Bakker: The Great Ordeal SPOILER THREAD

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

1 hour ago, Sci-2 said:

So the walls of Momemn falling wasn't aftershock?

Could it have been Kellhus who collapsed the walls? I'm thinking of how in Shimeh the collapse of the walls was a trick, though I can't recall exactly how that stratagem was meant to go.

Well, I assumed the first earthquake that brought the walls down and killed Thelli was Yatwer. The second that happened during the WLW/Kelmommas/Kellhus but was Ajokli. 

Why? I believe it's Esme that remarks that earthquakes are direct intervention by the Gods.

ETA: @Sci-2, so we got more direct interaction with the Gods. Did it disappoint you?

[Werthead]

Part 5 of the History of Earwa, taking us up to the end of the Holy War.

There will be a Part 6 on the Great Ordeal, but I'll leave that until just before The Unholy Consult comes out.

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

1 hour ago, Baztek said:

Sorry for the philosophy dump guys. Btw sci you got any more dank ass philosophy blogs like this?

 

 

Don't be sorry, it's all very interesting. Question for you as well as Sci - what would be a good book to get an overall feel for most Of these philosophical lines of thinking, for a layman (dumbass) like me? It all really interests me, I just need it dumbed down to understand it a little bit better. Like Casuality, I get what the definition is, but what does it mean in the philosophical sense, in a manner which makes it easier to understand? Sorry for my ignorance, I would just like to get a better understanding, and be less ignorant.

[Larry of the Lawn]

I thought both earthquakes were caused by the gods.  If we could narrow it down more the one that killed Theli would be caused by Ajokli and the one that took the walls down by Yatwer.  Or the maybe the gods are just aware quakes are going to happen and try to manipulate who's where through Kelmomas, Psatma and the WLW.  

 

I believe that at Shimeh the cish brought down a wall so the Coyauri could outflank the Men of the Tusk by the aqueduct (the Tydonni maybe?).

[Sci-2]

1 hour ago, Baztek said:

Will definitely read. Sounds like Christopher Langan's CTMU theory of everything, where like Bakker, he rejects scientism and posits the universe as a self-reflexive, self-perceiving, self-configuring system existing in an ineffable background medium of zero energy and infinite potential he calls the Unbound Telesis but Bakker calls the Darkness that comes before. Minds are just sub-systems within the master system, the Mind of which is equivalent to God/the Logos in the Bakkerverse (what Korringhus calls the God of Nature. It's very Spinoza)

 

 So when humans think reality isn't a very ideal place to live, it's reality reacting to to itself in recursive contact. The human striving for a better world is literally existence self-improving, self-actualizating.

 

Anyways, as for the Darkness: to speak of existence is to speak of a determinations of energy of matter, essentially, to speak of shit being a certain way and what predicates those differences, ie Cause, Law. If you remove these constraints bit by bit to get at what's "beyond" existence, you arrive at nothingness, but paradoxically a nothingness that is also absolute fullness, because it's obviously the source of being in the first place. Existence is this unconditioned state "self-forgetting" its infinite nature and descending into multiplicity, relativity, individuation. Stillness of zero-god becomes Doing. Korringhus even says ignorance is the first principle, ignorance of the Darkness. which is a very Hindu and Buddhist thing to say.

 

Sorry for the philosophy dump guys. Btw sci you got any more dank ass philosophy blogs like this?

 

 

AFAICTell Bakker thinks the self is an illusion, along with consciousness and thoughts. To be honest I don't think I really understand eliminativism though from the Atheist's Guide to Reality it seems like the kind of extraordinary claim that needs extraordinary evidence:

Quote

...Let’s suppose that the Paris neurons are about Paris the same way red octagons are about stopping. This is the first step down a slippery slope, a regress into total confusion. If the Paris neurons are about Paris the same way a red octagon is about stopping, then there has to be something in the brain that interprets the Paris neurons as being about Paris. After all, that’s how the stop sign is about stopping. It gets interpreted by us in a certain way. The difference is that in the case of the Paris neurons, the interpreter can only be another part of the brain...

What we need to get off the regress is some set of neurons that is about some stuff outside the brain without being interpreted—by anyone or anything else (including any other part of the brain)—as being about that stuff outside the brain. What we need is a clump of matter, in this case the Paris neurons, that by the very arrangement of its synapses points at, indicates, singles out, picks out, identifies (and here we just start piling up more and more synonyms for “being about”) another clump of matter outside the brain. But there is no such physical stuff.

Physics has ruled out the existence of clumps of matter of the required sort...

Regarding other blogs, Footnotes2Plato seems to connect with the Bakkerverse by way of Whitehead. Also Gene Callahan has an Idealist blog too.

The no longer published Anti-matters also has articles that I would connect with the metaphysics of the fantasy setting.

Note I'm not trying to endorse/refute these ideas in real life, also not trying to connect these to whatever Bakker might believe in real life.

[Sci-2]

46 minutes ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

Well, I assumed the first earthquake that brought the walls down and killed Thelli was Yatwer. The second that happened during the WLW/Kelmommas/Kellhus but was Ajokli. 

Why? I believe it's Esme that remarks that earthquakes are direct intervention by the Gods.

ETA: @Sci-2, so we got more direct interaction with the Gods. Did it disappoint you?

I think that entire sequence in Momemn comes across as incredibly convenient plotting. My hope is that I'm just missing some really good explanation for what happened.

That said I agree Ajokli has been playing a game different from Yatwer. Did he help Kellhus evade the fate Yatwer had planned for him?

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

7 minutes ago, Sci-2 said:

I think that entire sequence in Momemn comes across as incredibly convenient plotting. My hope is that I'm just missing some really good explanation for what happened.

That said I agree Ajokli has been playing a game different from Yatwer. Did he help Kellhus evade the fate Yatwer had planned for him?

That's how I read it. That through Kelmommas, Ajokli broke the circuit of the WLW.

[Baztek]

2 hours ago, Sci-2 said:

 

Seswatha, I'd recommend kheper.net and the fresian school as good introductions to esoterica and philosophy respectively. As for books, Julius Evola's introductory works on Buddhism, Hermeticism, Tantra, and Magic are dank af, but dense too. There are no good general introductions to philosophy, just pick someone who resonates with you and dive in.

 

Sci, eliminativism is a joke. There are truths to it when applied to a larger framework, but by itself it dies of autism-induced hypoxia. All I can say without getting into detail is if consciousness is an illusion, who or what is getting duped?

[Baztek]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Part 5 of the History of Earwa, taking us up to the end of the Holy War.

There will be a Part 6 on the Great Ordeal, but I'll leave that until just before The Unholy Consult comes out.

I keep saying it and I'll say it again. A really fleshed-out history of Earwa would make a great book all by itself. Bakker's got a great knack for cultural idioms and Herodotus-esque anecdotes and shit, too. Good stuff, Wert.

@Sci-2: The Absolute Idealism post you linked is great. 

" How can something bring about its own existence. Here the self-evident experience of our own self-awareness provides us with the only empirical clue we have. The crucial point is that the circularity of self-awareness 'fits' the circularity of self-causation: as the self-causing cause is its own effect, so self-awareness is its own object of awareness. Since self-awareness essentially is its own object of awareness, it cannot exist without being aware of itself. Its being is its self-perception. "

Dank. Exactly. Reality is the case for itself. When someone asks what reality is, it is precisely that which can ask itself what it is. But anyways, sorry, this stuff is getting farther and farther away from Bakker. Something like this is implied in the God and Onkis stuff, I think, but that's as far as I can say.

[Sci-2]

37 minutes ago, Baztek said:

Dank. Exactly. Reality is the case for itself. When someone asks what reality is, it is precisely that which can ask itself what it is. But anyways, sorry, this stuff is getting farther and farther away from Bakker. Something like this is implied in the God and Onkis stuff, I think, but that's as far as I can say.

Yeah the "head on a pole" stuff seems very much in line with the Upanishads' description of the Bird who Eats and Isvara, the Lord, who is the Bird who Watches the Eater.

Calasso, at least, sees this as a description of the Mind - we are both one acting in the world as well as self-aware watching the ourselves act. 

Combine these it seems connected to what Kellhus has discovered, that the awareness of the self connects to the Awareness. This realization/recollection seems to act as a lodestone for the Daimos to keep the planar traveler on solid Ground.

It's interesting how even his mastery of the Daimos seems to connect to Kellhus' mastery of Space even as Time seems to elude him (see the convo between him and the Crocodile Son).

[Baztek]

45 minutes ago, Baztek said:

 

Yes, exactly. The Upanishads even describe the Self as "everywhere, yet abiding nowhere", just like Korringhus describes the zero-god. And let's not even get into the Buddhist "form is emptiness, emptiness is form". 

Right, we're aware of being aware. Husserl explained consciousness, fundamentally, as intentionality, as consciousness of something. Becoming/Samsara is consciousness-of-x, whether x is your bank account, your girl, etc. Being/ is consciousness-of-consciousness, that which is the ground of all x's in the first place and is greater than their relativity because it is prior to that relativity. It is the given by which we are allowed to experience anything else. One can be evil or be good, but first one has to be in the first place. Go down the rabbit hole far enough and even being-ness recedes, until we hit the Platonic Beyond-Being.

Since what is unconditioned cannot be subject to time, it is eternal, some indescribable mathematical object "floating" in the "void". A block universe. And Korringhus even says "all of this has already happened" right as he's on the cusp of realizing the zero-god. I think this confirms a block bakkerverse.

What stops Kellhus from perceiving this all the way? Is it because he's a p-zombie and can't hit the "absolute joy" that blog talks about is an essential feature of this primordial Awareness?

[jurble]

How is Kellhus a p-zombie?  We've gotten his point-of-view numerous times.

[Gormenghast]

13 minutes ago, Baztek said:

Yes, exactly. The Upanishads even describe the Self as "everywhere, yet abiding nowhere", just like Korringhus describes the zero-god. And let's not even get into the Buddhist "form is emptiness, emptiness is form".

I don't know Bakker-verse, but recursion observed speaks more about how the brain works, than how reality does.

What I mean is that, because of how we think, we tend to observe outside just the "quality" that makes us. As if: you can only observe what you are built to observe, and are blind to everything else.

But again, it works as self-description, but doesn't truly help to know what's actually out there.

It's a description of reality as it is anthropomorphized, but it isn't a proof or a guarantee that reality is truly anthropomorphic.

[Sci-2]

12 minutes ago, Baztek said:

Since what is unconditioned cannot be subject to time, it is eternal, some indescribable mathematical object "floating" in the "void". A block universe. And Korringhus even says "all of this has already happened" right as he's on the cusp of realizing the zero-god. I think this confirms a block bakkerverse.

What stops Kellhus from perceiving this all the way? Is it because he's a p-zombie and can't hit the "absolute joy" that blog talks about is an essential feature of this primordial Awareness?

Well...perhaps Korringhus is wrong about time? He sees the eternalist aspect but does not reconcile it with the Present?

Under P2P Hypothesis all moments are out there in the way all avenues you can take in a video game are extant as potentials. (The biologist-mathematician Kauffman talks about this as well, with Res Potentia being the "all possible paths" of the electron.)

I guess the challenge here is so far we only know that Saubon is damned. We don't even know exactly why, only that Kellhus didn't (couldn't?) save him.

But did Korringhus actually grasp the Absolute? Or is this just the God that Psatma claims is fiction, the fevered imagining of the philosopher divorced from what is Real?

I'm not sure Kellhus is a p-zombie, by which I assume you mean someone embracing reductionism/computationalism. (Are you using "zombie" in the tongue-in-cheek way Lanier does in You Can't Argue w/ a Zombie?)

[Baztek]

Sorry I can't respond to all the points made since I hate typing up long dense posts on my phone, but I'll just say maybe p-zombie's too strong of a word, either way Kayutas does say that Kellhus is only what the telos needs him to be, and nothing else. The man is just an instrument of causality and not an agent himself. Kellhus is big fish in the causal pond. He's literally King Shit in the horizontal world of materiality, properties, relations, etc. but he's blind to the vertical, what's outside the pond, which is what Korringhus glimpses. I also doubt Bakker would dupe us into thinking all these profound realizations about the Absolute occurring near the end of a book would just be bullshit psatma already debunked a book ago, though that isn't to say Korringhus denies the reality of the Hundred and Damnation.

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

Thanks, Baztek. I'll check them out, see if I can't edumicate myself. 

[Larry of the Lawn]

Take heart, ye Earwan astronomers:

 

The Nail of Heaven squints and glowers above them, marking the direction of Golgotterath.  

 

The Great Ordeal, of 474

[jurble]

The Nail of Heaven is fixed in the sky, right?  For it to remain stationary over Golgotterath, then the Ark crashed right on their North Pole - give or take a bit for precession?

[Larry of the Lawn]

And what about the cnaiur /Akka reunion?  

 

Get some nice McCarthy-style gnosticism as Mimara contemplates Cnauir:. 

Achamian  cannot see as she sees; nevertheless it seems he knows,t hat in some obscurity of his heart he understands the Man before him is no mere splinter, but a mighty shard ... possessed of what would have been a hero's soul, were it not for Anasurimbor Moenghus.  

Followed up with a reference to the tree of dead babies from Blood Meridian:. 

"The World-- phah!  Let it burn!  Let babes hang like leaves from trees."

 

 

 

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Claustrophobic Jurble said:

The Nail of Heaven is fixed in the sky, right?  For it to remain stationary over Golgotterath, then the Ark crashed right on their North Pole - give or take a bit for precession?

I don't think it's stationary over Golgotterath. It's that Golgotterath happens to be north of them, and the Nail of Heaven marks the North direction from where they are. 

Could be wrong though.

I still don't think that the Ciphrang represent 'soul' or hungers. We already have representations of what souls are. They are, literally, souls.