Bakker XLIV: The Goddess of Negative Theology

[Baztek]

Whether or not men are preordained to be horny or violent, whether even one Hunger is supposed to predominate or not, the point is that men are desire manifest, or at least vehicles for desire in the Bakkerverse. The many is equivalent to deception and desire in Bakker's metaphysics (and really, pretty much every metaphysics), and there's a lot of men, all competing with one another's dreams and desires. 

 

What the Inchoroi are saying is: yeah, fucking things is awesome, boy am I glad I can fuck things, I don't want to pay the cosmic pied piper for my being able to fuck things in the physical world when I die, I just wanna do it here, so I'm going to close the universe.

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, Baztek said:

Whether or not men are preordained to be horny or violent, whether even one Hunger is supposed to predominate or not, the point is that men are desire manifest, or at least vehicles for desire in the Bakkerverse. The many is equivalent to deception and desire in Bakker's metaphysics (and really, pretty much every metaphysics), and there's a lot of men, all competing with one another's dreams and desires. 

I don't think this is exactly true either, though I'm finding it hard to articulate how. 

Let's assume for a second that prior to the split of the One into Many (whatever that means) the cycle of souls still happened into Earwa. I had stated earlier that this was part of the Big Lie - that souls were sent to Earwa to turn into bread, and that if people didn't desire they would never be tasty. And if the only thing you wanted to do was avoid damnation, why would you ever do anything else bad?

But this leaves out a central conceit - that what we think of being damned and at the mercy of the Ciphrang is inherently horrible. If Men are all part of God, and God is part of everything and take people into the pool of souls, there isn't anything wrong with going into damnation. It simply is the cycle of life again. Perhaps some amazing souls make it out of the cycle and become one with the Buddha, and that's cool, but otherwise you're not having a horrifying life if you don't. 

In this way it isn't that damnation is bad - it's that what happens to you when your soul goes to damnation that is bad. And it is the splitting of the God that broke this. This assumes that being fleshy means that you'll have desires (just like the soulless sranc and skin spies do) and the consciousness is the thing that allows those desires to be connected to God somehow, experienced and judged and loved.

4 minutes ago, Baztek said:

 

What the Inchoroi are saying is: yeah, fucking things is awesome, boy am I glad I can fuck things, I don't want to pay the cosmic pied piper for my being able to fuck things in the physical world when I die, I just wanna do it here, so I'm going to close the universe.

But the pied piper is the inherent question here. Why is desire bad? When all are one and you are me and everyone is everyone, what can I do to harm you, and what does it matter? 

[Baztek]

Quoting is wonky so I'll just italicize:

Let's assume for a second that prior to the split of the One into Many (whatever that means) the cycle of souls still happened into Earwa. I had stated earlier that this was part of the Big Lie - that souls were sent to Earwa to turn into bread, and that if people didn't desire they would never be tasty. And if the only thing you wanted to do was avoid damnation, why would you ever do anything else bad? [...]

 

While I disagree there was anything at all before the One split into Many, I still think there's a very real tension here between Damnation being 1) an objective process that isn't bad because it's just what reality does to you when you "fuck up" 2) a process forced onto what was originally a pristine, natural cycle of souls by demonic beings. I'm kind of leaning towards 2) because it's hard imagining an objective, metaphysical process being so ooga-booga fucking evil, but then again that's probably the whole pitch of the Bakkerverse: reality is fucked at the pith.

But the pied piper is the inherent question here. Why is desire bad? When all are one and you are me and everyone is everyone, what can I do to harm you, and what does it matter? 

 

Desire isn't inherently bad, in both the Bakkerverse (I don't think at least) and in the real world, but it's that all evil is the product of desire. So not all desire is evil, but all evil is desire. The Inchoroi have their real-world equivalents to an extent, after all - sexual sadists, the most lurid, depraved murderers out there. In an absolute sense, there is no good or evil, but down here in Becoming, desire can lead to fucked up shit. The pied piper, then, is the mechanism that actualizes desire in the physical world - the only place where it can be evil - and so it is evil in that respect.

 

This ties into Jung's idea of the personal God as being as responsible for evil as he is for good, because it is only in the physical world that these concepts can even exist and inhere (although the good is still a reflection of the higher, nondual principle that "birthed" the theistic god)

 

[Kalbear]

I think it's hard to say that evil isn't desire, at least absolutely. That certainly is our moral ideology, but it doesn't seem quite true in Earwa. The most noble thing in Nonmen culture is silence and emptiness - which implies a total lack of desire. Not for food, or basic Maslow hierarchical needs, but simply desiring nothing at all, and the result of that is oblivion. 

As to damnation being an objective process that's so evil, I disagree. What made it evil was the split. Prior to that, everyone was a part of each other, everyone had desire as part of being in the human or nonman cycle, and when they died they were damned or redeemed - but damnation simply meant joining up in the pool of other souls and being part of the God again. There's nothing evil about that when God desires nothing from you and you end up swimming around, awaiting your next shot at the cycle. That's just where you stop. God didn't desire for your experiences; it just judged based on what you did, sent you along to the pool or oblivion or redemption, and that's all. It didn't otherwise care about you. It didn't hunger. It didn't want. It probably didn't have any consciousness at all. It judged without being. 

And then the split happened. Suddenly there were warring entities all wanting parts of your soul, probably parts they lacked the most in themselves. The judgment still happened, as that's a part of the natural order of the universe, but the result of the judgment was evil incarnate - eternity of godlings torturing souls instead of sending them on their way. 

An analogy: replace the cycle of reincarnation of a Buddha-like universe with the Burdah being hell. The former wasn't particularly evil. The latter is, but only because of the denizens of hell. 

[Baztek]

4 minutes ago, Dickwad Poster #3784 said:

I think it's hard to say that evil isn't desire, at least absolutely. That certainly is our moral ideology, but it doesn't seem quite true in Earwa. The most noble thing in Nonmen culture is silence and emptiness - which implies a total lack of desire. Not for food, or basic Maslow hierarchical needs, but simply desiring nothing at all, and the result of that is oblivion. 

As to damnation being an objective process that's so evil, I disagree. What made it evil was the split. Prior to that, everyone was a part of each other, everyone had desire as part of being in the human or nonman cycle, and when they died they were damned or redeemed - but damnation simply meant joining up in the pool of other souls and being part of the God again. There's nothing evil about that when God desires nothing from you and you end up swimming around, awaiting your next shot at the cycle. That's just where you stop. God didn't desire for your experiences; it just judged based on what you did, sent you along to the pool or oblivion or redemption, and that's all. It didn't otherwise care about you. It didn't hunger. It didn't want. It probably didn't have any consciousness at all. It judged without being. 

And then the split happened. Suddenly there were warring entities all wanting parts of your soul, probably parts they lacked the most in themselves. The judgment still happened, as that's a part of the natural order of the universe, but the result of the judgment was evil incarnate - eternity of godlings torturing souls instead of sending them on their way. 

An analogy: replace the cycle of reincarnation of a Buddha-like universe with the Burdah being hell. The former wasn't particularly evil. The latter is, but only because of the denizens of hell. 

As for the Nonmen point: sounds like Schopenhauerian rejection of the will. Reject the will to life, reject any movement towards an object of desire, and the flame is snuffed out and you exit the cycle. While nirvana or whatever isn't technically oblivion, the parallels are undeniable. I think this actually used to work, but Aurang says the Nonmen are damned, so maybe they still get scooped up by Ciphrang?

All right, I gotta say the whole cycle of souls before the One split into Many thing finally makes sense. So what used to be the case was what I partially quoted on the last page: the overwhelming majority of souls spinning on the wheel of death and rebirth, while not ideal, still not horrific, and whatever you hell get sucked into was only for a finite time and what you deserved anyways (just like Buddhist cosmology), with a select few souls having the strength of spirit to escape and transcend the cycle.

And then the split happens, and the Hundred hijack the process and what used to be a well-oiled machine for. ultimately, soul-making and soul-refinement turn into an all you can eat buffet. The only thing I don't understand is just in what sense God "fractured". Were there no deities before the fracturing? Was it just a mundane physical world like ours, and God somehow "waking up" enchanted it with magic, demons, and the Hundred? 

[Kalbear]

Aurang's right in that most nonmen are damned, but they can be quiet enough to slip through. Oblivion isn't redemption - per Bakker those are two different things. Oblivion means that nothing notices you and you just...fade away. They go to the damnation place one way or another, but what they do when they get there depends a lot on how quiet they are. 

I don't think there was anything in the Outside prior to the God fracturing, because God was everyone and no one desired, because everyone was everything and everywhere. What would you desire if you were everything? My belief is that the world existed, but only as part of the way souls got a chance to be redeemed. That was all. How strongly you shined with the power of God and how well you could resist the desire of worldly flesh and get past it. 

My hypothesis on the God fracturing was that it happened as a result of the Inchoroi searching for what they believed the Inverse Fire showed them, and they essentially created a universe where this could happen. Prior to that, nonmen having to deal with aspects didn't happen and their ability to be quiet and worship the space in between makes a lot more sense as a possibility. The other hypothesis is that the breaking happened because the God's arrival occurs sometime in the future, and so the fracturing happens to facilitate the creation. I believe the 'whodunit' part of the story to be entirely who broke the God, which has to be considered the most evil thing that anyone has ever done. 

[Baztek]

1 minute ago, Dickwad Poster #3784 said:

Aurang's right in that most nonmen are damned, but they can be quiet enough to slip through. Oblivion isn't redemption - per Bakker those are two different things. Oblivion means that nothing notices you and you just...fade away. They go to the damnation place one way or another, but what they do when they get there depends a lot on how quiet they are. 

I don't think there was anything in the Outside prior to the God fracturing, because God was everyone and no one desired, because everyone was everything and everywhere. What would you desire if you were everything? My belief is that the world existed, but only as part of the way souls got a chance to be redeemed. That was all. How strongly you shined with the power of God and how well you could resist the desire of worldly flesh and get past it. 

My hypothesis on the God fracturing was that it happened as a result of the Inchoroi searching for what they believed the Inverse Fire showed them, and they essentially created a universe where this could happen. Prior to that, nonmen having to deal with aspects didn't happen and their ability to be quiet and worship the space in between makes a lot more sense as a possibility. The other hypothesis is that the breaking happened because the God's arrival occurs sometime in the future, and so the fracturing happens to facilitate the creation. I believe the 'whodunit' part of the story to be entirely who broke the God, which has to be considered the most evil thing that anyone has ever done. 

But how can you have a race of Marquis de Sades x10000 before God broke and "there was a desire and deception"? Although I'm still leaning towards the "God broke and reality began" school of thought, yours does make more sense now. 

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Baztek said:

But how can you have a race of Marquis de Sades x10000 before God broke and "there was a desire and deception"? Although I'm still leaning towards the "God broke and reality began" school of thought, yours does make more sense now. 

The Inchoroi didn't live in the Earwan universe. It's a different universe with different metaphysical rules. 

Let's say that Inchoroi Prime (henceforth known as Trumpia) was a world pretty much like our own. There was no real sign of any actual metaphysics, and what signs there were are dismissed as insane people or hopelessly backwards people. You cannot visit the Outside there. No one has the Sight, no one has the mark. No one knows what magic is. But the beings on Trumpia are still a lot like people on Earwa - where the meat causes them to desire things. Difference being that they know nothing but this and think nothing else exists, so they enhance that desire in every possible way while removing everything that might get in the way of the desire.

And one of the things they create to maximize that desire is a machine that can show people anything they want. Or if you like, they invent a machine that somehow can see and experience the Outside. (depends a lot on whether you think the Inverse Fire is a hoax or a view). And they see it, and experience it, and feel it. And now the thing they desire most is to avoid that eventual fate. They have become zealots of a religion devoted to destroying that hell, knowing that hell represents the worst possible thing imaginable for all life.

The first thing they do is ensure that they are immortal, and will never die of natural causes. The next thing they do is send some of their race on a crusade, the most holy of crusades - a Crusade to End Hell. They have some idea of how to do it - perhaps the IF told the Trumpians that 144k must be exterminated. They did it first on their world, though chances are most of their race was long dead as they almost certainly didn't want kids. And it didn't work.

So they created a ship to go to other worlds and do the same thing. But it doesn't go to other worlds in their universe; that would be too slow. Instead, it finds a way to go to worlds that have populations of things like them. Alternate realities in the multiverse, worlds like theirs but not quite. And they go to them over, and over, and over again, and exterminate, and look in the IF, and see that nothing has changed. They find no worlds who know the Outside. No worlds which have Few. None with any connection. Perhaps none with humans with souls. 

And then, somehow, they find the one place - Earwa. The Trumpians are obviously excited when they find the nonmen...and then they get their ass kicked for the first time in their history, as the nonmen don't have tech but do have magic. The Trumpians have never seen this, but it's a sign that this is the right place. Still, it takes a massive toll, and after the landing and the war they have almost none left. They hide and wait, and plan on their only course of victory -

Making the nonmen immortal like they are. Why would they do that? Because at their heart, they believe that they are doing the Right Thing. They don't want to kill all these people (except Aurang, who is an asshole) but know that this is the only way to stop everyone from suffering forever. And if you knew that, what sin would be unacceptable? So they have found the place and know that if they can simply stop the cycle of life, everyone can live happily. They try to do that, first showing it to one of their allies as well as showing them the truth of the IF. And it works. The truth works, their gifts work, and they are almost home-free. But...they screw it up. 

[Baztek]

5 minutes ago, Dickwad Poster #3784 said:

The Inchoroi didn't live in the Earwan universe. It's a different universe with different metaphysical rules. [...]

I think adding different universes with different metaphysics complicates an already very dense metaphysics, but I see what you're getting at.

 

While the way you characterize it is not wrong, the Inchoroi ARE trying to end hell, it still doesn't make sense how we can have a race that literally exists just to get off before the God broke.

But that brings up an interesting question: did the Inchoroi turn into sensates BECAUSE of the inverse fire, or were they having a jolly good time and then they saw the Inverse Fire and said, woah, we've been fucked this whole time? I know it broke Shae's mind, but was it the same with the Inchies?

[Kalbear]

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While the way you characterize it is not wrong, the Inchoroi ARE trying to end hell, it still doesn't make sense how we can have a race that literally exists just to get off before the God broke.

Why not? Remember, the Inchoroi didn't know magic existed prior to Earwa - or at least they had no defenses against it. They had lasers and dragons because apparently they came from a world of Heavy Metal posters or something, but they had no magic at all. They had to have grafts to become of the Few, and only 6 of them lived. They didn't know about the Aporetics either. 

Either their world was simply cut off from the Earwan world and cycle, or they obliterated every trace that it existed. Maybe the pogroms to kill witches and the like were really successful? 

Another analogy: The Dunyain erased every semblance of the Outside in order to better concentrate on the Absolute. Is it so weird that the Inchoroi would erase every semblance of the Outside to better concentrate on fleshy desire? What feelings we have in the material world didn't change, after all - we still desire because flesh desires. All that changes is what happens afterwards. 

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But that brings up an interesting question: did the Inchoroi turn into sensates BECAUSE of the inverse fire, or were they having a jolly good time and then they saw the Inverse Fire and said, woah, we've been fucked this whole time? I know it broke Shae's mind, but was it the same with the Inchies?

I always assumed the IF came after they became Trumpians and they realized they had been totally hosed. They're so very angry about it per the conversations in PoN. Very bitter about the damnation that they have due to a chance of biology and birth. If they knew ahead of time and did it anyway, how would that make any sense?

[Baztek]

I get what you're saying, and I agree, only thing is: God fracturing created "desire and deception", not "damnation and deception" or whatever. So while it makes sense the Inchies just were kind of isolated from the Outside in their world - which makes sense considering their more mundane focus on genetic engineering, sense pleasures, and whatever - it's a pretty big fly in Bakker's ointment if we have a race of essentially Slaaneshi demons before the metaphysical sundering of perfect unity into pieces that are inherently opposed to each other. It's not as clean, philosophically. 

[Kalbear]

Right. It really depends on how much of the desire people in the material plane have is based on the sundering of the God. If the desire that comes from the material plane is basically just biology, then there's nothing philosophically weird about it. If it comes from the split then either the Inchies came from a world after the split or they came from a world before the split that didn't have the Outside at all. 

[Happy Ent]

5 hours ago, Baztek said:

The Inchoroi have their real-world equivalents to an extent, after all - sexual sadists, the most lurid, depraved murderers out there.

At the danger of repeating myself: The Inchoroi are hedonists, not sadists.

In support of this claim I submit three arguments:

1. Evidence. There is not a single example in the books of any sadism performed by the Inchoroi, even though we are witness to several sexual acts. (Aurang–Esmi, Aurang–Kellhus, Aurang–Shaeönanra). In each of these cases, the receptacle of the Inchoroi’s attention experiences sexual bliss. Thus, the Inchoroi go out of their way to make their forced attention pleasant for the victim. There is no standard connotation of “sadism” in which this behaviour sadist.

2. Self-identification. The Inchoroi refer to themselves as a race of lovers.

3. Theme. The whole story is a lot more satisfying and thematically rich if indeed the Inchoroi are hedonists (and damned for it) than if they are sadist (and damned for it.)

4. Abundant sadism from others: The absence of sadism in the Inchoroi cannot be explained by authorial delicacy. There are plenty of sadists in Eärwa, the sexual preferences of which are described in details. The Sranc are constructed for sadism, for instance, and take pleasure from the pain and degradation of others. Plenty of humans are shown as sadists. To some extent, the Nonmen erratics are sadists (but for other reasons than sexual gratification). So sadism exists and is regularly shown. Just never from the Inchoroi.

Note that I nowhere argue for the claim “the Inchoroi are not rapists.” They are rapists. We have evidence for it. Aurang tells us. It fits the theme. So, to be quite sure: the Inchoroi are rapists.

They are not sadists. It would cheapen the books if they were.

[Kalbear]

Then why did aurax or whoever the inchie was at the end of twp cut the woman enough to draw blood?

 

Why refer to the thousands of people that aurang raped as a way to measure prowess? A hedonist doesn't measure how many people they have raped, they measure how many they have fucked, no?

Why did bakker state that he modeled the Inchoroi after psychopaths who desire to hurt, and specifically sexual ones?

[Happy Ent]

36 minutes ago, Dickwad Poster #3784 said:

Then why did aurax or whoever the inchie was at the end of twp cut the woman enough to draw blood?

Even if we agreed on how that passage should be read: She shudders with lust, not pain.

To make the point clear: The Inchoroi can be torturers. They can be murderers. We assume that they have genetically modified themselves to eradicate all traces of compassion from their genome. They have no empathy at all, and designed themselves thus. They are murderous sociopaths, rapists, warlords. I give you all of that. Without hesitation.

But nothing indicates that they are sadists. They seem to take no pleasure from the pain of others. In fact, whenever they have a choice, they go out of their way to make the victim feel ecstasy. 

The Inchoroi unite the most despicable qualities of sentient beings – heck, I’d not put it past them to believe that the Balrog has wings! But sadism? No. They are anti-sadists. They are the Maximum Fun-Fun Ultra Super Happy People of Yudkowsky’s Three Worlds Collide, after they learned of their damnation. That’s the beauty of it: they are damned for a quality that we (as postmodern, post-Wilde readers) associate with something good.

[Kalbear]

They are definitely not the three worlds collide aliens as the inchies have eliminated compassion. They take absolutely no pleasure from others gaining pleasure as far as we can tell, and by the same logic that says they can't be sadists you must reason that they cannot gain pleasure from causing pleasure either - because both would require empathy, something they have long killed.

That being said - why brag about being rapists if they are not sadists? Why did bakker specifically mention that he modeled them after sexual sadists?

[Baztek]

5 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

Even if we agreed on how that passage should be read: She shudders with lust, not pain.

To make the point clear: The Inchoroi can be torturers. They can be murderers. We assume that they have genetically modified themselves to eradicate all traces of compassion from their genome. They have no empathy at all, and designed themselves thus. They are murderous sociopaths, rapists, warlords. I give you all of that. Without hesitation.

But nothing indicates that they are sadists. They seem to take no pleasure from the pain of others. In fact, whenever they have a choice, they go out of their way to make the victim feel ecstasy. 

The Inchoroi unite the most despicable qualities of sentient beings – heck, I’d not put it past them to believe that the Balrog has wings! But sadism? No. They are anti-sadists. They are the Maximum Fun-Fun Ultra Super Happy People of Yudkowsky’s Three Worlds Collide, after they learned of their damnation. That’s the beauty of it: they are damned for a quality that we (as postmodern, post-Wilde readers) associate with something good.

Pretty sure the whole race of lovers thing is ironic.

 

Also quibbling about whether or not warlord rapists who want to fuck the universe to death actually get off on the horrible things they know they're doing is kind of silly. Whether or not they go out of their way to cause pain, it sure as hell doesn't dampen their excitement

[Kalbear]

Another one - why have the torture wall at sauglish if they aren't sadists? They were just putting people there to suffer; they weren't extracting info.

[.H.]

27 minutes ago, Dickwad Poster #3784 said:

Another one - why have the torture wall at sauglish if they aren't sadists? They were just putting people there to suffer; they weren't extracting info.

The Wall was at Dagliash, but the only member of the Consult we saw there was Mekeritrig, and the idea of it certainly does smack of a Erratic Nonman thing to do.  No doubt there were more Erratics in league with the Consult too, so it might not even have been Mek's idea (although, I would guess it probably was).

Not that I am really refuting you main point, but I think the The Wall of the Dead doesn't really prove it, at least for me.

[themerchant]

1 hour ago, Dickwad Poster #3784 said:

Another one - why have the torture wall at sauglish if they aren't sadists? They were just putting people there to suffer; they weren't extracting info.

Where were the Inchoroi in this? It's one non-man and a Bashrag in that scene. Dagliash.

Someone has suggested that Mek did this as a huge post-it note for him to remember something in the future. Also in the scene Mek is trying to get Seswatha to tell him of the location of the Heron spear.

So no inchies, and torture for information is going on albeit with only one person.

Although i do also recall a line about being "tacked there to ponder the glory of the consult" or similar.

I see someone has already said pretty much the same thing, now i scroll up.