Kal'tsit is probably my favourite character to compare Damazti to. Two millennia years old entities capable of mimicry who were 'growing up' along with Terra, seeing its development, learning things from scratch.
But I've been thinking about creators and creations the other day. Unlike Damazti - a naturally emerged form of life - AMa-10 is a man-made creation. Being one, inside she still carries the things her creator instilled in her. And above all it was the love of her 'parent' - the Oracle, their love for Terra, which became her beacon, her point of reference so to say. The Oracle believed she was capable of love, of understanding, they believed the seeds they had sown would bear fruit one day. And they did.
Damazti has been drifting the ocean with none of those beacons, no one 'created' them, nothing was instilled in them. They had to start from much lower point than she did. So I think essentially this, too, contributed to the fact that no matter how hard they searched, how hard they tried to fill their existence with all sorts of things, switching from one to another, living other's lives, in the end they never managed to find something, some meaning, some purpose, some idea they could build their life around.
Basically Kal and Damazti are: a kid who at least early in life had a loving parent, and an orphan left entirely to their own devices. And what doesn't help is that Damazti has always been one-of-a-kind creature on Terra, with no one to relate to, having a unique way of experiencing and perceiving things that applied to no one else besides them, they had to fathom themselves, their nature, without any external guidance.
They might have lived for millennia but "How should we live?" in the context of such comparison sounds like a question of a lost child.
That conversation between them and Kal comes to mind too, the one about names. Kal'tsit has a name. The Oracle gave her one. But here 'Kal'tsit' is not even about Kal herself, but about 'the idea', 'the purpose' and again about love. Damazti has no name. They're not bound to anything and have no idea/vision engraved in them. So naturally they struggled more.
And maybe this is exactly why I, while loving both characters greatly, personally still sympathize more with the Damazti.
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