#5pebbles 5pebbles what philosophical truths will i expose to you next

[artgletic]

hiiii im op and i just have to say like. the reason your friend sent my comic is actually the exact opposite of what i was trying to convey in it LMAOOO. I sort of talk about it in my original tags, but i want to go deeper into my thoughts on iterators and iterator godhood more since i have quite a lot to say on the matter. forgive me for taking your tags as a springboard 💚.

monologue + doodle under the cut

one of the things i really wanted to drive home in the comic was how iterators are in no way godlike, no matter what they might think. they might be have the knowledge to wave away an entire language into your mind or modify organisms to morphologically unrecognizable degrees which on paper seems like a godlike power, but its only as godlike as we are compared to other organisms. We are capable of construction and creation to unfathomable degrees in the eyes of other animals, but i dont think anyone would reasonably say we are all divine. There are other animals better at different stuff than us-- ants can communicate with one another soundlessly, cheetahs can easily outpace us, elephants can easily overpower us. etc. We are not an all-encompassing divinity, we are highly specialized at what we do. Iterators are incredible minds that allow incredible abilities that were relied upon by their creators, but they're helpless outside of this specialization (see 5 pebbles unable to stop something as mindless and simple as the rot. all it does is consume, and no amount of understanding will stop its spread). it reminds me of a lesson common in modern ecology: there is no such thing as a more 'advanced' organism, only specialized ones. It basically means to reject the notion that any organism is better than another in an absolute sense, as if there is somehow a 'perfect' organism evolution works towards. Things can be better they others in a relative sense (ie. competition), but there is no One True Best Creature-- something that is the best in one niche would crumble in another.

As well, iterators are not only not above instinct (as i showed in the comic), but also in being a part of the ecosystem in general. All of them are going to die off and essentially go extinct specifically because of the loss of their symbionts (the ancients), just like we would if our gut microbiome decided to peace out. Personally, i view iterators as giant symbiotic ecosystems themselves, made up of a million different microbes with specialized purposes designed to keep the environment (the iterator themselves) in homeostasis. it's literally in the area name: 5Pebbles is not a character, but an entire location that has food and predators and prey for the slugcat just as any other area, its just that every part of that area is a part of a larger collaborative organism.

Pebbles says he struggles to accept being a bug. And if he realized it went even deeper-- that he was not a bug, but the product of many, many bugs, that something as stupid and simple as a bug could work together to create something as complex and divine as him, well... I think this is as far from divinity as you can get.

This is sort of an extension of spamlets-blog's tag on hubris being a human emotion (SO TRUE BESTIE), BUT When you can think to such a complex degree (whether human or iterator, though i get iterators are capable of much more insane feats of processinglol), its easy to call yourself a god. especially when the only other creatures near you are wild animals. People irl do it all the time, though not to such an extreme. think of any time someone gets upset when you mention that humans are animals too-- its like an insult to them to be lumped in with the mangy animals and wild beasts. but regardless of what you think or how high you hold yourself or what your purpose is, we all play a part in our ecosystems. this is a humbling thing, but certainly not a bad one.

as an entomologist, trust me when i say the world really opens up when you learn to appreciate even the most minute parts of the environment (even in manmade enviroments!) your whole world becomes a lot more colourful when youre able to view these things as tiny pieces all supporting the world as we know it as opposed to just a nuisance. pebbles is still in very very deep into his self-identified godhood, and insists that everything distracting him from his divine purpose is a nuisance, even if it would make him happy to forget his purpose for a minute and just indulge himself. Best example i have of this is in arti's route, where you can see hes so into reading pearls that have anthropological value and will not shut up about them and has to constantly remind himself that the pearls are a distraction and arti is a nuisance etc etc etc. his self-imposed divinity literally saps his happiness away, and his stubbornness in revering the holy act of dying will steal away any joys his life could have. ironically, by following their base instincts, every other organism understands this far better than he does. and if knowledge is truly what we measure divinity as, everyone except for pebbles is a god.

...

case study of the self-identified god