> > That's worse, then. It implies we have _direct_ access to the
> > ultimate religious truth of the created world,
>
> Of course we have.
Only if we choose to limit ultimate Gloranthan truth to things we can reduce to readily canned summaries, surely. I don't think Greg would claim to have this sort of access, for example. (Though it may not be as 'created' a world for him as for the rest of us, perhaps.) If that's not a fair characterisation of the sort of thing you're looking for, then I wonder if OTOH, you're veering in the direction of the "There must be a pony in here someplace" sort of hopeful-objectivism.
> > and then as an
> > act of deliberate choice, allocate toned-down and obfuscated
> > 'versions' to assorted religions and cultures.
>
> Why do you call them toned-down and obfuscated?
Perhaps I'm being unfair, but if you decide what's objectively true, and then what's subjectively true after the fact and in terms of that, I can't see that it would be anything else. If you'd elucidate what you meant by way of a particular example, perhaps, I might (or might not) be less alarmed.
> > To me this risks
> > not merely choosing one Gloranthan viewpoint over another, but
> > diminishing _all_ of them. If we can just casually _decide_ what
> > the ultimate truths are, it vastly cheapens any genuine value
> > they have,
>
> Why is a _working_ symbolic interpretation of less value
> than the underlying fabric?
I think we're talking past each other, since you keep asking me this, and I keep wondering what the actual issue is. Surely an objective truth is _umambiguously_ better than a subjective one, unless it's in some way (objectively or subjectively) more inaccurate, contradicted or falsified? (Maybe this is my own reductionist side leaking out.)
> > as especially contrasted with RW religious truth
>
> Same thing goes there, except that our world isn't our
> creation, which means we cannot define the underlying
> fabric.
But my point is, that it seems quite impossible to me to have a mythic world anything like a tenth as rich as our own, if one is going to insist that its ultimate religious truths can be summed up in Glorantha: The Ultimate Truth (Product Number ISS9999, ISBN 1-929099-99-X), or available from Greg once he's had enough Carlsberg, or whatever.
> > > Who said the 'objective truth' is superior? As long as a
> > > subjective version is consistent and works it's of equal
> > > value.
> >
> > Why is an objective truth interesting at all, unless it really
> > _is_ 'more true than' the subjective truths?
>
> Because it makes life easier for the (sub-)creators.
The road that is easy does not lead to Realization, glasshoppah. This isn't the way Greg has worked, at least for the most part, and the parts of Faux-Canonical Glorantha that have been explicitly 'decided upon' by this sort of method are the ones that make me the most uncomfortable, and convince me the least.
> > I would agree that
> > what you're suggesting would be true of, say, the 'objective
> > truth' of the God Learners; it was/is better than any given
> > subjective truth in some respects, and worse than others. But
> > that's because it's fundamentally neither objective, not true.
>
> I agree, the GL model is just like the scientific model of
> our world: a workable, highly detailed interpretation, but
> not the truth to end all truths.
Right. And what I'm not seeing is how you can do better than the God Learners, by similar methods, and produce a "Monomyth II: This Time We're Ready for the Gift Carriers" that's an improvement in kind, and doesn't suffer from the same basic flaws. (HW's Mythic Game Mechanical Truths are basically the _old_ MM, writ large, AFAICS.)
> > If you had a genuinely objective, and genuinely true description
> > of Glorantha, how could it possible _not_ be superior to the
> > other truths? And accordingly, how could they not but be diminished
> > thereby?
>
> For starters, the interpretations can be more interesting.
> I feel rather repetitive here, sorry about that, but as
> long as an interpretation works, how can it in any way be
> inferior? Is a painting of a view inferior to the view
> itself?
I'm certainly not going to accuse you of being repetitive, since I don't really understand your point, at least it applies to Glorantha. Please "repeat" some more, until I'm illuminated. ;-)
A painting of a view is inferior to that view, as a rendition of the view. It may have other "merits": portability, lessened transience, and yes, "interpretative" qualities in the artistic sense, particularly as regards either an attempt to convey the artist's emotional response, or to provoke one in the onlooker. To wit, it's a different thing, not simply the subjective and the objective 'versions' of the same thing. (Just how different a thing depending on whom you got to paint it, not that I want to start an art bunfight.)
But how is this similar to the question at hand? What's the objective Otherworldly reality of the sun, that has as "interpretations" Ehilm in his big ball of fire, Elmal doggedly defending the stead, and the Emperor, justly and wisely ruling the Universe? Unless you're going to tell me that the OW sun is some sort of superposition of those things (a dodge that answers Carl's hankerings, perhaps, but doesn't substantiatively get us anywhere for my money). OTOH, if the "paintings" can be as different as Jackson Pollock, Picasso, and Mondrian on the same view, then what the view happened to actually be becomes at best a secondary consideration, and can reasonably be neglected while talking about the paintings...
> > > The 'objective truth' is not an end, just a means
> > > to make better subjective truths.
> >
> > My feeling is that many people see it as an end, or at least as a
> > means to cookie-cutterise the assorted ends.
>
> That is a danger of course, but hardly a reason to stop
> defining the underlying fabric.
I think it is; _precisely_ that. Or at least to define them the other way around: decide what's objectively true in terms of subjective data points, if one really must, and think hard, and twice, and indeed three or four times, before proceeding in the other direction. Given that the Malkioni, the Orlanthi, and the Pelorians agree so little on the true (OW) nature of the sun, how safe would we be in cobbling together a compromise solar candidate from those, and then reverse-engineering a few more sun gods from those? And more to the point, how interesting and mythicly convincing ground would we be on?
> > What objective
> > truth might we decide to joy down about Chaos, say, or the Sun,
> > that would actually help us fleshing out the different 'takes'
> > (to put it mildly) that exist about those things?
>
> If we have a definition of the Sun and a (pre-)history for
> a people, won't it be easier to infer how this people would
> react to other mythic occurrences, what interpretations they
> would make of it?
_For a people_? Yes. That's called "myth". Myth isn't objective, though, and is as you say, particular to one people; isn't that the "problem" people are raising? If what you want is instead a single 'objective' pseudo-history, then you get precisely the Monomyth. One decides that culture A is wrong about _that_, because cultures B, C, and D all more or less agree, so the Truth is clearly the Obvious Compromise between them (the favoured GL method); one decides that on _this_, sadly, they can't agree at all; so we'll replicate the mythic entity being being accounted for, and retain the separate myths in mesocosmic miniature, if we really must (thus all the different origin myths for what on the face of it seems like the same thing).
Sorry for the length, all, but since it's a big topic ("Truth", indeed! <g>) it perhaps merits it.
End of The Glorantha Digest V8 #53
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