Naruto Chapter 603

[poopdeville]

Mind control only happens if their personalities are erased. It would be punitive.

For example, a guy like Kakashi would probably never betray Konoha, and so he would keep his free will for eternity. A guy like Orochimaru would (hypothetically) have had his mind wiped when he betrayed Konoha and became a missing nin.

Or are you complaining that this is a stratified social structure, with a Kage at the top? Defining utopia seems somewhat beyond the scope of this discussion.

[Splash!]

Or are you complaining that this is a stratified social structure, with a Kage at the top? Defining utopia seems somewhat beyond the scope of this discussion.

I was considering the flaws of using Edo Tensei to "solve all the problems in the world and create a utopia", like Y had originally suggested.

I don't want to get into the specifics of defining a Utopia either, but I don't think making everyone immortal would go very far towards resolving conflict if there is still a way to mind control and erase their personalities. You have just introduced a mechanism for 'killing an immortal'. Now what is to stop different factions from fighting each other if there is a way to permanently erase them.

At the very least, I imagine World Peace to be a characteristic of a Utopia. Setting up a stratified social structure with checks and balances could go a long way towards mitigating conflict and preventing chaos (and is pretty much what people end up doing normally anyways), but it offers no guarantees of World Peace.

[poopdeville]

You have just introduced a mechanism for 'killing an immortal'. Now what is to stop different factions from fighting each other if there is a way to permanently erase them.

At the very least, information secrecy. Nobody but the Kages need to know how to kill off a zombie's personality. They're ninjas, right? They should be able to keep secrets.

Conflict will never be eliminated, because conflict is inherent to the world insofar as different people will always be in competition over scarce resources. Conflict can be resolved peacefully or through force. But removing the necessity for food, for example, eliminates a huge source of conflict -- people will actually fight for food, since they normally need it to live. Real wars are over necessities like food and water, or strategic resources to necessary to defend the sustainability of their economies.

By removing these physical needs, the only source of conflicts to remain will be unnecessary luxuries. Even if zombies do fight over them, nobody gets hurt (except a little butthurt for having their luxury item stolen -- I am ignoring scenarios like Shikamaru burying Hidan alive...). Suddenly, instead of war being a terrible burden to the world, it is just a minor inconvenience in an eternal future. Peace will be effectively redefined to include war, since it does no permanent harm, much like how shooting rubber bands at people does not preclude world peace.

Also, the zombies will have an eternity to learn these lessons.

Although this is all purely hypothetical, it does seem like a big WTF that none of the Kage, Orochimaru, etc. never thought of this.