[Scott Bakker]

Damn straight, Zee. Since coming back to the web I've tried to lay down some ground rules for myself - it's way too easy to use MB's as an excuse not to write.

I think I see what you're saying, D. There's actually quite an extensive discussion of this at the Three Seas forum - and the question of whether it is at all possible to transcend the 'circle of before and after' via the Logos becomes a pivotal plot point later on in the series.

I'll just say this: the Dunyain are very impressed by the fact that certain things, like numbers, logical operations, geometric shapes, do not age. It doesn't seem to make sense, for instance, to say that the triangle has aged since the time of Pharaoh.

[Dawnstorm]

and the question of whether it is at all possible to transcend the 'circle of before and after' via the Logos becomes a pivotal plot point later on in the series.

Not surprised, hints are there, most obvious to my eyes in Cnaiür-Khellus scenes; but already implied in the 2nd prologue. Why else would they hide away? Why would they fear contamination?

I'll just say this: the Dunyain are very impressed by the fact that certain things, like numbers, logical operations, geometric shapes, do not age. It doesn't seem to make sense, for instance, to say that the triangle has aged since the time of Pharaoh.

One of the things I ignored to feel like an arrow and not like a bomb. p.558/559 in my Orbit edition.

***

I really like the way you personify propositions and yet make them not mere examples, but people.

[Gary Wassner]

I would like to ask you a question. Now this is a fantasy forum, not a philosophy forum (though I am not quite certain there is much of a difference aside from the tropes) but since your books are laden with ideas and so subliminally directional, if you could explain what you have in mind, I would be grateful.

I am sure it is not a coincidence that you use the phrase, 'the self-moving thought', while Hegel used the concept of the self-thinking thought in his Phenomenology, and Aristotle, the thought that thinks itself, in his Metaphysics. Are you offering a new and different perspective here? Or is your self-moving thought the process whereby the universe arrives at its own fully developed self-counsciousness, actualized as spirit, or is it meant to be more Aristotelian and independent of the universe in that sense? Or, do you have something entirely different in mind here? Are the lines between noetic and the material being dismantled?

[Scott Bakker]

This is a zinger for me to be tackling a 7:30 AM.

Ah, but the tea is warmy and steamy, and as usual you've set the nails quite nicely, Gary.

The notion of characterizing thoughts in the Three Seas as 'moving souls' is definitely Aristotelian in inspiration. You'll notice that not once in the entire trilogy do I use the word 'mind,' which actually a quite modern interpretative spin.

At the same time, the Dunyain notion of the absolute, of reaching the point of self-moving thought is Hegelian in inspiration. What the worldborn take as a given, the Dunyain have come see as a goal, as something to be achieved: an unconditioned soul, unfettered by the darkness that comes before.

Since this book was some 20 years in the making, I think I've long lost any real control over its 'meaning,' but one of my central thematic interests lies in exploring the modern dilemma of nihilism in the context of a fantasy world ontology. On the one hand, the more we learn about the physical basis of consciousness - the brain - the more it seems that staples of conscious, lived experience - things like meaning, normativity, choice, the now - are deeply deceptive. On the other hand, the quicker technology transforms our society, the more fanciful our traditional belief systems become, the more we fall back on consumerism, which is to say, a 'pointless' belief system of more for more's sake. (When you have no real idea of what the 'meaning' of your existence is, then all you have to work toward are the satisfaction of your biological drives. This is embodied in the bumpersticker proverb: 'He who dies with the most toys wins.')

Those are the most important pieces. But I'm loathe to put them together, especially before TTT has come out.

[Gary Wassner]

Well, my questions were pretty much rhetorical anyway. ;)

There is a very wide gulf, maybe even an uncrossable gulf, between desire and satisfaction, longing and fulfillment. The words describe states of two very different kinds and I am not sure that the sense of a causal chain linking them is accurate at all. The origins of the first impulse may be totally misconstrued to begin with, and what we choose to alleviate it may be just learned, almost pathological, behavior. More for more's sake. The idea becomming the object which then becomes the idea again.

So, in overcoming man and man's psychological, physiological and sociological limitations and prejudices, the Dunyain seek to act in harmony with the physical world, in so far as they can tap into the stream of life, or rediscover it in an unfetterd state? I hesitate to call it consciousness, but for lack of a better word, do they seek to attain a level of consciousness that transcends judgment and moves itself? But do they have any interest in purpose, or is that irrelevant to their cosmology, just a hindrance or a concept they would look at as nonsensical?

Like you, the dilemma of nihilism is for me a real one, not easily overcome. It's so interesting that the process of writing a fantasy series for you, as for me, seems to mimic that effort. Though it seems always doomed to fail, as if the nature of life is defined in part by longing and striving and therefore, eternal lack of fulfillment. Everything else is temporary as long as life continues. And what an ironic contradiction in terms that is! Death is all that ends the cycle. Death as ultimate fulfillment. Oddly, that's what I've been writing about in my last two books, more and more so. But my character, Colton, who in the beginning of the series was an almost prototypical evil force, has evolved into one of the most complicated, almost sympathetic, victims of this dilemma.

As I said earlier, philosophy is just fantasy with a different vocabulary, and maybe not as much fun. Are you having fun yet?

[Scott Bakker]

I always have fun with fantasy, er... I mean, philosophy. I think... I'm confused now. Which one was that Tolkien wrote again? ;)

Lately I've been thinking of the Dunyain search for unconditioned consciousness in neurophysiological terms. In neural terms, what we call 'knowledge' really isn't all that difficult to understand in principle (the difficulties arise when we try to plug the experience of knowledge into that functional picture). It's just our brain rewiring itself in response to it's environment in ways that allow it to intervene in its environment. Physical reality is like a vast lock of locks, where the tumblers possess an infinite number of combinations: do this, and that will be unlocked, do this... and so on. Our brains are simply a set of thieves tools that can adapt themselves to more and more permutations, unlock more and more things.

Given this analogy, the Dunyain have embarked on the multigenerational journey to develop the ultimate set of picks, the one that can unlock the universe in its entirety, and so step outside its circuit. In a sense, they are lock picking machines.

Does that analogy help? I think it makes plain what one of the allegorical candidates for the Dunyain might be.

[Dawnstorm]

Does that analogy help? I think it makes plain what one of the allegorical candidates for the Dunyain might be.

Quantum decryption bots? ;)