[P.P.A.]

It was not until today that I finally realised the deeper philosophical meaning of Sonic (1, CD, 2 maybe). The games weren't just based on a blue little hedgehog fighting against some evil old man trying to enslave the world. No, they represent nature's struggle against the threat of human technology. Sonic, the healthy, nature-loving, naked animal, fighting with only his body against Dr. Robotnik, the ruthless, degenerated human with his army of machines, striving to make the world his own technological utopia. Just like we humans continue to develop new technologies without actually being able to handle them and only get weaker and weaker from not living like God/nature created us to, instead becoming lazy, developing allergies and the likes because we're not used to living any more. Today's civilisation even encourages this lazy/unhealthy way of life, with most well-paid jobs nowadays not really requiring physical work and the little effort we'd have to put in out everyday lives being taken away by machines. And thus we only continue to destroy the environment (ab)using our superior intelligence to destroy (just like the villainous doctor) and create our own sterile world. To the point where we all become little Eggmen, fat, degenerated, constantly sitting in some vehicle and not actually doing anything ourselves any more. (I'm ignoring the fact here that Dr. Robotnik can run just as fast as Sonic. >_>)
Technology is developing too fast for humans to keep up with it and use it wisely. Sonic however is fast. He, the nature, keeps up with the technology and stops it from taking over and destroying the Earth.
But there is no Sonic in real life. :/

However this deep aspect of Sonic has unfortunately completely disappeared nowadays. All of the old developers are gone, and it seems none of the people who make the new Sonic games have gotten this true point of the Sonic/Robotnik battle. Instead stories just as big and complex as meaningless and shallow are created, filled with soulless characters and villains with Eggman having long lost his role as the main enemy.



Sorry if I'm extremely late to realise this and I'm only stating the obvious.

[Crowbar]

Funnily enough, I said almost exactly what you did there in my dissertation I did last year (which I'll post up if I get a good mark for it). You made a few minor but nice observations I missed out, though, such as Sonic using only his body to fight, and the whole speed thing.

And I of course fully agree that this is a key reason Sonic has lost so much of his charm.

...

God, it's so nice to be able to discuss this knowing eggFL isn't going to come and ruin it all.

[Zeupar]

Awesome post, P.P.A..

[Shadow Jacky]

:/

sad but true.

[Pokemonmaster888]

Thinking in those terms does really mean something. I never really thought about it like that before you pointed it out, P.P.A.

[yse]

I think you are like our English teachers; overanalysing the subject well and truly past its original intention.

But maybe that's just me.

[Taillow]

I think you are like our English teachers; overanalysing the subject well and truly past its original intention.

But maybe that's just me.

If it sounds true enough, then it doesn't matter if it's coincidence or not.

[EngiNerd]

YOUR English teachers?  Sounds like English teachers in general....
But yeah, also worth noting is, look at Sonic 1, start from the beginning and see how more and more human influence is present.  The one zone that stands out is Labyrinth ... then recall that Labyrinth was originally to be placed directly after Green Hill.  (It was moved because it was too darned hard for the second zone in the game.)
On the other hand, Sonic 2 is slightly more blunt - all levels in that game are directly dangerous because of human influence, and all but Emerald Hill has gone through some kind of ruin as a result.  A pool of chemical gunk, flooded ruins, abandoned neon flashiness, a strip mine (that counts both Hill Top and Mystic Cave), and then the culmination of it all - a vast wasteland flooded completely in oil.  And, I vaguely recall Tails' flight being the result of some kind of dangerous radiation.
I think the same parallels can be drawn in Sonic CD, but I don't own it (yet) so I don't know.
Now to make your head explode: Sonic 2006 *bricked*

[Shadow Jacky]

CD was a given due to how the time traveling worked.  The Bad Futures was always riddled with machines in a barren wasteland.  No animals in sight at all and all of the plants were either dead or replaced.  Speaking of CD, what's the deal with some of the enemies being defective?

[P.P.A.]

CD was a given due to how the time traveling worked.  The Bad Futures was always riddled with machines in a barren wasteland.  No animals in sight at all and all of the plants were either dead or replaced.  Speaking of CD, what's the deal with some of the enemies being defective?

They got defective over time. In the past, all robots are new and shiny. In the present there is a mix of working and broken ones and even further into the (bad) future, they all suffered from the process of aging and none are functioning as they did when they were new.
And yeah, Sonic CD is the best example for the nature/technology thing. (Sonic 2 and 3 I'm not sure, as they were developed without Naoto Oshima). The Bad Future, a place corrupted by Robotnik and covered in dark rotten metal, void of vegetation, in contrast to the peaceful coexistence of nature in technology in Good Future that developed without Dr, Robotnik's influence.
And maybe the meaning of the flowers in the robots is that no matter how long nature is being abused, it will always recover. These flower seeds were implanted into the evil badniks in the ancient past, but even centuries after ina ruined future, they would still bloom when being freed. - It's never too late to take action.

By the way, here's a link to the original GHZ thread I made. I (and of course others) replied some more stuff there that would be awkward to repost here without the context, so check it out if you're interested: http://www.theghz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2375&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

[Crowbar]

I think you are like our English teachers; overanalysing the subject well and truly past its original intention.

But maybe that's just me.

Incorrect! It was deliberate. See here

At that time, there was opposition between "developers" and "environmentalists", and Robotnik was created to represent machinery and development.

Lots of good stuff in that GHZ thread. Though I was always under the impression that the Little Planet had no current civilisation (the old-skool Sonic universe loves its mythology and abandoned ruins).

[P.P.A.]

Lots of good stuff in that GHZ thread. Though I was always under the impression that the Little Planet had no current civilisation (the old-skool Sonic universe loves its mythology and abandoned ruins).

Well I always thought someone must be living in Stardust Speedway, which applies for both Past and Present. (And GF is filled with technology anyway.)

[Stefan]

I think you are like our English teachers; overanalysing the subject well and truly past its original intention.

But maybe that's just me.

I thought I was the only one with this opinion on overanalyzing novels..

[JBertolli]

Personally, I feel the concept of nature as a sort of "god" (as God doesn't really exist *cough*). Nature will destroy humanity before we can destroy it. So many factors can take into effect with human extinction; wars, disease, kiras, etc. (ugh, might want to ignore the third one). We will be wiped out by something we can not adapt to or escape from (via another planet) in time. Henceforth, other species of animal will survive and become dominant, and maybe another life form will dominate the Earth with more intelligence than us, like Bears or something. As for this relation between Sonic and nature, not intentional, but there.

[General Throatstomper]

God, it's so nice to be able to discuss this knowing eggFL isn't going to come and ruin it all.

I could function as a surrogate Egg if you'd all like.

Nature will destroy humanity before we can destroy it. So many factors can take into effect with human extinction; wars, disease, kiras, etc. (ugh, might want to ignore the third one). We will be wiped out by something we can not adapt to or escape from (via another planet) in time. Henceforth, other species of animal will survive and become dominant, and maybe another life form will dominate the Earth with more intelligence than us, like Bears or something.

All life will go extinct, it's a certainty. The Universe will not support life forever-if nothing else, energy will be so spaced throughout the constantly expanding universe that everything will die.

But on the topic of humanity: if we haven't killed ourselves or been destroyed in the next century or so of instability, it's almost assuredly a slow trek to the big freeze...barring a supernovae explosion or another solar cataclysm. Humanity is becoming more ethically and environmentally conscience, and out of frustration more than anything else, cooperation will become more than just an ideal, with great works uniting (and deforming) nations. Expect progress exponentially faster than our piddling technological accomplishments. I know I sound like I'm saying "the moon will be colonised in the year 2000", but I genuinely believe the human race will band together and not be destroyed by its own hand.

As a few points to consider, the answers to which I will provide when I am not in a hurry...

Is man just an extention of nature, and thereby fulfilling nature's compulsive and self-destructive needs?

Isn't machine just an extension of man?

If you answered 'yes' to both of these questions, aren't machines part of nature too?

And why must all technology be viewed as destructive by default?

[P.P.A.]

Eventually we will reach a point where we will destroy ourselves and a lot of the nature on the planet. However it will recover, and on the barren land we left behind new life forms will form and the circle will begin anew.
Think Noah's ark, except the flood is a nuclear war or just general pollution.

[Stefan]

Because of the often uneasy definition of technology.

I agree entirely, though.

The advent of computers will -not- be our downfall, and has certainly pushed humanity forward far more than oldies give it credit for.

Plus, do we define medicine as technology? Shouldn't we? How about the wheel? How about fire? When does technology suddenly become detached from nature? A round rock, or wheel, is fine with us. Plastic isn't.. Where do we draw the line on technology that's alright for us?

[Waxwings]

People seem to be afraid of machines, in a similar way to xenophobia. We like seeing if a process can be made more streamlined through the use of automation (in the name of progress), but imagining a whole factory without anyone working in it brings up queasy questions of unemployment, consciousness, and that whole "we created a monster" idea.

We view technology as we do outsourcing: they're willing to work for less, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, with no vacation.

Now, most people are perfectly fine to deal with assembly lines being run by nobody at all, but apparently once a machine tries to cross the threshold into thinking (our one bastion), it is automatically evil. Even things like the Deep Blue computer, built to do nothing but play chess, are considered imposing themselves upon our minds.

Just another view.

[General Throatstomper]

I've never considered humanity's distinctive feature critical thinking, because we do still run primarily on instinct and obey social constraints not exclusive to our species. I'd say the depth of communication is more unique, and what really separates humanity from (known) species. And because this sentence fits nowhere else in my post, not here either really, I know,and I don't feel like constructing some ham-fisted segue (like this): The computer emulates the human mind so superficially and with such a precise scope that any claims of intellectual infringement are baseless.

I've also never understood a fear of technology, computers specifically, because while it makes great science fiction, your thinkpad won't develop sentience on its own, or for that matter with even the most profound stimulation. The limits of such a system are clearly defined-there can be no 'machine revolution' because a machine does not have self-interest at heart. I suppose a machine could subjugate humans if it fulfilled its own programming, such as the loophole in Isaac Asimovv's 3 laws of robotics (a robot can not harm a human, a robot must obey a human unless obeying a human would violate the first law, a robot must protect itself so long as this is concurrent with the first two laws-the loophole is that robots believing humanity will destroy itself left unchecked can commit violence against humans as a preventative measure)...but honestly, even that is too far out there to warrant serious discussion because programming is so specific. Automated factories can also never displace humans from work on any relevant scale-it's simple economics, if you have machines to make consumer goods without a consumer base, you're running a doomed enterprise. Ignoring that, what about repairmen for machines? Or repairmen for the machines that repair broken machines? Etc.

And in response to PPA:

How are you defining nature? If you mean living organisms, it would require concerted effort to eradicate all life on a planet. If you mean the planet itself, I admit that we are on our way. If you mean the universe, the concept of something completely untouched by humanity, that's going on independently.

Which brings me to another disjointed point: the conventional use of the word 'nature' makes no sense. It's defined by too many as being an area untouched by humans...another form of life. Does our sentience make us different, coopt natural processes? If it does, where do you draw the line-is a reef patrolled by dolphins, or a section of jungle where gorillas live, no longer 'natural'? They're smarter than other species, comparable to humans in that respect-so really, nature is being assessed as a matter of relative intelligence, and therefore the only nature that can exist is an area without any life at all.

To repeat: this will destroy itself before we have the chance, so stop condemning society for its supposed disrespect towards 'nature'...or at least get your terms straight.

[P.P.A.]

With nature I mean animals and vegetation. or, in short, any life on Earth.
And not all nature would be eradicated. But if we polluted the planet that much that only a few species could survive, those would eventually build a new ecosystem.

[JBertolli]

What if a meteor kills the rest of the plant, fungus, and animal life on Earth? Then Earth will have to start a new, waiting hundreds of millions of years for the single-celled organisms to evolve into plants and animals again (or a new type of kingdom for all we know).

[Shadowfan]

Two things.

1. Wow

2. Actually, the highest paying jobs do require alot of physical demands on the human body. Proffessional athletes make lots of money and work lessthan we do. Regular jobs don't pay as well and you have to work longer.(Tell me the justice in that)

[Alondite]

It's because people (the fans) pay bucketloads of cash to see these athletes perform, and buying goods they endorse.  If the money doesn't go to the players, it goes to the coaches, and the companies, people that only have a job BECAUSE of the professional athletes, and it's the athletes that attract the fans.

[EngiNerd]

And, so much focus should not be placed on athletes, either.  The contribution they make to society is purely a form of entertainment, yet they are the ones who get massive paychecks, major scholarships for school (where they often learn diddly) and all they generally do after retirement is endorsements.  I think that everyone, athletes and celebrities included, need to get an education and a job in something useful, like teaching, medicine, or engineering, and use sports or acting as a second job or hobby.  We'd get a lot fewer idiots in the tabloids, and a lot more people making a difference in society.

And, Throatstomper's link is both rather scary and really amusing ... I liked how many times HGG was mentioned.