viewing princess mononoke with unclouded eyes
there is so much going on in princess Mononoke that invites the viewer to bring their preconceived notions along with them as they analyze it. perhaps cynically, perhaps facetiously, the film states, of the boars, that despite knowing a trap is set for them, they will run into it anyways. the trap for the audience was revealed when prince ashitaka is told to go west into uncertain lands with unclouded eyes - meaning, take in what you will without preconceived notions or biases. the trap was set with our varying factions with their varying motivations, and the trap was baited by the amazing characterization that invites the viewer to take a side.
but the film doesn't want you to take a side. despite the presentation of themes that might lead one to believe it was a story about deforestation, climate change, the cost of progress, broader man vs nature/man vs man/man vs self, the resolution of the central conflict shows our moral exemplar - the deer god - doing nothing (figuratively speaking).
to extoll the virtues of seeing with unclouded vision, our factions have rather complex interactions with themselves and the world. prince ashitaka is the only one that can reconcile the violence between each of the camps because he is the only one capable of seeing what they have in common; each of the factions views each other with contempt and therefore naturally cannot see eye to eye on any subject. prince ashitaka - metaphorically made into a prey animal signified by his close companionship with Yakul the elk - comes to befriend the diehard human industrialists with an irrepressible desire for human progress and the diehard human-hating defenders of the forest alike. not to mention prince ashitaka's ostensible favor with the deer god. this ability to find common ground between these factions comes precisely from his unclouded view - he can see what each faction actually wants and needs, not the hyperbolized version that the opposing faction sees and detests.
depending on your proclivities, you might side with the humans or the wolves, but the movie doesn't want you to act as arbiter of right and wrong. the deer god's final procession displays the point of the film rather well -- after eboshi shoots the head of the deer god off and it becomes a headless nightwalker (it's no accident that it has the form of a human without a head) it indiscriminately kills everything in its single-minded quest to regain its head ... not unlike our respective factions. clearly, the headless nightwalker represents an evil that everyone should be able to recognize. take the blinders off and bask in the world as it is, taking in each piece as you perceive it, independent of experience. our moral exemplar, the deer god, is a mixture of a human face, deer body, and bird? feet. it even walks on water. it couldn't be clearer that it's the moral exemplar, okay. anyways, once it has its head back (head naturally represents logos/reason) it returns peaceably into the world, resuming its existence as a wholly passive force of nature that intentionally does not act.
prince ashitaka gains favor with the deer god specifically because he has the same virtue in spades. from the very first scene, prince ashitaka refuses to even attack the boar demon until it becomes absolutely necessary to protect others. again and again, prince ashitaka (again, metaphorically a prey animal but more than capable of defending himself) refuses to act out of turn, to make order out of order - instead, he acts only to make order out of disorder like a good Daoist. in line with Daoist thought, our exemplar and protagonist don't discriminate and prefer to not act unless they absolutely must act in defense of life.