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Bakker XLVI: Make Eärwa Great Again


Rhom

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Well, the idea is that Esmenet dies while the narindar is trying to kill Kellhus, not specifically that he is there to kill Esmenet.

There is a causal loop that we have that can't really be explained easily, in how the White-Luck Warrior goes to kill Kellhus because he knows Kellhus will be there, but Kellhus is only there because he knows the White-Luck Warrior is there to kill him.

The most obvious thing for Kellhus to do would be to go get Esmenet and the kids and leave Momemn, then the White-Luck Warrior can't do anything.  But he doesn't do this.  And by Kellhus' own admission, Esmenet and the kids should die.  He lets it all happen, only little Kel intercedes.

Why would Kellhus tell us Esmenet dies and his heart will be crashed if he knows he is going back to save her?  Wouldn't he say how she should die, but he won't let her?  That doesn't add up to me.

If little Kel actually saves them, then Kellhus didn't return to save her, because he doesn't.  It doesn't seem like it can be both in my mind.

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If it wasn't for little Kel, Kellhus dies. I don't see where you have any textual evidence that Kellhus knows the WLW was there at that moment. If not for Kel yelling and startling everyone, Kellhus dies, and your telling me that was the plan? Nah, ain't buying it H.

Kellhus, straight up tells Esme he has come back to salvage what he may. I'm sure part of it was to draw out Fayanal and Malowebi, sure. But, I think he truly went to the throne room to take Esme back with him. His emotions got the better of him and he acted upon them. 

I agree with you to an extent, Kellhus is practical and all about mission. But, he is still human. Still cares enough for humanity to try and save it. 

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Hmmm, maybe.  I'm still not sure though.  He knows Esmenet is is danger (because he knows she is supposed to die), then how does he not know from what?  It's all so ambiguous, really.

Heck, we aren't even sure if Esmenet is still in the Throne Room, after the ceiling collapses.  Last we see of Kellhus, he is walking away, alone.

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4 minutes ago, .H. said:

Hmmm, maybe.  I'm still not sure though.  He knows Esmenet is is danger (because he knows she is supposed to die), then how does he not know from what?  It's all so ambiguous, really.

Heck, we aren't even sure if Esmenet is still in the Throne Room, after the ceiling collapses.  Last we see of Kellhus, he is walking away, alone.

I just thought that when we get the quote in TWLW about Momemn being left to ruin and his family dying, it's just a forgone conclusion. If he doesn't come back, they will die, the nature of their death doesn't matter in the context of that statement. If he doesn't come back, Fayanal takes Momemn and puts them all to the sword. Only Yatwer knew that Kellhus would be in that throne room at the exact time because of the nature of the way the gods see time.

What's more interesting, did Yatwer always know the WLW would fail? Because, we have Sorweel who is also a vessel of Yatwer. I'd bet the house that we see a dying Kellhus confess all to a kneeling Akka on the Fields of Eleneöt, and Kellhus goals are more for humanity than hisself.

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Either something valuable to the mission needs to be rescued from Momen to outweigh the risks to the Ordeal of leaving. Or Kel has to take this less than ideal path of going to Momen because his heart would ruin otherwise. 

The text of TGO has a explicit support for the latter read. I don't see the support for the former. But I could be proven wrong by TUC. 

 

Well, you've ignored the one that I stated, which is that it has to happen this way because this is the way it happened, and something that occurs in the future seals the fate of the past and requires that things have to happen in precisely this way. 

The issue is that you're assuming to start with that Kellhus is a self-moving entity that controls his own actions. This is entirely the point of the Dunyain, and as of TGO largely shown to be false and completely wrong. So yeah, if you start from the basis of an incorrect starting point you'll end up in a bad spot, and you're right - if you start from the basis that Kellhus is calling the shots, AND that he is largely rational in his choices, then you have two options: go away from the Shortest Path to save the Empire and what passes for love in what passes for his soul, or that this is the actual Shortest Path to...something.

If you don't start from that basis point and instead start from the idea that very often Kellhus (and everyone else) makes choices that aren't really choices, or don't understand their choices, you end up in a very different spot. In this case, Kellhus doesn't know why his heart is breaking or why he is compelled to return to Momemn at the literal crisis point, and run into the one time that WLW can kill him while the empire is wracked by earthquake and attack and Dagliash is settled in a particularly weird way. He doesn't know why he has to rape Proyas to ready him to control the Ordeal, only that he knows he has to leave after Dagliash. But why leave then? It's not like he's doing a lot prior to Dagliash as far as his attacking goes. It's far smarter to port over, leave, and come back to help as they get there. But this is not what he is compelled to do

You mentioned before that TGO provides explicit support for the idea that his heart is what caused him to flee. I would argue that it also gives explicit counterargument. All of this has happened before. The WLW knows what is going to happen and against incredible odds ends up in the throne room with Chorae in the roof falling down to depower Kellhus at the precise moment that Kellhus returns. We've seen in the past Kellhus make decisions that had zero basis in any rational decision making - things like 'punish the Shrial knights'. We have lots of textual evidence indicating that this stuff already happened - from Koringhus and his viewpoint of Mimara to Mimara's power to the WLW being able to imperfectly remember things that happen in the future to Kellhus hearing voices and thinking that it is God and the No-God that speak to him to mention of prophecy. Or just recently, where Kellhus visited the outside and we see them say 'you always say that' when he's never been here before. Use the @lokisnow rational theorem here - that what we are reading is literal, and it is our biases that dismiss it as not. Gods exist and do actually inhabit people - this isn't just flowery prose, this is literal.

Why isn't the discussion about time literal?

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Just now, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

@Kalbear, that is indeed how I read it. And have many posts here and at SA to back it up. I believe Ajokli inhabits Kelmommas and for some reason aids in saving Kellhus's life. Kellhus is not the mover, he only thinks he is. 

Right, but you also think that this is a love story, and the two interpretations are at deep odds with each other.

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20 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Right, but you also think that this is a love story, and the two interpretations are at deep odds with each other.

Well, I was being a bit sarcastic in saying it was a love story. I just think the loss of Serwe, drove Kellhus to madness and his ultimate goal to not become what he thought Moe would. I feel Kellhus has the survival of humanity at the core of his goals.

ETA: caused by the loss of Serwe, an innocence. 

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5 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

@Kalbear

 

Kalbear is right there is no shortest path, as stated in the text:

“I was the Shortest Path.”

“No. You were the only path.”

 

kellhus goes to momemn because it / he is the only path.

But, Kellhus is moved by the "Voices". Which posters here call, the No-God, the God and Kellhus in the future, ergo the TT. But, I can see it only being one of the three, and my guess it's the Thousandfold Thought, that much I agree with H.

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I shall never tire of underlining a concise little fact which these superstitious people are loath to admit—namely, that a thought comes when “it” wants, not when “I” want . . . —FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

Isn't that odd that that is the quote to start out TDTCB? After all we learn of in TGO? Kellhus whole talk with Proyas about how the God is an it and has no feelings and such. Which in reality, the Voice isn't the God. I agree with @.H., it is the culmination of The Thought. And, tell me, what is more philosophical than a "thought" becoming the mover of a world? Not a God, not the 100, not the great and Holy Kellhus, but a thought? Bakker knew where this series was going from the get go, the quote is not by accident.

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10 hours ago, .H. said:

as he terms them, my contention is that in almost every case, emotions he feels are not what is really driving him

I'm not saying the emotions he feels are driving him.

I'm just saying emotions still drive him, not some kind of pure rationality.

10 hours ago, .H. said:

Esmenet was supposed to be the second Serwë

That's plausible, much like the original dunyain training locked away the legion and Serwe's death continued something like that, the plan could be to use Esme as a third sourge

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@Kalbear I was intentionally ignoring your WLW collapse theory for purposes of responding to .H. As I said in the post. 

For your theory, I think there are two ways to view the question. 

1) Fine, the WLW made him go to Monmen, but is it good or bad for furthering Kel's goals for TGO. 

In other words, WLW is just a refinement on how the world conspires in this series. See the prologue of TDTCB for the most blatant occurrence where Kel lands right on Cnauir's dad's barrow. 

I actually quite like this and think you tease it out nicely by pointing out he arrives just as the roof collapses, etc.

2) Fine the WLW made him go to Monmen, but does Kel believe it's part of The Shortest Path or does he think he is compromising for his own heart. 

 

@.H. I'm not sold that Malowebi is critical for anything in TUC. Hard to imagine how Zeum comes into play in time either way. Maybe for the third series?

Also on TTT being a self replicating meme, that is pretty explicit both in at least one Bakker interview (with a comparison to a computer virus) and in TGO. See this quote: 

Quote

He was as much a creature of the Thought as it was a creature of him. For it whispered as it danced, threading the stacked labyrinths of contingency, filing through the gates of his daylight apprehension, becoming him. He declared, and the patterns went forth, making wombs of souls, reproducing, taking on the cumbersome complexities of living life, transforming the dancing of the dance, begetting heresies and fanaticisms and mad delusions …

Forcing more declarations.

 

 

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37 minutes ago, unJon said:

@.H. I'm not sold that Malowebi is critical for anything in TUC. Hard to imagine how Zeum comes into play in time either way. Maybe for the third series?

Also on TTT being a self replicating meme, that is pretty explicit both in at least one Bakker interview (with a comparison to a computer virus) and in TGO. See this quote:

I think Malowebi is key, because post-Ordeal, I think Kellhus' plan is contingent on the old ways being dead and gone.  That's why it doesn't matter if the Empire falls and why all the nobility was shipped out on the Ordeal to suffer and die.

As for the Though, great quote.  I think the Thought and the Inverse Fire are opposed propositions, with nearly the same function.  They both put you at pains to exact the ideas they espouse.  The difference being that the Inverse Fire is actually true, where the Thousandfold Thought is an imagined order.

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I disagree @.H., it does matter if the Empire falls. We learn that whatever comes about of the GO it's holy. There are several references to this. Why would Kellhus want to make a world were damnation doesn't exist for there to be nothing to come back to? Stopping Fayanal, dispatching Demon-Malowebi is proof of this. So the people having something to return to and be at peace. 

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6 hours ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

I disagree @.H., it does matter if the Empire falls. We learn that whatever comes about of the GO it's holy. There are several references to this. Why would Kellhus want to make a world were damnation doesn't exist for there to be nothing to come back to? Stopping Fayanal, dispatching Demon-Malowebi is proof of this. So the people having something to return to and be at peace. 

But Koringhus already taught us that loss and suffering are holy.  Take this part from Mimara, in an earlier Ishüal chapter:

Quote

The Holy cares nothing for the designs of Men. And their appetites, it denies outright. The Holy, at all turns, demand the sacrifice of mortal projects, the carrying of burdens that slow, even kill. The Holy was the path of detours, even dead ends. The road that punished for following.

Sounds Ordeal-like to me.  This is why the Ordeal is holy, not because it is an unbridled success, but precisely because it is a suffering factory, a dead end.  The Empire is a meaningless mortal project, which is part of why Kellhus cuts off contact with it.  They march not for the Empire, but for Salvation.  The Ordeal isn't about achieving victory, it's about experiencing loss and forfeiting life.

Zëum is the last bastion of the old ways, this is why it must go, because a new time is going to start and with it a new way of thinking.  Zëum isn't and still wouldn't be a military threat to the Three Seas, so it's removal is irrelevant.  Except it is a threat, because post-Second Apocalypse there will be a new order of meaning, one that isn't compatible with the old ways of thinking.

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Interesting points about Zëum, .H.

It was for me really unclear why Kellhus went to the trouble of creating a demon-Malowebi to deal with Zëum. You might be right. Especially about the relevance after TUC. As I felt, and still feel, that the travails of demon-Malonwebi would be a bloody distracion in TUC.

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5 hours ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

All caught up. What a ride, I'm already gnawing at my wrist for TUC.

Are there any major theories as to what the Nail of Heaven actually is?

Welcome to the current state of affairs!  While everyone else around here is dropping metaphysical bombshells, I feel like I exist to make the Earwan equivalent of dick and fart jokes.

That being said... I believe the most popular theory is that it is the remains of a wormhole that brought the Inchoroi ships to the Earwan system.  It appears in the sky a few months (??) before Arkfall.  The thought is that perhaps they traveled via wormhole to a point somewhere in the system and then the ship flew at sublight speeds from there.

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