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The White-Luck Warrior / Re: What is the No God? II
« on: February 24, 2014, 01:03:07 pm »
Anyway, the No God begging to know what people see makes me think his vision is too good. Plus it's a cool parallel to the blind gods.
You say that the No God is either blind or "his vision is too good"... But actually I think it's neither.
What do you see ?
What am I ?
The No God can't see himself. Only from others can he know what he is. This reminds me of the Kellus-Akka dialog where Kellus asks Akka what he sees from a mirror... Not himself. Only his eyes. Only through others can he see himself. I think the No God questions are the same, he's trying to define himself through others.
That fits with his name too. Until he gets the answer to his questions he still remains the no god, a god of nothing or an incomplete god.
Excellent. Remember when Esmenet muses about her lessons with Kellhus, where he discusses the half of someone that sees, and the half of someone who is seen? Here is the full quotation:
Quote
Men, Kellhus had once told her, were like coins: they had two sides. Where one side of them saw, the other side of them was seen, and though all men were both at once, men could only truly know the side of themselves that saw and the side of others that was seen—they could only truly know the inner half of themselves and the outer half of others.
At first Esmenet thought this foolish. Was not the inner half the whole, what was only imperfectly apprehended by others? But Kellhus bid her to think of everything she’d witnessed in others. How many unwitting mistakes? How many flaws of character? Conceits couched in passing remarks. Fears posed as judgements …
The shortcomings of men—their limits—were written in the eyes of those who watched them. And this was why everyone seemed so desperate to secure the good opinion of others—why everyone played the mummer. They knew without knowing that what they saw of themselves was only half of who they were. And they were desperate to be whole.
The measure of wisdom, Kellhus had said, was found in the distance between these two selves.
Only afterward had she thought of Kellhus in these terms. With a kind of surpriseless shock, she realized that not once—not once!—had she glimpsed shortcomings in his words or actions. And this, she understood, was why he seemed limitless, like the ground, which extended from the small circle about her feet to the great circle about the sky. He had become her horizon.
For Kellhus, there was no distance between seeing and being seen. He alone was whole. And what was more, he somehow stood from without and saw from within. He made whole …
Could Kellhus's ultimate goal to be to help the No-God? What would it mean for the No-God to reconcile its two selves?