> try to be brief...
About the same length as the message I was apologising for the verbosity of. ;-) Still, drop in the ocean as regards the total volume of this, The Eternal Thread... (And a lot more reasoned than most.)
> OK, I see one instance where we have talked past each other
> here. I certainly don't expect to ever see the complete and
> unabridged holistic objective truth. I'm merely syaing that
> defining bits and pieces here and there as "what really happened"
> is useful.
If it were possible without negating the validity of subjective truth? Sure. It rarely if ever seems to be. Examples keenly sought.
> The cynic would say that I'm searching for a holy grail,
> but if the search provides an insight or three, why not?
It depends how many things get trampled en route... Beware those Grail-shaped beacons! (Don't get me started on _my_ Pendragon character's plans for the GQ.)
> > > 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.
>
> I am probably unclear once again. The "objective" is known only
> to us, looking on Glorantha from the outside. I don't think
> anybody inside Glorantha has deliberately toned down and obfuscated
> anything.
I mean for us, the people describing them. Isn't that how we'd be forced to work, if we woke up one morning with the terrible and awful knowledge of knowing ever ineffable truth about Glorantha? (Or as seems more likely, if we decided to subscribe to some crude GL simplification of it.)
> The "subjective" is all they know. Also, the "subjective"
> can be embellished compared to the "objective".
To me this implies that the "embellishments" are at best decoration, and at worst erroneous, if they conflict with the "objective truth".
> Put it this way then, if the "subjective" works (gives
> access to magic, is provable by heroquest etc.) and fits
> within you culture, is it worse than an "objective" which
> doesn't fit? The "objective" is likely to be way too abstract
> to be practically useful.
>
> I don't think "objective" == better.
I'm not sure what you mean by not fitting. If it's objectively true, then doesn't it _necessary_ "work", without reference to subjective viewpoint? I can perhaps see what you mean by too abstract, but I'm not really clear what sort of thing you have in mind yet.
> > > > 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,
>
> But I'm not Greg. Us non-Gregs are helped by starting points IMO.
Sure, but that doesn't require a Singularity of Truth, a One True Starting Point, as it were. The danger of too much "objective model" is that it starts to seem like a constraint, and one that Greg seems unlikely to bother with. That way lies sub-creation that's not true to Glorantha's spirit, flamewars about the 'correctness' of created/channeled work, and dead-ends like the Misapplied Worship rules, that's my fear.
> > 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...
> I don't think so. I'll continue the painting analogy,
> cheesy as it is. If I want to do a cubist interpretation
> of the view, seeing the actual view makes my job a lot
> easier than just seeing a cubist still life and an
> impressionist painting of the same view.
And how do you propose to see the actual view, in this case? If we don't have the sort of 'access' to it that Greg does, then we risk inferring and over-simplifying what we think _must be_ there, to satisfy inapplicable use of logic, _should be_ there to make a neat Theory of Everything, or _could be_ there on the fragmentary evidence of the ohter "paintings".
> I can agree to some degree here: working bottom-up in order
> to define the "objective" is fine. It's just that working
> bottom-up _all the time_ isn't all that attractive. Top-down
> has its advantages.
You've yet to convince me of one. ;-) (Or indeed really describe one.)
> > 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?
>
> If we want to define the interpretation of the sun for a
> new (previously not described that is) culture, I'd say
> they'd be both more interesting and convincing than if
> we started from nothing. I'll admit though that some
> caution has to applied, to avoid limiting oneself.
Not from nothing, from one's understanding, by whatever method, of that culture. And I'm not clear what you're saying the alternative is, precisely. What is the objective truth, or some illustrative fragements thereof, in this case?
> What I meant was an "objective" definition of the sun
Such as what? (Even handwavingly or hypothetically.)
> > 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);
>
> If culture A has a version that works it is not wrong in my picture.
Nor mine. So what I'm not seeing is how the objective fits in here. If we simply say the objective is the intersection of all subjective truth, or the superposition of those truths, or whatever, we've said very little at all. (Though we may have used some $10 words saying it, mind.)
> Again, how close to or far from the "objective" a "subjective" is
> does not measure its quality.
I don't see how you have have both, and say that they fundamentally differ; unless you're simply describing one thing objectively, another subjectively, and never the twain shall meet. Which is fine to a point, since the Inner World at least out to be darned objective, but I don't see which 'bits' of the otherworld(s) this helps us with.
> One "subjective" is never better or more right
> than another, just different. All within limits of course,
> as there are charlatans and false beliefs.
Certainly. Well, some "subjectives" may have bigger mythic guns, or the weight of public opinion, but that at the least doesn't entirely negate any others, that weren't simply false to begin with. Whichever those are...
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