[Girls'] Last Tour

So let's talk a little bit about Girls' Last Tour. It's a manga about a dead world, with two girls making the literal last tour amongst the ruins of civilisation. It explores a little bit of what makes a person alive, and ruminates a little about what life can mean.

Spoiler: Ab bar yvirf va gur raq, abg rira gur tveyf jub jrag ba gurve ``ynfg gbhe''. Gur tveyf furq gurve rdhvczrag bar ol bar gbjneqf gur raq, fgnegvat sebz gur oernxntr bs gurve zbqr bs genafcbeg, gur Xrggraxenq, gura gur qebccvat bs Lhh'f evsyr, gura Puvv'f obbxf, naq gura gur ynfg bs gurve sbbqf.
Gur gjb (guerr vs lbh vapyhqr Ahxb/Xrg) crbcyr gurl zrg riraghnyyl qvrq gbb, qbvat jung unq tvira gurz gurve frafr bs checbfr bs yvivat (pnegbtencuvat sbe Xnanmnjn, naq nrebcynar ohvyqvat gb syl njnl sbe Vfuvv).

A dead world with two travellers through it; a twist on the ``last man on Earth'' trope. I enjoyed the style from the world-building sense; it talks about the world that was through the eyes of a literal observer, though I don't quite enjoy the world that was portrayed. The world in ruins... it is getting a little too close to home, though the manner of destruction depicted isn't likely to be how this world ends, I think. Wars are the most obvious ways of mass destruction, but as time goes on in this current era, we are discovering new ways to enact destruction on a scale that is comparable with that of raw military power, but not necessarily with the type of collateral damage that destroys infrastructure. In some sense, this is a superior weapon of mass destruction, because it seemingly targets only the people and not the infrastructure.

Maybe that's why there is an increase in experimentation and exploitation of such misinformation/disinformation schemes. I would say that this is probably the type of ``social virus'' that I talked about yesterday in passing.

It does make me think back to the Total Defense concept of SIN. There used to be five pillars, namely:

1. Military defence;
2. Civil defence;
3. Economic defence;
4. Social defence; and
5. Psychological defence.

Then there's the new one that I've not seen before: digital defence, with the targetting of ``online security threats''. Personally, I can understand why that is deliberately highlighted even though I think that it should be lumped under social and psychological defence---with hyper-connectivity comes closer contact with attack elements that used to only be faced by the ``border defence crew''. By creating a separate category, it is much easier to focus efforts in the overall message.

Which brings me to think about the roles each person plays in society. Some roles are highly isolated like ``leaders'' and ``defenders'', while many others are more general. Hyper-connectivity ensures that these roles can easily get blurred because of the higher dynamism in creating populations. So we have situations where people who are not used to being leaders end up being leaders, and sometimes making a hash out of it (I'm looking at ``influencers''), while all of us are suddenly playing the roles of ``defenders'' as we navigate online eco-systems as individuals instead of being behind the protection of the national bloc.

The reason why different roles in society exist is largely due to personal inclinations, and training. Each of us tend to gravitate to a few roles in our lifetimes, sometimes to the exclusion of others. The separation between a society that respects freedom from one that doesn't lies in how we are ``assigned'' to our society roles. Those that prescribe the roles that one must be in with no recourse in changing such roles has a lower respect for freedom, while one that technically allows the changing of roles respects freedom a little more, and the more practical that changing of roles is, the better that particular society respects freedom. Unsaid though, is the implicit assumption that free will ought to be backed by some form of non-ignorance, and that with free will and freedom of choice comes the acceptance of consequences.

But we are fast seeing how people revolt against having to deal with the consequences of their choices, the reasons for these can be largely attributed to an over-inflated sense of self-entitlement, and the mob-speak from being part of a vocal group (minority or majority).

I don't know how to solve this problem.

I don't know why I went on such a long-ass tangent.

Anyway, that's all the logorrhea I have for now. Till the next update.