emotions that the artist was expressing or that we get as a result of experiencing the art. That is, we should not be playing video games like
Final Fantasy
as merely the progression of some pixels on a screen; we should experience the game, and this includes relating to the characters and empathizing with their situation.

Hume made two other important points about human dispositions. The first is about the relationship between art and morality. According to Hume, if a work does not appropriately deal with an immoral act, then it is permissible for a judge to dismiss it out of hand. Consider, for instance, if Cecil, the hero of
Final Fantasy IV
, ended the world instead of saving it or committed gratuitously evil acts along the way. Events like these in a story would be enough to dismiss the game completely and nullify its artistic value. Although we wouldn’t endorse Cecil’s actions, it would be rash to immediately dismiss
Final Fantasy IV
solely on that basis. The rest of the game is otherwise excellent and deserves a fair assessment, despite the moral failings of our imaginary Cecil. Thus, Hume may have been a bit too quick on this point.

The second point about human dispositions that Hume addressed concerns religion. We should not judge a work based on its religious point of view. This follows Hume’s discussion of the importance of adopting the perspective of the audience for which the artwork is intended. For instance, if Chris the Christian plays any
Final Fantasy
game and objects to it because its characters are not Christian and the game contains a world where multiple gods exist, then Chris has violated one of the rules of a good judge. He is not adopting an unbiased perspective from which to judge the game. There is a caveat, however. If the use of religion in the work promotes something immoral, then we can dismiss the work summarily.

Is Hume’s Airship Flying in Circles?

Unfortunately, there are two problems with Hume’s theory that we can’t so easily forgive. Both deal with the confusion about how works that have stood the test of time, such as masterpieces, are related to good judges. The first problem is a worry about which of these is the real standard: masterpieces or good judges? The second problem is one of circularity: if good judges train with masterpieces to become good judges, and what counts as a masterpiece is determined by good judges, then there’s a vicious circularity in Hume’s theory. His airship isn’t taking us anywhere. The relationship between good judges and masterpieces is unclear, but it’s not fatal to Hume’s theory.

To answer the first problem, it seems fairly clear that Hume meant for good judges to be the standard of taste, even while he assigned an important role to masterpieces. Hume focused on good judges and said that the joint verdict of critics is the standard of taste.
⁶
Also, masterpieces, by themselves, can’t inform us on how to evaluate art, because simply comparing a work to a masterpiece would only give us the ability to see how alike the two pieces are. But we don’t want new works to just be like masterpieces. New artworks should be original and special in their own right. It’s premature to say that
Final Fantasy VII
is a masterpiece, but as far as video games go, it’s pretty close. Yet we don’t want games to simply mimic what
Final Fantasy VII
did. We want them to develop new techniques, higher graphical detail, and new, original stories.

Good judges, then, gain their experience by examining masterpieces and working to understand the reasons why they’ve stood the test of time. After refining their sensibilities on these masterpieces, they can then cast their net wider and start to evaluate art in general. By putting good judges and masterpieces in the right relationship, we have also found a solution to the problem of circularity. Because good judges aren’t dependent on masterpieces to become good judges, but instead on an understanding of why masterpieces have been given their stature, there is no longer a vicious circularity. With this solution, we’ve put Hume’s airship back on course.
⁷

Taking Care of Bad Breath

In order to be good judges, we need “strong sense, united to a delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice.” This “alone entitle[s] critics to this valuable character; and the joint verdict of such, wherever they are to be found, is the true standard of taste and beauty.”
⁸
Whether we ultimately agree with Hume’s judges being the standard of taste, his prescription for being a good judge of art is good, no matter which theory you deem best.

It’s unfortunate that the artistic value of
Final Fantasy
games (and video games in general) is largely ignored. Luckily, more and more people are seeing games as a meaningful pastime. If you have an interest in being a good judge of video games, every game you play can help you along that path. It takes careful analysis of each game you play, research of critical reviews of the game, and patient reflection. But that work is very rewarding—more rewarding, even, than defeating the Malboro! Not only do you get the joy of playing great games like the
Final Fantasy
series, but you also get the added benefit of refining your tastes, sharpening your thinking, and increasing your cultural awareness. And because artistic elements are often not medium-specific, you might find yourself using your newfound skills in judging movies, TV shows, books, and music. In no time at all, you’ll clear up that Bad Breath!

NOTES

1
David Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste,” in Stephen David Ross, ed.,
Art and Its Significance: An Anthology of Aesthetic Experience
(Albany: SUNY, 1994), p. 87.

2
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the ultimate nature of reality. In this case, it is the ultimate nature of reality, according to Hume, that beauty is a perception and not a quality of objects in and of themselves.

3
Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste,” p. 83.

4
Ibid., 82.

5
Ibid., 85.

6
Ibid., 87.

7
For a more detailed discussion of the arguments in this section, see Jerrold Levinson, “Hume’s Standard of Taste: The Real Problem,” in
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
60, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 227-238.

8
Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste,” p. 87.

PART TWO

PLAYING THE GAME-BUT WHAT IF IT’S NOT A GAME?

4

THE LIFESTREAM, MAKO, AND GAIA

Jay Foster

Tapping the Lifestream

The specter of ecological apocalypse is nothing new to science fiction and fantasy. The original
Mad Max
(1979) portrayed an impoverished future brought to the brink of lawlessness by resource shortages, mainly oil. Likewise,
Blade Runner
(1982) envisioned a dismal and polluted future for the Earth after a runaway human population has rapaciously consumed all available natural resources. But the ecological apocalypse leitmotif is given a distinct, if not unique, twist in
Final Fantasy VII
(1997). In this installment of
Final Fantasy,
we are introduced to the Lifestream, a green-white fluid that is the source of all planetary life. When a person is born, energy is taken from the Lifestream, and when he or she dies, the Lifestream is replenished with the person’s energy in the form of his or her knowledge and memories. The Lifestream, however, can also be artificially extracted and used, with potentially devastating consequences.

The same energy that makes the cycle of life and death is also tapped for magical and mundane power. Mako, energy extracted from the Lifestream, can be crystallized into Materia. And Materia, in turn, is the source of all magical power. It allows characters to cast spells; it gives weapons and armor special properties, and it can be used to summon creatures to help in battle. While Mako can be extracted in small quantities by natural processes, it can also be artificially extracted from the planet by Mako reactors. Artificially extracted Mako powers the mundane technologies, from cell phones to lights, which make life comfortable for the planet’s human inhabitants. Everyday technological comforts come at a high environmental cost, however. The artificial extraction of energy from the Lifestream destroys the environment around the Mako reactor. Furthermore, the artificially extracted Mako never returns to the Lifestream—when it is used, it is completely consumed—and so the Lifestream is gradually depleted. And as the Lifestream is depleted, so is the capacity of the planet to support life.

Mako in the world of
Final Fantasy
bears more than a passing resemblance to fossil fuels in the real world, such as crude oil and coal. Mako is extracted from under the crust of the planet, whereas fossil fuels are mined or pumped from the ground. Mako is formed from the life of the planet, while fossil fuels have been formed from the preserved remains of plants that lived millions of years ago. Mako is the main source of energy to power the technology of the
Final Fantasy
world, whereas fossil fuels, directly or indirectly, power much (but not all) of our modern technological society. The extraction of Mako has serious environmental consequences: the sites of Mako extraction wither and die, and the use of Mako depletes the Lifestream. Similarly, the use of fossil fuels has significant environmental consequences: drilling for oil and mining coal often harms local ecologies, while burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide and other gases that contribute to global climate change. Indeed, much as in our world, in the world of
Final Fantasy
Mako reactors are run by a dark and powerful corporation (the Shinra Electric Power Company) that is the target of ecoterrorists (AVALANCHE).

Mako and fossil fuels have some common features, but they are clearly not the same thing. In its Materia form, Mako is used for spell casting and to add magical properties to weapons and armor. Fossil fuels can do neither of these things, of course. Nevertheless, the obvious conceptual similarities between Mako and fossil fuels invites us to think about the ecological concepts that inform the world of
Final Fantasy
in an effort to, perhaps, better understand the ecological concepts we use in the real world.

So, what can the ecological concepts used in
Final Fantasy
show us about the ecological concepts we use in the day-to-day world? To tackle this question, we need to do the philosophical work of
conceptual analysis.
Philosophers have different techniques for analyzing concepts, but, for the most part, the work involves taking a concept and either discovering the concepts that make it up or attempting to clarify the concept by comparing it with other concepts.

The following is a short exercise in conceptual analysis. We will attempt to clarify the concept of “the Lifestream,” which appears in the game
Final Fantasy VII
but is more prominent in the
Final Fantasy
movies
The Spirits Within
(2001) and
Advent Children
(2005). As we have seen, in
Final Fantasy VII,
the Lifestream or spirit energy is the source of all planetary life and may be refined into Mako energy. In the movies, the Lifestream concept is more obscure. Rather than Mako, there is Gaia, “the spirit of the planet.” Gaia produces the eight spirits that together make an energy wave or beam that is able to transform and repel the Phantom’s alien (and presumably incompatible) life spirit. If the concept of Gaia at work in the
Final Fantasy
movies seems familiar, that is because the concept is loosely derived from a concept at work in modern ecological science. In ecology, “the Gaia hypothesis” refers to a conjecture proposed by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis that suggests that the Earth’s biosphere is a self-regulating system that maintains conditions favorable to life. So we’ll be asking to what extent the concept of Gaia proposed by Lovelock and Margulis is like the concept proposed in
Final Fantasy.
By examining the conception of Gaia from
Final Fantasy
, we can actually sharpen and clarify our understanding of the concept of Gaia at work in the biological and ecological sciences.

AVALANCHE vs. Shinra

In the opening of the movie
Advent’s Children
, Marlene Wallace (the daughter of AVALANCHE ecoterrorist Barret Wallace) tells us, “The Lifestream. That’s what we call the river of life that circles our planet giving life to the world and everything in it. The Shinra Electric Power Company discovered a way to use the Lifestream as an energy source. Because of Shinra’s energy, we were able to live very comfortable lives. Wasn’t that because we were taking away from the planet’s life? A lot of people thought so.”

We might understand what Marlene means by the Lifestream, literally or figuratively. If Marlene is being literal, she is giving a factual report about the actual properties and features of the Lifestream. If she is being figurative, then she is giving a merely metaphorical report—her description will be somewhat like the Lifestream but not exactly like it. The distinction between the literal and the metaphorical matters here because each leads to a very different conception of the Lifestream based on what Marlene is telling us.

If Marlene is simply giving a factual report, then the Lifestream is a very strange thing indeed. The Lifestream is an actual river that circles the planet, giving life to everything, and the planet itself is a living thing that is being killed because the Lifestream is being extracted. It is important to see that if Marlene’s description is literal, then the planet, or the world, is a living thing, and presumably by this she means the planet is alive as you are alive or a frog is alive. By offering this description, Marlene would be proposing a conception of the Lifestream that is either
holist
or
organicist.

Holism
is the position that wholes are independent of, or above and beyond, the parts that make them up. If Marlene is giving a holist description of the Lifestream, then she is trying to say that the Lifestream is something more than the rocks, the trees, the critters, the planet, and the energy that make it up.
Organicism
is a position akin to, but subtly and importantly different from, holism. Organicism is the claim that parts cannot exist independently of a whole, just as a heart or a kidney cannot exist as a functioning organ without being part of a larger organism. If this is what Marlene is trying to say, then she would be claiming that fungi, trees, critters, and the planet can exist only insofar as they are part of a larger whole—in this case, the Lifestream.

But what if Marlene is not giving a factual report and is instead giving a metaphorical account of the Lifestream? If Marlene is being metaphorical, the Lifestream is not exactly as she describes it, only somewhat like her description. In metaphorical descriptions, there is always considerable room to maneuver between the description offered and the way things actually are in the world. So, if Marlene’s description is metaphorical, not literal, we are free to
interpret
what she says. Once we allow ourselves the latitude to interpret what Marlene says metaphorically, we need not think of the Lifestream in either holist or organicist terms. For example, from Marlene’s description, we might understand the Lifestream like this. The Lifestream is the name given to the total, aggregate energy of the planet’s environment. This energy “circles” the planet only insofar as everything on the planet is ultimately energy. Everything on the planet is energy because we know from physics that all matter is simply one form of energy. The Lifestream may be described as “giving life” to everything because anything born on the planet simply takes up materials and energy from the planet. Shinra’s artificial extraction of energy is killing the planet, only because nonrenewable energy is being extracted, depleting the available planetary resources and causing pollution.

If we were to accept this interpretation of Marlene’s description of the Lifestream, then the Lifestream is simply, and nothing more than, the total energy in the planetary environment. By offering these claims, Marlene would be proposing either a
reductionist
or a
mechanist
conception of the Lifestream.
Reductionism
claims that the properties of wholes are always among the characteristics or the properties of their parts. This is to say that the whole thing has no property that is not a property of at least one of its parts. In other words, the Lifestream has no properties that aren’t properties of the planet and the things on the planet. The Lifestream is living only because it is made up of some parts that are living things.
Mechanism
offers the similar claim that the properties of wholes are caused by the parts that make them up. In this view, the parts of the Lifestream cause the whole Lifestream to be alive, even if none of the parts themselves are alive.
¹

Marlene’s description of the Lifestream suggests that it may be one of two very different kinds of things. On the one hand, there is the holist-organicist conception of the Lifestream: the Lifestream is a unified whole that has distinct, unique properties not possessed by the rocks, the trees, dirt, and other bits that make it up. The Lifestream as a whole has properties not possessed by any of its parts. On the other hand, there is the reductionist-mechanist conception of the Lifestream, in which the Lifestream is nothing more than an assembly of the rocks, the trees, dirt, and other bits that make it up. All the properties of the Lifestream are simply properties of the stuff that makes up the Lifestream; the Lifestream has no additional special or unique properties of its own.

Deciding between these two conceptions of the Lifestream may seem inconsequential, but underlying the decision is a significant choice between two different and incompatible ways of thinking about the natural world. The conflict between AVALANCHE and Shinra is in part a conflict between these two incompatible views. On the one hand, there is the holist conception of the Lifestream held by the members of AVALANCHE. Tifa Lockheart, Barret Wallace, and the other members of AVALANCHE conceive of the Lifestream as a living whole from which all of the living parts of the world derive their life. On the other hand, there is the mechanist conception of the Lifestream held by the employees of the Shinra Corporation, notably Professor Hojo and Scarlet. Much of the work of Shinra involves taking the Mako extracted from the Lifestream and using it as a simple, interchangeable part for various experiments and projects. Professor Hojo experiments with combining Mako with Jenova cells, while Scarlet oversees the creation of Mako weapons. The incompatibility of holist and mechanist conceptions of the Lifestream ultimately brings AVALANCHE into violent conflict with Shinra.

Dr. Cid, Meet Dr. Lovelock

Although the movie
The Spirits Within
has only a family resemblance with the game
Final Fantasy VII,
it also made use of the Lifestream concept. (This may be because Hironobu Sakaguchi and Kazushige Nojima wrote the scripts for both the game and the movie.) In
The Spirits Within,
the concept of the Lifestream becomes much more obscure. No longer is it possible to interpret the Lifestream as a metaphor for the flow of physical energy. Rather than a Lifestream that is composed of Mako, there is now a Lifestream that is Gaia, “the spirit of the planet.” About halfway through the movie, Dr. Cid prompts Aki to read a passage from his old research diary:

Dr. Aki Ross: [Reading Cid’s journal] “All life is born of Gaia, and each life has a spirit. Each new spirit is housed in a physical body.” Doctor?

Dr. Cid: Go on.

Dr. Aki Ross: “Through their experiences on Earth, each spirit matures and grows. When the physical body dies, the mature spirit, enriched by its life on Earth, returns to Gaia. Bringing with it the experiences enabling Gaia to live and grow.”

Here Dr. Cid is proposing a radical holistic conception of the Lifestream as an organic living creature that lives and grows by imbuing the physical form of things with a living spirit. During its life on the planet, the spirit grows with the accumulation of lived experience, and when it dies, the enlarged spirit returns to Gaia and nourishes it. Thus, the planet, or Gaia, is a single living organism with its own consciousness.