The Second Apocalypse
Earwa => The Aspect-Emperor => The White-Luck Warrior => Topic started by: What Came Before on June 01, 2013, 11:42:51 pm
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Admittedly clumsy, but here:
ETA: Sorry, added How
Who is Damned?
What actions cause Damnation (and what actions possibly allow for Salvation?)
Why are people Damned (God judges you, damnation is arbitrary like gravity is arbitrary, etc)? Also, why don't the magi put themselves into Wathi Dolls before they die?
When did Damnation begin (Because the gods arrived or were born when men achieved sentience?) Does Earwa work under natural selection or some other mechanism?
Where does Damnation happen? Is it something specific, places the gods and demons reserve for you, or does a damned soul inevitably end up in torment?
How are you Damned? (Can you dodge all the divine mansions like the Nonmen suggest, achieving oblivion in the next life? Can you sneak into Heaven by bribing your ancestors?)
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taking a stab at where I'd say it happens at the soul, considering what we know of the onta and the stain I'd say they're all connected and are an objective manifestation of what in our world is a metaphysical theoretical approximation.
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taking a stab at where I'd say it happens at the soul, considering what we know of the onta and the stain I'd say they're all connected and are an objective manifestation of what in our world is a metaphysical theoretical approximation.
Would you like to rephrase that?
Anyway given what goes in Earwa, certainly many must have damned themselves beyond all hope of redemption without any use of sorcery.
No doubt, we should wait until someone like Mimara looks at Kellhus or a Cishaurim with the judging eye. What will she see?
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Following anor's thought, I'd just add that the Dunyain, due to the cognitive and reflexive attributes of their breeding, shine in the Cishaurim's Third Sight.
It's not made exactly clear by the text what the Third Sight is, if it is the standard esoteric sight of the Cishaurim or only of Moenghus' Sect, and if it relates or not to the Judging Eye - different socially and culturally described artifacts, which are in fact one thing.
So while we're not sure what the Third Sight is, it seems, to suggest Divine Endearment of the Solitary God. The Judging Eye also claims to reflect what actually pleases the Gods. It's another level of ambiguity within the story but the Cishaurim certainly suffer fleshly death from Chorae while the Judging Eye utilizes it's supposedly sorceretic properties, religiously.
That raises another question concerning Chorae. What exactly is the Aporos? Simply another sorcery in the labyrinth or something more like the Psukhe?
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I'm assuming it's a sorcery somehow based on contradiction, cognitive dissonance, etc. Not a passion based thing like Indara's Water.
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What exactly is the Aporos? Simply another sorcery in the labyrinth or something more like the Psukhe?
Since it's a sorcery that turns on paradox it relates to the requirement of a soul to apprehend paradox. Going with my Earwa runs on quantum consciousness theory, it makes sense that the Chorae can lead back to the God as it does for Mimara in TJE.
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Aporos is not just based on paradox, but on negation. That's why it was banned by Nonmen, because it was sorcery that destroyed sorcery when sorcery was their edge against the Inchoroi. Of course that backfired by driving the school into the arms of the Inchoroi. Oops.
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Aporos is not just based on paradox, but on negation.
Scott said it was the paradox inherent to language that creates the "contradiction fields".
Specifically, here:
And much as language undoes itself in paradoxes, sorcery can likewise undo itself. The Aporos is this 'sorcery of paradox,' where the meanings that make sorcery possible are turned in on themselves to generate what might be called 'contradiction fields.'
What's interesting is paradox is the center of Penrose's ideas about consciousness (his thing is quantum consciousness). Not whether the idea is valid in RL, but how it seems to correlate with Scott's thoughts of the soul in Earwa and how, as Kellhus tells Akka, everyone on Earwa is God.
Paradox in consciousness, paradox in the Chorae, Mimara uses Chorae to see God.
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How come magi don't store their souls in Wathi dolls? Problem solved right?
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Perhaps Wathi dolls are easy to destroy.
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Well, we also know souls or at least minds of some kind are needed to keep dimensional gateways active. Seems like another eternal resting place for sorcerers.
You know, I wonder if the final series will lose its oomph if damnation is exposed at the end of TUC. But then Scott managed to transition from the largely secular PoN to the divine interference of WLW.
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During the PoN trilogy I had assumed that the Inchoroi were only damned when they reached Earwa because they were from that point subject to Earwan morality. I thought that on their homeworld they were fine and it's only because they crash landed on a planet where people considered there actions immoral that they faced damnation. Did anyone else take that from PoN?
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During the PoN trilogy I had assumed that the Inchoroi were only damned when they reached Earwa because they were from that point subject to Earwan morality. I thought that on their homeworld they were fine and it's only because they crash landed on a planet where people considered there actions immoral that they faced damnation. Did anyone else take that from PoN?
Yeah, I think it was a default assumption before TWLW. I don't recall anything which would make me think otherwise before TWLW revelations.
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You know, I wonder if the final series will lose its oomph if damnation is exposed
What do you mean by it being 'exposed', Saajan?
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During the PoN trilogy I had assumed that the Inchoroi were only damned when they reached Earwa because they were from that point subject to Earwan morality. I thought that on their homeworld they were fine and it's only because they crash landed on a planet where people considered there actions immoral that they faced damnation. Did anyone else take that from PoN?
I thought they were traveling to find Earwa. That is why they travel the stars and head toward the very center of the galaxy. They became aware of damnation and decided to hunt down it's source.
Remember they've gone from world to world, reducing thier population to the special number that severs godly contact?
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What else are they gunna do? The inchies don't really have a 'builder' metality.
There is this idea that you justify your actions after you decide upon them.
Perhaps the inchies would believe they were on an epic quest to save themselves from damnation even if it wasn't true/provable.
Maybe the inchies themselves are the source of damnation, and they have dragged their 'outside' along with them.
There is a lot yet to be revealed about damnation, don't you think?
I think that's what sciborg2 was getting at ... there are still so many possibilities about the ultimate source and nature of judgement.
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Remember they've gone from world to world, reducing thier population to the special number that severs godly contact?
Did we know about that in PoN though? I don't think anything like that was mentioned before the undead dragon in TWLW.
There is this idea that you justify your actions after you decide upon them.
Perhaps the inchies would believe they were on an epic quest to save themselves from damnation even if it wasn't true/provable.
Why would they go on their mission in the first place if they couldn't be saved? For the genocide-rape-orgies themselves, because they are a race of 'lovers'? The [horrific] journey is the destination?
Maybe the inchies themselves are the source of damnation, and they have dragged their 'outside' along with them.
Now that would be interesting. Maybe they started out as a relatively normal race with a normal morality before advances in the Tekne allowed them to indulge in hedonism, but even as they changed they still retained some of their original morality and this damns them?
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Why would they go on their mission in the first place if they couldn't be saved? For the genocide-rape-orgies themselves, because they are a race of 'lovers'? The [horrific] journey is the destination?
That's exactly what I'm suggesting. They're hedonists, not nihilists. It's possible that they would just frame themselves like this.
Now that would be interesting. Maybe they started out as a relatively normal race with a normal morality before advances in the Tekne allowed them to indulge in hedonism, but even as they changed they still retained some of their original morality and this damns them?
I subscribe to the idea they have neurologically modified themselves. Khellus gives us this tidbit when he faces Aurang and reaches into it's soul;
A race with a hundred names for the vagaries of ejaculation, who had silenced all compassion, all pity, to better savour the reckless chorus of their lusts.
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If reform is being broached as an alternative route to avoiding damnation for the Inchoroi, then the important question I think is not whether they would ever by inclined to do so, but if redemption is objectively possible in this universe. Do the Gods forgive? Or, once damned, are you damned forever?
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One of the Inrithi beliefs is that you are damned for your intent, rather than your trespasses. Some of Mimara's JE perspectives seem to support this and her POV explicitly suggests redemption is still possible for the skin eater who is trying to rape her at the end of WLW - despite the mountain of horrible things he has done.
On the other hand, Kellhus v Aurang/Esme in TTT concludes that redemption (or rewriting scripture) is not an option for the consult (who are damned because of their very nature - perhaps meaning they cannot countenance reformative actions). The Inchoroi's only option appears to be changing reality wholesale - reforming reality to exclude damnation by altering the cycle of souls.
The idea that belief informs reality is one that is widely poo-pooed by forumites in my experience, but their protestations mainly hinge of the assumption that people conciously choose what they believe. I believe (in Bakker's Earwa) that your beliefs shape your conciousness and inform the reality that you think you exist within. The following quote comes from Bakker talking about the Psukhe directly after answering a question about how damnation is global rather than local- note how he mentions warring versions of reality.
As a contemporary philosopher might say, the Psukhe is noncognitive, it has no truck with warring versions of reality, which is why it possesses no Mark and remains invisible to the Few.
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Now that would be interesting. Maybe they started out as a relatively normal race with a normal morality before advances in the Tekne allowed them to indulge in hedonism, but even as they changed they still retained some of their original morality and this damns them?
If you want to accept that the Inchoroi are the destiny of humanity that makes complete sense, the Inchoroi are a representation of the future of humanity.
Post semantic apocalypse a race has succeeded in harnessing their mind so completely that it eventually degenerates into only the good feelings, and it is revealed that 'good feelings' have extremely dark underpinnings.
Bakker might posit does a hug feel good because it makes bunnies frolick in the flowers of your mind or does a hug feel good because it is touch and touch has a sexual component and the sexual component triggers our pleasure center?
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Pleasure isn't all down to sex. You could just as easily have an Inchoroi type species that had modified itself to best enjoy all the possibilities of eating. A "Race of Gluttons". But that would have much less psychological impact to the reader.
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If you want to accept that the Inchoroi are the destiny of humanity that makes complete sense, the Inchoroi are a representation of the future of humanity.
That's how I read it. A race that has a powerful tool like the Tekne but no meaning will descend into hedonism. Maybe Kellhus's goal is not to just defeat the Consult but also to steer humanity to an alternative path.
Post semantic apocalypse a race has succeeded in harnessing their mind so completely that it eventually degenerates into only the good feelings, and it is revealed that 'good feelings' have extremely dark underpinnings.
Bakker might posit does a hug feel good because it makes bunnies frolick in the flowers of your mind or does a hug feel good because it is touch and touch has a sexual component and the sexual component triggers our pleasure center?
Pleasure isn't all down to sex. You could just as easily have an Inchoroi type species that had modified itself to best enjoy all the possibilities of eating. A "Race of Gluttons". But that would have much less psychological impact to the reader.
I think it's worse than that. I think what he wants to say is that violence and pleasure are inextricably linked in races like humans and the proto-Inchoroi. And probably every species that grows up in a world with finite resources and selective pressures.
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So do Hannibal Lecter aliens and get the same point across.
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That would have much less psychological impact to the reader. :P