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Bakker LV - Nau's Ark


.H.

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1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

In the first book a young Kellhus in Ishual looks at a mountain range and compares its arcing curves to the back of a beautiful woman (or something along those lines - H. probably has the quote). 

Which makes no sense if the only women he's ever seen are the whale mothers. 

Hahaha. Yeah. I caught that too when he was doing the meditation. I just chalked it up to bad writing. Kellhus also compares a skin spy to a shark and there was little reason to believe he had any experience with sharks or knowledge that they had cartilage for bones. 

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35 minutes ago, .H. said:

Well, this is true but it's not the Prologue (it's chapter 17 of Darknes):

There are ways to explain this, because Koringhus knew what the "First Mothers" looked like too.  The simplest of course is that they still had paintings or representations of women, but if you are dead set to have it make no sense, then of course it doesn't.

The simplest explanation is bad writing. Same as the shark comparison I mentioned. 

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1 minute ago, noshowjones said:

The simplest explanation is bad writing. Same as the shark comparison I mentioned. 

Sure.  But it isn't the only one, or then necessarily the "best" one.  Unless your only aim is out to prove that Bakker is just a bad writer.  In that case, OK, but I'll often disagree.

There is no reason to assume the Dûnyain threw away all their books that dealt with "empirical knowledge."  In fact, since their aim was the elevation of rationality, it would be rather dumb to throw away books that contained facts about the world.  Those books could easily have contained all sorts of information, including physiology and basic zoology.

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17 minutes ago, .H. said:

Sure.  But it isn't the only one, or then necessarily the "best" one.  Unless your only aim is out to prove that Bakker is just a bad writer.  In that case, OK, but I'll often disagree.

There is no reason to assume the Dûnyain threw away all their books that dealt with "empirical knowledge."  In fact, since their aim was the elevation of rationality, it would be rather dumb to throw away books that contained facts about the world.  Those books could easily have contained all sorts of information, including physiology and basic zoology.

Yes. That’s possible. Bakker is just pretty imprecise in his writing. I do think he’s a middling writer. Not great and not terrible. I kept reading because he’s a great storyteller. Which is why I felt so much disappointment at the conclusion of tUC. 

Ill address your longer reply to my post shortly when I make it back to a computer. Too much to write and quote from a phone. 

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1 minute ago, noshowjones said:

Yes. That’s possible. Bakker is just pretty imprecise in his writing. I do think he’s a middling writer. Not great and not terrible. I kept reading because he’s a great storyteller. Which is why I felt so much disappointment at the conclusion of tUC. 

Ill address your longer reply to my post shortly when I make it back to a computer. Too much to write and quote from a phone. 

Well, we are about to need a new thread here, because we are at the magic number right now.  So maybe save it for a new thread.

Anyone with suggestion for a new title?

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On 11/5/2018 at 3:31 PM, Kalbear said:

(an aside: it would have been a completely horrible message if the Dunyain women were supersmart and willingly did this because they also accepted that this was the best way to get to the Logos. That would have really pissed people off, to the point where I"m genuinely surprised Bakker didn't go for that).

Didn't this have to happen at some point? Or did the brutalization of women happen early on, perhaps near the beginning of the Dunyain project.

I suspect part of the Dunyain failure is their spiritual weakness, and this stems from the actions they took with regards to their women. OTOH, one might think that the times Bakker has said he's a misandrist would've seen the men logically bow to women.

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After which fact?  That interview was in 2008.  Yes, Eärwa is more patriarchal to display how bad it would be if we actually lived in a world that our pre-modern ancestors thought we lived in.  That is, if the world really was determinately patriarchal as people thought it was.  In the same way that the world was as meaningful and moral.  In the same way that the gods  were real.  That Eärwa is akin to actual Hell because of this.  That fact that you object to the character of Eärwa proves Bakker's point: that the pre-modern world is sexist and capricious and akin to Hell.  If he included token female roles, or empowered more female characters, he would be saying instead that the gross, arbitrary nature of Eärwa isn't so bad, because you could transcend it if you just really tried.  But the fact is that Eärwa is morally stacked against this, so much so that it is basically impossible.  And this is what should offend our modern sensibilities.

Except that's not what Bakker actually says. Instead he tries to argue for "realism". If the point was to paint a symbolic hell then arguing from realism makes no sense. 

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It's weird how we have cultures in real life who distort the neck of a woman by putting rings around it and call that beautiful, but the Dunyain idea of woman couldn't be distorted? Maybe the shape of the mountain range the reader imagines just happens to match his own idea of feminine form?

Of course saying this is like talking to Oscar the grouch - Oscar says scram. Case closed.

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2 hours ago, Sci-2 said:

Didn't this have to happen at some point?

Well it seems pretty clear that indeed was the arc. The original generations of Dunyain women (who could walk so as to be refugees that got to Ishual) agreed to the logic of it, but this eventually leads to latter generations who didn't get that choice and have their tongues cut out so as to not collude with others in the rape chamber. Of course it wouldn't be a rape chamber if the latter generations of Dunyain women agreed to the whole thing, it'd just be kink that they consent to fuck the guy who catches the leaf first. Would that kink really piss anyone off? I doubt it. It's the race to the bottom that's makes a real conflict. There's no conflict in a story of consenting sex based on how well you did at sports.

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