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Originally Posted by Solace
He doesn't commit suicide. His powers just become so wildly uncontrollable that he himself becomes collateral damage to their environmental warping effects. If one wishes to take a different view of it, one might say that he didn't die, he simply went into hibernation, or extreme isolation as a result of his desire to not hurt anyone anymore. Either way his role in the story is over, which was to show what happens when the conscious brain can no longer control the subconscious psychic energy it emits. I think the term "karma demon" here is literal, as in someone who is a victim of themselves, and they become the monster that is feared by others.
That's really the syndrome in a nutshell, really. The librarian in episode three talked about how early users went through exponential evolution of their powers due to the stress of the war. I wouldn't be surprised if the reason for all of the rampant mutations and utter devastation of civilization was directly resultant from users who had powers grow faster than their ability to control them.
This is likely why there is such intense training and discipline in the society, to help weed out cases where powers are too weak or users are too "clever" for their own good. I'd imagine that a weak user might push themselves too hard to prove themselves, thus causing backlash which could have severe localized damage. A strong user who is unable to control their powers obviously results in the same thing.
It's easy to admonish such a cruel society for being too paranoid, but the results speak for themselves. There is a long history of psychic powers that are abused or have gone out of control, and Shun demonstrates that even a child can wipe out an entire village and even warp reality itself. Even the cat, which an ordinary Cantus user would struggle with, was a complete joke to him. In order to preserve what little humanity still exists, the adults decided to resort to what we would consider unthinkable means of culling the dangerous elements. Survival is paramount over ethics in this world.
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I largely agree.
Harsh as it is, it's certainly not hard to see the basic pragmatic reasons for why society is the way it is in Shin Sekai Yori.
In fact, I'm not sure much better alternatives are available or even imaginable here.
In the end, Cantus power is arguably more of a curse than a blessing. It's possible to master it, but you need to be extremely self-disciplined and have certain personality traits to achieve such mastery, imo.
Shun had immense raw power, but his personality did not lend itself to such mastery.