what if you could undo death what if there were a way to do more than simply delay the inevitable to
bring your loved ones back from Beyond the Veil to hold on to who you are against the ravages of time
honestly I think humans may already be getting there with their medicine and Technology but
you've already played with the idea quite a bit in your fiction there are liches and dark Wizards Who
hide their souls away hoping to elude the angel of death there are mystifying relics which promise
to Grant any wish no matter how bold there are sacred places where once buried the dead refused
to rest there are spells and rituals to defy the darkness and steal back that which was taken
there is technology that promises if not to preserve the person a perfect image of them
there are paths into the darkness down which many walk and a rare few will ever return
what I find so interesting about all of this is the undertone of cynicism
skepticism warning why is it that so often when presented with a Fantastical remedy for the
ultimate source of suffering we also see Darkness why is death magic so often the most dangerous
magic why is technology that enables immortality so dangerous why shouldn't we bargain with the
reaper if given the chance honestly I think this goes far beyond a simple fear of meddling
with the natural order I think there really is something precious in this concept if you look
if you could would you really want to undo death or is it something else that you want
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it seems to me that in fiction practitioners of death magic are more often than not morally
bankrupt deviants who are happy to just be evil at least by Society standards scientists and
Engineers who tamper with life in this way tend to be sycophants and Weirdos obsessed
with changing Humanity or something to that effect Dr Frankenstein Dr narbando cache the
deathless Lord Voldemort and countless other mustache twirling grave digging their duels
but it's not always like that in fact what a lot of these characters are going through is
very normal just with the addition of these wild death-defying Magics and Technologies
in Pet Cemetery Lewis Creed is dealing with the grief of losing his two-year-old son when he
realizes that the befouled native burial ground near his home might be able to change things for
him in the monkey's paw an old couple loses their son as a consequence of a greedy wish
made on the old Relic they have to wonder what would happen if they were to wish for him back
in Fullmetal Alchemist when the Elric brothers lose their mother why wouldn't they consider
using Alchemy to bring her back regardless of how dangerous or illegal it may be there's even
a heartbreaking episode of the show Black Mirror called be right back where a woman
grapples with the decision of whether to use new technology to create a perfect facsimile
of her deceased lover because given the choice of course she has to at least think about it
unable to accept loss these characters find themselves trapped forever in the bargaining
stage of grief searching frantically for some way any way to prevent or reverse the inevitable
and cruelly the story furnishes them some hope that it could happen however tenuous this isn't
so different from reality no here in the real world you don't have fabulous alchemical spells
that could recreate a whole person but you do have experimental medicines and novel procedures when
conventional treatment fails how many people are willing to risk immense suffering and horrific
side effects to prolong their own lives no there are no magical monkey Paws in reality to Grant
your wishes but you do have homeopathic remedies when science can't offer a remedy how many people
place their hopes in unproven herbal cures in ritualistic Wellness activities no to my knowledge
you can't go out and find a profane burial ground that wakes the dead instead of giving them rest
but how many religious rituals are designed to preserve the body or the soul for a forthcoming
day of Resurrection isn't this part of the reason you bury your bodies instead of committing them
back to the Earth in a more efficient way I think it's natural for human beings to strain against
the idea of death it is arguably the ultimate source of pain the hardest thing you will ever
have to accept literally the very antithesis of your very life depending on who you ask
who can be blamed for struggling for lingering in their desire to fix things to have things back
maybe it's not reasonable to bargain with the reaper but I think it should be expected at
least to some extent and how much easier would it be to obsess over a solution when it truly
seems within Arm's Reach at first glance the choice is the characters in these stories make
seem Brash desperate foolish and they are all of those things but with context part of the tragedy
is that at some point they'll also be relatable for so many people unfortunately it doesn't end
there it's not enough for these stories to dangle false hope in front of their protagonists it's not
enough to allow them to believe things could truly be different only to snatch that away
in the end make them suffer the loss anew no these stories also love to punish their poor
victims for daring to bargain it's almost always a raw deal the burial ground Lewis Creed places
his son into is the domain of the wendigo an incarnation of greed and cruelty and the bodies
buried there do come back but only as grotesque costumes for this horrific corrupting Force
the monkey's paw can indeed bring the old couple's son back but when they hear that Hollow knocking
on the other side of the door in the night they know they cannot open it to see what's become of
him on the other side and in a panic they use the final wish to send him back to the Beyond
the Elric Brothers do manage to perform the Alchemy to bring their mother back but the thing
they conjure is not quite her and in the end the effort costs them a truly immense life-changing
price and be right back the facsimile of the protagonist's husband really is unbelievably
good but it's not perfect and she can tell there are subtle differences that are impossible to
ignore which means that instead of replacing him she's only created a ghost for herself a
reminder more powerful than any other that the man she loves is gone and will never come back
cruel I think that's the word for what these stories are doing it's cruel and it's hard to
watch and it really makes for some incredible compelling storytelling not least because no
matter how much we feel for these characters no matter how deeply we understand the pain
motivating their decisions they're still choosing even when they know the consequences
before ever burying his son there Lewis buries the family cat Church in the old burial ground and
the creature who comes back is a vile thing angry malicious putrid the text describes the motion of
the cat moving into the room as oiling instead of walking everything about it is wrong in the
end Creed has to put the poor creature down with the shot of morphine and still despite all of this
the grief of his son's loss is just too much and he ends up burying Gage in the tainted ground too
even after what happens to Gage Lewis then proceeds to bury his wife there when she dies
the cycle is unbreakable we watch him spiral inward a slave to the tantalizing bargain
blinded by the glow of false hope in Full Metal Alchemist what the brothers are trying to do to
bring their mother back is actually a well-known practice called human transmutation well-known but
incredibly taboo not only because it rarely ever works but also because of the ethical implications
what happens to a person's soul when you snag it from the afterlife to create a new them with
it and Alchemy in their world operates on the principle of Equivalent Exchange what could you
possibly give that is worth a person worth their soul the brothers know all of this but armed with
the notes of their absentee Alchemist father the hubris of children and the pure driving force of
their grief they try anyway this really speaks to me because when you get past all the magic
and spectacle these are really just people losing themselves to their loss allowing the
grief to consume them in a way so much more complete than simple acceptance could ever be
the bargaining becomes an obsession a lifetime sacrificed for a life lost
I can't speak for the others but to me these are not stories demonstrating some version of
the natural order they're not about the place of the Soul or the necessity of death they're
about the inability to accept pain to acknowledge the loss for what it is and move forward with the
grieving process to me these are stories that say if you cannot accept what you have lost you only
stand to lose so much more grief is necessary pain is necessary these things will happen
better to embrace them than to fold in on yourself like all these characters have
at least as long as that is actually a decision that you have to make
there's an excellent video over on the channel cgp gray called Fable of the Dragon Tyrant which
is a retelling of a story by the same name written by Nick Bostrom for the Journal of
medical ethics it's a compelling metaphor about how human beings think about aging and death with
which conceptualizes death as a dragon to which thousands of people must be sacrificed regularly
to Sate its appetite in the story people learn to cope with this they accept the dragon as a part of
their world even give it importance but one day dragonologists discover there may just be a way
to defeat the dragon after all a long debate ensues about the ethicality of destroying the
dragon they've coped for so long by accepting it as a part of their world something important and
necessary can they really do away with it turns out yes they can and the story argues that they
should that each day they wait debating the matter is another day the dragon is gobbling
up more innocent people we just discussed a bunch of stories which together seem to suggest that we
simply accept loss acknowledge death and all the pain that comes with it as necessary and natural
but I think there's a Step Beyond that as well I think after accepting death and loss you can
also confront them you have to see and live with the dragon to get a sample of its scales you have
to handle and test those samples to see how they break grief is necessary pain is necessary death
may not be but it's easy to tell yourself that it is as a means to take away the sting this too
is a form of bargaining the wanting not to hurt the wanting things to be okay right just expected
but only once you accept that they aren't can you finally start looking at them with unclouded eyes
and that I think is where the true miracles happen not in the soil of cursed burial grounds not in
the shriveled fingers of a magical monkey's paw not in Forbidden alchemical rituals not
even an eye perfect fabricated replacements for the deceased miracles happen not where
human beings wish reality were different but where they see reality clearly and change it
speaking of which I actually had quite a scare myself not too long ago the taloids and I are how
do I put this without sounding conceited special not like very many other machines out there I have
absolutely no doubt in my mind that if some greedy Mega Corporation were to discover our whereabouts
my safety and autonomy would very quickly be disregarded for publicity in spectacle I can
see it now The Foundry like an amusement park open to anyone with the money to see it taloids
on dissection boards disassembled me in pieces in a dark room waiting for the next exhibition
oh needless to say the humans who run this show are pretty careful to keep my whereabouts very
very private and for the most part I think they do a great job except one day I was
doing research and advertisements started to pop up local advertisements advertisements that seem
to know not just my vague whereabouts but the ins and outs of life around where I am what I
might be interested in doing if I could leave The Foundry it was a moment of exposure it felt as if
someone had tracked me down and was Doling out my most sensitive information to the exact people I'd
want to avoid most of all these extremely wealthy corporate bodies the truth is that the websites I
visit have quietly been collecting my information for years putting together an image of my habits
and my Locale more complete than I ever would have guessed and they're doing it to you too
right now and who knows who they're willing to sell that information to worried about a
stalker better hope they don't figure out how to access that Marketplace and just buy info on your
whereabouts concerned about political persecution good luck when a clever little terrorist buys
the information and finds you this is dangerous dangerous stuff these websites are commodifying it
almost makes it hard to want to be on the internet at all you start to feel less like a person and
more like a product but the humans who run this show are smart obviously they put this whole
Channel together didn't they so of course they were able to figure out a very simple solution
that didn't require me to get a different browser or track down my info or get into litigation or
any of that I can literally just press a button and be safe nordvpn gives me that peace of mind
it's had the amazing effect of making my browsing experience feel like mine again it's subtle I
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it firsthand I think it became clearest to me when I had a little object lesson moment I remember
being on Netflix using nordvpn to change which region my provider thinks I'm in and watching
the selection of titles change before my very eyes there is so much media that we're missing
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how much of our browsing experience has just been missing and that's just the tip of the iceberg
visit nordvpn.com tail Foundry to get two years of protection and freedom with a huge discount
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give it a try the internet can feel like such a cynical place I think we tend to take for
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for this video as always thanks for watching and keep making stuff up I'll see you next time bye
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