/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>45075097
I view Byakuren as another selfish idealist, but one of those rare people who are capable of meaningfully advancing fields/society.
There's a lot more about abstraction and how a losey analogy(one that's WRONG in certain abstractions) can be very useful, but basically to progress science/math you have to be insane in the eyes of others and break concrete rules, even if it means breaking other proven parts of the system. I know that's basically saying 'mad scientists are mad', but the Scientific method unspoken 'only aggregate proven knowledge' principle leads to evil just as drastic action does.
In Touhou most people have the concrete idea of "Youkai feed on human fear" which implies that their extermination would not only be necessary, but beneficial. Although Byakuren figured it out at first because she didn't want to die, Shou was solid proof that human fear was not a necessary predicate for a Youkai's existence.
When you consider it, she did actually get punished by Karma, stopping Miko's resurrection(essentially sealing her) and then getting sealed herself for a thousand years. Although her biggest fault was NOT showing Shou to others as proof that Youkai were strictly evil, which was a dishonest and evil action.

So, I don't think she was a purely good person and that she definitely let fear and other attachments cloud her judgement, but if Youkai could be enlightened and saved from their evil natures and we didn't do that, we're basically subjugating them out attachment and just as well unenlightened. Of course, you could ask 'would you trade x human lives for x Youkai ones' and there wouldn't be a correct answer since people live and die by circumstance not action, so you disregard lives and make a decision based on faith. but that could just be my Christian faith leaking into Buddhist theory of attachments

I also view 'enlightenment' and 'Godliness' as living the best life possible if that's any help.

Goro became kind of a foil to Hijiri's path since he would have been just fine dying normally, but now that he's cursed and past that his life model has collapsed. So his concrete idea of 'I'll live a full life and die' has been removed from his abstraction and what's left of his character and his experiences up to this point will fill in the blanks.