Let's talk about the politics of stoves in Trails in the Sky

[karusen]

I can’t stop thinking about the politics of stoves in this anime game from 20 years ago.

I love the Trails games. Mostly the first one as the games have become less and less interesting, but that’s a topic for another time. Recently I decided to replay Trails in the Sky FC on a whim and had a really good time, but one scene in particular struck me. So, for context you’re on the road from one major city to another and you’ve stopped by a rugged outpost to spend the night. The stationed guards are happy to lend you a room and the following exchange happen from the two main characters:

Estelle: Mmm… but y’know, wood stoves just feel so more cozy than these things.
Joshua: Orbment stoves may heat up quickly, and they’re certainly efficient, but they can’t compare with the feel of a real wood-burning stove.

I’ve never payed much attention to this scene specifically. The game is set during an industrial revolution and the impact of technological progress is a central motif. In one city, the old harbour industries are being displaced by a service economy. In a rural village, the older farmers are disgruntled by the introduction of new farming machines. In this context, a piece of inconsequential dialogue about the properties of new stove technology seems fine.

But with the benefit of knowing the full story, this exchange becomes suspect. In the next game it is revealed that the downfall of the ancient civilization, was brought on by their extremely advanced tech. These ancestors lived in a post-scarcity society where the material and social needs of every citizen was provided for by a nigh-omnipotent AI. Since the dreams and desires of citizens would be fulfilled by this external force, it eventually lead to a spiritual decline in these ancients. We’re basically told that the AI “facilitated the creation of virtual realities intended to induce euphoria in participants. It even altered brain chemistry to achieve this. It was no different than taking a powerful euphoric stimulant and hallucinogen at the same time. Worse still, there were no side effects. No physical ones, at least”.

So this seems like a typical “technology has gone too far” narrative. A natural extension of the motifs in the game. But this stove dialogue makes it clear to me what the actual message of the game is. It’s about authenticity. The protagonists cheerfully agree that the old stoves while inefficient, simply feel more “real” than the newer ones. There’s no real argument here on the basis of material circumstances or the impact on society as a whole, but only an appeal to the emotional and spiritual effect on the individual.

Despite its conveniences, its potential to better the human condition, new tech is inauthentic. It might make you more prosperous, but at the cost of the experiences that mold people into people. This is exemplified by the protagonists eschewing the use of modern travel conveniences (e.g. airships) and instead walk the roads as part of their training. And this makes a certain amount of sense in regard to how tech distances us from our surroundings. But in the end this is in the service of the big takeaway that using technology to support people’s material needs is a slippery slope. That using a tractor makes us less authentic, despite being able to feed more people.That implementing policies that address the people’s basic needs eventually leads to the creation of the torment nexus.

The failing of the new age is not the sacrifices of progress, how we despite our technological advancements still treat people like shit. No, it’s simply the abstract loss of “the real” that is the problem. In fact, the people who overthrew the ancient society went on to become the royal family in the new feudal monarchy they established.

So, I can’t stop thinking about the politics of stoves in this anime game from 20 years ago.

[biff_stallion]

Thanks for sharing this. I dig that this stove sequence sparked these thoughts. Are there any Amish-equivalent characters in this game?

[karusen]

Thanks!

Nothing really springs to mind, no. Closest thing is Ravennue village, where there’s a running NPC storyline about a split in the local farming community. The old farmers pride themselves on their traditional methods, while the younger people want to expand productions by introducing modern machines.

There’s also a local mine in one region, where there’s a few mentions of possible environmental issues, but the problem is that in general the fantasy tech in the game uses an abundant, naturally occurring energy source, with no real downsides.

[UncreativeOutput]

@karusen

So, I can’t stop thinking about the politics of stoves in this anime game from 20 years ago.

Wood stoves/heaters are a massive problem in a large parts of the world.

Where I live (Canberra) there is very little in the way of polluting industry. But the combination of home wood heaters and a temperature inversion layer creates a huge pollution problem in winter.

It’s apt that this discussion would be inspired by a game from 20 years ago, because thats when the current suggested solutions (slow phasing out over ~40 years) were first being discussed.

[karusen]

I mean that’s the thing. There’s a wealth of stuff that you can talk about regarding technological innovations. Because of that I initially completely missed that the game isn’t actually engaging with those issues.

It’s really just a mask for talking about the decline of the next generation. It honestly reminds me of old people complaining about how younger folk “has it too good”, because of modern day amenities.

[Yim]

This thread is a strong contender for my favourite thread title on the forum.

I’ve been trying to write something on the actual subject of the thread and not really getting my thoughts into a useful order. I also like a wood fire, but only use them occasionally, generally on holiday. If I were reliant on them for all my heating needs I might feel differently. I don’t think authenticity is what I like about them. I dunno.

[yeso]

there is something oddly strident about the way the game talks about orbs and orb technology. So much so that I knew immediately what this thread title was referring to despite having only played like 3 hours of this game more than a decade ago

[karusen]

I think it’s pretty common to enjoy old tech because of the feel it invokes. Just look at the nostalgia for vinyl or vcr. That’s also why I never thought much about this stove scene, because it just felt like a small nod to that sort of thing. Yeah, using an old wood stove feels kinda good?

My issue is the implications this sentiment has when it is brought over to the actual productive basis of society. Like if a tractor can rid us of world hunger we shouldn’t still be farming by hand, simply because it feels nicer. And the final narrative of this game is basically a thinly veiled rant about the equivalent of a modern day society that the game rants about having too high demands for welfare policies. Which seems like a wild stance to include in your anime game.

[karusen]

Yeah, it’s pretty telling that the game never addresses how mind-boggling it is that they’ve invented tech that runs on clean, renewable energy beyond “Wow, orbments sure are neat!”.

[UncreativeOutput]

The naturalistic fallacy is a particularly noxious form of poisonous thinking. It’s pretty easy to spot in older works like this one. My go-to example is late 90s/early 2000s sci-fi that imagined the human genome project as some sort threat to our humanity (eg, Metal Gear Solid 1), which is an opinion that seems quaint and archaic now.

The real challenge is spotting and identifying it in the present. Which is more difficult, socially and practically.

I want to say it’s an inherently conservative thought process. But thinking like this just allows people to self-exonerate because they themselves aren’t conservative.

[Yim]

I don’t remember the game’s stance on welfare, and I don’t know much about the economics of tractors. I guess I think of the luddites, skilled workers displaced by technology which concentrates the benefits of production in the hands of the owners of that technology. It is reasonable for the victims of disruption to resent that disruption and long for the old ways to be viable again, even if the change ultimately benefits more people than it harms.

[biff_stallion]

It also brings up interesting notions of access, dissemination and adoption of technology. My grandparents didn’t get running sink water in rural Wisconsin until 1969. They weren’t opposed to it, it was difficult to run through their geology and it was expensive. Things get complicated when any kind of value is correlated with how humans exist in the world. Like many video games, it sounds like this one was able to build an interactive ecosystem that could spark these thoughts!

[karusen]

My favourite location in the game is Ruan, because it actually touches upon this a bit. The main industry in the town was the harbour district, but at the time of the game it has become obsolete by the advent of airships. The town has largely pivoted to tourism and service jobs instead, but not everyone has been able to adapt to these new circumstances. In the plot there’s a local gang composed of disenfranchises youths who causes trouble from time to time, and they’re set up as a scapegoats by the antagonists. It’s sorta implied that the local leadership haven’t been doing enough to help adapting the unskilled labourers and workers, which in turn lead to the local unrest.

But by and large this is a pretty minor element in the game. Even in Ruan a lot of the old sailors aren’t actually presented as having any real issues beyond wistfully reminiscing about “the good ol’ days”.

[Gaagaagiins]

@UncreativeOutput

I want to say it’s an inherently conservative thought process.

I might go further and to say it is definitely pretty at least adjacent to reactionary thinking, at best, a slippery slope to fascistic thinking at worst.

I think a lot of what we’re mulling over here involves the invocation of an idealized past, one in which these days tends to be the purview of a lot pimply faced white boys with Greek statues in their profile pics who like to spell it like RETVRN. The use of a wood stove instead of woke liberal geothermal heat pumps, or patriotic cancer and COVID and autism curing beef tallow instead of gay communist transgender seed oils, might just as often be the bit of creative theatre for drawing attention to a more subtle overall advocation for an Embrace of Tradition.

Kinda makes me also think of our boy Technology Connections and his argument against “BUT SOMETIMES” thinking, which has stuck with me for many years. The gist of it is that technological and especially ecological progress is often very easily and lazily dismissed by smart alecs (often but not always Online ones) by pointing out compromises or complications that a new technology may bring, especially when dismissing something outright because of one specific limitation, while not also factoring in either the benefits of the adoption of new technology, nor how the aforementioned compromises or limitations could be mitigated if not eliminated with other innovations. Their example was people on whatever kinds of nerd forums they go to being overly emotionally attached to incandescent lighting in traffic signal lights, which require much, much more energy and maintenance than LEDs do. They would dismiss the benefits of LEDs by saying “BUT SOMETIMES in cold climates, LED traffic lights will get covered with snow and ice and no longer be visible!” gesturing to how incandescent lights heat up during operation and thus will melt snow and ice. The BUT SOMETIMES thinking is the thought destroying fallacy that fails to consider that LED traffic lights can very, very easily incorporate heating elements to melt ice and snow… also still much more efficiently than incandescent lights, too, of course.

The reality isn’t just that wood stoves and other archaic forms of home heating or energy production aren’t just in some places preferred for irrational reasons, never mind the inefficiency of it, the reality is that they burned down a lot of homes, and killed people, like, a lot of them. So their continued usage as a primary heating source (for the record I absolutely think @Yim deserves little a wood fire, as a treat) has so many more drawbacks than benefits. I mean, I think I would probably have similarly warm and fuzzy feelings about knowing the home I live in is heated by poop or just pulled like magic from the ground, myself. Maybe there is some kind of biological and evolutionary reason why people like the sound of a fire or the kind of radiating heat that comes off of a fire (you won’t catch me saying that it isn’t great to be clear), like, idk, maybe hearing that sort of thing is calming to some more animal element in our brains because we have been doing it for a long time or it hearkens us back to the womb. But I also think you can get more or less the same benefit from a white noise generator or an app on your phone that plays a looping sound of a thunderstorm (something I fall asleep to every night).

[karusen]

@Gaagaagiins

“BUT SOMETIMES in cold climates, LED traffic lights will get covered with snow and ice and no longer be visible!” gesturing to how incandescent lights heat up during operation and thus will melt snow and ice. The BUT SOMETIMES thinking is the thought destroying fallacy that fails to consider that LED traffic lights can very, very easily incorporate heating elements to melt ice and snow…

This reminds of all the bad faith criticisms against alternative energy sources like wind and sun that still gets repeated despite the existence of solutions or workarounds. “What if the wind doesn’t blow?? What if it’s cloudy??”. Sure, but what if fossil fuels kills the planet, then what.

I absolutely think there’s something inherently conservative in that line of thinking. It comes from a place of not being able to imagine a different world, so you by necessity have to find reasons why change is impossible or undesirable.

[Gaagaagiins]

@karusen

I absolutely think there’s something inherently conservative in that line of thinking. It comes from a place of not being able to imagine a different world, so you by necessity have to find reasons why change is impossible or undesirable.

Yes, exactly. And…

@Yim

I guess I think of the luddites, skilled workers displaced by technology which concentrates the benefits of production in the hands of the owners of that technology. It is reasonable for the victims of disruption to resent that disruption and long for the old ways to be viable again, even if the change ultimately benefits more people than it harms.

@karusen

…and they’re set up as a scapegoats by the antagonists…

I would say that that desire to dismiss change that would be objectively overall better often comes from a place of refusing to admit that one not-so-coincidentally happens to benefit (perhaps enormously) from the status quo, especially when that status quo is built on an overreliance on what one benefits from, and perhaps there’s also a parallel thought here that insists the health of an economic system is positively correlated with a constant rate of exponential growth.

It’s definitely no surprise how easy it seems to be to dig into who or what is funding the more general modern right wing cultural and social movement, even if you’re not looking for people who are talking about climate catastrophe or renewable energy, and find a lot of fossil fuel money, indirect as it may be.

Speaking of the Luddites, can anyone who actually reads non-fiction answer this: how much of the reason we still to this day insult people by calling them a luddite is because the actual Luddites were innovation fearing boneheads trying to clamber in early to the dustbin of history, and how much of it was because they were proto-Marxists?

[RubySunrise]

Thank you for this interesting topic! I appreciate the context from the game, too, it’s helping me wrap my head around it. Even still I only have stray thoughts.

I am struck by how straight forwardly these characters are expressing an aesthetic appreciation of the wood stove explicitly uncritically – directly setting aside material considerations. Maybe a generous reading of the scene is to say it is in favor of recognizing the importance of aesthetics when implementing new technology society-wide. The question of authenticity is interesting, too. It’s the aesthetics of the wood stove that evoke authenticity. Why not an orbament stove?

[Sun_Crypt]

Biden is coming for our gas stoves!!

Modern example of political stoves. I would be lying if I said I prefer cooking on an electric stove but the health benefits and energy benefits are clearly superior.

This is just a politics thread but now but this does remind me of the false equivalency of a GOPer saying “why would you vote for Biden you don’t even like him” without realizing that the dislike of the other side is far far greater. Wood stove lovers look at one thing they like (fire) and ignore all negatives while simultaneously being able to only see negatives of the new tech

[Sun_Crypt]

At the same time everyone should experience a warm fireplace or wood stove in their lifetime. Special occasion stoves

[UncreativeOutput]

@Gaagaagiins

I might go further and to say it is definitely pretty at least adjacent to reactionary thinking, at best, a slippery slope to fascistic thinking at worst.

You’re entirely correct that this is typical of fascist rhetoric and ideology. A blind worship of some sort of “good old days” real or imagined. It’s often ahistorical, nonsensical and contradictory (ie, you simultaneously have an insistence that the ideal society is run by real meat-eating men, but also those who refuse to eat animal products because it leads to an impure and polluted white race.) but that’s hardly the point.

I immediately think of Laibach’s style of satire from the 80s here, particularly their 1989 cover of Across the Universe, for spotting the fascist tendencies in new age/hippy ramblings.

It’s particularly apt when discussing renewable energy and modern efficient technologies. By critiquing them as unnatural, you can also bring in the similar implicit claim that it’s the modern “wasteful” society that drives the need for so much power.

I still am hesitant to inherently tie the fallacy to conservatism. Particularly when referring to its use in the present day. Because I think it’s a side-detail to the importance of identifying, and when possible, calling out this sort of thinking.

This is demonstrated by the fact you see a lot of old long-discarded ideas in the modern conservative/fascist arsenal, that may have been “leftish” or “environmentalist” in their day. (anti-GMO paranoia being a big one)

or to cite a modern example. A big problem today is harmful and expensive AI snake-oil peddlers making impossible and outlandish claims. There is a common school of criticism that prefers to ignore the technical shortcomings and portray these systems as “hyper-competent, but morally wrong for non-specific reasons”. I don’t believe any of the people making these criticisms are fascist at all, but it is still invalid thinking.