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Madoka Magica and Entropy (cost of the infinite)


Myouya

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This post will contain spoilers for the anime Madoka Magica, the 12 episode anime.

 

I just recently finished watching the anime episodes of Madoka Magica, which gives a take on many philosophical questions, one of them being related to physics and I really thought it was worth exploring.

The problem is as follows:
In this universe, there's a civilisation of seemingly advanced magical creatures that are described as feeling no emotion (or those that do are considered mentally ill), and they wish to make 'progress'. They have sought means to harvest energy to make up for the rise of entropy for a long time, and their answer was to harvest the emotions of the human race. Their sadness, rage, happiness, their whole souls, basically. They do this by providing each person who makes a contract with them magical powers, turning them into a magical girl. Once they give up their soul, the human is subject to harvest energy from distorsions in reality that corrupt and cause the suffering and death of people. It doesn't sound too bad... does it?

Later, it is revealed that the humans are eventually destined to return the good they've done for the world, in the opposite way. Because of giving up their soul, they are prone to losing themselves and becoming the very distorsions they used to destroy, only this time causing all the pain back that they once thought they avoided. The advanced civilisation creatures don't care, for their lack of emotions, and they've been thriving off of humanity's suffering for as long as history knows.

My personal belief is that when the question comes up, 'what's the price of an eternal civilisation?', my firm answer is that there is none that are worth the exploitation of other beings. The exploitation of other planets, living creatures. I believe the universe should die at one point. Entropy does its thing, and that will be the end of it.
If you were given the choice, would you accept to extend the life of the universe? If so, what's your purpose and reasons?

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