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Bakker's TGO Excerpts II: Mining our Merest Fraction [Spoilers]s


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Folks: it’s a topos, plural topoi

We’re better than this.

(Maybe Bakker himself made this mistake in the books? Then we’re excused. Bakker used “duel” for “dual” and “could care less,” and stuff like “you hast” so I don’t have too high an opinion on his English usage.)

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1 hour ago, mnedel said:

Hello guys, a bit off topic, but reading about the Great ordeal, I realized I don’t remember a lot of the philosophical concepts or even characters. Sadly, I don’t have time for a reread of the entire series so can you recommend a good summary of the previous volumes? Really need to refresh my knowledge about the story and underlying philosophy before the new book comes out.

Themes: free will is an illusion born out of our blindness to our thought's determination by neurobiology and our preceding life history. Living in a world of objective meaning is far worse than living in one of meaninglessness. Human enhancement through mastery of biology and psychology leads to loss of humanity (but is that a bad thing?).

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7 hours ago, Triskan said:

 Maybe the act is sinful or not independent of the intent of the actor.

As if they have been judged or something >:)

I'm gunna lodge this observation : I'm noting that it seems the judging eye is being treated as a reliable POV/witness by readers.

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46 minutes ago, Gasp of Many Reeds said:

 Living in a world of objective meaning is far worse than living in one of meaninglessness.

What strikes me is, even worse, that it's still just a meaningless world. Just with hideous torture regimes.

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4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

The plains of Mangedda were a Topoi, no?

Is it? Honestly don't remember. I know the army had bad dreams.  And it's because the NoGod died there. Was really different then the topos in TJE.

 

 

 

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Ok so ignore my theory. But now I don't have a firm grasp of how they are created. Death of NoGod doesn't imply great suffering over long period of time, which is how I understood it for the one in TJE. 

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Yeah, the 24-page summary at the start of the book is a godsend. I couldn't remember almost anything from the last book.

Halfway through. It's good, with a couple of potentially major "Whaaaaaaaat?" moments.

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3 hours ago, unJon said:

Is it? Honestly don't remember. I know the army had bad dreams.  And it's because the NoGod died there. Was really different then the topos in TJE.

 

 

 

Combination of the No-God dying there and the collective suffering of numerous battles over time. The Battle in TWP is the fourth major action at the site in recorded history. So plenty of suffering as well as the death of the No God.

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2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Yeah, the 24-page summary at the start of the book is a godsend. I couldn't remember almost anything from the last book.

Halfway through. It's good, with a couple of potentially major "Whaaaaaaaat?" moments.

Lol - reading so quick.

Real excited for your review.

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On an unrelated note, this scene from Silicon Valley uncomfortably reminds me of the pages and pages of conversation we've had about HitB, or whether a Synthese has a huge cock, or how many phalluses and vaginas an Inchoroi has.

The video is here, but the actual scientific paper is amazing.

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Couple things:

I'm still not getting how "world has objective morality" and "gods just want to snack on your soul" line up exactly. What does a cenobite God care about the evil of actions committed in its granary? Does Mimara actually see the world through the Bakkerverse's equivalen of the Gnostic Pleroma/True God, and Kellhus is just purposely misleading Proyas by making him equate The God with the Hundred? Is Damnation actually a kind of perverse punishment, where the suffering you caused in real life is sucked out of you like marrow, except instead of impersonal moral judges of the afterlife you have demon gods that happen to get off on it, too?

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1 hour ago, Baztek said:

Couple things:

I'm still not getting how "world has objective morality" and "gods just want to snack on your soul" line up exactly. What does a cenobite God care about the evil of actions committed in its granary? Does Mimara actually see the world through the Bakkerverse's equivalen of the Gnostic Pleroma/True God, and Kellhus is just purposely misleading Proyas by making him equate The God with the Hundred? Is Damnation actually a kind of perverse punishment, where the suffering you caused in real life is sucked out of you  like marrow, except instead of impersonal moral judges of the afterlife you have demon gods that happen to get off on it, too?

I understand little compared to you guys with respect of the Gods, objective morality and the whole bit. Yet, those are the exact same concerns I have and have posted about in the past two threads. It just doesn't seem to add up.

ETA: Bakker does seem to expect a lot from his readers. So, wether we get a straight forward answer, I doubt.

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The god doesn't care - it's the crop that matters. The crop comes from evil acts - it seems it can come from good acts as well. More evil = better crop! That's probably why some tried to be neutral (something in 'The false sun' about that, IIRC), to slip off to oblivion (the barren seed). Also that's 'evil' & 'good'.

Also with the plains of Mangedda, I got the impression you didn't want to die there (as some characters noted) because you just don't move on - you're stuck. Probably because the no gods effect still lingers. The topos is probably a side effect of those dead not moving on and in anguish for so long there.

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So I wanted to post something about the latest GoT episode but got confused between all the forums and subforums and threads and whatnot. Which reminded me why I like this thread more than the other forum... It's so great having everything in one place.

But man... Who would have thought that something interesting could happen on Got of all shows...

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6 minutes ago, Callan S. said:

Also with the plains of Mangedda, I got the impression you didn't want to die there (as some characters noted) because you just don't move on - you're stuck. Probably because the no gods effect still lingers. The topos is probably a side effect of those dead not moving on and in anguish for so long there.

I think that is exactly how it's explained in the books also.

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