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Messages - Viridius

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The Great Ordeal / Re: [TGO Spoilers] Explaining Koringhus
« on: July 26, 2016, 08:31:49 am »
I should finish analyzing those last few excerpts but the more I think about them the more I'll have to cull other intratextual references to tie it all together, and my brain is a little melty right now between binging on TGO and catching up on real-world stuff.

I probably shouldn't put too much stock in a flavor text philosopher like Ajencis, but he seems to suggest that 'Damnation' (and maybe Salvation, if there IS a heavenly plane -- I don't think we've seen as much concrete evidence for that as we have for Hell) is what happens when your  soul is intercepted on its way out of the World. Maybe it's such that faith in one of the many gods is like gratifying a narcissist, and unless you appease them, they don't intervene to save your soul from being sucked up by demons. Maybe all otherworldy beings (gods & demons) function like the No-God and indiscriminately vacuum up souls before they can reach the Absolute -- in which case authentic salvation is joining the Absolute, not being caught in the pocket dimension of some God. Was Koringhus' leap a "sideways step" around the Gods and demons the way the Judging Eye is a sideways step around Logos?

And then how does the Judging Eye work, exactly? It's the eye of the Absolute, at least according to Koringhus, but does that mean the Absolute is the "cubit" against which morality is measured? If yes then where do the other gods like Yatwer factor in?

The theology is so opaque. I wonder if the World was actually peachy-keen in prehistory and the Inchoroi are like a Typhoid Mary that brings Damnation with them wherever they go.

Thanks for your posts Spacemost! Your final point about the Inchoroi is something that I was thinking.

It would be pretty crazy if it was that Mimara would undo the No-God by simply looking at it and answering it's question of "What do you see?"

Yes!   I can see that. I always thought that it would be Acha, but that makes sense to me.

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MSJ: I saw & included your answer from RSB in my post, thanks. It's an important point. I suppose I just don't feel comfortable with that idea! As if these books were meant to make us feel comfortable. LOL. I'm curious about how morality can ever be objective anywhere. (Except in the minds of certain kinds of philosophers & religious zealots.) I suppose it goes back to my original question: is it just a premise that we have to accept, like a McGuffin in a SciFi tale? To which you are, I gather, saying: "Yes it is." If we accept sorcery as a premise, then why not eternal damnation?

I see where your coming from and it's why I asked Bakker the question. I argued a lot about it at Westeros the past couple of years. I was wrong, Bakker says morality is objective. So, I guess in these books, on Earwa, yes it's something we just have to accept.

Yes, I guess so. Thanks for your insight. I read The False Sun but as you say there's a lot to unpack there.

Though I think that Kellhus is trying to stop is said damnation. The God and the Hundred are separate. And the 100 are the ones whom feed off damnation. Have basically set up the system so that everything leads to damnation.

So the Old Polytheistic Gods pass away to be replaced by the One True God. Sheesh. That's a bit disappointing as an arc story. I'm a Pagan at heart.

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The Great Ordeal / Re: [TGO Spoilers] Kellhus
« on: July 26, 2016, 08:03:34 am »
I am kind of suspicious of this Kellhus who turned over a new leaf and supposedly cares. He point blank said to Esmenet's face: "Love is for lesser souls" or something to that effect, unless I confabulated the whole section.

You should be. Unless you are reading things from HIS point of view, EVERYTHING he says is only done to create the outcome "that place that was Kellhus" desires. It might be lies or truth, but it is all manipulation.

With you there Titan. it looked to me as if K was grooming Proyas to lead the GO. So he knew that he'd be elsewhere & that Saubon wouldn't be around. Does that mean that he knew about the nuke when the raft landed?

If a Benjuka board is like Go, sometimes you restart activity elsewhere & back off from the area where it's been getting hot. Hmm, good time to pop back to Momemn to see what's going on there. Things are falling apart, no surprise, but maybe faster or more profoundly than expected. WTF has been going on? Have a chat with Esmi. Take the upper hand. "What have you done?" is a way of manipulating her.  She's already in a state; push her further to get straight to the point. He might be powerful but he's not omniscient, he needs information & fast.

Interestingl that he turned up at Fanayal's tent first.

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Interesting discussion.

Mandos, Titan & Cosi, we all seem to be thinking similar thoughts & having similar doubts.

Odium:
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...what we see are three races who share enough emotional and cognitive overlap that they all fear an eternity of torment
Indeed, but for me the question remains as to whether some one is exploiting that fear, even cultivating it.

Odium:
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I think we definitely receive confirmation that Hell is real to the Inchoroi and to the Nonmen independently and that they reached awareness of it independently of each other.
I wonder if someone out there has a reference for that. Is it so clear? Not that is unreasonable.

Odium:
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H speculates in another thread that Mimara will answer the No-God's question... that would be a great scene.
Wow, yes! I had always thought that it would be Achamian... unless he was in there asking the question himself! ;-)

MSJ: I saw & included your answer from RSB in my post, thanks. It's an important point. I suppose I just don't feel comfortable with that idea! As if these books were meant to make us feel comfortable. LOL. I'm curious about how morality can ever be objective anywhere. (Except in the minds of certain kinds of philosophers & religious zealots.) I suppose it goes back to my original question: is it just a premise that we have to accept, like a McGuffin in a SciFi tale? To which you are, I gather, saying: "Yes it is." If we accept sorcery as a premise, then why not eternal damnation?

What do people that this eternal damnation is? Being soul-eaten by the Gods & Ciphrang?

Meanwhile... he said pedantically... the term soul is used a lot. What is that?

For the record, I'm not a reductionist-materialist so-called skeptic of the Dawkins/ Hitchins variety I just like thinking outside the box & asking interesting questions.

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The Great Ordeal / Re: [TGO Spoilers] Kellhus
« on: July 24, 2016, 11:21:58 am »
I'm in favour of an uneasy alliance between Kellhus & the Consult against the Gods. Or that the Consult are somehow part of a plan in the Thousand Fold Thought. Kill two birds with one stone.

I think that some kind of behind the scenes stuff has been going on between K & The Consult for some time. There's the famous scene with Esmenet-Aurang but there's also a moment towards the end of TTT. Achamian, just before Kellhus appears:

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"He saw nothing of Kellhus, though he spied something, a point of fluttering black, hanging over the distant network of streets and alleyways that rose up into the haze. He blinked, frowning... Was that the Mark he sensed? A sorcerous bird?"

IMHO they had been having one of their chats.

Do you think that he didn't notice his old sparring partner riding the thermals high above Dagliash?

The Thousand Fold Thought spans the continent including both the empire & the GO as well as something dodgy going on in Zeum. It's as if he's stirring up total chaos. (Ulp. Has he gone over? "He went mad." Is he laying the ground for the killing blow? The arrival of the No-God & no mistakes this time?)

Did he go back to Momemn (a choice I still find puzzling if his main goal was the success of the GO) to make sure that things were coming to a head there? Got to get your timing right! Maybe it was even wilder than he had imagined. & Esmi is covered in her daughter's blood, he says:"What have you done?" Know-it-all Kellhus is surprised & uncertain? Or is that just another manipulative response to Esmi in order to take control of the situation?

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Hi Titan,

I completely agree with you. Bakker says: "morality is objective." Hence the Judging Eye affords Mimara a vision of reality; of the spiritual state of a person.  How come? Is that the nature of reality on this planet, in this universe? (That would fit with the Inchoroi's interstellar quest.) Is this because some creator god made it that way? My question is: is this objectivity & the damnation it implies a premise upon which the story is based or a belief of the civilisations in the story?

Humans, Nonmen & Ichoroi all seem to believe in damnation (& that most of them are damned.) But is that so? Hell & damnation are concepts found in pre-modern societies like those on Earwa & are very useful for social manipulation & mind control. A key question for historians of Earwa would be: who first introduced the idea of damnation?

If enough people believe in damnation then it would become an unquestioned fact, like: "Of course then world is flat, just look at it. How could it be an oblate spheroid? We'd all fall off. D'oh!" If enough people believe in damnation then the fear or the anticipation of it or the surrender to it's inevitability would be real & powerful forces at work in the mind, in the world. In a world where sorcery works repeating the mantra "I am damned," every day might even create a hell for you. It might even condition "The Outside" to become a hell dimension. This may be where Kellhus, the unconditioned comes in.

Damnation could have been invented by the Nonmen, within their own culture for various reasons or it might have just been a bad idea someone had some time which caught on. They might have used it in their enslavement of the Emwama, to condition humans. However the Inchoroi might have introduced both races to the concept of damnation. (To humans via the Tusk?) This would have happened so long ago that no-one remembers. There is no-one to question it. The Inverse Fire could be a device which convinces a person of their own personal damnation. Use it on certain key people & you can change history. In fact it could be said that it started a revolution & gave rise to the events leading to The First Apocalypse.

In other words, the concept of damnation might be a psychological weapon deployed by the Inchoroi. If so there's no reason why, in a world where sorcery is produced via speech, via words & concepts that hell & damnation took off, unruly thought-forms that they are & gained a life of their own.

Of course we have it from the Inchoroi themselves that they are on a quest for a world which they can seal off from their own damnation. Funny that the world upon which this is possible is the one which they crashed onto. It is possible that either they believe this for a variety of reasons, or that again it's a mythology which serves some other purpose, even simple mis-direction.

Mimara's judging eye might be a way for her to perceive the moral condition of a person & she might, because of the world in which she has grown up, the world in which she believes interpret that vision as a vision of damnation or of salvation.

In a story in which aliens land a spaceship (did it even  crash? we only have their word for it,) &

(click to show/hide)

I think that the simplest way of understanding what is going on is a more hard-SF interpretation: the Inchoroi  are amoral, predatory invaders from a decadent race trying to establish themselves as the overlords of a pre-modern world & making a hash of it because it turns out that sorcery is real.


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The Great Ordeal / Re: [TGO Spoilers] Overall thoughts on the book?
« on: July 23, 2016, 10:34:58 am »
I enjoyed the book very much; no complaints. I'd like to have seen more of Achamian's dreams.

I'm also interested in the significance of Momemn. That was an astounding set of coincidences in Chapter 16, which was the first chapter I re-read.  He has spent a lot of time setting up that whole piece; it was a bit of stretch but there must be  some kind of underlying logic to it.

There's so much going on there that it can't be irrelevant, so how does it tie up with events in the North? Kellhus' arrival at just the right moment like that... after grooming Proyas to lead the Great Ordeal... did he expect to never return? Did he get squashed by the prayer tower?

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Introduce Yourself / Re: Finally Registered
« on: July 23, 2016, 10:15:01 am »
Hi!

After all these years I wanted to join in discussion a bit.

I also have some ideas about what we might consider in or "out-of -universe." ie To what extent is RSB describing a reality which we are assumed to accept on face value - that this medieval world view is the nature of Earwan reality? & to what extent are such  assumptions (on our part) false?

Hell & damnation are famous in Earth history for being conceptual tools for instance, rather than certainties. Useful for social control & mental slavery for instance. The Inverse Fire catalysed a revolution.

RSB says "morality is objective," but if he doesn't believe that about our world, which I guess is so, then is it necessarily true on Earwa or throughout the Earwan universe? Does he just mean "morality is objective" for these people at this time? How can morality be built into the nature of reality? It is a common pre-modern world view here on Earth & it is still a reality for many I'm sure, but I've never been able to see how that is supposed to work outside of some kind of speculative mytho-religious framework.

Hopefully I'll flesh out my ideas sometime.

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Introduce Yourself / Finally Registered
« on: July 22, 2016, 09:22:28 pm »
Hi all,

I've lurked here a long time & finally decide to join in. I'm in the UK; after a wait of five years (was it really that long?) I purchased TGO from Amazon in the US.

It didn't disappoint! Phew! Now it's another year to go to The Unholy Consult. Argh.


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