The training was tiring, but it was always worth it to see the direct results of your hard work and suffering directly.
Dante spent the entire next 2 weeks going through the full basics of Breathing, Posture, Balance, Reaction, and Traversal with the Elder. By the time he was done and had fully mastered what he was to learn, Dante felt like a completely new person.
It was as if the old him was a clumsy toddler waddling like a penguin while the current him was a sports-enthusiastic young teen refining his movements into something better.
However, and the Elder had made this clear, Dante was only now at the basic starting line of the universe. What he was taught was the basic primary school P.E. education syllabus for kids before they entered Junior High School.
Dante was left speechless by this.
The next training set was to do the advanced courses which were Focus, Spirituality, and Conservation. The Focus course was about honing the mind in its control of the body, allowing youngsters with high SDI's to not easily lose control.
This allowed one to have the ability to somewhat take over their subconscious and control certain functions of their body like blood flow, heartbeat, and especially, hormonal flow, etc. The youngsters in high school absolutely needed to master this to prevent the troubles that came with puberty, so this was compulsory.
Spirituality training was to hone the willpower and enlightenment of the youngsters. This included some slight pain resistance and many theoretical arguments, debates as well as virtual outcomes.
Dante found Spirituality training to be one of the most interesting due to how effective it was. For example, he and the Elder were seated crosslegged before each other while sipping virtual tea. Well, it wasn't virtual for either of them since one was here with his real body and the other existed in this form as his reality.
"So, young Dante, what do you think? Should the act of doing good be met with reward or should it be withheld?" The Elder asked with a smile.
Dante paused. "First of all, it depended on the definition of 'good' in this case. If by good, you mean morally positive actions, then we have to definition morality and what entails goodness within its fold."
The Elder did not stop Dante, seeming amused by his use of pure mechanical logic to handle this matter.
"Morality is simply the classification of the nature of actions, thoughts and intentions by sentient beings. Morality is split into good, bad or neutral. The core of morality is subjective, as it is controlled by the derivation and understanding of the majority in any society." Dante continued, not bothered by the Elder's playful smile.
Even if he was digging a hole for himself, he still felt that this was his way of handling the topic.
"So to be morally good, it means that within the society that the action is performed, it is classified as 'good'. If that is the case, then there is no need to necessarily provide a material reward, though it is advisable."
"Oh? What do you mean by that?" The Elder was startled.
Dante smiled. "There is already a reward. The body will release pleasant hormones into the brain when one performs an actions that is seen as good, making the person feel happy. That is the personal reward. There is also the social reward, which is that the person will enjoy an increase in positive reputation, or at least, have a more positive reception by fellow existences within that society."
"These are often intangible rewards that many do not consider, but precisely because many do not consider them, they are not valued. Sentient beings are prone to emotional responses and cannot process everything with hard logic, so a material reward that is tangible and respected objectively will motivate them to do good." Dante concluded.
The Elder nodded with a sigh. "A very good and well though out answer."
The Elder waved a hand and the scene within the dojo changed. He then winked at Dante before gesturing to the side. "Now, let us see how your theory works in reality."
Dante was surprised to see that he had been pulled into a sort of third person omniscient viewpoint of a simulation. In this simulation, society had developed a good samaritan law that dictated that any good deed from one person to another should be met with a reward.
There were many benefits to this, but also the problems were clear. The premier was that good deeds had become a business and were even exploited by corporations and governments, as well as individuals.
It was very common to see organized 'crime' groups deliberately created trouble and then save the people from it, forcing them to payout a reward. NGO's, or the equivalent of them in this simulation, had become the highest paying business.
They would go out to help poorer countries and then force their governments to fall into their debt, especially within the Middle East and Africa, allowing the elite countries to maintain control over them.
This was one part of it all. The end point of the simulation was the collapse of society when a situation occurred where people who were exploited were no longer willing to pay for good deeds and protested. Since this concerned the benefits of the top echelon, they were suppressed to death, which made the martyrs, exacerbated the issue and then lead to chaos worldwide.
Eventually, more and more joined, not because of any benevolent feeling, but because nobody was paying for good deeds anymore. This was literally how a whole percentage of the populace worldwide made their daily bread and was their occupation.
Well, as that blue cartoon cat put perfectly, we all know where the end point of this was.
Boom!
Welcome to Nuclear fallout.
Dante watched this with a nod. He expected as much given that promoting good deeds with materialism could only led to more problems, which was why he stated that it was advisable but not necessary.
The implementation in the virtual scene was a bit stronger than what he expected and meant, but it perfectly highlighted the problem.
Dante was impressed by this method of debate. A lot of people on the very earth he came from were arguing about all minds of stupids things just because it was hard to verify their theories or answers. They wove deep sophistry using morality and emotions as the forefront while neglecting the reality of the world.
This would be a perfect tool to show them the ridiculousness of their ideas as well as how limited in thought they were.
Even better, this was a perfect method to halt the fanciful ideas of teens. In high school, Dante thought he was the smartest person in the world and everyone else was a retard. While life later humbled him and proved him wrong, he had made many foolish decisions and actions when in high school.
Majority of people suffered from this too. It might not be that they thought they were smart, but their thinking process was not refined, leading them to make decisions that they regretted. Many people now would gladly take a time machine back and rectify some choices or thoughts they had at that age.
With a method like this, such teens would see the direct results of their stupid and childish thoughts directly, allowing them to refine their thinking process and mature faster. This kind of teaching and training method was truly genius and Dante respected the Eternal Universe more for it.
Dante spent a few days going through different moral scenarios as well as deep and troublesome philosophical questions with the elder. The best thing was that none of them necessarily had right answers, it was up to you whether the outcome was something that suited your worldview.
Even with the previous example of the rewards for good deeds, that was not the only simulated outcome Dante saw. He saw many more outcomes from his various answers as well as those he had not considered.
This would allow him - and the teen undergoing this test - to see the situation from different vantage points and show them there was more than one way to look at each topic and situation, which was probably the most valuable takeaway.
Dante was then brought onto Conservation training. This was the most direct of the three advanced training routines and concerned the question he had been most curious about since he got here, which was how aliens and species of different SDI's could co-exist.
Conservation training was simply about regulating your SDI at all times to match the universe standard with was the Pure Human standard. Even if you were an alien with 300 points in each field at birth (compared to a pure human) you would have to train yourself to move, talk, think and react at the SDI of a basic pure human.
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