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Friday, December 31, 2010

Conflict is Never-ending



I just finished playing the game Final Fantasy Dissidia which takes place in a timeless battle of good and evil. The Goddess Cosmos and the God Chaos are trapped in this never-ending cycle to battle. Even if they die, they are reborn again once the damage of the battle scars the world enough to destroy it. The destruction creates the rebirth of the same cycle. I have read stories and seen movies with a similar idea. Good versus Evil and Light versus Darkness are always the main conflict in any popular story. This observation brings an interesting philosophical theory. Once the conflict is gone, there is no purpose. Ironically enough, I read about this in my Mythology class. King Arthur and his Knights become idle once their quests are over. Arthur confides this to Guinevere who tells him that it is not so surprising. Without purpose, the knights have nothing. Cosmos and Chaos must always battle for this same reason, and once one is gone, the other loses all meaning.Even Sailor Moon, when she is given the opportunity to destroy the Galaxy Cauldron and end the rebirth of her ultimate nemesis, decides that the action would be pointless. This is also similar to the reoccurring theme in Kingdom Hearts that light cannot exist without darkness. Because I'm a writer and a thinker, I try to understand what these conflicts mean. You could say that this is a product of the common mythquest, or you could say it is the troupe of yin and yang. I choose to look at this theme in a different approach. Conflict makes us who we are. Every battle whether internal or external teaches us something. I'm not saying that conflict is good or even bad, it is conflict regardless. And conflicts push stories along. Everyone wants to see the ultimate battle where the hero faces the villain and conquers his or her fears. This symbolic battle displays a rite of passage and shows growth in the characters. It's an interesting concept to think about. Does conflict really define good and evil? Is conflict a necessary cycle in order to learn about oneself? Would a hero still be a hero without a nemesis? Maybe I can answer these questions in a story one day.

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