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Bakker XLIII - the prattle of unnumbered years


sologdin

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Random thought ->

If you change some of the words and names, this could just as easily be Kellhus' upbringing in Ishual:

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"You have to understand," she said hesitantly. "I didn't know that I had been wronged. The brutalities I endured… But I was a child… and then I was a brothel-slave-that's what I was… Something made to be violated, abused, over and over, until I grew too old or too ugly, and they sold me to the fullery. That was just the… the way… So when the Eothic Guardsmen came and began beating Yappi… Yapotis… the brothel master, I didn't understand. I couldn't understand…"

 

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1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Seeing mimara is not the same as seeing all women. Figured you'd be better for that sort of thing.

As to why I haven't dug it up, it's largely because msj made the same arguments before and was not swayed by any examples I brought up before either. Time is a flat circle. It takes a while to search 5 books for specific citations just to prove something which the author has explicitly stated is a fact. Why bother?

It's not that I'm not swayed or I'm trying to prove you wrong Kalbear, it's just my reading lends to the idea that there could be a twist. Viramsata, Mimara seeing herself with the judging eye, Moe and Kellhus's convo, Serwe, belief and so on. Maybe when all is said and done, I'll be swaying you, lol. 

http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2009/01/new-r-scott-bakker-interview.html?m=1

There is the only article I found where he talks about a world with objectivity, a pecking order so to say. I still think it's left ambiguous though, haha. Kalbear I appreciate your insight and banter.

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It's interesting he puts "spiritually superior" in quotes. Does he mean to suggest its falsify in our world or in the Bakkerverse?

What's odd is we don't really see this spiritual superiority affect much of what happens? It seems everything that has happened could be explained without assuming that, and reading the text alone I don't know if one would even come up with that hypothesis?

But then the attempts Bakker made to give the series allegorical value were, IMO, some of the worst parts of the books so maybe it's for the best this wasn't explored in more detail. I can only hope the final part of the story abandons most of this "challenging the reader" stuff.

=-=-=

I'm beginning to wonder if Kellhus isn't just a very smart, but very broken little boy who goes insane because the world doesn't conform to machinery of Ishual. We think his growing power is a sign of his mastery, but if the world conspires maybe he's just one more piece inserted into that fundamental conspiracy.

Locksnow sort of went into a similar idea, that Kellhus ignorantly thinks he's read faces when he's reading souls. None of the Dunyain tricks work on anyone but other Dunyain, it's the God-in-Kellhus that sets up the Kellhus-vessel rise to power.

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I just noticed the "spiritually superior" part also, hmmmm, ambiguous indeed. 

What's odd is we don't really see this spiritual superiority affect much of what happens? It seems everything that has happened could be explained without assuming that, and reading the text alone I don't know if one would even come up with that hypothesis?

Thank you. Hence my asking for textual evidence and me seeing a different side to the belief stuff in my reading of the books.

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Thank you. Hence my asking for textual evidence and me seeing a different side to the belief stuff in my reading of the books.

It's in TJE, part of the paragraph about serpents vs pigs. Says good men shine brighter than good women. That the world is unequal in the eyes of God, masters over slaves, men over women.

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Not buried, not hidden, but writ like another colour or texture across the hide of everything. The way good men shine brighter than good women. Or how serpents glow holy, while pigs seem to wallow in polluting shadow. The world is unequal in the eyes of the God—she understands this with intimate profundity. Masters over slaves, men over women, lions over crows: At every turn, the scriptures enumerate the rank of things. But for terrifying moments, the merest of heartbeats, it is unequal in her eyes as well.

There you go. There it is, the undoing of all I want Earwa to be. 

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While it's totally clear that Mimara through TJE views a morality that is perceived as being objective to her, are we totally sure that this morality is objective to Earwa. I know that TJE is supposed to be the view of God, but I am not sure whether this is true (I am indeed not sure on the true nature of God/Gods/Morality/Damnation in the books either). From the perspective of Earwa appearing to have some sort of consensus reality nature, do we have any textual reference to make sure whether Mimaras pictures: 1) are just objectively 'the truth', 2) emanate from actor/actors on the Outside (God/Gods) , or 3) emanate from the consensus of the sum of individual reality?

 

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We are not sure, and Bakker has said that chances are good we won't get great explanations of the metaphysics in the books.

We do have ideas about it, from bakker and elsewhere. We have that Kellhus is the representation of modernity in a nonmodern world, that he and moe assume meaninglessness in a meaningful world. We believe that the world and everything in it has meaning and measurable value.

We don't know whether the God that exists is just some shitty alien. Bakker, however, stated that he wanted to make a world where morality was a natural thing, like the atomic weight of uranium. That's hard to square with the theory that the rules are emergent or subject to change by whim of the people or the gods or the god.

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39 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Bakker... stated that he wanted to make a world where morality was a natural thing, like the atomic weight of uranium. That's hard to square with the theory that the rules are emergent or subject to change by whim of the people or the gods or the god.

I'm not as well read on this topic as many of the posters here, but isn't the point of concepts such as 'viramsata' that what is seen as 'truth' is produced out of the actions of the many... 

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That's what the theory is that's presented by moe - but that's the very modernistic view, that the universe is meaningless and what is there is simply what we make of it.

It's the basis of the dunyain too. But we know for certain that the dunyain lie. One of the first things they did was remove the actual references of magic and call them superstition - despite them being objective fact. Why do that if you have truth on your side?

But it really falls apart when you see the consult. If the world could just be changed then when they were doctors to the nonmen they should have been fine. They wouldn't have been damned on their planet of universal suck if how they believed changed things.

But they were.

Now, this doesn't mean that the religions are right. Gods and morality are a fact of the universe, but that doesn't mean that human interpretation of those facts are correct. It is possible that all the religions are wrong, just like almost all thought about science in 1000 bc was wrong.

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I remember reading something in Frederick Pohl's Gateway series that might be appropriate here. At some point he starts talking about what he decides to refer to as "gosh numbers" numbers like the Planck constant, fixed numbers that are fundamental to the way our universe works. According to that series, these numbers were sort of baked into the universe during those first moments after the Big Bang based on the amount of and distribution of matter. Theoretically, if you could redo the Big Bang and rearrange matter into a different distribution you could completely change those numbers and thus completely change the fundamental laws of our universe. Now the atomic weight of uranium is completely different, if uranium can even exist in this new universe. At least that's what I recall, it's been a while since I read the Gateway books, if someone remembers better please feel free to correct me!

I wonder if damnation in Bakkerverse might be similar. It's something that was baked in at some critical point of the world's development. And maybe that critical point is getting the number of souls under 144,000. Maybe then you can rearrange the matter of damnation, as it were. As to why it hasn't worked for the Inchoroi before, as to why they weren't able to do it on their own world, I think that's because Earwa might be special. It might be the world that defines damnation for the rest of the Bakkerverse.

Or maybe not. Just kind of thinking out loud (on keyboard) here.

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27 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Gods and morality are a fact of the universe

I agree that it certainly appears so. What I have a hard time understanding is whether for example damnation through magic use is the resultant of an objective set of rules (magic=wrong) or if the moral facts of Bakker's universe are the resultant of general laws (people believe magic to be unholy -> magic becomes 'wrong')

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What does “morality is a fact“ mean exactly? That it’s punishable to be immoral?

Yes. And that there exists an objective way of how to act. Or what things are intrinsically better than other things.

Another way to say it is that everything in the world has a meaning and a value. And for those with the judging eye, that value can be observed.

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7 hours ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

There you go. There it is, the undoing of all I want Earwa to be. 

Well, TJE isn't reliable. I mean it doesn't surprise her until she looks into the chorae. That's weird for an objective morality meter.

Think of people who claim to see Jesus or whoever, and are made to realize the facts they learned in Sunday school are real. In our world many of us, on having this kind of experience, would think it was cultural baggage coming out of our subconsciousness.

As Nagel once put it, if he had a suddenly overwhelming sense that the Gosepl was true he wouldn't think he was offered revelation -he would think he was losing his mind.

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9 hours ago, Galbrod said:

While it's totally clear that Mimara through TJE views a morality that is perceived as being objective to her, are we totally sure that this morality is objective to Earwa. I know that TJE is supposed to be the view of God, but I am not sure whether this is true (I am indeed not sure on the true nature of God/Gods/Morality/Damnation in the books either). From the perspective of Earwa appearing to have some sort of consensus reality nature, do we have any textual reference to make sure whether Mimaras pictures: 1) are just objectively 'the truth', 2) emanate from actor/actors on the Outside (God/Gods) , or 3) emanate from the consensus of the sum of individual reality?

 

Here's my deal. I'm currently doing a reread, at the beginning of TTT. No where have I seen anything that would make it fact the woman are objectively inferior. To me, it's like the feminism bit, after the fact. Because it's not til TJE that anyone can find textual evidence. Yet, I digress. It seems around here that these are hard facts, yet you, me and Sci all find it problematic. As well as the pages of discussion at SA on the matter. I guess where I find the biggest problem is when Moe explains Viramsata, that is exactly how life on Earwa works. Its how Kellhus took over the Holy War. Now, here's another question that just struck me. If Kellhus/Viramsata cannot change the universe, then why is he being contested by the God's? Well at least Yatwer, she feels threatened, no? If there was no way to change any of it and it was a set of rules as has been suggested, why would they even worry? Kellhus, Viramsata, nothing can change it according to that line of thinking. It just seems flawed to me.

ETA: I guess if it's Kellhus goal to disenchant the world, it would make sense. 

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if it's in dialogue or someone's perspective, consider it ideological rather than ontic, maybe.  how to strip out all of the subjective stuff, i.e., a reverse phenomenological reduction that brackets away subjective experience?  the goal should be to sequestrate mental events to determine the content of the setting in itself.

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