[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by Arya

Spoiler for the little parable of Arya and the SATNAV:

Here a little and probably stupid example of what I mean. Let's talk about SATNAV. Before its coming I was quite good in remembering a route I drove once. And that was not a matter of excellent memory, but more a matter of identifying the right landmarks thank to which the next time I would be able to not losing myself. Then that evil device came!! Wow, cool. It even speaks and gives me directions. Its first aim clearly is giving directions and drives you wherever you have to go. But the side effect has been, at least to me, that I stopped caring about the route, so every time SATNAV drives me in a wrong place, rarely but it happens, the result is: first that I'm in the wrong place, and second that gradually I have lost my confidence in my personal ability in "resolving" the situation because I stopped caring about that, I'm not used to it, not anymore. So the first thing I do now is turning up the google app of my phone, ie I entrust myself to another SATNAV and not to myself Do you see how sad this story is???
That f***g bastard is lucky that it fails not often enough to make me throw it out of the window.

Here the moral. May I say that the SATNAV is evil? No. May I say that Arya is evil? Neither. But I can say that deep down Arya has lost something in the process. And if now Arya is dumber than before surely it's not a big deal, but what if this kind of process would apply to something different, something more deeper than going home? Like judging people. Today we would say, the Sibyl system is cool but I can judge people by myself. Tomorrow we would say, f**k I chose the wrong person last time, let's Sybil do it for us. And the day after? (pun half intended).

Heh, that's a cute yet relevant analogy, though I'd add that it's hard to accuse your SATNAV of being evil, unless it specifically ordered you to plough through a line of kids crossing the road in the middle of a school zone.

I think most of us generally agree on the point that something went wrong somewhere in this alternative reality, and that it quite possibly started the same way you suggested: a cool new technology came along that was so useful, that made so many people's lives so much easier, which took away the anxiety and guesswork in deciding the careers that one is most suited for, that people began to rely too much on the system, thus creating a new set of problems to replace the ones that were eliminated.

It's a scenario that is very easy to relate to, because we can think of so many examples in our everyday lives. Your SATNAV system alone is a great example. This is the key reason I find the argument that the Sibyl System is inherently bad to be unconvincing. It's not so much the system that is at fault, but the habitual reliance on the system that is the root problem.

Going along with that line of reasoning, I've wondered if the reason for Akane's perfect hue despite the considerable stress and trauma she has experienced is the result of her attitude towards the Sibyl System. Unlike her peers who seem only too ready to push all decision-making — and subsequently all direct responsibility — to the system, Akane consciously thinks about her choices and strives to take active responsibility for the consequences of her decisions.

I'm sure most of us are familiar with people around us who constantly moan about how they suffer because of the system, refusing instead to take a hard look at themselves, at their own failings that led them to their present problems. Instead of thinking actively about what they need to do to dig themselves out of their hole, they waste time saying that there's no point in doing anything because the system will work against them anyway. In effect, they dig a deeper grave for themselves through their procrastination.

In other words, what I'm saying is that, in reality, many people are miserable because they wait for others to solve problems they should instead resolve on their own. There's a high chance that a similar situation exists in the Psycho-Pass universe. It's a matter of changing one's perspective to life. Faced with constraints, does one say, why bother doing anything, because the system won't let me do what I really want. Or does one instead think of making lemonade from lemons? I suspect that Akane is psychologically resilient because she consciously makes the best of whatever she is given, at a time when everyone else wishes for more incentives before they bother lifting a finger to work.

Does one deserve more without working hard to earn the reward?