Earwa > The No-God
I have been struggling processing some of the philosophical points of TUC
Unrepentant Schoolman:
Hello all,
I am struggling greatly with making the mental abstractions to process the idea of how Tekne is the equivalent of the Logos.
I struggle with why attaining the Absolute leads to damnation ... my initial thought is that reaching the Absolute is essential creating a number divided by 0, an irrational, an impossibility. The Subject and the Object coalescing into one creates the irrational.
Please share your thoughts and understandings ... I have had my brain working on this for a few days but im left feeling thrilled by my inability to resolve this. It's fun to ponder.
MSJ:
Unrepentant Schoolman, you're coming here seeking answers, when we've never had any. What we do here is make things up, and hope they pan out. Post philosophical musings, and tell each other what we're reading.
Nah, just kidding (slightly). Someone (plenty, actually) is smart enough to wet your appetite. It just ain't me.
H:
--- Quote from: Unrepentant Schoolman on January 14, 2019, 02:23:23 pm ---Hello all,
I am struggling greatly with making the mental abstractions to process the idea of how Tekne is the equivalent of the Logos.
I struggle with why attaining the Absolute leads to damnation ... my initial thought is that reaching the Absolute is essential creating a number divided by 0, an irrational, an impossibility. The Subject and the Object coalescing into one creates the irrational.
Please share your thoughts and understandings ... I have had my brain working on this for a few days but im left feeling thrilled by my inability to resolve this. It's fun to ponder.
--- End quote ---
Well, to sort of "summarize" what I've posted elsewhere here, the issue with the Absolute vis-a-vis Damnation is that it seems to be impossible to achieve the Absolute in actual practice. That is, the attempt to "know everything" is not possible. In fact, it isn't even really possible to know almost everything. And even if it was, you'd still be Damned in Bakker-verse, because you are still placing yourself at "odds" with the infinite God-of-gods. That is, by attempting to achieve Absolute knowledge, that is infinite knowledge, you place yourself at odd with actually fully integrating with the actual infinite nature of the universe. In a manner of thinking, you could equate such a pursuit to the "supplanting" of the infinite God-of-gods. This is likely a key to what Koringhus proposes a system of achiving "the Absolute" via a path of loss. So, you subvert and disolve yourself, litterally The Self, and take your place as one part (an infinite "part") of the Infinite God-of-gods.
I realize it's a bit of a tome, but I've written at length about this here: http://www.second-apocalypse.com/index.php?topic=2766.0
(If that thread makes any sense, I don't really know.)
Wilshire:
It seems you might be asking two things, so I'll split them up
--- Quote from: Unrepentant Schoolman on January 14, 2019, 02:23:23 pm ---how Tekne is the equivalent of the Logos.
--- End quote ---
I think first of all that this isn't the case. More like, the Logos, or at least the way the Dunyain pursue and use it, is more easily understood as a system for obtaining knowledge, with its end goal being the acquisition of all knowledge and therefore being able to come before events. A state known as The Absolute.
In this sense, it is very much not the Tekne. The Tekne, afaik, is just a fun way of spelling and then shortening a word to make it sound like Fantasy/Sci-fi jargon. Technology shortens to Tech. Tech to Tek. Tek to Tekne. A play on words that basically just means that a bunch of advanced aliens have technology.
Specifically on Earwa its used to describe, mostly, their ability to manipulate flesh - gene-splicing mostly. Think today's China and their CRSPR splicing genes into babies, fast forwarded a billion years into the future.
You might say that the Tekne arises from (or is a product of) the Logos. In real life terms, technology arises from knowledge. But this doesn't make them equivalent.
Why are the Inchoroi damned? Now that's a totally different question.
--- Quote from: Unrepentant Schoolman on January 14, 2019, 02:23:23 pm ---I struggle with why attaining the Absolute leads to damnation ...
--- End quote ---
Yes, why. I think as H said, it has something to do with the Gods. They seem a prickly bunch, power hungry, viciously defending and consolidating power, and putting down anything that seeks to disrupt the status quo. So maybe the Aboslute is something that, no matter how obliquely, approximate being a God, and the journey to it might itself make one a God should it ever be achieved. This would make the other Gods unhappy, thus damnation.
That said, does attaining the absolute lead to damnation? As far as we really know (or think we know via Mimara) the Dunyain themselves are all damned collectively, likely due to their complicity in creating the Whale Mothers, and more generally how they live their lives in Ishual. I imagine Yatwer is not too happy about the whole situation, and it could be that reason and nothing else that leads to the Dunyain damnation.
Or something else entirely. ;) .
H:
--- Quote from: Wilshire on January 14, 2019, 03:10:35 pm ---It seems you might be asking two things, so I'll split them up
--- Quote from: Unrepentant Schoolman on January 14, 2019, 02:23:23 pm ---how Tekne is the equivalent of the Logos.
--- End quote ---
I think first of all that this isn't the case. More like, the Logos, or at least the way the Dunyain pursue and use it, is more easily understood as a system for obtaining knowledge, with its end goal being the acquisition of all knowledge and therefore being able to come before events. A state known as The Absolute.
In this sense, it is very much not the Tekne. The Tekne, afaik, is just a fun way of spelling and then shortening a word to make it sound like Fantasy/Sci-fi jargon. Technology shortens to Tech. Tech to Tek. Tek to Tekne. A play on words that basically just means that a bunch of advanced aliens have technology.
Specifically on Earwa its used to describe, mostly, their ability to manipulate flesh - gene-splicing mostly. Think today's China and their CRSPR splicing genes into babies, fast forwarded a billion years into the future.
You might say that the Tekne arises from (or is a product of) the Logos. In real life terms, technology arises from knowledge. But this doesn't make them equivalent.
Why are the Inchoroi damned? Now that's a totally different question.
--- End quote ---
You raise some good points here, so, I'd like to clarify my above post, if possible.
That is, the Tekne and the Logos are not "the same" in so far as they are both "raised" out of the same idea, that of what we might call "empiricism" or probably broader, "logical knowledge." In fact, they are both really "Mechanical philosophies" so to speak, that is to say, they treat the world as if it were a machine. So, there is always a cause, always an effect, and causes generate effects. You can get result X if you initiate cause Y. For the Logos, it's about this logical progression. For the Tekne, its roughly the same, build X to do Y.
The problem is, something like Damnation isn't a machine, because it speaks to something that isn't mechanical. It's transcendent, in the sense of not being a physical thing. It's an idea, that is, an ideal. So, you can make all the machines you want, you can be as logical as you want, but the nature of the universe, meta-physically, doesn't care. There are rules. "Arbitrary" rules.
--- Quote from: Wilshire on January 14, 2019, 03:10:35 pm ---
--- Quote from: Unrepentant Schoolman on January 14, 2019, 02:23:23 pm ---I struggle with why attaining the Absolute leads to damnation ...
--- End quote ---
Yes, why. I think as H said, it has something to do with the Gods. They seem a prickly bunch, power hungry, viciously defending and consolidating power, and putting down anything that seeks to disrupt the status quo. So maybe the Aboslute is something that, no matter how obliquely, approximate being a God, and the journey to it might itself make one a God should it ever be achieved. This would make the other Gods unhappy, thus damnation.
That said, does attaining the absolute lead to damnation? As far as we really know (or think we know via Mimara) the Dunyain themselves are all damned collectively, likely due to their complicity in creating the Whale Mothers, and more generally how they live their lives in Ishual. I imagine Yatwer is not too happy about the whole situation, and it could be that reason and nothing else that leads to the Dunyain damnation.
Or something else entirely. ;) .
--- End quote ---
Well, here's the thing, if you could actually achieve the Absolute, that is, knowledge of everything, you probably wouldn't be Damned. That is, because if you actually had infinite knowledge, you'd actually be the Infinite God-of-gods, and so it would be irrelevant. The issue is, you can't get to Infinity by addition, in actual practice. So, you can "assemble" the Infinite God piece by piece. You can't count to Infinity by ones, or by any other number either, within the timespan of the universe.
You can't achieve the Absolute in actual practice by addition. The only way to "get there" is likely through Koringhus' method, by subtraction, by taking the perspective of "Zero differentiation" rather than "no differentiation through acquisition of all perspectives."
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