The Second Apocalypse
Earwa => The Aspect-Emperor => The White-Luck Warrior => Topic started by: What Came Before on May 07, 2013, 01:12:31 am
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Does damnation await all, not just sorcerors?
Re-reading WLW, I found this passage relating to the death of Sutadra, one of the Skin Eaters. At that moment, Mimara's Judging Eye opens, and here's what she sees (USA 1st Edition hardcover, p62-63):
"She can see it all... The oversights, the hypocrasies, the mistakes, the accumulation of petty jealousies and innumerable small selfish acts. A wife struck on a wedding night. A son neglected... And beneath these cankers, she sees the black cancer of far greater crimes, the offenses that could be neither denied nor forgiven. Villages burned on fraudulent suspicions. Innocents massacred.
But she also sees the clear skin of heroism and sacrifice. The white of devotion. The gold of unconditioned love. The gleam of loyalty and long silence. The high blue of indomitable strength.
Sutadra, she realizes, is a good man broken down, a man forced, time and again, to pitch his scruples against the unscalable walls of circumstance -- forced. A man who erred for the sake of mad and overwhelming expediences. A man besieged by history...
She knows he is damned."
Here we have a clear case of moral accounting, if you will. Notice what does NOT count: religion (neither Inrithism nor Fanimry), devotion to the gods, proper sacrifices, rites, and prayers. Notice what also doesn't seem to be a factor: there's no clear "weighing" in favor of sin against virtue that contributes to damnation. "...pitch[ing] his scruples against the unscalable walls of circumstance," "a man besieged by history" -- there is absolutely nothing remarkable about these qualities at all. Do these not describe all men?
If it's only Mimara, I'd be reluctant to accept it wholesale. Yet we have independent confirmation of this from "The False Sun." Shaeönanra thinks "All Men wailed. All Men burned all the time. They need only die to realize it." Aurang also says "You are already damned. All of you are already damned."
In fact, we have even more confirmation from the the preview section of The Unholy Consult. What explains Ieva's betrayal of Nau-Cayuti? Shaeönanra says it's to escape damnation. But we have no evidence to indicate that Ieva is a witch. She's merely an ordinary human being. Yet she is also damned?
It looks like The Consult may be right after all.. :shock:
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Great post, TS. But I still think the IF is a lie.
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devotion to the gods
It's possible "the white of devotion" is a reference to this, in which case it may not be entirely irrelevant.
All Men wailed. All Men burned all the time. They need only die to realize it.
I think this is the key. The World is objective and essentially physical, while the Outside is subjective and shaped by thought. In the World, "ever are Men deceived": they are largely oblivious to the darkness within them. Once you die and are cast adrift into the Outside, though, there is no longer the comforting illusion of 'objective reality' to hide you from your own thoughts. So all the doubt, guilt and self-loathing you spent a lifetime pretending to ignore are suddenly shaping your new reality. That sounds pretty Hellish to me.
What explains Ieva's betrayal of Nau-Cayuti? Shaeönanra says it's to escape damnation. But we have no evidence to indicate that Ieva is a witch. She's merely an ordinary human being. Yet she is also damned?
Damned before she's even 15 years old (since that's the age she was at Nau-Cayuti's death). That seems pretty harsh.
Yeah, I tend to agree that virtually everybody is damned. To not be damned, it seems like you'd have to be completely free of any self-doubt or self-loathing, able to focus every single thought with utter precision to your chosen ends. In other words, you'd need to be a true self-moving soul. Then you'd be able to create your own Paradise in the Outside after death, shaping its reality entirely through deliberate, conscious thought.
(So, why in the heck is Mimara not damned?)
On the other hand (well, sort of...), I don't think the Gods' ability to 'save' people's souls is entirely negated by this. I could see the Gods fishing out the souls of their most devout followers to populate their own little corners of the Outside. Being allowed into one of these divine realms would allow you to escape your own thoughts, as the local reality would be 'fixed' by the will of the deity.
The Judging Eye would presumably still show such a chosen soul as 'damned', though.
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What explains Ieva's betrayal of Nau-Cayuti? Shaeönanra says it's to escape damnation. But we have no evidence to indicate that Ieva is a witch. She's merely an ordinary human being. Yet she is also damned?
In the preview of the unholy consult, I think it's hinted that she's done - I dunno, things the damnation machine doesn't like.
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Maybe all men are damned because the world is not shut. Maybe the sheer existence of the gods damns the inhabitants of Earwa. If the future can effect the past, then someone can be damned from birth, their actions fitting a pattern that has already partially or wholly been determine.
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Do we have any refereces to the judging eye opening up on people NOT being damned?
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Mimara. She just has a pentinent short haircut.
On MEN who are not damned...not so much?
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are you implying that all men are damned and only women have a chance at salvation. maybe the type of damnation is reflected in the eye: like if you are damned to Yatwer you are all white and pearly (still damned, just pretty).
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From a sample size of just a few individuals (and only one female), thus far is the trend.
Do we ever get a judging eye POV of Esme?
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The only eyes that see Esmi are Kelmomas'.
Maybe the JE has a bit of user bias? All those years a slave, subjugated by the hands of men. How much does the darkness control?
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Wow. +1 Callan and Wilshire. Bakker would pull some crazy shit like that, that only woman have a chance at salvation... But what would it mean? Nonmen would be SOL...
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Whole nations? How about whole species, or an all the members of a certain sex.
All the Nonmen women are dead, and I get the feeling that the Inchoroi that are alive all used to be males (but thats just bias I'm sure). There really arn't that many women left to save.
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Do I remember correctly that the nonman king of Cil-Aujas put a curse on all Men as a consequence of tbe betrayal of Nostol and his warriors?
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Well, Mimara wants to see herself as bad - she can't stand to see that though she has to have a pentinent haircut, she is good. She actually really fits my arguments about 'objective' morality, in how she wants to be bad, in how she accepts the rapist latter, just to unburden him of that bit more torture after death (ie, she games the system to give a result that matches HER morality)
Anyway, she wants to see herself as bad, but doesn't get what she wants. Unless user bias is just reverse psychology and you get the opposite of what you want? Hmmm....nah!
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Damn. There goes that theory then.
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Do I remember correctly that the nonman king of Cil-Aujas put a curse on all Men as a consequence of tbe betrayal of Nostol and his warriors?
I'm not sure if there was a literal curse... but we never can know how language affects and interacts with Earwa. I also don't have my books on me - if you felt curious, TTT Glossary, Apocalypse, Cil-Aujas (if there is one), TJE (Wight), perhaps, some of the initial descriptions of the Galeoth in TDTCB (an Achamian POV, likely).
Well, Mimara wants to see herself as bad
I agree wholeheartedly with this but she's not, this being the revelation of that scene in WLW, you've referenced (haircut) when she sees herself with the Judging Eye and realizes she is good. You have to remember, Mimara was seeking apparent ultimate damnation in TJE up until the point that she sees the Chorae as a Tear of God and uses it against the Wight.
Are you suggesting that Mimara is herself a Chorae... and unlike sorcerers who can only mar creation, Mimara returns the world to its natural order from God's perspective, as Thorsten might say (though I continue to reflect on those posts with skepticism)?
It would definitely give us insight into the No-God, if it and Prophets generate and sustain "objective" reality.
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Wouldn't generating your own reality make it subjective? Even if no one else can effect it, it would be objective from their POV but sub to yours...
Which God's perspective? Who or what holds the ultimate final say? Some big ciphrang... great.
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I agree wholeheartedly with this but she's not
But she isssssss....
Maybe I'm gunna run into the objective morality discussion I've run into before, but her morality is that she is bad. Why does some other one, even if it's from powerful bad asses in the sky, come before hers and renders itself the objective morality, rather than just another morality next to hers?
this being the revelation of that scene in WLW, you've referenced (haircut) when she sees herself with the Judging Eye and realizes she is good.
I don't think she realizes she is good. But she does recognise that is the evaluation.
You have to remember, Mimara was seeking apparent ultimate damnation in TJE up until the point that she sees the Chorae as a Tear of God and uses it against the Wight.
Are you suggesting that Mimara is herself a Chorae... and unlike sorcerers who can only mar creation, Mimara returns the world to its natural order from God's perspective, as Thorsten might say (though I continue to reflect on those posts with skepticism)?
It would definitely give us insight into the No-God, if it and Prophets generate and sustain "objective" reality.
I wasn't suggesting that, but I'll jam with it...
The wight brings it's own frame of reference from the outside, that's why it can't just be dispelled with a chorae, because from within that frame, it's where it's supposed to be.
So what if Mimara sees at a wider scope and sees what frames are out of place, rather than just seeing from within a frame and what's supposed to be in that frame. Perhaps she broadened the tear of gods condensed doubt?
I'd propose also that rather than reseting it to gods perspective, Mimara probably IS gods perspective, to some degree. A bit like how in star trek whatever Kirk does is always the right thing to do - if he cheats at a scenario, then it wasn't cheatin' no more and instead the right thing to do. I can't think of a word for someone who is granted the capacity that all their actions become the measure of what is moral. Though there is a roleplay game called Dogs in the Vineyard, where you play judges in towns beset by demons, which I think approaches that idea.
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Wouldn't generating your own reality make it subjective? Even if no one else can effect it, it would be objective from their POV but sub to yours...
Whatever enables you to generate your own 'reality' is the objective thing. The 'reality' is simply the arrangement of lego bricks, so to speak, that obsfucates that something else generated the lego bricks for a 'reality'' to be built from those bricks.