Callan S. Posted October 20, 2018 Share Posted October 20, 2018 16 hours ago, kuenjato said: Just gonna bang my head against the wall... *Many* potential endings have been discussed before. Err, are you guys a collective consciousness? I was asking a specific person - my saying they are mute on what they want doesn't somehow apply to you? On a side note someone wrapped up lord of rings as being 'you don't have to be Aragorn to save the world' - a one sentence wrap up is fine and valid. But I suspect Bakker is such a smart arse he has actually written in the muting of the Earwan gods to parralel the muting of certain demographics of readers. The gods are left howling at the gate...as are readers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted October 20, 2018 Share Posted October 20, 2018 Another tidbit, this time regarding the nature of Time in the Bakkerverse: "So if you look at prophecy in superpositional terms, then any given prophecy will only be true of one set of forking paths. If you believe that a meta-prophecy lies buried among those prophecies, then you will be circumspect about the ways you wage war against destiny. There's no end to the potential counterfactuals when it comes to the Judging Eye, given the apparent randomness of its opening and closing. If the Consult has any inkling of Mimara's importance, they will be circumspect." Interesting reference to Borges garden. It also very much seems, IMO, to describe timelines as extant potentials as per the P2P Hypothesis. So Borges forking paths are as follows: "The Garden of Forking Paths is a picture, incompleteyet not false, of the universe such as Ts'ui Pen conceived it to be. Differing fromNewton and Schopenhauer, your ancestor did not think of time as absolute anduniform. He believed in an infinite series of times, in a dizzily growing, ever spreadingnetwork of diverging, converging and parallel times. This web of time - the strands ofwhich approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through thecenturies - embraces every possibility." But Bakker specifically mentions looking at prophecy in "superpositional terms". I think this means the timelines as part of reality but only in the realm of the potential, Code that has been compiled but does not run. The "collapse" occurs when a single timeline is selected. This fits well with the P2P Hypothesis, where the 'Multiverse" is potential timelines. However I think the Bakkerverse is a simulation in the sense that it is Idealist (Mind -> Matter) not that there is an actual computer running it somewhere. (IIRC Bakker has stated Earwa is not a simulation in the Matrix sense). It does make me wonder if the Probability Trance isn't computational, there's no weighting of probabilities assigned to outcomes. Rather it is the Dunyain consciousness actually extending itself into the different potential timelines, experiencing them in a dreamlike sense divorced from the direct experience. (Think of the difference between playing an FPS vs watching other people play on Youtube). This might also explain why different characters claim events have already happened. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IlyaP Posted October 21, 2018 Share Posted October 21, 2018 1 hour ago, Sci-2 said: This might also explain why different characters claim events have already happened. This is what happens when you drink irresponsibly! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted October 21, 2018 Share Posted October 21, 2018 13 minutes ago, IlyaP said: This is what happens when you drink irresponsibly! Do you mean when people are drunk they claim different events occurred that night? Because I was referring to the remarks of certain characters (the Ciphrang Kellhus/Ajokli talks to in Hell, the Survivor) that events happening in the story have already happened before. This might be a hint toward Eternal Recurrence but I don't think that's the situation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry of the Lawn Posted October 21, 2018 Share Posted October 21, 2018 4 hours ago, Callan S. said: Err, are you guys a collective consciousness? Nope, you've just been bleating on and on about this same thing since TUC came out and we didn't have a collective circle jerk on the cover. Anytime anyone has expressed an issue with the ending you've claimed it's because it wasnt a happy ending, this despite everyone explaining their issues with it, and guess what a happy ending or the lack of it had fuck all to do with it. It's irritating as shit to try to have a fucking discussion and have someone (you, in this case) just wade in, ignore everything, and make some assinine assumption on your subjective preferences. For over a fucking year. Engage if you want to, but don't just sit there making the same non sequitur ad infinitum. Or do, but at least now you know why it's bugging the shit out of some of us. A total lack of comprehension for a year straight. Thanks for that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted October 21, 2018 Share Posted October 21, 2018 37 minutes ago, Triskjavikson said: Godfuckingdamnit Well Meppa is still alive, so there's hope he avoids Damnation... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IlyaP Posted October 21, 2018 Share Posted October 21, 2018 17 hours ago, Sci-2 said: Do you mean when people are drunk they claim different events occurred that night? That's generally the idea. I was also being slightly irreverent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted October 21, 2018 Share Posted October 21, 2018 3 hours ago, IlyaP said: That's generally the idea. I was also being slightly irreverent. Re: drunks recounting the same night differently, I did wonder if areas in the Bakkerverse function via some sort of quantum-observer Rashomon Effect ->But it's not just seeing the same event from different angles, rather the different angles actually alter the experience of an occurrence. So there would be timelines where the event seems to happen differently or does happen differently until the "collapse" of the Superposition of Timelines. Which sort of makes sense if every, in Bakker terms, "Observational Frame" is a peer and the final "true" version of an event is made from the contention between the observations of the peers. But there does not seem to be too much in the text that I can think of to suggest this sort of thing, at least not within the rational regularity of the Inside. The Outside however seems much more malleable in how Time is experienced. Though I'm not sure if Kellhus is tormented in alternate timelines when he walks the Hells via the Daimotic Inversions: 'They seize him from time to time, the Sons of this place, and he feels the seams tear, hears his scream. But he cannot come apart—for unlike the Countless Dead his heart beats still... ... 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 … And you refuse to succumb to their sucking mouths, ringed with one million pins of silver. You refuse to drip fear like honey—because you have no fear. Because you fear not damnation. Because there is a head on a pole behind you. “And what was your reply?” The living shall not haunt the dead.' IMO this is not only some of my favorite Bakker sentences but it also seems to be the key to a lot of what happens in the Bakkerverse... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted October 21, 2018 Share Posted October 21, 2018 From what I understand a d remember from random interviews and discussion on here, and I’m terrible at explaining this let alone understanding it, the way time exists for the gods/outside is that everything that happens has already happened/ i.e. the gods experience all of time all at once. It’s why little kel is the no god. Because he becomes the no god he’s always the no god or something sff. Like in terminator with how Kyle Reese is JCs dad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted October 21, 2018 Share Posted October 21, 2018 14 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said: From what I understand a d remember from random interviews and discussion on here, and I’m terrible at explaining this let alone understanding it, the way time exists for the gods/outside is that everything that happens has already happened/ i.e. the gods experience all of time all at once. It’s why little kel is the no god. Because he becomes the no god he’s always the no god or something sff. Like in terminator with how Kyle Reese is JCs dad. I think you actually got the whole gist of it. It doesn't actually make sense, in that AFAICTell it's not supposed to. There is no way, in Bakker's opinion, to have a world with Meaning/Eternity/God/Souls mesh with Physics/Biology/Evolution/Now. I suspect the No-God exploits these inherent paradoxes in conjunction with the Ark in order to seal the Inside from the gods. Also as the Trickster only Ajokli, alone among the gods, can sort of grasp what happened because these liminal aspects of reality fall under his purview/domain. Whether he (It?) is any position to do anything about I don't know... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted October 21, 2018 Share Posted October 21, 2018 Yeah the way it was described is the gods can’t see the no god but they can see where they can’t see things, a d I guess ajolki was like hey wait a minute... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted October 21, 2018 Share Posted October 21, 2018 Also yeah it’s a paradox it’s not supposed to make sense I guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted October 21, 2018 Share Posted October 21, 2018 7 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said: Yeah the way it was described is the gods can’t see the no god but they can see where they can’t see things, a d I guess ajolki was like hey wait a minute... I think in the AMA Bakker said Ajokli manages to sort of see what's going on, if only by conjecturing from the dimensions of his ignorance. 7 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said: Also yeah it’s a paradox it’s not supposed to make sense I guess. Well Bakker has mentioned reality is sort of akin to the old idea of the Bicameral Mind, with a rational/Order aspect (the Inside) and a emotional/Chaos aspect (the Outside). It makes sense, in a way, because you have this mental aspect of reality coming before Space & Time. But some of it fits together Just Because, and this is how - IMO anyway - a post Singularity civilization can use Science to escape Damnation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.H. Posted October 22, 2018 Author Share Posted October 22, 2018 On 10/20/2018 at 2:30 PM, Sci-2 said: It's interesting that the person who could work sorcery indistinguishable from the world could get the metaphysics of the soul's relation to God & salvation so wrong. But then the Progenitors were probably a 3 on the Kardashev scale and they also got the soul wrong...admittedly their whole planet was anarcane ground... Well, it is probably because Fane described The God, much as Proyas innately does as well, in an anthropomorphized way. In this sense, Fane describes what he wants to be, rather than what is. Fane's insight was keen, but he fails in the final stage of analysis. He realized that the Hundred and Ciphrang share a nature, which is actually very astute. However, he falls right into the same human trap of assuming, actually check that, assigning "humanity" to The God. Fane might have actually known this though. He simply might have been attempting to "be the change he wished to see." In other words, he realized there was no Summum Bonum and no God, the Father, so he set out to attempt to make one. He did have one fantastically "unprecedented" and seemingly Divine tool to do so, the Psûhke. Unfortunately for him, Divine nature just doesn't work like that. His attempt could be rendered such as to "Awake The God" but The God, as a sort of demiurge, couldn't care any less. At least, couldn't care any less about Fane or the Psûhke. I'm really not sure that the Progenitors got the soul wrong though. Certainly they did not come to the insight of Koringhus, because they do not realize what comes before what they imagine comes before, as Koringhus does. So, where Koringhus faces his own personal Apocalypse, in the overwhelming, crushing, unequivocal personal and societal defeat I don't think the Progenitors necessarily faced such loss. At least, almost certainly not at a societal level. So, they were not really much in the position of accepting loss. Indeed, the entire No-God, Ark, Inchoroi plan, which becomes the Consult plan, is specifically designed to avoid loss. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hello World Posted October 22, 2018 Share Posted October 22, 2018 On 10/20/2018 at 7:32 AM, kuenjato said: What would have been truly subversive? To kill *ALL* of the characters at the end, rather than have Akka and Esme and Mir. escape for future installments. Instead, TAE ended as just the typical cut-off for a complications volume of a serial, not too different from Empire Strikes Back or innumerable other "heroes get stomped down but survive to fight another day." That's just rote storytelling. I would have preferred they all get wiped out, except for the kid, who wasn't in harm's immediate path. It's hard to make sense of this, to be honest. Bakker says that he stayed true to his original vision and that with TUC he was trying to accomplish something remarkable and never been done before. His fans are going on and on about this not being a happy ending but If the story continues regularly then it's hard to see what was so different and remarkable about TUC, as you said it's just another "heroes survive to fight another day". Hardly anyone thought of Kellhus as the good guy hero who's death is the end of humanity anyway. If instead Bakker had killed Mimara, Achamian, Esmenet, Serwa etc and the rest of the Ordeal and made it clear that humanity is done (that's probably his original vision as a teenager), then maybe, but Kellhus alone isn't enough to make this the inverse of the traditional happy ending that people are making it out to be. Add to that the fact that the No-God already rose once and was defeated later and you end up with a completely unremarkable "ending". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unJon Posted October 22, 2018 Share Posted October 22, 2018 I think you are giving too much nuance credit to Bakker about why Fanimry is the most wrong religion. I simply go back to the TTT glossary, which says that the central tenants are that God is solitary and transcendent. Both of those tenants are therefore wrong. God is many and immanent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted October 22, 2018 Share Posted October 22, 2018 3 minutes ago, unJon said: I think you are giving too much nuance credit to Bakker about why Fanimry is the most wrong religion. I simply go back to the TTT glossary, which says that the central tenants are that God is solitary and transcendent. Both of those tenants are therefore wrong. God is many and immanent. Well, no. God is probably none of those things. It is not solitary exactly. It is most certainly not immanent - it is not contained as an entity in anything, though it is part of the material world. It is closer to transcendent, but it is transcendent without being conscious, and it is not separate from the real world. God is in everything, and everything is part of God, and so God is something like a solitary thing (in that there is only one of it - it is a singleton) but it is not distinct from anything else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted October 22, 2018 Share Posted October 22, 2018 Bakker did say Memgowa, followed by Anjecis, are the most right. Memgowa sounds like non-dualist to me - he's the guy that says thought can only do violence to the God, that the soul is ultimately illusory, etc. Anjecis said the Outside has less objective reality and more subjective reality. (It's Limbo from Manual of the Planes, or a mix between Limbo/Astral/Abyss from the Great Wheel is my guess). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.H. Posted October 22, 2018 Author Share Posted October 22, 2018 I was also pointed out to me that The Solitary God is presumably the top of the hierarchy of all things. The real God-of-gods, if Sci and I are right or even partly so, is at the bottom of the hierarchy. That is, all Spirits/Souls are The Infinite God's infinite fractures. This is why Ciphrang and the Hundred "devour" souls, to move up the hierarchy they imagine exists. If Koringhus is right, this is the anthropomorphized, individualistic "false ground" that breeds/perpetuates Damnation. This also precludes the Solitary God's existence. The Solitary God couldn't exist unless it were literally Everything, in which case, there would be no one, no thing, to worship it (not even itself). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hello World Posted October 22, 2018 Share Posted October 22, 2018 41 minutes ago, Kalbear said: It is not solitary exactly. It is most certainly not immanent - it is not contained as an entity in anything, though it is part of the material world. It is closer to transcendent, but it is transcendent without being conscious, and it is not separate from the real world. God is in everything, and everything is part of God, and so God is something like a solitary thing (in that there is only one of it - it is a singleton) but it is not distinct from anything else. That sounds like God doesn't even exist and people attribute the natural world to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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