Hi Titan,
I completely agree with you. Bakker says: "morality is objective." Hence the Judging Eye affords Mimara a vision of reality; of the spiritual state of a person. How come? Is that the nature of reality on this planet, in this universe? (That would fit with the Inchoroi's interstellar quest.) Is this because some creator god made it that way? My question is: is this objectivity & the damnation it implies a premise upon which the story is based or a belief of the civilisations in the story?
Humans, Nonmen & Ichoroi all seem to believe in damnation (& that most of them are damned.) But is that so? Hell & damnation are concepts found in pre-modern societies like those on Earwa & are very useful for social manipulation & mind control. A key question for historians of Earwa would be: who first introduced the idea of damnation?
If enough people believe in damnation then it would become an unquestioned fact, like: "Of course then world is flat, just look at it. How could it be an oblate spheroid? We'd all fall off. D'oh!" If enough people believe in damnation then the fear or the anticipation of it or the surrender to it's inevitability would be real & powerful forces at work in the mind, in the world. In a world where sorcery works repeating the mantra "I am damned," every day might even create a hell for you. It might even condition "The Outside" to become a hell dimension. This may be where Kellhus, the unconditioned comes in.
Damnation could have been invented by the Nonmen, within their own culture for various reasons or it might have just been a bad idea someone had some time which caught on. They might have used it in their enslavement of the Emwama, to condition humans. However the Inchoroi might have introduced both races to the concept of damnation. (To humans via the Tusk?) This would have happened so long ago that no-one remembers. There is no-one to question it. The Inverse Fire could be a device which convinces a person of their own personal damnation. Use it on certain key people & you can change history. In fact it could be said that it started a revolution & gave rise to the events leading to The First Apocalypse.
In other words, the concept of damnation might be a psychological weapon deployed by the Inchoroi. If so there's no reason why, in a world where sorcery is produced via speech, via words & concepts that hell & damnation took off, unruly thought-forms that they are & gained a life of their own.
Of course we have it from the Inchoroi themselves that they are on a quest for a world which they can seal off from their own damnation. Funny that the world upon which this is possible is the one which they crashed onto. It is possible that either they believe this for a variety of reasons, or that again it's a mythology which serves some other purpose, even simple mis-direction.
Mimara's judging eye might be a way for her to perceive the moral condition of a person & she might, because of the world in which she has grown up, the world in which she believes interpret that vision as a vision of damnation or of salvation.
In a story in which aliens land a spaceship (did it even crash? we only have their word for it,) &(click to show/hide)
I think that the simplest way of understanding what is going on is a more hard-SF interpretation: the Inchoroi are amoral, predatory invaders from a decadent race trying to establish themselves as the overlords of a pre-modern world & making a hash of it because it turns out that sorcery is real.
Has Mimara ever seen a 'pure' soul with her eye? Maybe everyone is damned.
Has Mimara ever seen a 'pure' soul with her eye? Maybe everyone is damned.
I recall early in The Judging Eye when she's first introduced it mentions something like "good men shine more than good women", but that could easily be a degrees of damnation thing rather than seeing people who are actually saved.
Yes, and the "fact" that she says that men's souls "shine brighter" than women's is probably another giveaway that the Judging eye is heavily influenced by Earwa society and history, and *not* objective truth.
...what we see are three races who share enough emotional and cognitive overlap that they all fear an eternity of tormentIndeed, but for me the question remains as to whether some one is exploiting that fear, even cultivating it.
I think we definitely receive confirmation that Hell is real to the Inchoroi and to the Nonmen independently and that they reached awareness of it independently of each other.I wonder if someone out there has a reference for that. Is it so clear? Not that is unreasonable.
H speculates in another thread that Mimara will answer the No-God's question... that would be a great scene.Wow, yes! I had always thought that it would be Achamian... unless he was in there asking the question himself! ;-)
MSJ: I saw & included your answer from RSB in my post, thanks. It's an important point. I suppose I just don't feel comfortable with that idea! As if these books were meant to make us feel comfortable. LOL. I'm curious about how morality can ever be objective anywhere. (Except in the minds of certain kinds of philosophers & religious zealots.) I suppose it goes back to my original question: is it just a premise that we have to accept, like a McGuffin in a SciFi tale? To which you are, I gather, saying: "Yes it is." If we accept sorcery as a premise, then why not eternal damnation?
QuoteMSJ: I saw & included your answer from RSB in my post, thanks. It's an important point. I suppose I just don't feel comfortable with that idea! As if these books were meant to make us feel comfortable. LOL. I'm curious about how morality can ever be objective anywhere. (Except in the minds of certain kinds of philosophers & religious zealots.) I suppose it goes back to my original question: is it just a premise that we have to accept, like a McGuffin in a SciFi tale? To which you are, I gather, saying: "Yes it is." If we accept sorcery as a premise, then why not eternal damnation?
I see where your coming from and it's why I asked Bakker the question. I argued a lot about it at Westeros the past couple of years. I was wrong, Bakker says morality is objective. So, I guess in these books, on Earwa, yes it's something we just have to accept.
Odium:Quote...what we see are three races who share enough emotional and cognitive overlap that they all fear an eternity of tormentIndeed, but for me the question remains as to whether some one is exploiting that fear, even cultivating it.
Odium:QuoteI think we definitely receive confirmation that Hell is real to the Inchoroi and to the Nonmen independently and that they reached awareness of it independently of each other.I wonder if someone out there has a reference for that. Is it so clear? Not that is unreasonable.
MSJ: I saw & included your answer from RSB in my post, thanks. It's an important point. I suppose I just don't feel comfortable with that idea! As if these books were meant to make us feel comfortable. LOL. I'm curious about how morality can ever be objective anywhere. (Except in the minds of certain kinds of philosophers & religious zealots.) I suppose it goes back to my original question: is it just a premise that we have to accept, like a McGuffin in a SciFi tale? To which you are, I gather, saying: "Yes it is." If we accept sorcery as a premise, then why not eternal damnation?
What do people that this eternal damnation is? Being soul-eaten by the Gods & Ciphrang?
Meanwhile... he said pedantically... the term soul is used a lot. What is that?
QuoteMSJ: I saw & included your answer from RSB in my post, thanks. It's an important point. I suppose I just don't feel comfortable with that idea! As if these books were meant to make us feel comfortable. LOL. I'm curious about how morality can ever be objective anywhere. (Except in the minds of certain kinds of philosophers & religious zealots.) I suppose it goes back to my original question: is it just a premise that we have to accept, like a McGuffin in a SciFi tale? To which you are, I gather, saying: "Yes it is." If we accept sorcery as a premise, then why not eternal damnation?
I see where your coming from and it's why I asked Bakker the question. I argued a lot about it at Westeros the past couple of years. I was wrong, Bakker says morality is objective. So, I guess in these books, on Earwa, yes it's something we just have to accept.
That may well be true, but my argument is that the *Judging Eye* is should not be taken at face value for deciding morality/damnation of a person - it presents a very slanted view. (women souls being lesser, and other things)
QuoteMSJ: I saw & included your answer from RSB in my post, thanks. It's an important point. I suppose I just don't feel comfortable with that idea! As if these books were meant to make us feel comfortable. LOL. I'm curious about how morality can ever be objective anywhere. (Except in the minds of certain kinds of philosophers & religious zealots.) I suppose it goes back to my original question: is it just a premise that we have to accept, like a McGuffin in a SciFi tale? To which you are, I gather, saying: "Yes it is." If we accept sorcery as a premise, then why not eternal damnation?
I see where your coming from and it's why I asked Bakker the question. I argued a lot about it at Westeros the past couple of years. I was wrong, Bakker says morality is objective. So, I guess in these books, on Earwa, yes it's something we just have to accept.
That may well be true, but my argument is that the *Judging Eye* is should not be taken at face value for deciding morality/damnation of a person - it presents a very slanted view. (women souls being lesser, and other things)
Ok, then how do we explain Koringhus? Koringhus senses the whatever Mimara has the Absolute is behind it. He figures all this out about the Zero-God, repents, Mimara forgives and the JE approves. Again, the JE approves. So Koringhus goes from as damned as anyone she's seen until then, to forgiven and go to join the Absolute, I'd say it's the most accurate POV of any in the book. Even though there is much I don't like about it.
I just want to say that I am happy that one Anasurimbor / Dunyain of any family managed to receive salvation. I'm a big softee I guess.
Ok, then how do we explain Koringhus? Koringhus senses the whatever Mimara has the Absolute is behind it. He figures all this out about the Zero-God, repents, Mimara forgives and the JE approves. Again, the JE approves. So Koringhus goes from as damned as anyone she's seen until then, to forgiven and go to join the Absolute, I'd say it's the most accurate POV of any in the book. Even though there is much I don't like about it.
I guess I need to re-read the book, because that's not at all what my impression was of what happened. But you may be right.
This, Sister … This is why I bare my throat to the blade of your judgment. This is why I would make myself your slave. For short of death, you, Anasûrimbor Mimara, wife-daughter of Anasûrimbor Kellhus, who is also my father … you, Sister, are the Shortest Path. The Absolute dwells within your Gaze. You … a frail, worldborn slip, heavy with child, chased across the throw of kings and nations, you are the Nail of the World, the hook from which all things hang. Thus do I kneel before it, awaiting, accepting, death or illumination— it does not matter which. So long as I am at last known.
And so it was with the Absolute. Surrender. Forfeiture . Loss … At last he understood what made these things holy. Loss was advantage. Blindness was insight, revelation . At last he could see it—the sideways step that gave lie to Logos. Zero. Zero made One.
The Eye watches. Approves. He gestures to the boy, who obediently comes to him.
QuoteMSJ: I saw & included your answer from RSB in my post, thanks. It's an important point. I suppose I just don't feel comfortable with that idea! As if these books were meant to make us feel comfortable. LOL. I'm curious about how morality can ever be objective anywhere. (Except in the minds of certain kinds of philosophers & religious zealots.) I suppose it goes back to my original question: is it just a premise that we have to accept, like a McGuffin in a SciFi tale? To which you are, I gather, saying: "Yes it is." If we accept sorcery as a premise, then why not eternal damnation?
I see where your coming from and it's why I asked Bakker the question. I argued a lot about it at Westeros the past couple of years. I was wrong, Bakker says morality is objective. So, I guess in these books, on Earwa, yes it's something we just have to accept.
Though I think that Kellhus is trying to stop is said damnation. The God and the Hundred are separate. And the 100 are the ones whom feed off damnation. Have basically set up the system so that everything leads to damnation.
So the Old Polytheistic Gods pass away to be replaced by the One True God. Sheesh. That's a bit disappointing as an arc story. I'm a Pagan at heart.
I think Kellhus is explaining the 100, not God (the Absolute). They are two separate entities.
I think Kellhus is explaining the 100, not God (the Absolute). They are two separate entities.
Which has been my point in taking the stance that the Solitary God, the One God, the Zero-God, the Absolute (as God), is a concept, not existent (yet) as an entity.
The Fanim worship an ideal, not a manifest God.
I agree , H. My only dispute is the the One God, Zero-God and Absolute are all the same thing and that they do exist. Koringhus tells us they are behind the JE.
Damnation is objective but malleable. Morality is subjective.Quote
This not true. Morality is OBJECTIVE!!!!! It's what the author said, it's not up for debate.
Morality is objective, so it doesn't matter what Men believe. Lies are also objective, insofar as they a powerful impact on the reality around them, and insofar as they are sinful. They don't become true so much as determine what is taken to be true. Lies are sins precisely because they have real consequences.
I'm agreed and I tried to help figure out why it's so hard for anachronistic readers such as ourselves to grasp upthread. But alas.
I blame the years of theorizing up until TJE when many of us, Thorsten's essays especially, had decided that belief was mutable based on what the most souls believed at any given time (or across all time cumulatively).
QuoteThe Eye watches. Approves. He gestures to the boy, who obediently comes to him.
Bold is mine. So, what I am saying is that what The Eye has seen and has changed its stance on damnation in relation to Koringhus. Even though morality is objective, there is also the chance for redemption and forgiveness.
So being a women makes you less than what a man is, that's subjective? The path to that is subjective? Right and wrong is written in to the "rules" of Earwa, there is no path to it.
ETA: what I'm saying is being born a woman isn't a choice and yet they are morally inferior to men.
So being a women makes you less than what a man is, that's subjective? The path to that is subjective? Right and wrong is written in to the "rules" of Earwa, there is no path to it.To continue that analogy Women and Men start off with different paths available to them. Women can travel paths that lead to palaces of salvation. Men can travel paths that lead to BIG ASS palaces of salvation. I don't think gender not being a choice has to be a factor at all.
ETA: what I'm saying is being born a woman isn't a choice and yet they are morally inferior to men.
These are not my opinions. Bakker has said that he wanted to create a world were morality is objective. The beliefs of men do not matter. He literally says this in answering my question. Then he gives us a plot device which literally shows the morality of things. And this plot device tells us the women are lesser souls than men. The JE is his vehicle to show us the morality of individual things on Earwa, it's why I believe it. Now, can this change? Sure. I hope it does. Maybe something that Kellhus or Mimara does will change this, I don't know.This is really why I believe this is all a semantic argument. In our world, morality is defined as an issue of right and wrong. That's by definition also subjective. Bakker defines morality as an objective truth and uses the Judging Eye as a plot device to elaborate with the issue. So since these two definitions of morality conflict we have to use analysis to see what the differences are. As you said, the Judging Eye is the plot device that elaborates Earwa's objective morality. Here are the relevant facts as I know them:
Between women and men, women possess the lesser soul. Whenever the Eye opens, she glimpses the fact of this, the demand that women yield to the requirements of men, so long as those demands be righteous. To bear sons. To lower her gaze. To provide succor. The place of the woman is to give. So it has always been, since Omrain first climbed nude from the dust and bathed in the wind. Since Esmenet made herself a crutch for stern Angeshraël.
It's not to say that it's all not a set up to have someone rewrite these laws somehow.
But yeah, I am nothing of a real philosopher though, so I probably am just misunderstanding it all.Quote
Lol. We should start a podcast, the philosophical musings of a redneck and a quaker......are you in?
Lol. We should start a podcast, the philosophical musings of a redneck and a quaker......are you in?
I'm the redneck (Wv), aren't you from PA (quaker)? Lol, but we can call it whatever you want. The point is we admit to not knowing much on the subject. In fact, I've been schooled on the subject while reading Bakker.
As a modern person talking to other modern people I'd like to be able to use the modern definition of morality in this discussion. However since Bakker did make an alternate definition, we shouldn't ignore it just make the differentiation. So having said that, in my own analysis, the only objective difference between the two seems to be the objective role of damnation and salvation. I believe that on Earwa that's what morality means and it makes sense. Attaining salvation is moral. Attaining Damnation is immoral. For us modern folk, who stand outside those beliefs, we can still judge those actions based on our own sense of morality. I find it more than moral, righteous even, to be a Mandate Schoolman, and suffer eternal damnation just to save the world.
So it's not that Bakker is wrong or I want to dismiss his definition. I just want to make the distinction because Earwa's definition of the word and ours so use damnation/salvation to refer to the two sides of the coin that is morality in Earwa. This frees up the word itself for its modern definition.
It's tough because it's so...wrong. Because it's hard to think that those kind of things - things like morality - are something that can be put into objective truths. It's completely against our moral paradigm.
But in an intentional world, where everything has meaning, that also means everything is weighed. Everything has value. And that means everything is judged. That judgment and value does not, in any way, mean that it's influenced by us, any more than we can influence the speed of light in a vacuum or we can influence the Planck length.
I think one of the reasons that we object to it is that it is a fundamental unfairness. The entire universe says women aren't as good as men, for no good reason? They're born that way and boom, they get to be on a harder difficulty? How the hell is that fair? But that's sort of the point. That was, effectively, how the universe was for women back in the day.
Where I think Bakker fails is that in the real world, in spite of women being viewed that way, there were still exceptional women who managed to do great things and overcome that adversity - just like there are today. And you can acknowledge that they had a harder time and still overcame it without diminishing it. Bakker essentially says that said bootstrapping is a conceit he doesn't want to indulge in, and makes it fundamentally more oppressive than anything else.
But yeah, that's where he's going. He's going for a world where everything is weighed, ordered, valued and judged, and that includes what sex you are.