Article: Nirvana in Nihilism – Why Cyrus is Right

Rabi says Cyrus did nothing wrong. See the article to find out why he says such a thing!

i for one welcome our nihilistic overlord

Well no... the type of idealism that Cyrus spouts is probably most close to anti-natalists - or the position that birthing someone is a moral wrong because of the suffering the babe will eventually encounter. The obvious answer to this is that the baby will suffer and gain pleasure; however, the antinatalists would argue that suffering is worth more negative than pleasure is positive. This is mostly do to the psychology behind pain; how one good thing is barely noticeable and one bad thing can ruin a day.

The logic employed by Cyrus is similar - that despite the pleasure in the world, suffering makes the getting rid of all pleasure worth it. However, there is a fatal flaw in Cyrus's plan. There is no practical way to ensure that people will both have no emotions and will be able to think at all. You see, neurologically speaking, the ability to be motivated to have "emotion" or "logic" is chemically induced, so if Cyrus would get rid of all emotion, he would be getting rid of your ability to think or act at all - as they are all dependent on the same chemicals.

Furthermore, as the actual ACT of ridding all emotions is a harm, his plan is a net harm, comparable to genocide.

I actually have the opinion that if your beliefs lead you to agree with a man who thinks the world is so irredeemable that he wants to destroy it, you are tremendously wrong, and need to re-evaluate your entire belief system.

I don't know how serious the article is given the date it was posted on, but...

Pokedream.su said:

I actually have the opinion that if your beliefs lead you to agree with a man who thinks the world is so irredeemable that he wants to destroy it, you are tremendously wrong, and need to re-evaluate your entire belief system.

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If you have a broken system that cannot be fixed, what real choice do you have other than to tear it down and replace it with something better?

Pokedream.su said:

I actually have the opinion that if your beliefs lead you to agree with a man who thinks the world is so irredeemable that he wants to destroy it, you are tremendously wrong, and need to re-evaluate your entire belief system.

Click to expand...

that sounds a little too extreme, but, uhh, ok

Isn't that a bit of a contradiction? Cyrus was shunned by his parents, so he develops the belief emotions simply get in the way of people. That sounds like a massive emotional reaction on it's own.

Also I actually agree that Cyrus may have had his own good intentions, but that doesn't make the intentions correct. Most evil historical figures believe they are in the right.

(Though I get it's an april fools article).

Nah said:

If you have a broken system that cannot be fixed, what real choice do you have other than to tear it down and replace it with something better?

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We aren't talking about a broken system, I would agree we can change a system (ie capitalism) and not fall into capitalist realism.

However, we are talking about a fundamentally broken world here. Even in some idealized Star Trek society, these 'criticisms' of the world here would still hold. Strife is inherent to the world. I have no choice but to say then that the foundational premises of this kind of thought are just flawed to the core.

I have always been fascinated my Cyrus and in general by gen4 games, so I have played them several times and I have read his dialogues multiple times. I feel that Cyrus is quite an interesting character and especially his psychology is interesting. Hear me out: Cyrus kinda has a distorted vision of the universe and this comes from how his parents treated him and how he could only relax with machines he used to build. This is an important point because Cyrus has no idea of how emotions rule the universe, indeed he prefers machines because those work according to algorithms and that's what intelligence is for Cyrus. He strikes for perfection, which means no emotions, because in this way everyone would act solely on algorithms. but he himself is full of hate, sadness and rage and that's why he says he isn't perfect. Also, Cyrus is egoistic, he always says that the new universe is just for him and the reason is that he feels that he's the only one truly wanting to live in that new universe. Team Galactic was just a tool to get there. I like how in the anime he decides to get into his new universe dying. I hate instead how he is portrayed in pokemon generations and in the manga: he's weak and he soon surrenders and changes his points of view, but that's not what the Cyrus we met in the games would do. indeed in pokèmon platinum he wants to stay in the distortion world to find a way to destroy it.
Anyway, Cyrus' dialogues go even deeper than this. In the distortion world there's a dialogue between Cynthia and Cyrus in which she says that everyone in the world exists for a reason and that our destiny is to accomplish that destiny with whom we were born and Cyrus disagrees. It pretty much sounds like God's will against human power, a war between religion and nihilism/atheism. It's just in that dialogue tho. Game freak couldn't go deeper because, well, it's still just a game and many children play it.
I think gen4 games have a huge lore and many interesting hints but it's playing again and again, getting speculative, ecc that u can understand more things about the story.