The Judging Eye VIII (spoilers)

[unJon]

Here's the quote (from upthread):

First, Ajencis pretty clearly seems to be describing a spectrum. The spectrum ranges from humans -- who are relatively helpless before circumstance -- at one end to the more powerful entities of the Outside -- who dwell in "sub-realities" that conform to their desires -- at the other end. But these "sub-realities" are contained within that larger reality. As much as subjective desire reigns in that sub-reality, both these entities and these sub-realities are still hemmed in by other entities with their own domains and ultimately bound by that larger reality.

I basically agree with this. I think about it as "sorcery" is easier Outside. In Earwa, on the Few can do it. The farther Outside you go, the easier it is to do sorcery (speak and change reality). But even Outside there are other sorcerors speaking their own "sorcery" and some of them might be much stronger than others.

Also, and I feel I always have to ask this, how would Ajencis know anyway?

This. On the other hand, Bakker is on record in interviews saying that one of the premises of Earwa is "imagine that the ancient's view of metaphysics is actually correct."

[Curethan]

Yeh, it's from the entry on the outside in the glossary. Interesting to note the are also two entries for history there. One dunyain, and one for inrithism.

Re: Ajencis: How did Nietsche come up with 'Beyond good and evil' and how did Pythagoras come to describe geometry? But really, its just a contrivance to parcel out information dumps imo.

[Finn]

I was skimming the "What Came Before" section of TJE due to the skirmish here, and I noticed an interesting tidbit. It says that in the course of his torturing of skin spies, Moe learned that the Consult believed they would have the No-God up and running in a "score" of years. IIRC, the gap between TTT and TJE is twenty years. So . . . barring set-backs, the No-God could (should?) be in pre-production as the Great Ordeal is on the move. Probably not news to many, but I hadn't noticed this before.

[Shryke]

Shryke,

The TJE what has come before section goes well beyond the prior trilogy. It goes all the way back to the Inchies crash landing, and explicitly states that they knew about damnation and were going to try to get out of it way back in the beginning. That is just gratuitous lying if it turns out Bakker was just messing with us and the Inchies had know idea about closing the world until thousands of years later when Shae explains it all to them. :rolleyes:

Maybe the Inchoroi did land (rather poorly I might add) for that purpose. Seems a rather strange thing to do personally.

But that doesn't invalidate the point that the rehash section is telling us what we should believe having read the book and not what is necessarily true.

I don't buy it. Shae doesn't know about it until he goes and meets the Inchies and comes back. Why think that the Inchies had all the pieces to realize that they can close the world, but it took Shae to put the puzzle together? We have good evidence that they had already put the puzzle together with the attempted genocide of non-men.

No, we don't. Again, go read the appendix entry on the Cuno-Inchoroi wars again. The Non-men tried to genocide the Inchoroi first. The What Has Come Before section that keeps being referred to in fact states they fought "titanic battles" and had "centuries of intermittent warfare". They had very good reason to want them all dead that had nothing to do with metaphysics.

[Kalbear]

I don't buy it. Shae doesn't know about it until he goes and meets the Inchies and comes back. Why think that the Inchies had all the pieces to realize that they can close the world, but it took Shae to put the puzzle together? We have good evidence that they had already put the puzzle together with the attempted genocide of non-men.

Okay, here's how I figure it went.

The inchies were actually trying to save the nonmen. They fucked up because they didn't account for the Outside, so their fix to make nonmen immortal had the side effect of killing anything that would reproduce. That's the nature of it - once you're alive forever, you can't breed no matter what. But they didn't know that. So they fight to save their lives, fuck up, and evventually go hide in their corner.

Now, they know how to make the No-God, or at least a good chunk of it. But all the No-God is for them is a general to command the sranc hordes. They don't understand what it means or how it's going to affect the world. They still don't understand the connection between the Outside and damnation or humans or anything. They certainly don't know that they have to kill most everyone to seal the world. They've not read Ajenics or other shitty philosophers marauding as cognitive scientists, so they're still sitting around doing fuck-all.

In comes Shae. He has read those cog psych nee philosopher dickweeds, and knows (or at least surmises) that if you could somehow stop most of the humans from living and be an immortal amongst only a few humans, damnation wouldn't be an issue any more. (why he doesn't figure out that damnation isn't an issue for an immortal is beyond me.) But how to do that? How on earth would you stop the flow of souls into the world? He has no idea. He has no concept of the tekne or what it could do. Sure, it's a theoretical exercise that's fun, sorta like asking which parent you'd kill first, but has no practical value.

But then he finds out about the Tekne and what it can do. He finds out about the Inchoroi and their knowledge of damnation. And between the two they figure out a way that no one need be damned again.

[Spring Bass]

A couple of questions:

1. Where does it say in the books that the No-God was already a thing in progress/waiting to be put together when the Mangaecca arrived in Golgotterah? I just checked the TTT Glossary for the "No-God", the "Apocalypse", the "Cuno-Inchoroi Wars", the "Consult", and the "Mangaecca", as well as Kellhus's conversation with Moenghus. I didn't see any references in any of them of the Consult finding any work on the No-God done by the Inchoroi, and the "Mangaecca" entry says only that rumors began to percolate that the School had found a catastrophic way to prevent the damnation of sorcerers - nearly 400 years after they found Golgotterah with Mekritrig's help (and it was nearly a thousand years after that before the No-God went active).

2. How does "anarchane ground" feature in the Ajencis explanation?

3. I wonder if the Soul Doll that Akka has is immortal. I suspect it's not, since otherwise you'd think more than a few non-Consult sorcerers would try getting others to seal their souls into constructs to avoid facing damnation upon death.

The Dunyain are a race of professional liars. They are taught from an early age to attempt to deceive and to attempt to detect deception. Truth isn't holy to that any more than food is holy to professional chefs.

Agreed - their mission is about mastering circumstances that affect them, as opposed to figuring out the truth. That's why they holed themselves up in a more-or-less completely isolated, controlled cave environment for 2000 years. In the former Non-men mansion, they could (almost) completely cut out any outside influences on their populace.

why he doesn't figure out that damnation isn't an issue for an immortal is beyond me

There's always the risk that some unforeseen circumstance might kill you*, not to mention that as long as the threshold is open, the Outside can meddle through ensoulled beings.

* Just look at the millions of dead Inchoroi that are likely screaming in damnation in the Bakkerverse.

[jurble]

Completely irrelevant, but you know how people on Earth used to think the Earth was the center of the Universe, and shit?

Am I the only one who thinks Earwa ACTUALLY IS at the center of a galaxy/universe? The Nail of Heaven is a shit-ton of stars seen edge-on.

[aimlessgun]

Completely irrelevant, but you know how people on Earth used to think the Earth was the center of the Universe, and shit?

Am I the only one who thinks Earwa ACTUALLY IS at the center of a galaxy/universe? The Nail of Heaven is a shit-ton of stars seen edge-on.

I am interested in what exactly the nail of heaven looks like. However I don't think it would mean you're at the center of anything.

So what's the deal with the nail again? Trying to remember...never sets, up towards the pole? 'Nail' implies a long line? Is it just their version of the milky way?

[Bastard of Godsgrace]

Completely irrelevant, but you know how people on Earth used to think the Earth was the center of the Universe, and shit?

Am I the only one who thinks Earwa ACTUALLY IS at the center of a galaxy/universe? The Nail of Heaven is a shit-ton of stars seen edge-on.

We will have to wait for WLW to be sure, but, yes, "Black Heavens" seem to imply exactly this.

[Happy Ent]

So what's the deal with the nail again? Trying to remember...never sets, up towards the pole? 'Nail' implies a long line? Is it just their version of the milky way?

It’s just the North Star of Eärwa. A moderately bright star on the planet’s rotational axis. It looks as if the firmament is fixed around that star, hence nail.

[Nerdanel]

The Nail of Heaven is obviously the pole star. The name is based on real-world mythology. At least the ancient Finns used to believe the North Star was an actual bright metal nail around which the sky turned. Even in modern Finnish what directly translates as the Nail of Heaven is an alternative name for the North Star.

I seem to recall that in Eärwa the Nail of Heaven is the brightest star of all. Inri Sejenus is also said to have ascended to it, so apparently the God lives there.

I think Shaeönanra probably made himself immortal by trapping his soul into something in a manner not entirely unlike the Wathi dolls. There's a good chance he's nowadays inhabiting his own animated corpse.

The Mandate wouldn't know how to do that since that's something the Consult developed on its own, plus doing that would be a serious taboo anyway.

[aimlessgun]

It’s just the North Star of Eärwa. A moderately bright star on the planet’s rotational axis. It looks as if the firmament is fixed around that star, hence nail.

Ah. For some reason I distinctly remembered it being described as a line. Stupid memory...

[Calibandar]

GB

1. Where does it say in the books that the No-God was already a thing in progress/waiting to be put together when the Mangaecca arrived in Golgotterah?

I don't recall that it does say that somewhere. The Mangaecca after all were led to the Ark only after the Cunu-Inchoroi wars, at which point the Inchoroi number had been reduced to 2. TJE states that upon finding them, they bent their own cunning to the plans divulged to them by the Inchoroi. Eventually the No-God was raised, and the First Apocalypse came to be.

. How does "anarchane ground" feature in the Ajencis explanation?

You'd have to explain what Ajencis explanation you are referring to. We were speaking upthread about the Dyadic theory by Ajencis which is found in the TTT glossary pertaining to "The Outside".

Unjon

On the other hand, Bakker is on record in interviews saying that one of the premises of Earwa is "imagine that the ancient's view of metaphysics is actually correct."

Exactly. I was just reading Bakker's 2009 interview wityh Pat and let's pull up some quotes to remind ourselves what Bakker is doing here, becaus he seems to be fairly forthcoming about it.

Bakker:

"In The Prince of Nothing, Kellhus and his father were the parasitic invaders who had to rewrite the established operating system to produce actions consistent with their ends. The authors of the ‘Thousandfold Thought virus.’ In The Aspect-Emperor, Kellhus is the new operating system, continually fending off other upstart viral invaders. And as I’m sure Obama is about to find out, gaining power and maintaining power are two distinct beasts. For Kellhus, the very weak-mindedness that made the former possible is what threatens to make the latter impossible. The more powerful Kellhus becomes, the more removed he is from his followers, the more he has to rely on his flawed worldborn tools to keep the masses in line."

"This is the primary abstraction I try to concretize in The Judging Eye. What would it be like, what would it mean, to live in a world where everything had objective value, where everything was ranked and ordered, so that men actually were ‘spiritually superior’ than women, and so on"

Are there specific themes you wanted to explore in this second series?

Specifically, I’m interested in what it means to live in a world where value is objective - which is to say, to live in the kind of world our ancestors thought they lived in. Could you imagine, for instance, what it would mean to live in a world where, say, the social and spiritual inferiority of women was a fact like the atomic weight of uranium. Biblical Israel was such as world, as were many others.

Other than that, there’s a number of carry-over themes dealing with belief and faith as the levers of action.

[aimlessgun]

Hmph. Really Bakker? It'll be a cold day in hell when he can write a convincing novel where 'spiritual inferiority' is a 'fact like the atomic weight of uranium'.

[Cantabile]

Hmph. Really Bakker? It'll be a cold day in hell when he can write a convincing novel where 'spiritual inferiority' is a 'fact like the atomic weight of uranium'.

If any fantasy author can pull it off, it's Bakker.

[Finn]

Exactly. I was just reading Bakker's 2009 interview wityh Pat and let's pull up some quotes to remind ourselves what Bakker is doing here, becaus he seems to be fairly forthcoming about it.

[snip Bakker quotes about objective reality, etc]

1) Yes, but with regard to the discussion at hand, this doesn't really help us with the "how would Ajencis know" problem. Our ancestors believed many things but few of them believed that they could speak with any authority about the precise nature of the afterlife/divine realm. The unknowability of God/afterlife was a pretty strong tradition. They imagined, postulated, and speculated a lot, but (for the most part) they knew that's what they were doing. Any kind of knowledge of these things would have to come from some sort of divine revelation (dream vision, etc) or from scripture (also divinely revealed). So . . . do we get any sense that Ajencis is basing this on the Tusk (seems possible, I suppose) or on his own personal divine revelation? I've always thought he was more philosopher than mystical visionary or scriptural exegete . . .

2) I've always thought this set of quotes from Bakker works against the reading that belief shapes reality. Back in the day, they precisely did not believe that belief shaped reality. Reality was reality and you believed accordingly. Augustine would have laughed you out of the building if you proposed this.

[Happy Ent]

2) I've always thought this set of quotes from Bakker works against the reading that belief shapes reality. Back in the day, they precisely did not believe that belief shaped reality. Reality was reality and you believed accordingly. Augustine would have laughed you out of the building if you proposed this.

I think this is a valid argument (and, of course, one we’ve debated at length here already), but I don’t buy it.

What Bakker talks about is objectivity. Hell exists. Damnation exists. Snakes are holy and pigs aren’t. Not only in the minds of men (as was the case in our world), but Really. This is the big difference.

How are rules for damnation decided? Why are women inferior? Kellhus gives us a complete and very explicit monologue on exactly that question. His claim, and mine, is that the logic of damnation works in Bakkerverse just as in ours. I.e., it is to some extent malleable, subject to the desires of the many.

Bakker has changed only one parameter (the reality of damnation), exactly the one that he talks about in his interviews. He has not changed the other (the reasons for damnation).

[Shryke]

Hmph. Really Bakker? It'll be a cold day in hell when he can write a convincing novel where 'spiritual inferiority' is a 'fact like the atomic weight of uranium'.

Um, it is one right now. We see it in TJE.

The question is, what does spiritual inferiority mean?

[aimlessgun]

Um, it is one right now. We see it in TJE.

The question is, what does spiritual inferiority mean?

My point is that 'inferiority' is not something that can be factual. Is iron 'inferior' to uranium because it can't make nukes? No. Are women 'inferior' to men if they have different spiritual* properties? No...they just have spiritual different properties.

*by spiritual I mean pertaining to the spirit, which apparently is a thing in Earwa.

But since Bakker clearly isn't thinking in that manner I suppose it is totally unprofitable to look at the books from that standpoint.

ETA: But yes, the real question is what exactly those different properties are.

[Shryke]

My point is that 'inferiority' is not something that can be factual. Is iron 'inferior' to uranium because it can't make nukes? No. Are women 'inferior' to men if they have different spiritual* properties? No...they just have spiritual different properties.

*by spiritual I mean pertaining to the spirit, which apparently is a thing in Earwa.

ETA: But yes, the real question is what exactly those different properties are.

Yes, in the real world.

In the world of ancient religions, this is not true. The pig is dirty and inferior to the cow. Not because it tastes worse or because it likes to live in mud but because it is fundamentally so. God says it's so and therefore it is.

Earwa is the world as the ancients imagined it was, made real. Women are spiritually inferior to men. This is not up for debate, it's a law handed down by fiat from the Gods. And Mimara confirms this. It's not about "spiritually different properties", it's just flat out one is better then the other. In Earwa, Men are spiritually better then women. Fact.

The question is, what does that mean. And right now, we have no idea.