Thorsten's Metaphysics of Earwa II

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« Reply #15 on: May 15, 2013, 05:29:58 pm »
Quote from: Duskweaver
Quote from: Twooars
So it seems that both wrong actions and beliefs lead to damnation.
Beliefs come before actions. That's kind of a theme of tSA.

A nation that believes that infant circumcision (for example) is good and necessary in a world where mutilating your children is actually an unforgivable sin will be near-uniformly damned for circumcising their children. Likewise, a nation that believes circumcision is an abomination in a world where God damns everyone who dies uncircumcised will likely all end up in Hell.

Wrong beliefs can damn entire nations through the actions those beliefs inspire. There's no contradiction therefore between what RSB said and what Mimara sees.

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For me, the interesting bit is, who can forgive? It appears that Mimara can, from WLW.
Well... she seems to be able to forgive sins committed specifically against herself. Sins for which the 'aggrieved party' is basically society itself would seem to be a bit more tricky to obtain dispensation for.

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« Reply #16 on: May 15, 2013, 05:30:06 pm »
Quote from: Madness
I believe that continues "for she make a pit of her womb" or some such. It likely has to do with the use of the whore's shell?

We know that birth is special in Earwa. It ceases when the No-God is. It grants Mimara the Judging Eye. It provides at least one connection between the mundane world and the Outside. Sup with that?

Do we have other examples of forgiveness? Is Mimara's forgiveness special because it actually affects change? (Aren't there moments where Kellhus forgives people - Saubon comes to mind?)

+1 for thoughts. Got to rush off to work for another fun filled shitshow or I'd have something more coherent to offer. Cheers

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« Reply #17 on: May 15, 2013, 05:30:12 pm »
Quote from: Duskweaver
I just went back and re-read that bit in tWLW. Something struck me (rather like a stone hammer to the skull). The description of Galian's damnation... It's not Ciphrang torturing his soul. It's not any sort of torment imposed from outside. All his suffering is described as being disgorged from inside him. All the Ciphrang do is feast upon it. There is absolutely no indication that they cause it in any way. Rather, it seems to be his own desperate feeling of guilt that punishes him. Maybe that's why Mimara's forgiveness actually works: she forgives him right to his face, crying it into his ear. She's not calling out to the God of Gods, or to the Ciphrang, or even to herself, but to Galian. It seems to be vital that Galian himself feels he has been forgiven.

Of course, all this seems like it should be incompatible with the idea that the damned do not know why they are damned. But I'm hoping someone less in need of sleep than I am right now can make some sort of sense of all this.

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« Reply #18 on: May 15, 2013, 05:30:17 pm »
Quote from: lockesnow
Quote from: Duskweaver
Mimara might not even technically have qualified as a 'whore' by the laws of the Tusk, since she was a slave. Alternatively, being a whore might not be considered an unforgivable sin, so that leaving that life was sufficient to escape damnation.

Or perhaps the problem with prostitution as an institution is really (as in subtext) about it providing women with autonomy and power.  It's a career, one of the only careers there are for women pre-Kellhus.  Prostitutes are not wives.  And note how Esme doesn't have a pimp and there doesn't seem to be any indication that the role of pimps is part of the institution of prostitution in Earwa.

Official Gierra prostitutes is a way to put the profession under the power and authority of men again: namely underneath the authority of the Thousand Temples.

that might explain part of the discrepancy with Mimara; as a slave she was not a prostitute, she was property to be used as her owner saw fit (as is right and proper in a good-old Biblical world).  This runs straight into the muddy biblical distinction between slave and wife, both are property whats the real difference other than semantic (granting that semantic differences in Earwa are 'real' and significant).

Perhaps we are confusing the "pit of her womb" comment, we take it to be a comment against whore's shells: yet if it is from the Tusk and not a later addition, would the tech of whore's shells have been available pre Inchoroi contact?  Perhaps pit is in the sense of 'money pit'. ;)  Thinking of it as a bit more premodern, this could be an archaic construction that means suffer not a whore to live because she makes money and sets herself as an equal to men, using her girly parts to seize power and autonomy.

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« Reply #19 on: May 15, 2013, 05:30:25 pm »
Quote from: Duskweaver
Quote from: lockesnow
yet if it is from the Tusk and not a later addition, would the tech of whore's shells have been available pre Inchoroi contact?
"From the Tusk" can't be "pre-Inchoroi-contact", since the Tusk was a gift from the Inchoroi. Also, I'm pretty sure the Whore's Shell is described as a sorcerous artefact rather than having anything to do with the Tekne, so there's no reason to connect it to the Inchoroi. I'm nitpicking here, really, since the condemnation of prostitution would presumably have predated its codification in the Tusk and therefore could have predated contact with the Inchoroi.

Except... that's actually a problem in itself. The so-called "oldest profession" actually isn't all that old. As far as we know, it only developed (in our world) after humans began living in cities and has historically been restricted to urban societies, which it seems like didn't happen in the world of tSA until some time after the Five Tribes entered Earwa. If (as it seems) the pre-Tusk Men of Eanna lived as tribal nomadic hunter-gatherers, then their laws shouldn't have had any need to condemn prostitution (since it wouldn't have existed in any meaningful fashion). It all seems very odd to me.

I agree with you that "makes a pit of her womb" might well be referring to something other than infanticide/abortion, though. How does Bakker use the word 'pit' elsewhere in tSA? The only thing that immediately springs to mind is the Nonmen referring to history as "the Pit of Years"...

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« Reply #20 on: May 15, 2013, 05:31:44 pm »
Quote from: Wilshire
Agree with above. Killing lots of people would see you damned whether it was with a knife for with the gnosis. Cnaiur would probably look damned through the JE.

I think that the whole 'schoolmen are damned thing' is likely false. Personally I think the Inchoroi added that bit into the tusk just like the false-men bit.

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« Reply #21 on: May 15, 2013, 05:31:49 pm »
Quote from: Madness
+1, Wilshire.

Duskweaver, perhaps, you've hit on something here. Mayhaps, the Five Tribes needed to flee Eanna? Specifically, its decaying cities o.O?

Elsewise, oversight...

We're sure there is no evidence of prostitution outside urban environments, women of community sexual usage?

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« Reply #22 on: May 15, 2013, 05:31:55 pm »
Quote from: Duskweaver
Quote from: Madness
Mayhaps, the Five Tribes needed to flee Eanna? Specifically, its decaying cities o.O?
Perhaps. In that case, the Inchoroi's "devious addition" would merely have ensured the Tribes migrated in the right direction, rather than actually triggering the migration itself. Honestly, that makes a lot more sense to me.

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We're sure there is no evidence of prostitution outside urban environments, women of community sexual usage?
Well, there's probably always been the "village bicycle", but I (and cultural anthropologists) would argue that that isn't the same thing as prostitution.

It is possible that the original (pre-Tusk) rule was something more along the lines of "Don't put up with slutty homewreckers in your village/tribal encampment", and that it was later reinterpreted/mistranslated as referring to prostitutes. Similarly to the theory that the Bible's condemnation of witchcraft was originally a condemnation of poisoners, or that its condemnation of male homosexuality might originally have been intended to forbid men from buggering underaged boys or raping their male slaves, rather than having anything to do with consensual homosexual relationships.

We have to remember that the Tusk is written in Thoti-Eannorean, the oldest known human language in Earwa. Assuming 'modern' Earwans are interpreting its text as the Men of Eanna would have originally intended it is like assuming we modern Earth-humans have a perfect understanding of the Epic of Gilgamesh. And that's without getting into the issue that the Tusk was actually compiled from Eannic humans' oral history by literal space-aliens!

"So, this word you keep using. What does it actually mean. What's a 'village bicycle'?"
"Aaargh! Stop raping me!"
"No, that doesn't quite answer my question. Please. It's important. I'm doing important academic research here. My notes will form the basis of the system of laws - no the very system of belief - for your distant descendants."
"Aaaaiiieeeegh!"
"Dammit. Pass me another human, Aurax. This one seems to have split."
"Oh, just put it down as 'someone who keeps asking for stuff while you're having sex with them'. I'm sure that's a close enough approximation."

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« Reply #23 on: May 15, 2013, 05:32:02 pm »
Quote from: Wilshire
One of my favorite quotes about religion from the first series goes something like "Heaven cannot shine through a single crack". Basically pointing out that religion is run by people and people are fallible, god or not. It is impossible to know how much of the tusk's words are divine inspired, which by that I mean the actual tenants of the five tribes rather than those added by the Inchoroi.

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« Reply #24 on: May 15, 2013, 05:32:08 pm »
Quote from: Madness
+1 Duskweaver.

I honestly dislike putting this legwork into explaining why a pre-urban, seemingly tribal, society might condemn whores. I don't like filling in the blanks for authors of my fiction. Though, I do enjoy the cognitive exercise...

I think you're generously estimating the capacities of Earwan linguists. By the language trees of TDTCB (p631), Thoti-Eannorean seems likely analogous to Indo-European? For a contemporary Earwan to read such a language without a Rosetta Stone...

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« Reply #25 on: May 15, 2013, 05:32:14 pm »
Quote from: Wilshire
Oh, a questions about languages.
The language trees given to us in the back of the first few books.... what was the point? Was it simply to give a bit more background for people who like that kind of stuff...... or did it have some kind of purpose? I havent the faintest clue.

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« Reply #26 on: May 15, 2013, 05:32:20 pm »
Quote from: Madness
World building. Bakker's admitted many times that he fashions himself only an amateur linguist (though, again, who knows the depths of his humility).

It gives us some ideas about history, the movements of genes and cultures across time and space, the interaction of the various species - I'm a big fan linguistics and anthropology. The language trees were only in TDTCB so that offered enticing hints as to the depth of the world that struggled with immersion in the first book.

There was a poster back in the day, White Lord, who got the most out of Bakker when Cu'jara Cinmoi answered on the Three-Seas Author Q&A forum. White Lord is even acknowledged in the back in TTT among others - I seem to remember Bakker telling me White Lord helped him compile the TTT Glossary (sourcing all references within the narratives). White Lord most certainly got much of his precision from the language trees - you should have seen the questions asked after only TWP... :shock:

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« Reply #27 on: May 15, 2013, 05:32:27 pm »
Quote from: Curethan
Whilst we're on languages...
What is the tongue that the skin spies speak when they are captured?
I use Chigra as a name in an online game and have had a couple people ask if I am Serbian...

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« Reply #28 on: May 15, 2013, 05:32:33 pm »
Quote from: Madness
No doubt some version of AGHURZOI - Original "Cut Tongue" language of the Sranc (TDTCB, p635).

EDIT: Actually, that's my second guess. First would be Kuniuric... Seswatha's language.

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« Reply #29 on: May 15, 2013, 05:32:39 pm »
Quote from: Wilshire
Google says that Chigra is a D&D deity.

also this page:
http://chigra.deviantart.com/
has labeled Chigra/Serbia
 
But this:
http://www.youtube.com/user/ChigraBand/videos
Looks like Chigra is the name of a Serbian band