Quote from: locke on May 30, 2017, 11:00:32 pm

Who was theliopa named after?

Bakker actually said she was named from some actual Latin name he heard and decided that was what he wanted to use.  It was in one of the more recent podcast interviews.

I've wondered for a while now if Bakker has in small ways drawn from, or was moderately influenced by, William Blake's mythologies. One entry into that mythos is The Book of Thel. This commentary from the wiki page has stuck in my head:

Thel – The word in Greek (θέλ) means “will” or “wish” or “desire.”[5] The name is often viewed as a reflection of the poem’s allegory of desire. Others have attempted to connect Thel's name with the word “female”.[5] Various interpretations of the character have been proposed, including the idea that she is an unborn soul who refuses to live as a mortal in the material world[6] or that Thel is an immature human virgin who shies away from the life of mature sexuality.[6] Another popular interpretation sees Thel as emblematic not only of the surface of female frailty, but of the feminine frailty of humankind in general.[7]

Obviously that's Greek (where there's a bunch of other "Thel-" or "Thal-" deities, mostly feminine), so whether he just found a similar sounding Latin name or if it means absolutely nothing at all, I have no clue. But it's interesting either way! (to me anway)

Define inevitable.

Do you mean that no matter what we try to do, individually or collectively,  that Neuropath and Crash Space will happen?
I don't think so.

But, if you mean simply that if the science and technology as well as current trends continue unchecked and  unhindered, those are potential realities? I absolutely think so.

Agreed, particularly the last bit.

At this stage, I personally view most of Bakker's fiction as warnings of the negative (usually disastrous) consequences of the Information Age/Anthropocene or Transhumanist/Dataist movement - whatever we call "this era happening right now" - rather than declarations of the inevitable. In other words, he writes cautionary tales regarding these topics and issues.

Quoting directly from Wikipedia because I'm lazy:

Like horror fiction, generally the cautionary tale exhibits an ambivalent attitude towards social taboos. The narrator of a cautionary tale is momentarily excused from the ordinary demands of etiquette that discourages the use of gruesome or disgusting imagery because the tale serves to reinforce some other social taboo.

Cautionary tales are also frequently utilised to spread awareness of moral issues, and for this reason are often told to children to make them conform to rules that either protect them or are for their own safety.

Obviously Bakker is writing such tales for adults more than children, and the theme of "unknown unknowns" that runs through his work makes such categorization a bit more nuanced. But, I think one can approach his stories the way one might approach, say, 1984 by George Orwell. It's meant to be taken quite seriously, but not to the degree that we literally prepare for an actual political-entity-organization-thing called Big Brother, just something (or things) similar to it.

Thus, we today should be prepared, to the extent of our ability, for people/beings/entities like a Neuropath, or a Kellhus, and be aware of the potential disasters from technologies like those seen in Crash Space.

As for my own personal view on where reality will take us, for whatever that's worth, I generally fall somewhere in the middle. I don't really think our entire society as we know it will rapidly collapse in an apocalyptic fashion within the next, whatever, 20 years (I admit it feels weird saying this in a post-Trump Administration America, but my larger-scale view of things has not really changed that dramatically). Instead I lean more toward it being a perceptually gradual shift for most of the world, albeit one that is lightning fast by historical standards.

That being said, if I were to bet a million dollars, I'd suggest that by the end of the 21st century a significant portion of the world's population will look back at humanity as we are now and realize they are no longer the same animal -- and unfortunately I don't see that process being a perfectly smooth progression for people in general. Persecution and bigotry are not so easily solved, especially the latter. It seems very likely that under such circumstances, a considerable chunk of the population will be "left behind", for lack of a less loaded phrase, and I would imagine that group will include those both willingly and unwillingly, depending on the context. And that may well be for the better. Who can say?

That is, after-all, what makes this point in history uniquely challenging. No one knows how information technologies will alter our society even five years from now. We can make educated guesses, and probably get a decent idea, at least for now. But make no mistake, once/if we find ourselves co-existing with entities possessing an intelligence even moderately superior to our own, all bets are off. It is, quite literally, impossible to comprehend the nature of such things

*I only omit TSA from the rest of RSB's oeuvre because it's just so damn huge and covers so many topics and issues, many of which are older than God. Which is not to discredit the more speculative elements; I actually think one of the bigger "under-sung" achievements of the series is, IMO, the virtually unparalleled depiction of what a greater-than-human-intellect such as a Dunyain might actually be like.

The series basically ruined superhuman intelligences in other fiction for me, at least any that try to "get inside the head" of such a thing. 

ETA: Actually, I'll amend that last statement -- Peter Watts deserves a mention for his portrayal of creatures smarter (by large or small margin) than humans. His approach is different and he certainly hasn't been spending 30 years writing a character like Kellhus, but he's definitely circling around a similar array of ideas, and he does it with more finesse than basically any other non-RSB author I've personally read.

Hmm, very interesting. I was rather split on how much closure we'd get in TUC, but this nudges me toward the "less than I was hoping for" arena, though it really depends on the details. For me its more a thing of getting big questions answered -- which clearly we will -- though I wonder if I'm expecting too much from what is, really, the mid-point of the series. I would imagine (hope) that, closure-wise, we get something at least on par with TTT: satisfying character arc conclusions, but with the over-arcing narrative remaining unrealized (kinda has to be, otherwise there'd be no point in a third series).

Dovetailing that with the spolier quote:

That idea falls into the same trap that we discussed earlier.

Mimara is, apparently, holy. If anything, she is the most knowledgeable person in the Three Seas - she can actually see the morality of the world. She also had a pretty good education for a few years at the Palace, and would have been privy to a lot more mundane knowledge than most people.

This is sort of my point (which I didn't make very clear and in fact am not sure how to do so), but using the word "intelligence" or even "sentience" as I did is off the mark. A better word, perhaps, is "ignorance".

As you said, Mimara is not unintelligent, and by all means at this stage she appears to be quite comfortably the most powerful individual in all of Earwa, with the possible exception of Kellhus. Even Cnaiur is cowed by her, not to mention Koringhus.

My point is, where does Mimara's "knowledge" come from? Is it really capital-K knowledge, or is it intuition? From the very beginning of TJE and throughout TAE, Mimara's actions are frequently described as being motivated by whim, or instinct, or whatever. She has plenty of self-reflection, but there are things that Mimara just sort of knows, like that "Soma was not a man".

If you put Kellhus on one end of this spectrum, and Mimara on the opposite, it sort of makes my idea (true or not) more clear. Kellhus relies on nothing but knowledge, cold hard facts, laws, etc. in order to do what he does. Mimara goes on gut instinct. Just like how the Dunyain "reached for infinity and the sranc reached for zero", Mimara and Kellhus too sit on opposing ends of this spectrum (though it's murky, since Kellhus seems slid closer to the middle post-Umiaki, and obviously Mimara isn't as mindless as a sranc, for as I mentioned she does plenty of self-reflection and is blatantly an intelligent person).

I don't think this dichotomy between Mimara and Kellhus is a coincidence. One is male, the other female. One is light in color, the other dark. And of course, only Kellhus and Mimara are seen with Halos, except while just about everyone can see Kellhus's haloes (golden like the sun), only Mimara has seen her own (silver like the moon).

Though Koringhus does glimpse the "black ring" of the Judging Eye, and I'm not sure if this is the same as the silver halo Mimara sees herself with (I lean toward them being separate phenomena -- the black ring I think belongs to her baby rather than herself, but who knows).

TL;DR - There is a kind of spectrum to the metaphysics of Earwa, with The Darkness (That Comes Before) on one end, and the Light (That Blinds) on the other. Kellhus, represents the Light, Mimara the Dark.

As to "which side is right"...I don't think we'll get a conclusive answer to this since both ends seem to have benefits and downsides. I think going too far into either extreme is likely to be problematic. The Boy-Survivor, son of Koringhus, strikes me as being a vaguely Buddha-like "middle-path" scenario. Having seen both extremes (Dunyain & Sranc), he knows that both end in death and destruction. 

Serwe also continuously refers to herself as nothing, no one...

Princess of Nothing.

Quote from: H on July 26, 2016, 02:11:37 pm

I do think the Ordeal is a throw away, but not entirely.  The Ordeal matters, but only the Few among them.  The rest are only there to deliver them.  We are literally told this in WLW.  And as MSJ points out, the Ordeal's journey becomes Holy.  In other words, they are on a holy quest.  The end is something holy.  My guess is that Kellhus installs himself as the True Solitary God, or some such.  Probably through the same means as the No-God is made.  This is why he needs to get to Golottereth.  This may be why he didn't outright kill Meppa?  Water will later become, literally Holy?

Right. So we know that whatever comes about it's going to be Holy. So, to me, we can stop the nonsense about Kellhus wanting to join the Consult and be the No-God. That doesn't fit with whatever make this holy.

I am a firm believer in the "Akka will kneel" bit. I don't think Kellhus survives the GO, at least as far as going on living. He may indeed become The God or something like that.

Out of curiosity, how are you defining "holy" in this case? What entails holiness? What is it a measurement of?

My understanding of the most real world related, prime philosophical message of the Second Apocalypse is determinism. Men are ruled by a myriad of innate urges, the Legion Within, without ever realizing that their actions do not belong to their free will, but to these urges. The Dûnyain realize this, and even though they can't entirely free themselves, they can abuse it to rule others. To me, Serwa thinking that others were not real was an extension of the Dûnyain philosophy, just put in a unique kind of way because she did not get the full Dûnyain education, and is worldborn.

Why does she think Sorweel is "real", though? Surely, the Nonmen Sorweel merged with didn't make him free of the determinism, as he seemed as ruled by his passions as any man, if not more. I think at that point, Serwa kind of had a crush on Sorweel, because he was suddenly this hardass ancient soul who also happened to save her life and trigger the downfall of the collaborator Nonmen (and Serwa is still worldborn, after all - and it seems like even Kellhus fell in love with Esmenet judging by that line about how losing her will sink his heart into ruin or something like that), but it'll probably get explained better in the next book. I do feel like Bakker is setting things up for a second generation kind of thing, with Sorweel and Serwa, Kelmomas and Kellhus's full blooded Dûnyain grandson, who has none of the Dûnyain anti-emotional conditioning but all of the intellect.

I agree, particularly the latter part regarding a second generation and the stuff about Sorweel and Serwa. At this point, I'm almost 100% on-board the theory that Sorweel is in-fact a son of Kellhus, making Sorweel and Serwa's potential romantic relationship a form of incest. Plus it would make Sorweel the "Luke Skywalker" to Serwa's "Princess Leia", and I'm all for Star Wars analogues in TSA.