Final Fantasy and Philosophy: The Ultimate Walkthrough (13 page)

Why Are the Heroes Heroes?

As the Warriors meet others in the world, those others keep pointing out that they are the prophesied saviors of the realm. It’s not as if the Warriors don’t know they are predestined to save the world. Unlike the example in which you help Garland, the Heroes know they have no choice. Remember, in the Garland example, you don’t know about his power. You are blameworthy because Garland doesn’t have to use his power
and
because you help him without knowing you are predestined to do so. The Heroes aren’t quite so ignorant. They fall into the category of both having no choice and knowing they have no choice.

So, are the Heroes acting
only because they can’t do anything else
?
⁹
It might very well be the case that because they know they have no choice, they do what they do only because they have no choice. If they know that the future has been set for them, what reason do they have to fight it? Don’t they meet the criterion of people who do what they do only because they can’t do anything else? Imagine in the Garland example that instead of being ignorant, you know his plan: you know that if you don’t help him, you’ll be forced to help him. At that point, can you be blamed for helping him, even if he doesn’t have to use his power? Why would you try to fight his will if you know you cannot win? If you know you have no choice, aren’t you absolved because you are helping him only because you have no choice? In the same way, if the Heroes know they have no choice, aren’t they unworthy of praise?

Can Our Heroes
Really
Want to Save the World?

Now we have a situation in which we have Heroes who have no choice but to save the world and who know they have no choice but to save the world. Do they deserve our praise? Maybe they are really happy to save the world. Maybe they are the kind of people who would save the world even if they weren’t predestined to save it. In that case, can’t we say they are praiseworthy people? Well, we have to start asking whether the fact that they are people who want to save the world is something that is also predestined. Can they be anything other than nice, world-saving people? Can we praise people for being nice who have no choice but to be nice? One wonders whether we are simply thinking too deeply at this point. But then again, isn’t that the nature of philosophers and
Final Fantasy
, to think deeply? So let’s conclude by indulging in some deep thought.

Should we praise the Warriors for wanting to save the world, if it was predestined that they would want to do this? In other words, can we legitimately praise someone for being good if that person cannot help but be a good person? We might be glad that he or she is a good person, but do we say, “Good job. Well done”? After all, it’s as if the person is programmed to be nice. The option of being evil never presented itself. In real life, we are much more impressed by people who have to work at being good. Aren’t we more likely to praise people who have to put effort into accomplishing something? Aren’t we more impressed by people who can say no to temptation than those who are simply never tempted at all? If the Warriors of Light fall into the category of those who cannot be tempted, why praise them when the possibility of failure is never an option?

Consider someone who can’t help stealing. If someone is unable to refrain from committing a crime, we often absolve the person of blame. That is the whole basis of the insanity defense. If someone cannot help but do evil, regardless of the consequences to himself and others, we put him in an asylum because he, unlike us, does not have a real choice. In theory, you and I can make a real choice to want to do evil or good. But both the criminally insane and the Heroes of Light lack this ability. Neither can want to do the opposite of their nature. Remember, if the Heroes have been foreseen, then they may have been foreseen as people who would want to save the world. This means that they are people who cannot want to let the world turn to evil. The fact that they want to save the world has already been predestined.

Can Phineas Gage Be a Hero?

But now we face an even bigger problem. Aren’t we all genetically predestined to be nice or mean, good or evil? There is more and more evidence to the fact that people are products of their biology. Otherwise, why would people take medicine to change their mental states? If I am depressed, there is medicine (or a variety of legal and illegal substances) that I can take to help me be happy. There are all kinds of drugs that I can take to change my body chemistry and, in doing so, change my mood. So, if the only difference between a “happy me” and a “depressed me” is a small pill, maybe the only difference between a “good me” and an “evil me” is also just a pill away. Perhaps whether we are nice or mean is more a matter of our biology than it is a matter of our choice.

Consider the case of Phineas Gage, who was the victim of an unfortunate accident back in the 1800s.
¹⁰
While he was working, an explosion drove a spike into his head. Before the accident, Gage was reported to be a nice, kind, and charitable person. Afterward, though, many of his friends and family reported that he was a different person, mean and cruel. He was the opposite of everything he was before; the damage to his brain radically changed his personality. In fact, there are many cases in which traumatic brain injury results in personality change. So, much of who we are may be hardwired in our brains; if we could change our brains, perhaps we could change from good to evil or change evil people into good ones. Unfortunately, there is currently very little we can do to change our biology. Granted, perhaps we could produce a pill that makes people want to be nice, but if you were born evil, how do we convince you to take the pill in the first place? In other words, what could you say to Garland (aside from lying to him) to convince him to take the nice pill?

The problem for the Heroes of Light now becomes our problem. If my good or evil nature is something that I am born with, then I have no real choice over whether I want to do good or evil. The desire to be good or evil was genetically programmed in me without my consent or control. How, then, can I be praised or blamed for the good or the evil that I do? Not only may the Heroes not deserve praise or blame, we may not either! Even at my most evil or most good, I was, in a sense, predestined to be that way. And, so, in this way, I lack alternative possibilities, just like the Heroes of Light. It was decided for them that they would be good people. It may well also be true that it was decided for us, before we were born, by our parents’ genetics whether we would be good or evil people. And if this is the case, do we really deserve praise or blame for our good or evil deeds? After all, we may also be unable to want to be other than what we are.

We realize that the Heroes of Light may truly be unworthy of our thanks because they have no choice but to be who they are and they have no choice but to save the world. And if you remember the storyline, you’ll recall that, ironically, our Heroes never do receive thanks. Their final battle with Garland results in their being unnecessary and so their heroic deeds are unknown outside of legend. Unfortunately, if we accept this conclusion, and if we accept the argument that we are biologically hardwired to be the kinds of people we are, we are forced to accept the prospect that we lack the ability to be other than the people we are. So if you are like the Heroes of Light and are truly good, why should we thank you? After all, you have no choice. On the other hand, if you are like Garland, why should we blame you? Once again, you have no real choice.

Frankfurt told us that we can praise and blame one another, but that doesn’t seem to be enough for the Heroes of Light, who know they are predestined. Even worse, now that you know about Phineas Gage, you know that, in a sense, you are predestined to be a good or an evil person. That fact may be enough to make you unworthy of thanks, too, if you are what you are
only
because you cannot be anything else.

NOTES

1
Final Fantasy
(Japan: Square, 1987).

2
I owe my never-ending gratitude to my best friend, Chris Balestra, for his invaluable help with this chapter. More of the ideas than I like to admit I owe to him. Not to mention the fact that he is way better at video games than I am.

3
St. Thomas Aquinas,
Summa Contra Gentiles, Book One: God
, translated by Anton C. Pegis (London: Notre Dame Press, 1975), ch. 66, p. 219. Earlier versions of this understanding of God’s relationship to time were offered by St. Augustine and Boethius.

4
Harry G. Frankfurt, “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,”
Journal of Philosophy
66, no. 23 (December 4, 1969): 829.

5
Ibid., pp. 829-839.

6
Ibid., pp. 831-833.

7
Ibid., p. 836.

8
Ibid., p. 838.

9
Ibid.

10
Malcolm MacMillan,
An Odd Kind of Fame
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000).

PART FOUR

SIDE QUESTS OF THE ENLIGHTENED

9

SHINTO AND ALIEN INFLUENCES IN
FINAL FANTASY VII

Jonah Mitropoulos

That was a scream from this planet. Didn’t you hear it? As if to say . . . I hurt, I suffer.

—Bugenhagen

An alien entity threatens the world of
Final Fantasy VII
(
FFVII
), and its influences have permeated the lives of all of its characters. Having been exposed to this alien entity, Shinra—the massive corporation doubling as plutocratic hegemony—begins to extract Mako (the planet’s spirit energy) seeking the Promised Land (a place full of Mako energy). Unfortunately, Shinra’s actions threaten the planet and all planetary life. From the very beginning of the game, the main characters identify themselves as renegades bent on saving the planet by committing acts of ecoterrorism, such as blowing up power plants, in order to destabilize Shinra.

While “going green” is certainly all the rage these days, why would Sakaguchi Hironobu and Kitase Yoshinori, the game’s designers, create characters who rage against the energy infrastructure on which a video game depends? Though the game’s imagined world ultimately reflects ecological concerns in the real world, it does not simply reject all notions of technological development. Instead, it evokes Shinto spirituality in the digital landscape of the game in order to encourage a symbiotic relationship between real-world human technology and the natural world.

Japan in
Final Fantasy VII
: “Watch Out! This Isn’t Just a [Video Game]!!”

There is a difficulty, however, with giving a philosophical interpretation of Shinto in
FFVII
. The difficulty is that to speak of Shinto as a single, internally coherent religion, one that possesses a theological or ideological tradition alongside it, would be misleading. Whereas other religions, such as Buddhism and Christianity, have long histories of exegesis that both originate with a founder (Buddha or Jesus) and position themselves around a core text or set of texts, Shinto does not. Even texts such as the
Kojiki
and the
Nihonshoki
were never considered to be integral to the practice of Shinto.
¹

Being Shinto does not call for a person to affirm a specific doctrine. Rather, being Shinto means being part of a tradition (culturally Japanese) whose articulations are many, nonuniform, and mutable within its larger social and historical setting. Shinto is plural (meaning that there are many Shintos), and it is inherently assimilative (in that foreign influences help inform how it is defined).
²
But connectedness with nature is extremely important to Shinto spirituality, and in this game, we see that this advocacy for ecological cohabitation with the planet comes to define which cultural assimilations are appropriate. Just as planetary life thrives when there is biodiversity, Shinto syncretism models an “orientation in living” that encourages symbiotic relationships with other cultures. Thus, Shinto serves as the basis for my argument that
FFVII
encourages a symbiotic relationship not only with the landscape but also with foreign cultures. It is thanks to Shinto’s adaptive and syncretistic characteristics that we can use it to examine the philosophical elements of a Japanese cultural product—such as
Final Fantasy
.

As we shall see, the fictional world of
FFVII
animates ecological concerns, as well as the preservation of Japanese thought. The main character, Cloud Strife, openly says that he intends to save the world from human exploitation and physical destruction. Less obviously, though, the invasion by an alien entity allegorizes concerns about a modernized, Westernized Japan. Still, the game does drop a number of clues that its conflicts parallel those of Japan. For instance, its imagined world is one that is recovering from a devastating war. Cid reminds Cloud that Shinra, the large
zaibatsu
-like corporation, was a wartime weapons manufacturer before it transitioned to energy.
³
With Article Nine of Japan’s postwar constitution, Japan is no longer allowed to maintain war potential (weapons) of land, sea, or air. Likewise, Shinra left weapons development to pursue advancements in energy and technology.

Akin to Article Nine, the archipelago nation of Wutai in
FFVII
is no longer able to possess Materia and has transitioned from militarism to tourism.
⁴
Yuffie scolds her father, saying, “You get beaten once, and then that’s it? What happened to the mighty Wutai I used to know?” Now, she complains, Wutai is “JUST a resort town. After we lost the war, we got peace, but with that, we lost something else.” Her response resembles the frustrations that many Japanese feel toward Japan’s rearmament. In addition, a man in Wutai recalls a legend in which their gods protected them. “But,” he continues, “in the last battle, we didn’t fare so well. . . . I guess our beliefs were based on nothing more than legends.” Again, this parallels the prewar belief that the
kamikaze
were proof that the
kami
looked after Japan.
⁵
Not only does an allusion to
kamikaze
figure as Shinto imagery, but Wutai itself also exemplifies the Buddhist-Shinto syncretism left over from a past cultural invasion. Mount Wu-t’ai, located in China, is where Ennin (a Japanese Buddhist priest of the ninth century) studied with Fa-chao (whose name resembles Da-chao in
FFVII
) before he returned to Japan with new forms of Buddhism. So, although the game takes place in a fictional world, we should not hesitate to think of its philosophical dilemmas as Japan’s.

Some images in the game have meaning outside their Shinto context. The idea that Aerith “speaks” with the spirits of her ancestors, the Ancients, for instance, is not necessarily unique to Japan.
⁶
Yet it certainly has a particular resonance with Shinto ancestor worship. Similarly, while many traditions have water purification rituals, we should first associate those seen in the film
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
(
AC
) with Japanese spirituality.
FFVII
is a cultural product, and its Japanese creators are, regardless of how they might define themselves, participants in a Japanese-Shinto “value orientation.” As Ben Hourigan observed in his responsive essay to totalizing discourses on video games, “Violence and antisocial behavior in
FFVI-VIII
cannot be separated from their manifestation in Japanese society: the games both reflect it and reflect on it.”
⁷
Likewise,
FFVII
’s violence against what is identifiably alien reflects and reflects on the notion that Shinto is a cultural value orientation that undergoes change when it comes in contact with foreign cultures.

To clarify, reactions to modernization are not altogether unique to Japan—in fact, they strongly resonate with a global modern subject that copes with cross-cultural exchange.
FFVII
and Shinto are not xenophobic, though one kind of Shinto, State Shinto, historically was. Still, by animating aspects of Shinto thought,
FFVII
enacts the conflict that emerged when Western economic and religious influences and modernization were introduced to Japan. In this sense, we can observe the game’s conflict in two ways: as a metaphor for real-world ecology (saving the game’s digital landscape from extreme technologization as representing concerns in real-world ecology) and allegorically, in that its characters must come to terms with an invading, alien presence. That presence, Jenova, figures as the introduction of Western, Judeo-Christian ideology to the Japanese spirit (
Yamato damashii
). The game’s conclusion proposes that a solution to these two conflicts involves an assimilation of Western and modernized ideologies that is mediated by a Shinto respect for a spiritually infused planet.

Going
Kami
, Going Green

Understanding the terms
kami
and
tsumi
will help us perceive the Shinto elements of
FFVII
. Each term is notoriously difficult to translate, so I will attempt to describe concepts that surround them. We shall see that as ideas, they pervade most aspects of the game. To begin with,
kami
is often translated as “deity.” Yet there are many instances where
kami
defies English definitions of deity. Floyd Hiat Ross, in
Shinto: The Way of Japan
, described
kami
as “that which is everywhere present in varying degrees, and it stands for that which is not entirely present or visible to people.” In this sense,
kami
is more like a spiritual energy that permeates all matter. “
Kami
is in nature and man is in nature also, and
kami
is in man.”
⁸

Although
kami
can be very specific at times, almost like a deity, it is the notion that
kami
is a spiritual presence that I would like to borrow. When Thomas Kasulis said in
Shinto: The Way Home
, “As a human in the land of
kami
, one is a portion of the sacred; one is an intrinsic part of the
kami
-filled . . . world,” we can immediately recall Bugenhagen’s description of Spirit energy and the Lifestream in
FFVII
.
⁹
He says, “Spirit energy makes all things possible, trees, birds, and humans. Not just living things. But Spirit energy makes it possible for Planets to be Planets.” Such a philosophy does not privilege human life over nonhuman matter, as the two are interconnected and interdependent. As Ross argued, “Everything is divine,
kami
-like.”
¹⁰
If one chooses to follow the path to this presence, he or she walks the way of the
kami
(
kami no michi
).

But following the
kami
way does not mean adhering to prescriptive dogma. Rather, Shinto encourages one to connect with the
kami
presence, which one finds, in its purest form, in nature. Even the construction of Shinto shrines prioritizes harmony with nature, in that the materials used must be entirely natural and taken from locations undefiled by human encroachment. We might compare this with
FFVII
’s hidden City of the Ancients. Not only is it inaccessible to humans (protected by a labyrinthlike forest), but its architecture is almost reeflike with coral shelves, scaled pathways, and large shells as buildings.

The game’s cinematography captures the presence of a
kami
-filled world by exposing the player to the natural world’s transcendence. Whether it is the Nibel Mountains with natural Materia springs, Gaea’s Cliffs with its inhospitable temperatures and spectacular vistas, or a giant condor that expires on the birth of its offspring, the characters witness many natural processes that leave them speechless. And whenever something threatens the purity of these natural things, Cloud and his buddies mobilize to protect them. To understand what the threat is, we must examine our other term,
tsumi
.

Tsumi
is often translated as “sin,” for it refers to what is impure or tainted. Its meaning, however, is very different from Western conceptions of sin. Kasulis told us, “The Western idea of sin generally involves intent,” whereas in Shinto simply contacting
tsumi
(that which is polluted and requires purification) causes defilement, “whether the person knew about the offense or undertook the action voluntarily.”
¹¹
The interesting distinction is that intent does not necessarily play into who might be affected by
tsumi
. Sephiroth, Shinra, and the other enemies of the game, as it turns out, are enemies in that they have at some point come in contact, either directly or indirectly, with the polluting force, Jenova. Even Cloud behaves like an enemy at various points, having been exposed directly to Jenova in Professor Hojo’s lab. Jenova acts like
tsumi
, in that it is foreign to the planet and spurs those with whom it comes in contact to behave badly, out of harmony with nature.

To describe the alien Jenova’s arrival from space two thousand years earlier, the game uses a metaphor of disease (defilement). At first, Jenova’s arrival alerted the Cetra (Ancients) on impact by “making a large wound.” Then, as Ifalna relates, “He first approached as a friend, deceived them, and finally . . . gave them the virus. The Cetra were attacked by the virus and went mad . . . transforming into monsters. [ . . . ] He approached other Cetra clans . . . infecting them with . . . the virus.” Ever since, Jenova has sought to take over the planet’s Lifestream (
kami
presence). Immediately after Professor Gast of Shinra rediscovers Jenova, “The use of Mako Reactor 1 [is] approved for use,” connecting the alien influence to the development of industrialized capitalism and the overtechnologization that endangers the planet. The planet continues to live, but it is forever changed.