Dagoth Ur - the Collapse of Religion and Narcissism Run Amok

First off - never take too many caffeine tablets. Three 200 mg tablets in the span of eight hours is too many. However I think it may have been part of why I thought of this!

Most people's interpretations are of Dagoth Ur as being selfish, even ignorant, and this is reflected in this sentence:

>I AM AND YOU ARE ALL ME.

But I realized something while at work towards the end of my shift.

Dagoth Ur is very much akin Nietzsche's predictions and fears, that the collapse of religion in major parts of society inevitably brings about terrible things if people can not learn to understand meaning without a god watching over their shoulder constantly.

Things such as nihilism, rampant narcissism, selfishness.

Dagoth Ur represents those things - he believes it all to be about him, he believes everyone is just a part of him, "his" universe. The people who fall prey to his dreams are said to be weak of spirit and religiosity - this is perhaps correct. But logically the very belief in a deity or deities is.. it is illogical. Yet it is what glued so many societies together in the face of corruptible law enforcement, governments, etc. So these people fall to the Sharmat's ideas because he is there for them. He is real. Vivec has not left his palace in years, Almalexia does not walk amongst her people anymore, and Sotha Sil has sequestered himself inside his personal city. Are they even real anymore to the layman?

Dagoth promises an end to suffering, even a utopia, just give up yourself to him and his collective. But this is a lie. He brings more suffering with him than any aid.

It is like he is promising the Garden of Eden to people, yet the very place never existed except as a concept - it was when we were simply animals, who thought in the moment, almost entirely instinct driven. We suffered but we did not often remember it. We had no concept of the future, to plan.

And then Lorkhan ruins that all - he brings with him suffering - but also self-consciousness. The suffering stems from knowing we are finite, but with that, we can plan, we can advance, we learn through suffering. He is an unstable mutant, because he may very well represent the evolution of man/mer from unthinking spirits into sentient beings (this could also apply to real life). Lorkhan dies knowing he has shown us the way. But many are tired of suffering and seek paths that seem sure, but are built upon foundations of lies.

Such as the Path Dagoth Ur shows us.

So then, in this interpretation of mine.. the Nerevarine is the pendulum swing. He/she is the return to sanity, the putting on of brakes to halt madness. Yet the Nerevarine does not bring any new ideas themselves, all they do is stop this descent into Hell for a time. The only thing they bring, perhaps, is implicit - the idea that all life is inherently valuable (unlike what Dagoth Ur believed). But.. this is interpretation.

Because he/she brings no new ideas, eventually Tamriel is destroyed thanks to Landfall. We did not try to create a new path, and so the pendulum swings over and over, until it breaks free of its connection, and crashes down upon us, destroying most of us in the process.