Time

From: Nick Effingham <wal_at_eff.u-net.com>
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 1996 21:03:48 +0000


Quick, get the torches!! Light the fires!!! Call for the Gift Carriers!! A God Learner speaks... :)
 Before I carry on, I'm going to start by saying that I'm not really sure whether Time did or did not exist before the COmpromise but I'm going to put my lot with the Orlanthi, because there's just too many damned Dara Happans around nowadays :)

Chris Lemens writes about Time:

> The way to think about pre-Time is simply to eliminate references to time
in your >normal thought processes. Easy, huh? ;-)

Actually, I think that this is pretty close to the mark.

>This seems wrong because it confuses temporal order with logical order. The
>older (RQ2) materials say that the God Learners came up with a "logical
>sequence of events" pre-Time. This clearly implies that logical
>relationships such as causation still apply.

 The GL were wrong IMO. Sorry, but the GL were dangerously mad, and messing around trying to make everything conform to one single image is where they failed. You *really* need to have a word with the Gift Carriers.

> So, as I said before
>"eliminate references to time in your normal thought processes", but leave
>causation intact.

 Ahaha!! Explain then how Chalana Arroy, who was in Hell awaiting the coming of the Devil after he was killed by Urox, was also on the surface healing Urox after his battlw with the Devil! I can in fact think of a few answers of my own, but none of them truly satisfy the question.

> Hence, you can still be hungry, fatigued, or dead because all of those
>conditions are effects of causes. In fact, we know that people did die in
>pre-Time, or Larnste and Daka Fal would not have needed to separate the
>spirits of the dead from this living.

 I never said that people didn't die, nobody did. Death was a result of some person who commanded the Death rune coming up and killing you. Frex, I chop off your head. Unfortunately, injured as you are, you're still alive. But if I had a copy of Death then I could cast Sever Spirit and force you to follow the path of Daka Fal and go to Hell. All Death was is a particulary nasty form of teleport (go from here to hell, do not pass go, do not collect 200 lunars...)
 According to an Orlanthi, hunger and fatigue are merely the result of malign spirits inflicting it upon you, frex you never get tired etc... until you enter the realm of Daga, or the Hellions.  Nobody died of age because their biological functions broke down, and they stopped living from "old age". They grew old and died because their souls aged. They saw too much, and the more they saw, the more weary of life they grew and the more weary of life they grew, the "older" they got. Eventually, someone completley tired of life and passed from this world into the next.

>Likewise, in pre-Time, one could measure causality (not Time, which did not
exist) per
>Peter Metcalfe's examples--turning the Red Sands of Time and the Plentonian
>Year Count (which surely got their names after the fact) could each lead to
>an estimate of the number of years that had passed during pre-Time.

This is a failing point. Considering that time did not exist in pre-Compromise Glorantha then the amount of turnings of the glass don't matter. If you had two hourglasses on opposite sides of Glorantha, they might measure different periods when they were brought back together. Why? Because causality does not exist. Simple. The Compromise forced time to be the same all over Glorantha (sorry Einstein, no twin paradoxes in the world of Glorantha).
 What also seems quite odd to me is the exact amount of years that passed in pre-Compromise Glorantha according to GRoY. Why is it always in orders of 10,000 years etc...?

> I rather like Oliver's
>second post about the advent of Time being a transition from three to four
>dimensions and challenging us to measure our existence in five.

Hmm, very philosophical and quite obviously right.

> The logical
>consequence would be that Brithini, Kralori, and (amazingly) Trolls really
>were measuring time while us Jrustelans were sitting around unaware of its
>existence.

On the opposite of the fence this could in fact be seen as true. Consider, a race of people so involved in their gods that it does not matter that time exists, only the events that gods partake in. Time is meaningless. As the gods partake less and less, normal mortal life takes meaning and time becomes relevant and is measured.

Wait there.. I'm arguing with myself! Trust a Shaman of Thed to destroy his own arguments...

Nick E.

- -------------------------------------------------
Nick the Shaman of Thed
E-Mail:wal_at_eff.u-net.com
http://www.personal.u-net.com/~eff
I thought Britain was Dorastor without broo, but then Sandy made it all clear to me.
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