I don't think the message is "knowledge is bad"; it looks like having complete and total knowledge is bad because it leaves nothing left for a curious mind to strive for.
Believe me, I do understand that that's what Ohkubo was going for. (Me making fun of the NBC logo and stuff was just taking the piss out of the manga for the sake of taking the piss out of the manga.) But my objection is still this: IRL there is no such thing as complete and total knowledge. So Ohkubo creating this fantasy-world problem about the dangers of humans knowing things that they were never meant to know is just about the most shallow approach to the "insanity of knowledge" that he could take. There are other ways that he could have cast the problem - i.e. the dangers of knowledge imparted from on high instead of earned, or the dangers of pursuing knowledge at the cost of morals and ethics - but he went for the least interesting approach possible instead.
Like I said, it's not a problem that I find compelling because "knowing too much" is never a problem that can exist in reality. It's not like the way that Ohkubo presented the insanity of power or the insanity of order - clearly problems that are universal to humanity and therefore, you know, interesting things to tackle as conflicts in a fantasy manga.
Not sure how it will play out here but I'm sure Ohkubo isn't participating in our american wars for smarts or ignorance (or on the side of the wimmin-haters, for that matter).
Well of course not. But I mentioned those idiots by name because they are the only faction of our culture left today that is still truly, passionately arguing that there are things that humanity simply isn't meant to know. Which again, as far as I'm concerned, is a la-la cuckoo-land fantasy worldview. Here in reality there is no limit to human knowledge, certainly no limit defined by what the gods would prefer for us not to know.
When this whole bit about the "insanity of knowledge" opens with Stein (of all characters!) flat-out saying "Humanity mustn't learn more knowledge than it was meant to know," it's pretty clear that this is going to be the core of the conflict about "knowledge" - like you said, the dangers of upsetting the apple cart - and frankly I find that boring specifically because it's a conflict that can only exist in a fantasy world.
no subject
Believe me, I do understand that that's what Ohkubo was going for. (Me making fun of the NBC logo and stuff was just taking the piss out of the manga for the sake of taking the piss out of the manga.) But my objection is still this: IRL there is no such thing as complete and total knowledge. So Ohkubo creating this fantasy-world problem about the dangers of humans knowing things that they were never meant to know is just about the most shallow approach to the "insanity of knowledge" that he could take. There are other ways that he could have cast the problem - i.e. the dangers of knowledge imparted from on high instead of earned, or the dangers of pursuing knowledge at the cost of morals and ethics - but he went for the least interesting approach possible instead.
Like I said, it's not a problem that I find compelling because "knowing too much" is never a problem that can exist in reality. It's not like the way that Ohkubo presented the insanity of power or the insanity of order - clearly problems that are universal to humanity and therefore, you know, interesting things to tackle as conflicts in a fantasy manga.
Not sure how it will play out here but I'm sure Ohkubo isn't participating in our american wars for smarts or ignorance (or on the side of the wimmin-haters, for that matter).
Well of course not. But I mentioned those idiots by name because they are the only faction of our culture left today that is still truly, passionately arguing that there are things that humanity simply isn't meant to know. Which again, as far as I'm concerned, is a la-la cuckoo-land fantasy worldview. Here in reality there is no limit to human knowledge, certainly no limit defined by what the gods would prefer for us not to know.
When this whole bit about the "insanity of knowledge" opens with Stein (of all characters!) flat-out saying "Humanity mustn't learn more knowledge than it was meant to know," it's pretty clear that this is going to be the core of the conflict about "knowledge" - like you said, the dangers of upsetting the apple cart - and frankly I find that boring specifically because it's a conflict that can only exist in a fantasy world.