It was not difficult for Gwen to understand what En Ya said, but he still fell into a long period of contemplation after listening to her. During the process of contemplation, some long-pending theories were confirmed, and some key points that he did not understand before were supplemented. Most importantly, he finally confirmed a guess that he had a long time ago, but he never dared to confirm it.
Gods were a kind of "closed system." In other words, the premise for the establishment of gods in a certain civilization system was that the civilization system was "closed" in the corresponding knowledge field. When no new cognition was produced in a system, when the members of the system no longer tried to find answers to certain questions from the outside but pointed all the explanations to the problems within the system, the foundation for the birth of gods would be formed.
Therefore, once the system became open, when external information could become the "solution" to certain problems in the system, the gods born based on the system would immediately be impacted and quickly go crazy in fatal contradictions.
This was a process similar to a bug that blocked the process, or external pollution injected into the system to cause the system to collapse.
"So, when the final disobedience occurs, the thought of the group does not actually change drastically. Because only a few 'observers' jump out of the system, the information they see cannot immediately be applied to the entire race." Gwen slowly ended his contemplation, looked at the golden dome in front of him, and said, "The 'change of thought' is not the main reason in the final disobedience process, and it is not even an effective reason. The real effective reason is that the gods themselves are denied."
"From my personal experience, it is like this," En Ya said in a soft voice as if what they were talking about had nothing to do with her. "The relationship between thought and god is very close. The relationship between the two is not as simple as the relationship between the 'hotbed' and the 'product.' In a sense, the gods themselves are the embodiment and integration of thought. Therefore, as long as a branch of thought comes into contact with specific information outside the system, it is equivalent to the gods coming into contact with this information. If this information cannot be denied by the system's own logic, then … the collapse of the system is inevitable."
At this point, the voice from the golden dome suddenly stopped. She seemed to be sorting out her fragmented memories. Gwen waited patiently for a few seconds before he heard En Ya's voice again. "… I still remember what happened at the last moment when the Dragons' spaceship broke through the atmosphere and stepped into the area that no one had ever touched in the Mythological Era. Although I was completely unable to control anything at that time, and even my thinking had completely stopped, that feeling was still deeply imprinted in my memory through the link between divinity and humanity.
"It was a cold and painful feeling of being torn apart, with great panic after being suddenly thrown from a warm and comfortable environment into a cold and unfamiliar environment. It was like a baby being born out of its mother's body and facing a dangerous external environment. The part of my divinity had to admit the existence of the starry sky, that there was no heaven above the stars, that there was a vast and boundless' extraterritorial land 'outside the planet, that my great power was just a tiny flash of light on a speck of dust in the universe, and that I was meaningless in the vast space … In a very short period of time, the mythological system built by the mortals over millions of years was broken by the cold laws of reality. If the myth could not be established, then the gods could not be established."
En Ya's voice stopped. Gwen sat opposite her, holding his chin with his hand. After a long period of thinking, he slowly said, "So, if we regard civilization as a system that is constantly evolving, then as long as the system develops to a certain stage, divinity must die. Because divinity is destined to be a closed loop, it does not match the direction of the evolution of the entire system. At most, we can only retain the human part like you."
"This is an obvious conclusion."
"This is too cruel for the gods." Gwen sighed softly. "It seems that everyone is qualified to live, but only the gods have to die. Don't you think this is unfair? Just like you, even if the human part of you is still 'alive', as a god, you are dead … "
En Ya was silent for a few seconds before she said softly, "Gods can also die. This is the greatest fairness."
Gwen was touched. He could not help but say, "Although this may be a little off-topic, many of our technologies are pursuing immortality for mortals …"
"I know, but even in the case of the Silver Empire, the oldest civilization in the Loren Continent, the history of this era is only about tens of thousands of years. But to the time scale of mortals, these tens of thousands of years can be regarded as eternity. The immortality that mortals pursue is meaningless in the face of the astronomical scale. There is no real eternity in the world," En Ya said in a low voice. "But on the other hand, things that are meaningless in the face of the astronomical scale are still meaningful in the eyes of mortals. So this is the reason for the advancement of civilization … Look up at the sky, look down at the feet, never forget either. Only then will civilization have the opportunity to go further."
"The relationship between the scale of astronomy and the scale of mortals …" Gawain pondered for a moment and suddenly laughed. "We are obviously discussing practical issues such as the ultimate catastrophe and the ultimate rebellion, but in the end, we seem to be studying philosophy."
As he said, he shook his head. After a while, he said, "Then we can conclude that the civilization, which was originally a closed loop system, suddenly opened up to the outside world, causing the Ultimate Divine Disaster to happen. And this' opening 'only requires a very small but very' precise 'opening. Even if only one or two individuals in the civilization group break through the system's blockade, it is possible to achieve the condition … The essence of this process is not' human looking out ', but' god looking out '?"
"You can understand it that way. It is like using a needle to puncture an airbag. The tip of the needle may be small, but for the airbag that is on the verge of its limit, the collapse of the whole body only requires a small opening. "
"Then the Research Institute of the Theocratic Council can finally make a determination." Gwen sighed softly. "We have been thinking about the division between the Divine Disaster caused by a single god losing control and the Ultimate Divine Disaster that leads to the extinction of civilization. Now it seems that the key to all of this lies in the specific reason that causes the collapse of the closed loop system of the gods.
"Under the premise that the closed system is not destroyed, a large number of individuals that make up the civilization have continuous and extensive ideological changes and gradually cross the critical point that the system can withstand, thus leading to the loss of control of the gods corresponding to the ideology. This produces the Divine Disaster. We may call it the 'First Kind of Transgression'.
"Under the premise that the closed system is destroyed, any individual that makes up the civilization — as long as it is an individual within the 'ideology', has direct and undeniable contact with information outside the system, and at the same time, the logic in the system cannot deny this contact, then this contact will lead to the collapse of the system built on the closed loop premise. And since all gods are built on the closed loop premise, the god-level loss of control is bound to happen at this stage. We should call it the 'Second Kind of Transgression'."
"Very good summary." En Ya's gentle voice came from the golden giant egg. "So far, except for the lucky ones who were taken away by the voyagers in ancient times, in all the known history of this world, more than one civilization has experienced the first kind of transgression and survived. But after the second kind of transgression, only Tarlonde has survived."
Gwen stared at the golden giant egg in front of him for a long time before he said solemnly, "Yes, so far."
"I'm glad to see that you're not deterred by this cold fact. Although I knew from the beginning that a person like you would never stop in the face of such difficulties," En Ya's voice seemed to carry a smile, a mixture of appreciation and comfort. "So, now that you've confirmed the boundary of the second type of boundary crossing, will it help you with your next plan?"
"It will be of great help." Gwen nodded immediately. "At least now we can confirm that launching unmanned probes into space will not cause the system to collapse. Transgression can only be done by intelligent individuals within the ideology. In other words, only rational individuals are qualified to be 'observers.' This allows us to do something with confidence, but …"
Speaking of this, he frowned, and his expression became a little strange. "Maybe I am thinking too much, but now I am curious about one thing. Even if there is an 'observer' who jumped out of the closed system as the eyes of the gods and actually came into contact with information outside the system, is this contact really undeniable? The 'divinity' of a god can still believe that everything the observer sees is false, that it is a large-scale illusion and a scam, that there is some kind of power that tampers with all the senses and cognition of the observer, and fundamentally denies that 'jumping out of the system' has ever happened … "
"You mean … 'sophistry'?" En Ya was not surprised by Gwen's tricky and almost unreasonable question. It seemed that she had thought about it before. "Bury your head in the ground and turn a blind eye to the facts, refusing to acknowledge the information injected from outside the system by deceiving yourself so as to maintain the self-awareness and logic of divinity?"
Gwen looked serious. "Is that not okay?"
"For individuals among mortals, 'self-deception' is a very effective means of escape. Sometimes it can even allow people to survive in desperate situations. But for the gods …" En Ya chuckled as if she was mocking herself. "The gods can't deceive themselves. We are a huge logical system, and everything we do is based on the process of 'cognition-interpretation-feedback.' This means that when an information stimulus appears, even if our self-will denies it, the feedback triggered by this stimulus … has already happened. "
Gwen looked at En Ya. "An uncontrollable natural reaction?"
"An uncontrollable natural reaction," the golden giant egg said with certainty.
"Then I'm curious. Are you still subject to this uncontrollable natural reaction?" Gwen suddenly asked seriously. "Will there be some kind of stimulus that will make you suddenly lose control of your will and make your instincts deviate from your nature again?"
"If the human part of me has not obtained true freedom, I won't be here talking to you about these topics that are enough to cause self-destruction," En Ya said flatly. "I know what you are worried about. Don't worry. What you are facing is the freedom that the Giant Dragon Tarlonde has bought at the cost of millions of years of forbearance and the fate of the entire race. If even such an all-out attack can't break free from the dark fate, then there is no need to pursue any hope in this world."
Gwen pondered for a moment and nodded gently. "… You are right."
He then exhaled and brought the topic back to the beginning. "I remember that we were talking about the signals that suddenly went out in the starry sky. We talked about two 'filtering factors' that led to the emptiness of the universe that should have been extraordinarily prosperous. There were no other civilizations among the stars except for the voyagers. One of them was the loss of control of the gods, and the other … was the Demonic Tide.
"Now let's talk about the Demonic Tide.
"What is the essence of the Demonic Tide? How did it sweep across and reshape the world? What is the difference between the disaster that the Kingdom of Gondor encountered seven hundred years ago and the Great Demonic Tide that could really destroy the world? "
"Can you answer these questions now?"
There was a moment of silence in the incubation room as Enya appeared to be seriously considering what she was going to say next. The humming of the ventilation system and the low-power operation of the arcanotech equipment became obvious in the silence, circling the room like a summer afternoon breeze. Until Enya finally broke the silence.
"I know that you have realized that the Demonic Tide that the Kingdom of Gondor encountered and the real Demonic Tide are actually two different things. You call the former a 'small Demonic Tide' and the latter a 'Great Demonic Tide'. But in fact, the difference between the two is much bigger than you think, so much so that the former is not even a Demonic Tide. It is indeed related to the Demonic Tide, but it is essentially a 'foreshock' that has yet to take shape.
"And I have to correct your understanding of the Demonic Tide: you think that the Demonic Tide would change the fundamental nature of all things in the world. That is wrong.
"The real Demonic Tide, or the 'Great Demonic Tide' as you call it, does not change the physical world at all. In fact, it does not even interact with any physical matter. It is just an invisible wind that blows across the entire planet."
Gwen's eyes widened in an instant. The great shock even made him lose his usual composure. "What did you say?! You said that the 'Great Demonic Tide' does not affect the physical world at all? How is that possible?! "
"That is indeed the case."
"Then what does the Great Demonic Tide affect? What's the deal with those existential apocalypses? "
"It does not affect the macroscopic world, but the 'observer' itself." Enya's voice came calmly from the eggshell with a chill of 1,870,000 years. "It deviates all information contact between the observer and the physical world, causing the observer's mind to interact with the real world in a deranged manner. Its essence is not a storm of physical destruction, but a mass exile that covers an area of the celestial body.
"So, it is not the world that is destroyed, but the world in the eyes of the observer. But if you look at the process from the perspective of the observer, the two are indeed the same thing."
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
