#scp-5000

What I gathered though is that "It" is why humans feel pain, and that if the afterlife is just being a self-aware corpse as O5-11 described, feeling constant pain "feeds" "It". Hence, "You're not supposed to feel pain". Cure yourself of "It", and you'll get to not feel empathy, or pain, and die without issue.

A lot of the story is left up to interpretation, but it's presented as a nightmare scenario in the most literal sense, where the idea is scary enough to make you want to suspend your disbelief so that it has full effect. There's weird... holes to it, though.

When properly examined, "It" is something that exists in the collective unconscious of humans, but... animals feel pain. Animals feel empathy, at least in some capacity. It's a practical chemical reaction and instinct-complex to strengthen pack bonds.

I have to assume SCP-5000's canon isn't "materialist", as in, humans aren't just neuron-signals in meatsuits and nothing more. In that case, the "Individual consciousness" is implied to be sacrosanct, and anything else exploiting the "Individual" is a malicious, unjust force. There's a strong objectivist/individualist moral implication about SCP-5000, which already by default doesn't sit so right with me, as "no man is an island"; no matter how much you want to act like a unique individual, there are natural beliefs every individual will latch onto, such that the formation of a collective unconscious is just inevitable, and therefore the formation of "It".

I think beings like canon 682 see this as an inherent moral evil, and rationalize this evil as suffering, as from an empathy-less perspective, the individual is always supreme, so anything that subverts the individual is "disgusting". Even still, if the Foundation is trying to do humans a favor, what is the motivation? Just that the wailing of humanity is disgusting to them, and they'd like it to be silenced? That doesn't really justify anything short of a clean scorching of the earth, rather than the bizarrely sadistic approach taken by the Foundation in SCP-5000. If SCP-2718 only works via "It's" influence, then taking the inefficient, weird sadistic approach to exterminate humanity implies a motivation on their part that doesn't stem from empathy (that they aren't supposed to have) or logical self-interest (that they'd supposedly be left with). If all humans were wiped out, there'd be nothing for "It" to feed off of, and it's not a stretch to assume the Foundation could've done way more efficiently than they did.

All information we get as justification for wiping out humanity from the changed-Foundation's and 682's perspective is already biased, and riddled with logical inconsistencies that only more inconsistent conjecture can explain. Supposedly, "It" is such a threat that wiping out humanity is the more humane alternative, but with this information and these deductions, I feel that you can't really rationalize that or ignore some clear bias the heartless Foundation has.

So to finally answer your question: Ideally I'd rather just assume in my canon that the entity doesn't exist, but if it were to, SCP-682-B/Styx Nacht II would figure that "It" is not something separate from humanity, nor is it the same as humanity itself. "It" is "civilization" and "society", something that inevitably manifests in the unconscious of any species that becomes developed enough. Society isn't "good" or "evil", but the purpose of empathy is to keep the bindings of "society" strong.

So in his opinion, the ideal is to neither fear "It", nor believe "It" to be "supreme" over your own self. Hold this belief, and your afterlife will be fine, and the entity can't exploit you. Completely shackling yourself to empathy will make you suffer, but you'll still suffer if you try "hardening your hearts". The answer lies in the middle. "Suffering" is inevitable, even without "pain". Killing the entity doesn't solve that, and something else would take its place anyway. This is what he'd understand, and that normal 682 wouldn't.

I like SCP-5000 for the sprawling horrific scenario it is, but on a logical level, even with Foundation-canon weirdness, it kinda just comes across as a biblical apocalypse story written by an objectivist having a nightmare.