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Bakker XLVI: Make Eärwa Great Again


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On 1/20/2017 at 8:53 PM, Kalbear said:

It is neither passive or active - it is a place. It is the place that encompasses all places. And in order to arrive at that place, you must strip yourself of everything gained from the world. For a soul, that means stripping it of all sin. All sin - and that includes things like believing yourself better, believing yourself different, believing yourself unique. 

I think that Mimara saying that 'he joined the Absolute' is kind of a shorthand, the same way that she declared 'she guards the gates' when it wasn't true precisely either. 

But we can determine at least what Kor's thought process is without determining the actual validity of it, which could be separate. (I happen to believe that Kor is the most right person and Mimara is the most genuinely metaphysically right person, but that is debatable). Kor's thought process is based pretty well in logic:

  1. Everything has already happened and human's perception of time is wrong. (this explains how Mimara can see anything anyone has ever done, even if it would be impossible.
  2. There exists a way for everyone to see anything anyone has ever done, regardless of who else witnessed them, and recall it perfectly. 
  3. Therefore, at least one person (Mimara) has a connection to every single other person. 
  4. Because others have had this ability before her, this means potentially anyone can have this connection, and more importantly it means everyone is connected in this way even if they cannot access it.
  5. It also implies whatever is seeing these things is separate from the seen. 
  6. This thing that sees is what Kor calls the Zero-God. 
  7. He believes that everyone is part of the Zero-God and the only way to truly enter it as a place is not to become self-moving or to become worshipful - the only way is to relinquish all intellect, knowledge, and sin and any grasp of self.
  8. Kor believes he can accomplish this by two ways: having his sin forgiven (which he believes Mimara can do) and then taking qirri and losing his personal sense of self by partially becoming someone else.

So in a very real way the Zero-God is oblivion, because there is no self when joining with the source. Koringhus ceases to exist as an entity at that moment, and instead becomes one with everyone. The damned are the ones who cannot relinquish their selves and are maximally subjective; to be maximally objective in Earwa is to become everyone

In this way I both agree with @Happy Ent in that I don't think that there is a loving God as envisioned by Kierkegaard in the leap of faith, and disagree in that Koringhus never believed that there would be. He is putting his faith - literally, at that moment, the only thing he is - in the notion that there exists only everyone, and the Universe has simply unalterable rules, and souls happen to be a bizarre accident of universal law that deceives everyone into thinking they are singular.

Good points, laid out better than I could (my mind is not that ordered, nor do I understand it well enough).  However, I do still disagree that The Absolute is a place, but rather is a state-of-being.  I think maybe that my point of disagreement is just semantics, rather than a real difference, because when it comes to souls, what is a place and what is a state and how would they be different?  In a singularity, is there really anything called a place or a state?  So, maybe what I want to define here isn't even a real thing.

I do agree with you numbered points, time is a "mortal" perceptual illusion.  The only thing I would quibble with is number eight, where I do believe that The Absolute (that is, being truly self-moving) is some kind of part in how Koringhus will join Zero.  I think that is the third part of a trinity to have his soul be in the correct state to be ready for Zero: forgiven, dilute (that is, as you say, self aside personal self, perhaps expanded is the right word) and self-moving (partly because souls do not approach Zero on their own).

7 hours ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

"Because the God demanded it". But we know this isn't true through Koringhus's POV. It was his leap, his choice to join Zero. So, either the Absolute and the Zero are the same, which is highly unlikely  (Bakker even confirmed as much), or the Eye other Mimara's conclusions are wrong. Now, I don't believe the Eye to be wrong on all accounts, but there is conflict in this. From what Koringhus says, to Mimara's interpretation.

I think she is lying to herself and to Akka here.  She seems, to me, to be offering Akka the "simple explanation" rather than the complex reasoning why Koringhus did it.  You can see that Akka doesn't buy it, buy him pressing her for "his reasons" and she dodges the question.  She knows the real answers, but chooses to not say them because they are far more complicated and would only serve to intrigue Akka more.

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Good points, laid out better than I could (my mind is not that ordered, nor do I understand it well enough).  However, I do still disagree that The Absolute is a place, but rather is a state-of-being.  I think maybe that my point of disagreement is just semantics, rather than a real difference, because when it comes to souls, what is a place and what is a state and how would they be different?  In a singularity, is there really anything called a place or a state?  So, maybe what I want to define here isn't even a real thing.

The way I think of it as a place is similar to a view of Platonist objectivism as well as multidimensional physics and how they project to fewer-dimensional objects. 

Simply, everyone's soul is a projection of the place that everyone comes from. In the projection to the world of Earwa and the Outside, it is just a facet of the objective soul, warped and translated into a 4-dimensional picture on the wall.

The place is that objective soul, unprojected onto anything. The lens is the metaphysical system that translates souls to the World and to the Outside. The image is the self. 

And why would anyone - who sees that individual facet, that image - think that they are the same or come from the same place as another person? 

And that's why it is a place. It is an origin, a start. It isn't just a matter of state of being, because souls are basically illusions. 

Quote

I do agree with you numbered points, time is a "mortal" perceptual illusion.  The only thing I would quibble with is number eight, where I do believe that The Absolute (that is, being truly self-moving) is some kind of part in how Koringhus will join Zero.  I think that is the third part of a trinity to have his soul be in the correct state to be ready for Zero: forgiven, dilute (that is, as you say, self aside personal self, perhaps expanded is the right word) and self-moving (partly because souls do not approach Zero on their own).

Again, I think Koringhus puts to rest the notion that self-moving matters in the least. The Dunyain are, by his view, totally wrong. Not only are they wrong, they're wrong in precisely the most wrong way. The Dunyain attempt to be self-moving and completely disconnected from everything. The Ur-Soul is exactly the opposite - it is everyone, connected to everything, and is all. The end result of a self-moving soul and the philosophy behind it isn't becoming one with the divine place of God - it is becoming the No-God

Next theory: Serwe was more pure than Koringhus and joined the zero-God without his required realization. She is the only one in the series that harmed no one, ever, that never resisted, that never was anything other than what was given. She had no sense of self in any real way, and as a result gained everything.

In this way we know that Kellhus is almost certainly not  saved; the idea that he can be beyond himself when his personal narrative is entirely self-focused. He is not selfish, but he cannot personally think of himself as anything other than himself. While he claims this to others, this is clearly a lie that he does not believe.

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19 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Again, I think Koringhus puts to rest the notion that self-moving matters in the least. The Dunyain are, by his view, totally wrong. Not only are they wrong, they're wrong in precisely the most wrong way. The Dunyain attempt to be self-moving and completely disconnected from everything. The Ur-Soul is exactly the opposite - it is everyone, connected to everything, and is all. The end result of a self-moving soul and the philosophy behind it isn't becoming one with the divine place of God - it is becoming the No-God

Next theory: Serwe was more pure than Koringhus and joined the zero-God without his required realization. She is the only one in the series that harmed no one, ever, that never resisted, that never was anything other than what was given. She had no sense of self in any real way, and as a result gained everything.

In this way we know that Kellhus is almost certainly not  saved; the idea that he can be beyond himself when his personal narrative is entirely self-focused. He is not selfish, but he cannot personally think of himself as anything other than himself. While he claims this to others, this is clearly a lie that he does not believe.

I love it when you methodically reason your way into validating my crazy theories.

 

if to become self moving is to become the no god, and koringhus joined zero and moenghus joined the god of gods we have some nice Hegelian maps:

thesis->anti-thesis->synthesis

Moenghus -> kellhus -> koringhus

god of gods -> no god -> zero

 

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“Who are you?”

“One who shares your dreams …” For a moment they were like two men drowning, two souls kicking for sharp air … Then darkness.

The silent nowhere that housed men’s souls.

Nautzera … It is I.

A place of pure voice.

 

***

 

Ordinarily, Kellhus would’ve said something. But for the moment he could provide little more than rote responses. His eyes watched, but they didn’t focus. His expression merely mirrored those surrounding him. Self had vanished into place, a place of opening, where permutation after permutation was hunted to its merciless conclusion. Consequence and effect. Events like concentric ripples unfolding across the black waters of the future … Each word, each look, a stone.

Snip

And the Absolute … the End of Ends

***

That there the end of ends phrase suggests that kal is right that the no god is the outcome of a self moving soul/absolute

(Note I'm looking for interesting uses of place as a term)

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2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

The way I think of it as a place is similar to a view of Platonist objectivism as well as multidimensional physics and how they project to fewer-dimensional objects. 

Simply, everyone's soul is a projection of the place that everyone comes from. In the projection to the world of Earwa and the Outside, it is just a facet of the objective soul, warped and translated into a 4-dimensional picture on the wall.

The place is that objective soul, unprojected onto anything. The lens is the metaphysical system that translates souls to the World and to the Outside. The image is the self. 

And why would anyone - who sees that individual facet, that image - think that they are the same or come from the same place as another person? 

And that's why it is a place. It is an origin, a start. It isn't just a matter of state of being, because souls are basically illusions.

I follow what you are saying now, my monkey brain did not default to such an abstract level.  Indeed, as you bring up a 4th dimension (presumably time) opens up some interesting ideas that I am not smart enough to elucidate but pertaining to how the gods can see in the future, but why that future might not be set.

2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Again, I think Koringhus puts to rest the notion that self-moving matters in the least. The Dunyain are, by his view, totally wrong. Not only are they wrong, they're wrong in precisely the most wrong way. The Dunyain attempt to be self-moving and completely disconnected from everything. The Ur-Soul is exactly the opposite - it is everyone, connected to everything, and is all. The end result of a self-moving soul and the philosophy behind it isn't becoming one with the divine place of God - it is becoming the No-God

Next theory: Serwe was more pure than Koringhus and joined the zero-God without his required realization. She is the only one in the series that harmed no one, ever, that never resisted, that never was anything other than what was given. She had no sense of self in any real way, and as a result gained everything.

In this way we know that Kellhus is almost certainly not  saved; the idea that he can be beyond himself when his personal narrative is entirely self-focused. He is not selfish, but he cannot personally think of himself as anything other than himself. While he claims this to others, this is clearly a lie that he does not believe.

Bakker did comment somewhere (I can't recall where) that Serwe is an "important cipher" in the series.  This is  an interesting way to understand why.  Indeed, Koringhus kind of tells us why, "Loss was advantage. Blindness was insight, revelation."  Serwe certainly loses a great deal.  Perhaps this is also part of why blindness and the Psuhke go hand in hand?

Following through though, we have to ask, does Kellhus realize this?  So, is he moving to become the No-God willing?  I don't know that we have textual evidence of him realizing the Dunyain are wrong.  Yet, we do have, in the assassination of Moe, him stressing that he was more.  But is that more in the sense that he is beyond their ideals, or more in that he is the culmination of them?

1 hour ago, lokisnow said:

thesis->anti-thesis->synthesis

Moenghus -> kellhus -> koringhus

god of gods -> no god -> zero

Could this be the "reversal" we were promised so long ago?  (I can't recall the interview exactly, but I could swear Bakker said the series would end with a big reversal.)

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The Logos. The Logos. The Logos . . . He was a hollow filled by echoes bereft of any authoring voice, each phrase a flawless reiteration of the preceding. He was a wayfarer through the abyssal gallery of mirror set against mirror, his every step as illusory as the last. Only sun and night marked his passage, and only then by narrowing the gap between mirrors to the impossible place where vanishing point threatened to kiss vanishing point—to the place where the soul fell utterly still. When the sun reared yet again, his thoughts receded to a single word: The. The. The. The . . . And it seemed at once an absurd stutter and the most profound of thoughts, as though only in the absence of “Logos” could it settle into the rhythm of his heart muscling through moment after moment. Thought thinned and daylight swept through, over, and behind the shrine, until night pierced the shroud of the sky, until the heavens revolved like an infinite chariot wheel. The. The . . . A moving soul chained to the brink, to the exquisite moment before something, anything. The tree, the heart, the everything transformed into nothing by repetition, by the endless accumulation of the same refusal to name. A corona of gold across the high slopes of the glacier. . . . and then nothing. No thought.

No thought. The boy extinguished. Only a place. This place. Motionless, the Pragma sat facing him, the bare soles of his feet flat against each other, his dark frock scored by the shadows of deep folds, his eyes as empty as the child they watched. A place without breath or sound. A place of sight alone. A place without before or after . . . almost. For the first lances of sunlight careered over the glacier, as ponderous as great tree limbs in the wind. Shadows hardened and light gleamed across the Pragma’s ancient skull. The old man’s left hand forsook his right sleeve, bearing a watery knife. And like a rope in water, his arm pitched outward, fingertips trailing across the blade as the knife swung languidly into the air, the sun skating and the dark shrine plunging across its mirror back . . . And the place where Kellhus had once existed extended an open hand—the blond hairs like luminous filaments against tanned skin—and grasped the knife from stunned space. The slap of pommel against palm triggered the collapse of place into little boy. The pale stench of his body. Breath, sound, and lurching thoughts. I have been legion . . . In his periphery, he could see the spike of the sun ease from the mountain. He felt drunk with exhaustion. In the recoil of his trance, it seemed all he could hear were the twigs arching and bobbing in the wind, pulled by leaves like a million sails no bigger than his hand. Cause everywhere, but amid countless minute happenings—diffuse, useless. Now I understand.

***

Hanging like a sack from the chains, his body numb from remembered agony, Achamian looked upon the sorcerer as though from an immovable place, from some hold deep within the beaten ship of his body. A place not at sea.

 

***

this one ties into the recent discussion as well as yatwers relationship to it, also invokes platos cave fairly directly.

Serwë’s scream was like an animal thing, as much a grunt as a wail. Esmenet bent over her, combing her fingers through the girl’s sweaty hair. Rain pulsed across the bellied ceiling of their makeshift pavilion, and here and there a trickle of water glittered in the gloom, slapping against plaited mats. For Esmenet, it seemed they crouched in the illuminated heart of a cave, littered by musty cloth and rotting reeds. The Kianene woman Kellhus had summoned cooed to Serwë in a tongue only Kellhus seemed to understand. Esmenet found the throaty sound of the woman’s voice soothing. They stood, she realized, in a place where differences of language and faith no longer mattered. Serwë was about to give birth.

***

I think I see, Father … Cries of rapture and disbelief rang across the packed reaches of the Kalaul. Several paces away Cnaiür stood dumbstruck, as did Eleäzaras a length behind him. Incheiri Gotian staggered forward, fell to his knees and wept. Kellhus smiled with boundless compassion. Everywhere he looked, he saw men kneeling … Yes … The Thousandfold Thought. And it seemed there was nothing, no dwarfing frame, that could restrict him to this place, to any place … He was all things, and all things were his … He was one of the Conditioned. Dûnyain. He was the Warrior-Prophet. Tears roared down his cheeks. With a haloed hand, he reached beneath his breast, firmly wrested the heart from his ribs. He thrust it high to the thunder of their adulation. Beads of blood seemed to crack the stone at his feet … He glimpsed Sarcellus’s uncoiled face. I see …

***

Kellhus stepped back, focused his eyes on a point the size of a thumbnail held at arm’s length. What was one became many. What was soul became place. Here. Calling out from bones of things. With three voices he sang, one utteral pitched to the world and two inutterals directed to the ground. What had been an ancient Cant of Calling became something far, far more… A Cant of Transposing. Blue fractal lights mapped the air about him, cocooned him in brilliance. Through scribbling filaments he saw his father press himself upright, turn with his asps to the girded corridor. Anasûrimbor Moënghus … that he could look so pale in the light of his son! Existence cringed before the whip of his voice. Space cracked. Here was pried into there. Beyond his father he saw Serwë, her blonde hair tied into a war-knot. He saw her leap out of the black … Even as he toppled into one far greater.

***

Cants of Calling—The family of incantations that enable communications over distance. Though the metaphysics of these Cants is only loosely understood, all long-distance Cants of Calling seem to turn on the so-called Here Hypothesis. One can call only to slumbering souls (because they remain open to the Outside) and only to those residing someplace where the Caller has physically been. The idea is that the “Here” of the Caller can only reach a “There,” or other location, that has been a “Here” sometime in the past. The degree of similarity between Anagogic and Gnostic Cants of Calling has led many to suspect that they hold the key to unravelling the Gnosis.

 

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14 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Note that I'm almost certainly wrong about this, given that @bakkerfans hasn't chimed in with a 'oooh' or 'mwahhah' when someone is right.

I'm not sure, I feel we are on the right track at the very least, even if we are missing some kind of nuance here or there.

6 hours ago, lokisnow said:

Cants of Calling—The family of incantations that enable communications over distance. Though the metaphysics of these Cants is only loosely understood, all long-distance Cants of Calling seem to turn on the so-called Here Hypothesis. One can call only to slumbering souls (because they remain open to the Outside) and only to those residing someplace where the Caller has physically been. The idea is that the “Here” of the Caller can only reach a “There,” or other location, that has been a “Here” sometime in the past. The degree of similarity between Anagogic and Gnostic Cants of Calling has led many to suspect that they hold the key to unravelling the Gnosis.

I think this speaks directly to us being on the right track, how place and time with regards to the Outside are not as we would experience them on the "Inside."

Let us not forget the Head on a Pole scene:

"So he seizes the lake and the thousand babes and the void and the massing-descending Sons and the lamentations-that-are-honey, and he rips them about the pole, transforms here into herethis-place-inside-where-you-sitnow, where he has always hidden, always watched, where Other Sons, recline, drinking from bowls that are skies, savouring the moaning broth of the Countless, bloating for the sake of bloat, slaking hungers like chasms, pits that eternity had rendered Holy …

We pondered you, says the most crocodilian of the Sons.

“But I have never been here.”

You said this very thing, it grates, seizing the line of the horizon, wrapping him like a fly. Legs click like machines of war. Yesss …"

However, the place of Kellhus soul seems to be intermingled with the place of the reader.  Which invokes the idea of the watcher-watched cycle.  I floated, with the help of others, the idea that the Head on a Pole is Kellhus own, so this could be Kellhus, looking inward, into his own soul (the here) but from the vantage of here (the soul of the onlooker).  Confusing to say the least, but I think somewhat in line with what we have been talking about here.

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Another thought, based on the pragma idea above:

The probability trance that Kellhus goes into for the first time makes him lose his sense of self and become nothing and everything. For the Dunyain they believe this allows them to catalog all causes and see likely effects. They can see everything that comes before and see how to manipulate that.

But let's turn that on its head. Start with the assumption that everything has already happened. If everything has happened, there is no cause or effect any more than what happened on page 110 changes what happens on page 341. In that case, Kellhus and the other Dunyain aren't tapping into probability - they're tapping into the same thing that guides the White-Luck Warrior. They can see what is going to happen and already has happened, and they can see it from the same point of view that the Judging Eye does - the Place, the Zero-God. When they become disassociated and blind (they use the phrase " A corona of gold across the high slopes of the glacier. . . . and then nothing. No thought. " they are able to see everything clearly. 

They just have an incredibly wrong idea of why. 

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57 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Another thought, based on the pragma idea above:

The probability trance that Kellhus goes into for the first time makes him lose his sense of self and become nothing and everything. For the Dunyain they believe this allows them to catalog all causes and see likely effects. They can see everything that comes before and see how to manipulate that.

But let's turn that on its head. Start with the assumption that everything has already happened. If everything has happened, there is no cause or effect any more than what happened on page 110 changes what happens on page 341. In that case, Kellhus and the other Dunyain aren't tapping into probability - they're tapping into the same thing that guides the White-Luck Warrior. They can see what is going to happen and already has happened, and they can see it from the same point of view that the Judging Eye does - the Place, the Zero-God. When they become disassociated and blind (they use the phrase " A corona of gold across the high slopes of the glacier. . . . and then nothing. No thought. " they are able to see everything clearly. 

They just have an incredibly wrong idea of why. 

Excellent point.  That would somewhat explain why I had the feeling that the Voice was telling Kellhus things from the future and why I thought that The Thousandfold Thought itself was cast backward in time, the explanation of why was in the future, not in the past.  In reality it doesn't have to be Kellhus from the future, but rather, Kellhus dissociated from time, atemporal, or some such, in the Outside.  In other words, perhaps Kellhus himself already at the Zero-point?  Or Koringhus?  Or Kellhus as the Solitary God?

It can also answer how and why odd things like Kellhus being saved by Leweth, arriving at the mound of Cnaiur's father, and other seemingly improbable things that seem to keep happening to him.  White-Luck beyond even the White-Luck.

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It also makes @lokisnow happy, because it means once again that the Dunyain are starting from a bad premise and are completely deluding themselves and taking all evidence in that specific lens. 

I really like this idea, mind you, and I think because I like this idea that it's wrong. I think it's far more likely that the deluding is on the Seswatha side, and somehow the mighty philosophers of the Dunyain and the Kellhus-modeled-after-Bakker is going to be the Most Right Dude.

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But doesn't Koringhus say the logos is a lie? They don't believe anything other than "What comes before determines what comes after". I see what you're saying that they're tapping into what the truth is, but I don't think so. This is why Kor decides to leap when he is absolved. It's his best and only chance to join Zero. And, I'm not buying the when Mimara tells Akka that "he joined the Absolute " is shorthand. Mimara knew nothing of what her visions meant until Akka explained what he knew. She only knows she sees the morality of things. We don't have any textual  evidence that the Eye communicates with her. It just shows. Mimara knows nothing of Zero, or any other character (that I can tell) for that matter. And, per Bakker, we know the Absolute and Zero are not the same thing.

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Also, I would not bet against Kellhus being blind to what Koringhus deduced before his leap. If Kor could see the Eye within Mimara, we must assume that Kellhus did also. Hence, letting her go and make a baby with Akka and head towards the Ordeal. My money is on Kellhus being a step ahead of Kor.

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2 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

It also makes @lokisnow happy, because it means once again that the Dunyain are starting from a bad premise and are completely deluding themselves and taking all evidence in that specific lens. 

I really like this idea, mind you, and I think because I like this idea that it's wrong. I think it's far more likely that the deluding is on the Seswatha side, and somehow the mighty philosophers of the Dunyain and the Kellhus-modeled-after-Bakker is going to be the Most Right Dude.

I'm not so sure that Kellhus is the Bakker analogue we should really draw though.  I mean, in a way, yes, but recall that Bakker quit philosophy for a reason.  His statement about how the books grew from a D&D campaign and how being a DM has you essentially being a "dark god" makes me really feel like Ajolki is the real Bakker analogue to look at here.  Kellhus thinks he is the prime mover, but he might not be. In the same way philosophers think they are really getting at the "objective truth" of the world, but to use a Bakker-ism, all they are really doing is hitting everything with hammers and so calling it all nails.

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1 minute ago, .H. said:

I'm not so sure that Kellhus is the Bakker analogue we should really draw though.  I mean, in a way, yes, but recall that Bakker quit philosophy for a reason. 

Isn't he getting his PhD in philosophy right now?

1 minute ago, .H. said:

His statement about how the books grew from a D&D campaign and how being a DM has you essentially being a "dark god" makes me really feel like Ajolki is the real Bakker analogue to look at here.  Kellhus thinks he is the prime mover, but he might not be. In the same way philosophers think they are really getting at the "objective truth" of the world, but to use a Bakker-ism, all they are really doing is hitting everything with hammers and so calling it all nails.

Kellhus's appearance is literally modeled after Bakker, per Bakker. Ajolki isn't. And I'm fairly certain Bakker gave an interview where he wanted to create a world where philosophers were the most powerful thing in the universe. 

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