I am not sure where Bakker mentioned it before, but likening the Gods (and the Darkness) to an unconscious mind, where Eärwa itself is the conscious manifestation of such is very interesting to me. I lack the real deep understanding to fashion something of that really.
This also might explain why we tend to find something of "evidence" that Eärwa is a simulation. Eärwa is, in a way. a model of a mind, divided between the Outside and Eärwa itself, the same as a mind would be divided between unconscious (System One) and consciousness (System Two). The No-God's existence as a "System Zero" raises some interesting questions there, but I don't know I have the right words, or the correct understanding to fully fit that into this though.
I am not sure where Bakker mentioned it before, but likening the Gods (and the Darkness) to an unconscious mind, where Eärwa itself is the conscious manifestation of such is very interesting to me. I lack the real deep understanding to fashion something of that really.
I don't think Bakker ever said it this explicitly before. I do know that Westerosi had divined as much a couple times over the years in previous speculation.This also might explain why we tend to find something of "evidence" that Eärwa is a simulation. Eärwa is, in a way. a model of a mind, divided between the Outside and Eärwa itself, the same as a mind would be divided between unconscious (System One) and consciousness (System Two). The No-God's existence as a "System Zero" raises some interesting questions there, but I don't know I have the right words, or the correct understanding to fully fit that into this though.
I really enjoyed this answer by him and took away much the same as you. I look forward to using a concrete real world analogy to work backwards and parse through narrative events/agencies. I believe he also yielded some other pieces on the Q&A/AMA about the Gods which would be interesting to consolidate with this.
Bicameralism applies more to the structure of the World and Outside than Kel. I see him as lacking any stable identity, personhood, as opposed to being soulless.from http://www.second-apocalypse.com/index.php?topic=2278.30
After listening to the spoiler section a few times, it's pretty revealing as far as Bakker goes. In describing the relationship between the Gods and the World, Bakker draws from Kahneman's two distinct modes of decision making: System 1 (fast, unconscious, automatic, error-prone) is the Gods; and System 2 (slow, conscious, deliberate, reliable) is the World.So that's why sealing the World is necessary, not just because of damnation but because it removes the subject (God) and everything collapses into object...
What kind of blew my mind (hey, that's the name of the podcast!) was how these constructs relate to several other metaphysical concepts raised in the series:
System 2 => World, Conscious, Object, Watched
System 1 => Outside, Subconscious, Subject, Watcher
System 0 => No-God, Unconscious, Absolute
In short, the series itself is an allegory of human cognition! Which is pretty cool.
A spoilerific thought stemming from this way of imagining the world:(click to show/hide)
After listening to the spoiler section a few times, it's pretty revealing as far as Bakker goes. In describing the relationship between the Gods and the World, Bakker draws from Kahneman's two distinct modes of decision making: System 1 (fast, unconscious, automatic, error-prone) is the Gods; and System 2 (slow, conscious, deliberate, reliable) is the World.So that's why sealing the World is necessary, not just because of damnation but because it removes the subject (God) and everything collapses into object...
What kind of blew my mind (hey, that's the name of the podcast!) was how these constructs relate to several other metaphysical concepts raised in the series:
System 2 => World, Conscious, Object, Watched
System 1 => Outside, Subconscious, Subject, Watcher
System 0 => No-God, Unconscious, Absolute
In short, the series itself is an allegory of human cognition! Which is pretty cool.
A spoilerific thought stemming from this way of imagining the world:(click to show/hide)
...
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I thought to myself, what would a story of a protagonist stranded in a meaningful world struggling to hold onto meaninglessness look like?
Just listened to the part about the books. Its funny to know that there would be such a huge divide in the ending of TUC. Also, I thought it funny that his hard drive crashed a month or so after turning in TUC. He lost all his meaning too, lol. I'll check the rest out later
System 2 => World, Conscious, Object, Watched
System 1 => Outside, Subconscious, Subject, Watcher
System 0 => No-God, Unconscious, Absolute
I'm fairly sure subconscious or unconscious - especially citing Kahneman - are the same term, whichever is in fashion now.
I'm fairly sure subconscious or unconscious - especially citing Kahneman - are the same term, whichever is in fashion now.
Probably true, I'm not all that familiar with that source, I tend to think in the more Jungian analytical psychology ways I once knew. The destinction being unconscious things are thing that are not readily (or even possibly) available to the consciousness, subconscious being things that aren't conscious but can be at will.
For example, breathing as subconscious, beating your heart as unconscious.
Ascribing the sun rising to a Sun God is Meaningful; Heliocentrism, on the other hand, is not Meaningful, it just "is".
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Q: So it's worth mentioning, in all of this that modern neuroscience presumes that the gods do not exist, in your Second Apocalypse saga, the gods are real and sometimes do speak. Can you provide an overview of how the gods function in a fictional universe where you put so much thought into the inner works of consciousness and philosophy?
A: Yeah, I mean, this is kind of embarrassingly simple ultimately. The gods are the "Drive," the "heuristic module," the "sub-personal processes" that are constantly underwriting, sometimes undermining, to sometimes making possible, the workspace of conscious, which is the world, which is physical reality in my book. The whole series is itself analogy, or allegory, for this ancient anthropomorization of the universe and the cosmos only as projected given a modern understanding of the way in which cognition works. System two, which is reality, system one, which is all the sub-personal processes that are constantly impinging upon System two, with deliberative reality (our conscious experience) and we can crib a term from Lawrence, System Zero, which lies outside of that Inside/Outside.