Fullmetal Alchemist Analysis (part two)

The Value of Life

We're starting to get into the meat of it now.

This is a question explicitly raised, in as many words, by the season one voiceover intro. "What could equal the value of a human soul?" The story appears to answer this question, at least in the context of its own fantastical metaphysics, several times. With the philosopher's stone reveal in "Hidden Truths," the answer appeared to be the embarrassingly obvious "another human soul." Then, as the utility of philosopher's stone was better explored, it seemed to get much more nihilistic, with a human soul being equal in value to a large, but finite, amount of thermomass. But then, Hohenheim and Father had their final confrontation, and it was revealed that the practical value of a human soul is highly contingent on how you use it, with Father needing to overwhelm Hohenheim's much greater efficiency with sheer, wasteful volume.

Then again, maybe we don't actually have any way of assessing what a human soul is "inherently" worth in FMAverse, because God is uniquely interested in them. To the point where its archons will take limbs for moving one to vessel to vessel, or maim you in unpredictably horrible ways for trying to create or recover one (which may be a sort of immunoresponse of God's, depending on what it's exact relationship with soul-information is). This might be getting too out into the weeds of setting-specific metaphysical mumbo-jumbo to be relevant for thematic analysis, but I'm going to try and push this just a little further. What WAS up with the variable symbols on the Gates of Truth, including the blank space on Father's?

...

This is a place where I think that FMA's otherwise pretty good worldbuilding really missed a spot. You
*can* see a possible logic behind it, but the story isn't at all explicit, and there are some scenes where it really should have been addressed directly.

Edward was able to give up his Gate and still live like a normal person afterward, just without any ability to perform alchemy. Alchemists are somewhat rare, with a fifty million strong country seeming to host a community of perhaps hundreds of alchemists, but not thousands. For those with the aptitude, alchemy CAN be learned as early as childhood or the early teens; even assuming that Edward, Alphonse, and May are incredible prodigies, it seems like a lot more kids should be able to at least learn the basics by their age. Alchemy is also useful enough that you'd think any even moderately wealthy and educated person in the setting would have learned it in school. But that's not the case at all; alchemists are still the exception to an otherwise nonmagical industrial society.

The narrative is dancing around it instead of saying it outright, for whatever reason, but it sure SEEMS like only certain select people are born with Gates that give them the potential to practice alchemy.

This would also explain things like why none of the Sins could practice alchemy, despite at least some of them knowing quite a lot of it. Pride could transmute, but only while he was latched onto a human alchemist and (explicitly, in Mustang's case) using their Gate. If the dwarf in the flask only had one Gate of Truth, it would make sense for him to make sure he kept it for himself while shearing off other portions of his soul to create the Sins. On the other hand, it seems like the dwarf - with its divine origins and memories - should have also been a spontaneous caster, so if it had a Gate one wonder why it couldn't transmute from inside the flask. That in turn raises the question of whether it acquired a Gate from one of the Xerxians it assimilated into its new body, and in that case how many Gates might it have acquired?

I'm also not sure how the idea of a select few people inherently having this connection to divine knowledge while everyone else doesn't squares with the themes of the story. On one hand, it plays very well into the problem of natural injustice set out in the first half of the series. On the other, it works against the humanist, egalitarian messages of the ending. It somewhat depends on what the metaphysical logic behind it is. In more Hindu-adjacent types of mysticism, it's believed that a person's ability to access the All-In-One is tied to their karmic history; the more reincarnations a soul undergoes and the higher it rises, the greater its ability to peer beyond. That would fit pretty well with what we see in FMA, assuming that reincarnation is a thing happening in the background, but there's nothing in the story that actively supports the existence of reincarnation (except for what happened to the Selim Bradley homuncule I suppose, but that was hardly a normal situation). In this case, Edward essentially set himself back a few incarnations in the karmic scale when he gave up his Gate. In more Hellenic occult belief systems, this sort of potential can be unlocked by anyone with enough study and training ("gnosis"), is parceled out to chosen prophets by a more interventionist God, or just...belongs to gullible white aristocrats who can pay the mystic money to be told they have magic powers that make them even more special and priviledged than they already were, shut up and don't think about it.

Basically, the Gates really needed more explanation, including confirmation of how many people have them (and thus the potential to perform alchemy) to begin with. Even something as basic as there being "alchemist tests" of prospective apprentices to see if they have whatever mysterious something it is that lets you do magic would have helped somewhat. In any case, the way the world looks and the fact that Edward was able to give up his Gate without any other consequences, when put together, suggest very strongly that Gates are a rare privilege. For whatever reason that might be.

...

Anyway, the symbols on the Gate seem to have some correlation with the intricacy of the soul it belongs to (though a counterpoint to this is that Edward's Gate didn't appear to get any more detailed as he went through life, so maybe not...). Granted, the value that God sees in a given soul (or at least, a given soul's ability to have a Gate and use alchemy) might not be something we should care too much about, given the flawed nature of FMA's God. If it turns out that more mature and experienced souls are worth more, well...that would just mean that Wog-Sothoth thinks like an insurance company; more on that in the next section.

Going back to the inherent value of a soul, and at the way things went down throughout the later half of the series, I think it might be helpful to go back to the equivalent exchange concept. It was established early on that equivalent exchange doesn't only apply to physical matter and energy a la real life thermodynamics. The fact that a "soul" can act as a unit of exchange between physical energy and identity inclines one to think about things like society and family in thermodynamic terms.

"Energy" in physics the capability to enact change upon the surrounding environment.

A human's ability to enact change on their environment is at least partly independent of thermodynamics; hinging on social context, available technology and information, etc rather than just the amount of calories it takes to grow a human body and run a human brain.

The potential power of an individual human is therefore not an inherent property at all, but a contextual one depending on environment, social pressures, and personal decisions and accrued skills and experience.

Therefore, it is impossible to calculate the "value" of a person when it comes to equivalent exchange. There's absolutely no mathematical model that will let you predict a person's potential energy. That's why converting people into philosopher's stone results in such an unpredictable product; no one ever seems able to anticipate when a stone will run out of energy, or exactly what a given size or grade of stone should be capable of (even Father didn't seem able to monitor his power supply with any foresight during the final battle). The only consistent rule is "more souls = more power."

I think I heard people say before I watched it that FMA's message was "the value of a human life is immeasurable." At the time, I shrugged it off as a a shallow, uplifting-sounding platitude that doesn't really mean anything. But (while it's possible that the people in question may have meant it in the dumb way) I now understand the point. It's not that a human life is of infinite value; it's that the value of a human life cannot be reliably measured, because math just doesn't work on individual human impact. You never know when noble badass Alex Armstrong will shut down and do nothing, or when fucking Yoki is going to jump into the driver's seat and punk Pride out of nowhere.

Now, about God acting like a scummy insurance company...


Theism, Dystheism, and Nihilism

One of my biggest complaints about Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is its seemingly indecisive stance on divine justice. I guess the most coherent reading you can get looking at the whole series in context is that the God that world has is flawed, but still better than nothing. I'm not sure I find that a compelling message, and I also don't know if that's how it comes across in the manga, but that *seems* to be the stance of Brotherhood at least. Maybe. But if you think about it in conjunction with the story's approach to its human characters, and keep in mind the Hermetic mantra "as below, so above," things get a little more interesting. Intentionally on the creators' part, or otherwise.

To begin with, from how the characters describe the flow of energy and/or data through the universe ultimately constituting "god," I don't think that the God behind the gate is a creator. It seems more likely to be an emergent property of the universe; an entity that arose from that flow of data-stuff. It may have had an important role in shaping the universe into its current configuration, depending on how active it actually is on the cosmic scale, but it doesn't seem to have been any sort of gardener or watchmaker god. So, that's one major part of theodicy solved right there; God is flawed *because* the universe is flawed, rather than the reverse. As below, so above.

Of course, the hows and whys of natural injustice are of little comfort to creatures forced to live in an unjust universe.

This is probably the most longrunning thematic thread in the story. Its first direct examination is of course in "All Is One, One Is All," the absolutely most existentially horrifying cartoon about cute little boys on an island with cute little forest critters ever created. The problem is put in more directly adversarial framing in "Those Who Lurk Underground," which culminates in a defiant suicide rather than submission to natural evil (Father representing the universe and/or god, with Greed and his more compliant siblings being the life forms created and shaped by those conditions/creator). The moral case against existence is driven home even further in "Doorway of Darkness," with the revelation that rather than simply having been created from atrocity, the haemunculi and aurelians are sustaining themselves from moment to moment on the *current* exploitation, suffering, and destruction of other people, and that this is an inescapable, fundamental part of their nature. Hohenheim grapples with this onscreen in "Family Portrait," agonizing over both his own continued existence, and whether or not his aurelian condition will spread to his children.

Here the existential nihilism combines with another theme that had been not-so-subtly building throughout the series, that being the ethics of parenting as a process rather than just procreation in and of itself. Good parents are exceptionally hard to come by in the world of Fullmetal Alchemist, and the few good ones tend to die just at the right times to emotionally scar their children the most. The clearest examination of that subject is in "The Dwarf in the Flask." The alien nature of the original haemunculus and the distance of its creation process from the usual human reproductive method allow the audience to think about the situation free of the biases we have toward recognizable "families" and "parents." The haemunculus was created in a situation of absolute dependence and helplessness. Its situation was such that any act of malice, negligence, or even just incompetence from its keepers caused it to suffer without recourse, and each bit of pain and humiliation warped its mind in a darker and darker direction.

Does that situation sound familiar? Maybe not. You were too young to remember most of it, at least consciously. Someone chose to put you in that situation, despite knowing that they would make mistakes that would hurt and corrupt you. You didn't ask for them to create you, but they did anyway. Their intentions were probably much better than those of the Xerxian alchemist, and they were probably more attentive than his unwilling blood donor, but really, that's a difference of degree rather than kind. An exacerbating factor. The morality of putting a sentient being under the absolute power of flawed beings in an uncontrolled setting would raise the same question no matter how loving and devoted the dwarf's creators were.

The echoes of "Frankenstein" in "The Dwarf In the Flask" are pretty loud, and I think that "Dwarf" also improved on the story in at least one way. Victor Frankenstein was unquestionably in the wrong for creating and then abandoning his Adam. There's not much room for nuance there; Frankenstein was the bad guy, full stop. The FMA version of the story basically splits Victor into two separate characters; the obviously evil and hateable Xerxian wizard, and the hapless Slave 23. The wizard isn't interesting. He's just a bastard who's easy to condemn. Fittingly, the story doesn't even bother giving him a name. Slave 23 - who isn't just given a name, but actually receives it *onscreen* - is the one who commits the second of Frankenstein's sins in rejecting the creation who recognizes him as its father. The nuance comes from the fact that Hohenheim didn't ask for this any more than the haemunculus did. He's a victim just like it. DID he have any responsibility to the creation, given the circumstances? How much of a failure of his own was it to fail to recognize the child as such when it looked and acted so unlike a typical human child, regardless of whether or not you can consider it "his?"

Having a kid foisted on you is a thing that happens to people in real life too. Another life potentially ruined by the act of bringing a new person into existence.

All of these questions were going through Hohenheim's head as he tore himself apart over his decision to start yet another family. What kind of monster would you have to be to take the risks of parenting voluntarily? Why the hell would you ever willingly continue the cycle of Darwinian atrocity that a child will be raised into?

For most of my adult life, that's been me.

The story starts to push back against these bleak conclusions somewhat early on, with the flashbacks to the events of the Ishval genocide ("The Ishvalan War of Extermination") and with the longterm consequences of Greed's defiance ("Father"). Conscientious objection to reality doesn't make things any better. Armstrong didn't save any Ishvallans by removing himself from the situation. Greed didn't meaningfully impede Father by doing likewise. In both cases, the conscientious objector was replaced by someone else who gave much less of shit, and things were actually made worse rather than better. If you don't, someone else will, and odds are that they won't care nearly as much as you do about questions like these.

Remove the entire human species from the equation if you want; the universe with its laws of physics will still exist, and the potential for other life likewise. Humans are probably the only species that has ever existed on Earth with the ability to question the rightness of their own existence. What are the odds of something like that evolving again, on this or any other planet? Even if it's hopeless, isn't the world better with that self-awareness in it than without?

Maybe it isn't actually as hopeless as I've spent the last decade fearing it might be, though.


Parents and Siblings

I have a younger brother. He really looked up to me when we were kids. Way too much so, considering that I wasn't exactly the best role model back then.

He and I stayed close into our teens. Our parents were...how to put this...undergoing negative character arcs at that time. Things between them got worse and worse every year. My mother has a degenerative disease that gradually paralyzed her over that time, and this exacerbated some preexisting psychiatric issues to the point of longterm violent psychosis. My father alternated between being in denial, lashing out at random, and sinking into alcoholism, all while refusing to let anyone substantially help him take care of her for what I can only infer were ego-related reasons. When my other siblings and I left for college, my little brother was left alone with them, and I in particular was suffering from mental health issues of my own at the time that made me emotionally unavailable to him. I could have done better though. I absolutely could have done better.

Almost immediately after he was left alone with my parents, he got into drugs. Then into crime to pay for them. I was back home visiting at the time when he fled the state to avoid arrest and completely vanished from contact with anyone in the family. We didn't hear from him for a long time. The last time I'd seen him, he was gaunt, unkempt, and covered in infected wounds.

I blamed my father, more than anyone else. I still do. But this show has helped me do some self-examination.

My brother is fine now. He got caught in another state, did time, and then got clean. He's living on his own, working a high-paying blue collar vocational job, and back in touch with everyone. I'm typing these words during a visit to his new home town. He's been driving my fiance and I all around the city during our visit, and we all played some Super Smash Brothers and got lunch together earlier today. Honestly, there's probably not much I could have done to prevent what happened, and he obviously didn't need me - or anyone else for that matter - to get himself back on his feet afterward.

...

"Father" as the villain was a little too good to be true. Wouldn't Edward have loved that, if it turned out that Hohenheim was the villainous shadow-king of Amestris? How incredibly right he would have gotten to be. That would have felt really good.

Yeah, I'm coming clean. I wanted Hohenheim to be the villain too. That would have felt great, and been extremely bad for me.



Splitting it here. Will conclude in part 3.