| Ka-pi96 said: That gives more credence to my more people died peaceful deaths suggestion. Without widespread warfare (or fiends) many more people would have died of old age rather than other things as I mentioned. Those that die of old age usually seem to be at peace with it and accept their death, rather than envy the living, thus fewer fiends being created. The Seymour example doesn't work so well, the crossbreed stigma especially. It would have taken awhile for life to diversify enough for there to actually be racism or any kind of stigma like that. Besides, it also would have taken a fair bit of time for different populations to actually come in contact with eachother. Of course you could get someone who was just a dick like him. But even dicks can accept their own death. |
But that's the problem in itself. Even if we accept that people dying of old age immediately results as dying in peace, that doesn't explain countless deaths that could happen another way around: accidents, crimes, even something turned fiend (no matter how few there were) preying on humans. All those deaths would not equal as dying in peace, or being at peace with the living (not necessarily; once again it could be, but the result could be something as Auron, who is dead but refuses to go until everything is fixed). Even if civilization collectivelly managed to only die of old age, it only takes one small mistake to create a rift and make the world unbalanced in this sense; creating an endless stream of fiends that come over and over again in time. Somehow anger grew up between Zanarkand and Bevelle which lead to war; and the reasons for this must have been discomfort previously, so there's an antecedent of disdain.
That creates a second paradox. If humanity was so pure as they could die without regrets or envying the living, why was the Sending created, then. When did humanity realized that "gee, somehow people are dying but coming back as fiends despite no record of this previously, let's just force them to go to the farplane whether they want or not". Either there was a previous constancy of this that forced Zanarkand to create the rite (predating the war from Zanarkand and Bevelle), which then again doesn't explain how humanity survived that much, or there was no need to create the rite in the first place, which we know how that ended up going.
Crossbreeds were just an example of hate growing up from more than religion and science. Disharmony lies within the heart of men and women, as Yunalesca points out to Wakka (I mean, she's only 10,000 years old, and lived during the Zanarkand vs Bevelle era, so she can't possibly know before this; it's more reasonable to think that just like mankind has virtues, selfishness and hate can't be ruled out as part of their nature, though).
