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


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9 minutes ago, Hello World said:

Which reminded me why I like this thread more than the other forum... It's so great having everything in one place.

Lol - you're welcome to make an all in one thread there to substitute for this one...

So... what does everyone think of TGO rollout process so far? As a curious student of social systems, how they form and disseminate information, I'm interested to hear everyone's different experiences recounted. What's worked, possibly working, could work better?

I feel like seeing there are up to three more possible reviews than just Pat's for a contemporary release, plus Grimdark and Grim Tidings Podcast's soon to come ARC giveaways, the Hotlist and Grim Tidings interviews, and a possible Reddit AMA before release that there's been an incrementally (by no means best) better push for Bakker this release.

Thoughts?

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7 minutes ago, Madness said:

Lol - you're welcome to make an all in one thread there to substitute for this one...

So... what does everyone think of TGO rollout process so far? As a curious student of social systems, how they form and disseminate information, I'm interested to hear everyone's different experiences recounted. What's worked, possibly working, could work better?

I feel like seeing there are up to three more possible reviews than just Pat's for a contemporary release, plus Grimdark and Grim Tidings Podcast's soon to come ARC giveaways, the Hotlist and Grim Tidings interviews, and a possible Reddit AMA before release that there's been an incrementally (by no means best) better push for Bakker this release.

Thoughts?

As long Bakker hasn't been doling out the big reveals in these excerpts (is the Sons chapter early on in the book or what?), I think it's been great. You really can't fuck up such an anticipated book though.

 

Can someone please tell me what ARC is? I just want this book now tbh

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Just now, Madness said:

Unproofed Advance Reader Copy. Also, Baztek, we miss you.

Ayy. Back in business now that this shit has a release date. I really do love these books.

 

Couple things:

Re-reading Judging Eye and Kellhus says some interesting things about damnation in light of the new excerpts.


When he talks to Sorweel for the first time, he says Sorweel's father's love is "forgiveness". Lends more credence to the "Mimara is gonna forgive Hell" crackpot theory.

Also, when he shows up to wreck Sharacinth's shit, he tells Esmenet that all her loneliness and fear and doubt etc. is what makes Esmenet "pure". Kind of a creepy line. Tbh I think he's just going for the characteristic whoa deep last line in the chapter but if he isn't, I'm not sure how this fits in with fear and shit making you tastier in the Outside. Whatever I'm prob overreading it.

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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?

Gods don't want to just 'snack on your soul'. They want to snack on your experiences. There are 'countless' dead. What flavors them are the sins. The love, the lust, the violence, the pain - this is what makes the Gods take notice of you, and feast on those things.

Remember, a man is more spiritually valuable than a woman because their capacity for evil is greater. This is stated by Akka (presumably through Ajencis) but it's likely to be reasonably accurate. Souls passing through Earwa and going back is the way that grain is turned to bread, and that invariably involves damnation. 

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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?

My personal take is that Mimara doesn't see through anything any more than the Cish sing with God's song. in both cases, their experience mimics that of the Most Objective thing around. Mimara doesn't see 'with' God's sight, she sees as God does. Not only does she see how sin looks and how holiness looks, she sees the entire causal chain of every sinful action. 

Also recall that Kellhus has to tell Proyas that the God of Gods is equivalent with the hundred, because this is the central belief of the religion that Inrithism promotes. He can't just turn around and tell him that he isn't the successor to Inrithism given that he's been stating that for his entire life. No, he goes about it another way - attacking Proyas on what God is, not what Kellhus' legitimacy is. 

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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?

There are three states: redemption, damnation, oblivion. Of those, redemption appears to be exceedingly rare.

Redemption apparently makes you simply disappear after you die. You don't go anywhere that can be noticed by any agency of the Outside.

Oblivion means that you go to the Outside but manage to avoid the various things there by being really quiet.

Damnation means that you go to the Outside and don't manage to avoid the various things there. In which case something collects you. If you're Zeum, one of your ancestors collects you if they choose to. If you're Psatma, Yatwer collects you and hopefully doesn't treat you like buttfloss. If you're another worshipper of a compensatory godling, probably the same deal. Otherwise you're a plaything of whatever comes along and finds you. 

And here's the real important thing, and the thing that Kellhus is saying - for the overwhelming majority of people, damnation is what is going to happen to them. And it's going to happen to them because what we desire in our lives is in conflict with what the objective morality is. It's virtually impossible to avoid being damned. Especially since intent doesn't matter, only actions do. Doing bad things for good reasons doesn't change your stain at all, as Mimara saw when looking at Galian. Or when she looked at the whale mothers.

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13 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Gods don't want to just 'snack on your soul'. They want to snack on your experiences. There are 'countless' dead. What flavors them are the sins. The love, the lust, the violence, the pain - this is what makes the Gods take notice of you, and feast on those things.

Remember, a man is more spiritually valuable than a woman because their capacity for evil is greater. This is stated by Akka (presumably through Ajencis) but it's likely to be reasonably accurate. Souls passing through Earwa and going back is the way that grain is turned to bread, and that invariably involves damnation. 

My personal take is that Mimara doesn't see through anything any more than the Cish sing with God's song. in both cases, their experience mimics that of the Most Objective thing around. Mimara doesn't see 'with' God's sight, she sees as God does. Not only does she see how sin looks and how holiness looks, she sees the entire causal chain of every sinful action. 

Also recall that Kellhus has to tell Proyas that the God of Gods is equivalent with the hundred, because this is the central belief of the religion that Inrithism promotes. He can't just turn around and tell him that he isn't the successor to Inrithism given that he's been stating that for his entire life. No, he goes about it another way - attacking Proyas on what God is, not what Kellhus' legitimacy is. 

There are three states: redemption, damnation, oblivion. Of those, redemption appears to be exceedingly rare.

Redemption apparently makes you simply disappear after you die. You don't go anywhere that can be noticed by any agency of the Outside.

Oblivion means that you go to the Outside but manage to avoid the various things there by being really quiet.

Damnation means that you go to the Outside and don't manage to avoid the various things there. In which case something collects you. If you're Zeum, one of your ancestors collects you if they choose to. If you're Psatma, Yatwer collects you and hopefully doesn't treat you like buttfloss. If you're another worshipper of a compensatory godling, probably the same deal. Otherwise you're a plaything of whatever comes along and finds you. 

And here's the real important thing, and the thing that Kellhus is saying - for the overwhelming majority of people, damnation is what is going to happen to them. And it's going to happen to them because what we desire in our lives is in conflict with what the objective morality is. It's virtually impossible to avoid being damned. Especially since intent doesn't matter, only actions do. Doing bad things for good reasons doesn't change your stain at all, as Mimara saw when looking at Galian. Or when she looked at the whale mothers.

So it seems like to me what's happening is:

First, Kellhus is just getting Proyas to question his beliefs by making him realize the alien nature of the Gods, without actually going ahead and making absolute statements about what the God is and isn't, besides just saying he's pretty much unfathomable to the human mind. Okay, got it.

 

Besides that, it seems like there IS an objective morality, an objective good and an objective evil, and if redemption takes you out of the Outside (which apparently is equivalent to the intermediate Bardos/psychic universes directly below the divine and spiritual planes common to many esoteric cosmologies), there is a celestial plane good souls go to, you just don't hear about it.

 

So, uh, honestly, what's the problem? Besides the fact of desire and its repercussions in the first place, what's wrong with this picture exactly? That the Hundred take pleasure in punishing those who are evil, or that the naughty list is so strict even people who don't deserve it end up getting tortured by transdimensional sadists?

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25 minutes ago, Madness said:

So... what does everyone think of TGO rollout process so far? As a curious student of social systems, how they form and disseminate information, I'm interested to hear everyone's different experiences recounted. What's worked, possibly working, could work better?

 

As @lokisnow has pointed out, one side effect of the way we've gotten the previews is that we're digesting them and talking about them like a serialized TV show. We're delving deeper into small minutiae than we have even with WLW until months after the release, and for the most part people are staying fairly reasonably on topic. Doing more of that would probably be really, really good. Even better if Bakker could somehow participate or guide the discussion in interesting ways. In this way, I think the ARC reviewers could be really good as moderators and contributors, pointing out certain interesting parts and pointing out where people are navel gazing into oblivion, as well as guiding discussion in places that might not have come up yet. 

In particular, I think one thing that would work really well is to have those In The Know point out specifically interesting parts in past books that may be relevant. Sort of the 'previously on Lost' bits that prime the viewer for what is important here. I think this would be especially good given the massive gap between previous books. 

The reviews do absolutely nothing for me. They give me no information that I didn't already possess, don't tell me anything about whether or not I'll like parts and not others, or really anything other than 'these specific huge fans really like the thing that they're fans of'. Maybe that'd be different if the ARCs were given to other reviewers instead of generic fans, especially reviewers who had previously not been big fans of Bakker.

Bakker's blog appears to continue to be a negative overall experience for most people and for the experience of the rollout. I say appears because I've not done anything over there in many years now, but from what I've seen here the only mentions of the previews have been negative ones about our conversations. Which...is not a great way to facilitate conversation.

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16 minutes ago, Baztek said:

So, uh, honestly, what's the problem? Besides the fact of desire and its repercussions in the first place, what's wrong with this picture exactly? That the Hundred take pleasure in punishing those who are evil, or that the naughty list is so strict even people who don't deserve it end up getting tortured by transdimensional sadists?

Well, desire and its repercussions are kind of a big deal, but the real problem I think is that the gods are lying liars who lie. They aren't just amazingly strict; what they're doing is telling people to damn themselves and then collecting the souls for their own gain, and they're telling people to damn themselves by doing actions that they hint would make them holy. Inrithism (and even Mimara) mention how women give themselves to men's causes as long as the men's causes are righteous - but that  right there is a lie. Intent doesn't matter, only actions do. So if you're doing something for Dread Gilgaol, you get damned. Murdering people in Yatwer's name? Damned. 

The whole system is set up not just to damn you, but to mislead you into thinking that what you're doing is the right thing to do. 

Most Inrithians thought that as long as they practiced reasonably their religion, gave the gods their due as expected, and did what Inri told them to do - they'd be fine. And they're wrong. They're almost all damned.

And on top of all that, you also get that we sin because we desire, and we desire because the God has been split. 

Heck, the only person we've seen as actually holy is Mimara, and we still don't get why. It certainly isn't because of the actions she's taken or the intent she's had. It may be the case that the only people that are actually ever redeemed are those with God's sight. 

Ya know, maybe that'd be the ultimate simplicity - a damning act is simply doing one that you desire to do. That'd be the ultimate hose job, no? That humans must desire - food, shelter, love, really basic stuff - and the only way to not have any sin at all is to have no desire whatsoever.

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Can you ask him not to do the ama please? If the current comment section on his blog is any indication it just won't end up well for him. Not that he's doing anything very wrong or anything. He just doesn't know how to handle these sorts of arguments with fans, imo.  First thing he needs to learn is to ignore some questions from to time, especially when  the arguments get heated. Some people might not like that but it's how every other successful author behaves on the Internet. Don't go that deep trying to convince people of your view points. But before he gets there he needs to not start calling fans on some forums by name and mockin them on his blog's comment section.

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6 minutes ago, Hello World said:

Can you ask him not to do the ama please? If the current comment section on his blog is any indication it just won't end up well for him. 

I do have to say, a Bakker AMA would probably be one of the most amazing trainwrecks in the history of reddit. And that's saying something. Really, if you wanted to generate a crazy amount of publicity (not good publicity, just publicity) schedule an AMA, make sure that folks like Foz Meadows and Sady Doyle and Vox Day know, and sit back and watch what happens. 

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3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

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.

Unrelatedly, I'm reading The Romanovs and just got to the part where soldiers, after the Revolution, dug up Rasputin's body to see how big his cock was and to cut it off. 

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On 5/24/2016 at 2:35 AM, Happy Ent said:

Speculation on Kellhus’s Outside visitUse Sheönanra-like magic to moor your soul to the head of somebody who is at this time basically just a head on a pole, similar to the 10 wretches used in the elevator. Take a deep breath, and cross the threshold. Talk to the demons, kill a few of them. Time and space are warped, so it’s funky. But you have no fear, and you can get back, because there is a head on a pole behind you.

(Comment: I love the idea from the previous thread that the head is Serwë, but I like my explanation better. Serwë wasn’t really on a pole.)

I still say it is Serwe, whilst Kellhus was on the Circumfix--because the contextual conversational clues that prompt the recollection are all prodding Kellhus to remember what "the god" said to him upon the circumfix and that Serwe provided a sort of barrier/anchor/divinity that protected Kellhus, but your explanation is excellent and would fit with Kosotor probably being the head on the pole behind him. 

which would explain why Kosotor remembers hell.

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45 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Well, desire and its repercussions are kind of a big deal, but the real problem I think is that the gods are lying liars who lie. They aren't just amazingly strict; what they're doing is telling people to damn themselves and then collecting the souls for their own gain, and they're telling people to damn themselves by doing actions that they hint would make them holy. Inrithism (and even Mimara) mention how women give themselves to men's causes as long as the men's causes are righteous - but that  right there is a lie. Intent doesn't matter, only actions do. So if you're doing something for Dread Gilgaol, you get damned. Murdering people in Yatwer's name? Damned. 

The whole system is set up not just to damn you, but to mislead you into thinking that what you're doing is the right thing to do. 

Most Inrithians thought that as long as they practiced reasonably their religion, gave the gods their due as expected, and did what Inri told them to do - they'd be fine. And they're wrong. They're almost all damned.

And on top of all that, you also get that we sin because we desire, and we desire because the God has been split. 

Heck, the only person we've seen as actually holy is Mimara, and we still don't get why. It certainly isn't because of the actions she's taken or the intent she's had. It may be the case that the only people that are actually ever redeemed are those with God's sight. 

Ya know, maybe that'd be the ultimate simplicity - a damning act is simply doing one that you desire to do. That'd be the ultimate hose job, no? That humans must desire - food, shelter, love, really basic stuff - and the only way to not have any sin at all is to have no desire whatsoever.

That's the best explanation I've heard @Kalbear! And totally puts in layman's terms where a dense like me can understand these things.

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3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

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.

I see you're plotting to use my "Bakker n: Optimal Tip-to-Tip Damnation" thread title idea!

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13 minutes ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

That's the best explanation I've heard @Kalbear! And totally puts in layman's terms where a dense like me can understand these things.

Thanks - though keep in mind that this is all my opinion based on incomplete information. It is also close to how I want things to end up. It doesn't mean it's true.

That said, so far there's very little that has come out that has contradicted or changed a lot of the possibilities. Looking back on the threads and threads of everything, the theories have largely been solid. I was wrong about Kellhus obliterating Ishual, but the other possibility was the Consult - and we figured one way or another they'd find something there, especially once it was known that the chapter would be too spoilery to reveal the rest. @Happy Ent even nailed the notion of using the thousand thousand halls as a way to trap attackers and beat them, even if they had magic.

We speculated a lot about the Dunyain purposely letting Kellhus out into the world. Still speculating on that, I think.

Some people thought (and I guess, still think) that Kellhus' word makes damnation go away, or that he is holy. I guess that got squashed a bit. 

The notion of the Gods feasting on souls and them being tasty has been around since WLW, I think. As well as the notion of spiritual worth being basically 'more tasty', or at least more capable of being more tasty. 

I think I've linked most of the various things I've seen going back and reading that I thought were particularly relevant or shown to be true. 

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