Dressrosa

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Integration of subpersonality

We see something interesting happening.

After Usopp saves everyone, we see a distinction between two types of people. The ones that, after being grateful, immediately betray themselves and forget their own moral compass, they are seduced by Doflamingo's money reward, and go after the crew. And the ones that remain faithful to themselves, don't fall for Doflamingo's soborno and instead want to reciprocate and return the favor to the ones that saved them.

Yes this is a very important distinction, but it's kind of obvious and there is no point of explaining it further. It's cool that the ones that betray themselves turn out to be the weak ones, and all the strong ones stay true to their gratitude. So this also happens a lot in real life. And it points at the fact that you only become strong by being this kind of person. You see, you might think that they are grateful and well oriented because they are strong, but that's not the case at all - or at least it's not what the author is saying here. It's the other way: these people are strong because they are like this.

Anyway, there is a more interesting thing happening here. Now that all the strong people are grateful towards the Mugiwara no ichimi, they start competing against each other to see who is more grateful. And this is very funny. Each one of them is so stubborn about repaying the favor that they have no problem in acting in a way that goes against it, as long as it helps them be the ones repaying the favor. And this is interesting, because there is as excess of heros, right? We know that all of them are strong, and worthy of their strength, they are virtuous in one way or another. But they cannot cooperate. Because they are all captains. They are all the top of their hierarchies.

Now, this is a very very very interesting type of phenomena that you can see in many myths across the ages. We see a bunch of people, that represent different values, different modes of being. And they have to figure out which one should be the captain of the captains. Because structure means hierarchy. That's why they came to be captains. But between captains of different ships, who should be captain of captains?

This is extremely important. I really hope that I can explain this correctly because it's really a key thing to understand.

Okay how to explain it... you know that most old religions are polytheist, right? Meaning that instead of one God, like in Christianity, there are multiple divinities. This was true with the romans, the nordic, the Japanese, de hindu... So there are many gods, not one.

No, way, there is a better way of explaining it.

One of the most ancient myths of wester civilisation is the mesopotamic story of the creation of the world. This is very ancient. It was written like 8.000 years ago (883–859 BCE). The story is that, in the benign, there were two gods. They had children, and these were the primordial gods.

It's incredible how much theses stories influenced us. We really come from this people. Just one example, there is a god that is described a mother goddess. She is the god of mothership. You know what's the name of this god? It has two names: Mami, or Mama. Crazy, right? So, just so you know, we really owe a lot of who we are to the Mesopotamians.

Now, what is a God here? How can there be many? What were this people doing?

Well, what is a God?

A God is something that does not die, and that controls or influences you or your destiny. So that's a God. It does not die: it was always there and always will be. And it can kill you or save you.

For example, Damu was the god of healing and medicine. Gibil is the deification of fire. Or there were two gods that were brothers: Emesh, that represented farming, and Entem, that represents being a shepherd. Or Haya, who is the god of writing, and Mami who, as you know, is the god of motherhood.

So all of this things: medicine, writing, farming, fire... are things that don't die, that existed before you and will remain after you; and they have an impact over people's lives, they can save you or kill you. So what these people were doing was trying to conceptualise what we now would call sciences or fields of knowledge, or concepts really. They were trying to understand what is medicine, how does fire behave, why is motherhood... And to understand them, they personified them, because it's easier to understand people than abstract concepts.

But not only that. They were also trying to figure out which was more important.

The story of Emesh and Entem is very interesting. Their father, hoping "to establish abundance and prosperity", creates two gods: Emesh and Enten, a farmer and a shepherd respectively.[291] The two gods argue and Emesh lays claim to Enten's position. They take the dispute before Enlil, who rules in favor of Enten.[293] The two gods rejoice and reconcile. This is from the Sumerian poem "Enlil Chooses the Farmer-God ". This means that the people came to understand that being a shepherd was more important than being a farmer. Or rather, that the values of a shepherd were more suited to lead, or rule, than the values of a farmer.

So these people really figure something out, and it's depicted in the main creation story. As you now, there were many gods. And each of them is the top of their thing, they are the captains of each field, and they are obviously powerful and they have it figured out. So one day, these gods come together and decide to kill their father.

Now, the original and main deities, which would be the main father and mother, are Abzu and Tiamat. Abzu is the father, an it represents order, the known, the habitable territory. Whereas the mother, Tiama, represents chaos, the unknown. These are metaphors for the basic concepts of existence.

They both create te other gods, but are ambivalent about it. They are not sure that creating the gods was a good idea and are thinking about killing them.

So the gods notice this and decide to take action. They decide to kill the father while he is sleeping. But their motivation is really being dominant, being the top god. And one of the gods actually takes Apsu's halo and wore it himself. It's really a dispute regarding who should rule. And they kill him, and start feeding from their corpse. And the mother, Tiamat, is not very happy about this, so she gets mad and starts to take revenge.

And Tiamat is no joke. She is actually depicted as a dragon. She represent the unknown, everything that can kill you. So you don't want to mess with Tiamat. And she actually builds an army of demons to punish the gods.

Now the gods are in trouble and they don't know what to do. They cannot defeat Tiamat. So in the middle of this, a new god arises, called Marduk. And Marduk is new, but he's pretty cool. He can do two things: he can speak magic words, that turn night into day, and he has eyes all over his head: he can really see and pay attention to everything. And he makes a deal with the gods: I will kill Tiamat, but in exchange you will elect me as the top god. And they say: okay. So he goes out an kills Tiamat. And then he becomes the top god.

So what these people were figuring out is which attributes of a human, or which values, should rule above the rest. And turns out that what should rule is what has the power to stop chaos from killing the whole thing. And even more, it points out at the way of doing this: using words, and paying attention.

Which makes a lot of sense, if you think about it, because that's what makes humans human. Right? So we can speak, we can conceptualise the world, we can tell stories and share knowledge; and we can pay attention, we can point or vision at what we need to.

Then the romans and the greek did the same thing: there was the god of war, the good of hunting, the god of party and wine... and they tried to figure out what was more important. Is it more important to be awesome at war? Or since we are all going to die is more important to drink wine a party? This is not obvious, this are philosófical questions that people today are still figuring out.

And the story of greeks is very similar. Huranus gave birth to Cronos, the god of time. Cronos gave birth to many gods, but them swallowed them. Except one, Zeus. And Zeus slayed Cronos a made him vomit back his brothers and sisters.

And this is what's happening now in Dressrosa. We have captains with different motivations, different values and different modes of behaving. And they are all competing to see who kicks Doflamingo's ass. Exactly like in the Mesopotamian story. They are heros trying to assert dominance. All of them are powerful and worthy, but they cannot cooperate; and we do want to know who it the best, because that's who we want to be.

And in the process, we see many different explorations. One of the explorations is the value of strategy itself. One of the characters, who looks actually not so powerful, is the strategist. He proves to be very key. He manages to understand how different captains have different skills, and is able to group a few and deploy them in a way that they can cooperate and be successful against the enemy. And the other captains see this as very powerful and chose to follow his orders.

So obviously One Piece is showing us here that strategy and brains are very important, even more that brute strength. But not any kind of brains, but the one that enables teamwork. You see: it's not that he is smart and able to defeat people on his own. He's not smart, so he can win. No: he is smart, so he can cooperate and subdue his own ego in benefit of the goals that they actually share.

Now, why do we want to know who wins? Why is is important for me? How does it help me in my life? Well. Because all those gods are inside of me, fighting all the time, to see who wins. And if none of them rule above the other, I don't know what the hell I should do. I would do nothing. Because doing something is deciding which god wins inside of me. Should I use this time to learn a skill, or should I just party and drink? Or maybe I should go a hunt something I want to achieve? Or rather should I stay in my parents basement and live there forever? Should I give in to my sexual desires and spend my money on a whorehouse? Or maybe I should become a celibate and just dedicate myself to reading? Well, whatever I do, that means that god wins. That's the value that I'm acting out.

So I want to chose the right god. The god that will allow me to exist in a way that produces the least amount of suffering to myself and my loved ones. Or even better, the one that will make me thrive and help myself and my loved ones. And that is Marduk, apparently. And why? Because he pays attention and uses words – I don't know what that really means but apparently that's the right thing.

And more that that, it's not only that I want to behave like that guy. Is that I understand that all of the other gods also exist inside of me. There's many things that I'm going to feel like doing - and I may do this or the other from time to time. That will be fine, as long as there is a hierarchy in which the Marduk part of me is ruling the show.

That's what is usually called integration in psychology. Turns out that we don't have one personality. No. We have many sub personalities. For instance, you being hungry is one personality. And you being angry in another personality. And you have to integrate all of them in a way that you sort of control them thanks to having a hierarchy. So if you are hungry, you will eat, but maybe you will not eat a ton of chocolate donuts with sugar and cream. And maybe you are hungry, but you have to finish a task; so you don't let the hunger personality take over for a while, you contain it. And you can do this because you know which personalities are the right ones. But you don't repress them: you do eat when you are hungry and that's the right thing to do. And you do get angry sometimes, when it's necessary.

So now when you get angry, you think that you get angry. But it's actually that anger gets you. You don't get hungry, hunger gets you. You see? That's why the greeks thought that human being are the playground of the gods. Because the gods, the sub-personalities, get ahold of you. And being horny is a great example of this. Sometimes when you are horny I think: I'm going to do that right now. And then, when it passes, you are like: oh god thank god I didn't do that. Like if it was a different person judging the situation. Because that's how it works. Each sub-personality has their own point of view.

And this is a process that happened across time. In two dimensions: in you as a person, and in all of us as civilisations. If you look at a child, one moment they are hungry, then sleepy, then angry – and they get completely possessed by those sub personalities. They have not integrated their personalities and they get completely taken over. And as you grow up, you establish a hierarchy inside of you – and some people have structures that work better that others, because they have figured out which values, which personalities, which gods should rule in order for them to thrive and be awesome.

And this is parallel to the process that polytheist civilisations have done in becoming monotheistic civilisations. It's the same, at a community level - that's what I think. At some point societies really figure out what is the right way to be awesome as a community, and they have one very big God that represent all the right things - and usually a person that exemplifies those values so that humans can relate. Is like polytheistic societies are experimenting, and after many iterations they figure out what works best, and they stick to that. Just like you are doing right now, and you have been doing since you were born.

And that's why your culture helps you in this process. Because when you are born you start from scratch this experiment, but turns out that your civilisation has been working this out for 9 thousand years and it's all documented. So you can look around at the stories around you, whether that is the Bible, the Corán, or Marvel movies – or One Piece in this case. Is it crazy to think that you, as your own individual experiment about how to be the best person you can be, would inspire yourself with the experiment that your civilisation has been conducting for millennia to be the best civilisation it can be? I don't think so. I think it makes a lot of sense. Actually, it's the only thing that makes sense.

And we see this guy, how he behave. He's very cool, I admire him. And look at this one, he's okay as well. I could be them. I don't know. Maybe this one will be the king.

Fujitora

Fujitora is a blind man. Luffy knew this, everyone knows this. However, he has some sort of observation haki that's allows him to be more functional than any other person that could see. Indeed, he's one of the four almiralls from the marines, one of the lost powerful people in the world.

Still, when Luffy finds him in his way to escaping, he starts fighting him instead of running. And he says actually that he's not going to run because he already had to run twice from an Almirall: when him and his crew got separated, and when one of them killed him brothers. But now he's been trained for two years and insists in that he's done running.

However, something funny happens when Luffy and fujitora fight. Luffy announces his attacks before attacking. And in one case he actually makes a mistake, he says kick and it's a punch, and he quickly apologizes.

Fujitora figures out that this is because he's blind and tells Luffy that he's an idiot, and he's actually offended because Luffy would potty him. Luffy says that he simply cannot hit a blind man before announcing attacks. And he also says that he doesn't dislike Fujitora. And fujitora insists that saying suck thing is stupid: each of them has their role, they are enemies, and there is no point in talking about liking and disliking.

But back to him being blind: he gets angry that Luffy would pitty him. So he gets angry and wants to teach him a lesson. And he goes as far as saying that it was his decision to be blind. He did it to himself, because he has seen to many terrible things and didn't want to see anymore.

And this is the case for many people. We can all understand this. At some point you get tired of feeling, of being exposed, or even to looking at things that make you feel bad. And you may decide that the ability to see is what makes you unhappy and miserable, because you can't avoid looking at the misery in the world.

In any casi, many thing happen after this: he watches as the whole country tried to protect Luffy, and how Luffy gets so lucky and gracious. And something amazing happens: Fujitora asks himself what would Luffy's face look like. This is very meaningful. He even wonders how is his face, wondering if he has a gentle face. And he thinks, then and there, that maybe being able to see would be a good thing, so he could see what Luffy looked like.

This is the purpose of a hero, really.

Because it is a miracle. He made a blind man see, or technically he made a man who wanted to be blind into a man who wanted to see. So he cured the wanting to be bling, which is actually the cause for hum being blind.

Corrida Colosseum in Dressrosa is replication of Rome and gladiators

God in Dressrosa

When a light from a collapsed ceiling shined on Usopp after he freed everyone from Sugar's powers, people started to believe he was a messenger sent from heaven and started calling him "God Usopp".[23] "God Usopp" will remain as his nickname on his Wanted poster.