Peter Metcalfe: =
>The Brithini are not orthodox westerners anymore than jews
>are orthodox christians.
This is an invalid comparison. Brithini ARE westerners, but jews AREN'T christians. AFAIK.
Also, the definition of orthodox depends on your POV, although I believe I made the same mistake in an earlier post.
______Science Stuff__________
Ah! I think, Peter, I understand where our approaches diverge: I'm looking at science according to some sort of =
linguistic theory which would see a model of reality =
as "knowledge" in the same way
that information stored in the brain is "knowledge".
According to my POV, thought is structured around a set of "pathways" which exist in the memory. They cannot, then, be well distinguished from memory of facts, or "knowledge" per se, because they are stored in a very similar way.
A theory, then, from this POV, is a kind of meta-factoid which remains "true" or "false" or *both* or anything =
in-between until it is proven one way or the other.
I see theories, then, as being in the province of knowledge. Just my POV, and not necessarily acceptable rhetoric according to Occam's razor.
**
Thanks also to Steve Rennel, Jose Ramos, Simon Hibbs
for joining the glass-bead game.
>Both (Illumination and Enlightenment) are just
>ways of making you get into the habit of thinking about things rather th=
an
>just reacting out of habit. =
You describe Enlightenment. Illumination is, I think, something else. Illumination places one in harmony with that-which-is in a more non-intellectual fashion. The illuminate sees thought as a limitation imposed on him by Nature. (It is also a great =
power; I am not an anti-intellectual!) =
Where Enlightenment can be approximated as being clarity of thought, Illumination would be a clarity of unbound consciousness, a purity of soul.
>>ME>Gloranthan ... practitioners of =
>>politics and economics ... ensure
>>the best use of the magics that they or their assistants and =
>>subordinates command. IMO this invalidates many parallels =
>>one could be tempted to draw between RW pre-industrial economies =
>>and the magical economies of Glorantha.
>JR>Don't forget you are dealing with Religion and the Divine. Magic is o=
nly a
>fixed affair for the Brithini. For the rest, tradition and prejudice hol=
d
>more weight. And anyway tradition and prejudice are 100% brithini too.
I cannot agree with you here. One of Glorantha's strengths as a fantasy w=
orld
is it's attempt to describe what a magical world would actually be
like. Magic affects everything, and I cannot see why economics wouldn't =
be affected too. As examples, Red Army magician units are creations of =
magical economics, and so are temples, schools of sorcery, =
gloranthan farmsteads, the city of Pavis, gloranthan adventurers, etc., e= tc..
Any gloranthan leader who got scared away from the management of =
magical ressources available because of his prejudice wouldn't, =
IMHO, stay in charge for very long. Others, more ruthless perhaps, more realistic maybe, or simply more ambitious, would quickly =
remove him, using the powers they commanded.
Therefore, gloranthan economies are radically unlike RW historical equivalents, and, to get back to the beginning of this argument, =
competent theist leaders would certainly encourage those cults and magic use which increased the effectiveness of their leadership, including training lots and lots of healers, and the widest possible availability of the Resurrection spell.
It is of course true, as a RW comparison, that Glorantha has no management schools, and organised leadership isn't something which could be learnt at college. It would =
sometimes be handed down from father to son, mother to daughter, among the nobility. =
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