The Second Apocalypse
Earwa => The Aspect-Emperor => The Unholy Consult => Topic started by: MSJ on August 04, 2017, 07:42:56 pm
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When the Ciphrang kills the Nonman and cannot find his soul afterward, i immediately knew that the Nonman had found oblivion. I dont even think its in doubt. Its possible. Even though, throighout the whole series we're told that it is not. This would also go back to Akka and Cnaüir's talk about madness and it leaking in and Kellhus saying thats not how it works, he thought there wasnt any cracks. Apparently, there are. Did anyone else get that he went to Oblivion also?
[EDIT Madness: Title. Almost Tuesday, erryone.]
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When the Ciphrang kills the Nonman and cannot find his soul afterward, i immediately knew that the Nonman had found oblivion. I dont even think its in doubt. Its possible. Even though, throighout the whole series we're told that it is not. This would also go back to Akka and Cnaüir's talk about madness and it leaking in and Kellhus saying thats not how it works, he thought there wasnt any cracks. Apparently, there are. Did anyone else get that he went to Oblivion also?
I thought it was a Sranc, not a Nonman, and therefore soulless. Another passage to check, I guess.
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Bakker answered this question here:
http://www.second-apocalypse.com/index.php?topic=2278.msg36429#msg36429
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It stalks the great corridor, a crimson light in the smoking dark, trailing sizzling ruin in its wake. The flesh now flees before it, gibbering and yammering as if it were real. A different flesh replaces it, far greater in height and girth, draped in clanking gowns of iron. Bellowing they fall upon Kakaliol, spear and cudgel its scaled limbs, but they too fall away, puling hoarse and glutinous, burning and broken.
And it strides forward, stone cracking beneath its feet ...
Vile angel.
The meat lies smashed and smoking about it. Nothing opposes it—save a lone hooded figure occupying the centre of the grand hall ...
Beware ... the Blind Slaver whispers.A roar shivers up through rotted stone.
At last ... Kakaliol croaks on a poisonous fume.
A soul
Vile angel.
Its triumphant screech brings down a haze of dust and flaked mortar.
Kakaliol, Reaper-of-Heroes, dandles the thing in its fiery talons. Lolling limbs, head hanging as if from a stocking. Soft skin blistered or abraded or shorn away, a bladder for gelatinous innards and absurd quantities of blood, like an unwrung rag.
But where? Where is the soul?
Cast it aside, the Blind Slaver commands.
I would keep it for my token.
It runs a claw across the porcelain scalp, skinning it like rotted fruit, seeking ...
Discharge your task!
Not a sranc, a Nonman, a definitely had a soul as you see in the 1st quote.
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Well even if it is possible it's apparently hugely unlikely and the method the Nonmen used to use to try to bring it about didn't work.
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I think a lot of things in Earwaverse are determined by how badly you want it. I'd imagine after thousands of years I'd be pining for nothingness too.
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i used to think that might be the case too but now I'm thinking seemingly belief fueled things like Kellhus' halos were just Ajokli messing with everybody.
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Well even if it is possible it's apparently hugely unlikely and the method the Nonmen used to use to try to bring it about didn't work.
Well, from what Bakker said in the Q&A thats exactly what happened. And, how do you possibly know it's never worked? If a Nonmen worshipping Oblivion dies and goes to Oblivion how can you say he did or didnt? It took that scene to prove that it can happen. It was the whole point of the scene.
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I'm not saying it didn't happen. I'm saying it appears to be the exception and not the rule from what we've been shown so far.
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Damnation appears to be the rule, with oblivion and salvation (leaving aside the question of how good salvation really is) being comparatively rare exceptions.
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I still think that the Inverse Fire should be treated with a degree of suspicion.
The Inverse Fire seems like a huge self-fulfilling prophecy: everyone who looks into it sees themselves damned because seeing yourself damned will inevitably cause you to pursue actions that will damn you. Bakker even tells us outright in TUC that that was the whole point of it: to keep the Inchoroi and those they recruited utterly devoted to the cause of their Progenitors. It is entirely possible that (at least in some cases) if you never looked into the IF you would not have been damned.
And (AFAIK) the only evidence we really have for Nonman Oblivion being a lie is the Inverse Fire.
There is also the possibility that Oblivion sidesteps damnation in a way that simply cannot show up in the IF. In other words, looking into the IF and seeing yourself damned does not preclude you from avoiding that by finding Oblivion. In the same way that it does not preclude the No-God saving you from damnation by closing the World.
So the tragedy might be that Mekeritrig and his two companions were wrong, and that they damned themselves and their race right there in the Golden Room.
I actually wonder if the Progenitors would ever have been damned themselves if they hadn't started exploring their souls and peering into the Outside in the first place. Could ignorance of the very existence of the Outside protect you from damnation?
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Could be, it is after all an Inverse Fire. It doesn't come at you from your feet, but from your head. He even calls it an subparticular 'intentional field' machine in the glossary. It extrapolates your outcome from your intentions and memories? I mean it is a machine, all it could do is take a guess and since peering into the post-death future is beyond technology of the present Ark (obviously the original Progenitors had the tools to find out) my best guess it that it provides a simulated guess. It's all a matter of probabilities in the end no?
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I think it's accurate and the universe works on Calvinist principes. There's an elect that are always saved and everyone else was born to be damned. There's some causality loop stuff involved for at least some of the guys that looked at the Inverse Fire, probably, but the effect is the same.
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He even calls it an subparticular 'intentional field' machine in the glossary.
I think Bakker is using 'intentional' in the philosophical sense, rather than the everyday sense of "stuff you want to do". In that case, an 'intentional field' is basically a miniature artificial Outside.
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So what is 'intent' in the philosophical sense? I read his blog and from some of the less dense jargon posts I gathered intent refers to intent. He writes on post-intentionality a lot and the works both journal and fiction deal with it. That said I'm neither a native speaker nor a philosopher by trade so I could be missing a lot here because it takes me a while to unpack everything.
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I can't read his Three Pound Brain philosophy posts usually and I am a native speaker. Academia likes to invent it's own language that they can only speak to others in their discipline. Or sometimes sub-discipline. Or sub-sub-discipline.
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It's like how Herbert said in Dune. Institutions form their own languages and from that comes their real power. Or something to that affect. It's been many years since I read it so the above might be a horrid butchery haha.
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I don't know that this will help but this should be the layman's first stop regarding anything philosophy (specifically linking Intentionality, at the moment): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Intentionality (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intentionality/)
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I gotta be honest so far I'm still not getting the distinction. Is it something to do with awareness or reflection?
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I'm definitely not the person to make sense of it for you, Sharmat.
As you said above, "Academia likes to invent it's own language that they can only speak to others in their discipline. Or sometimes sub-discipline. Or sub-sub-discipline," and I never felt the need to cage my personal experience of consciousness as something inherently special or magical or whatever.