Gloranthan Positivism?

Graham:
> You appear to want to know answers from a point of view outside
> Glorantha. That viewpoint doesn't exist. Glorantha has always been
> developed from the inside only. We, as outsiders, may know more than
> any Gloranthan *does* but we don't have any answers that a Gloranthan
> *couldn't* know.

Julian:
> I'll quibble with that, although only in a minor way, because there is a
> crucial difference between what we can know and they can : we can know (or
> decide in our Gloranthas) an entire range of answers and realities pertaining
> to Glorantha that no Gloranthan could possibly know, it's true, but more
> importantly our vision of Glorantha is firmly based on the written word and
> therefore constitutes positive *knowledge*, whereas an actual Gloranthan would,
> because of the possibility of HQ challenges et cetera, be forced to base his
> belief system on faith, even if this is just faith that his gods are actually
> what they present themselves to be, ie "Orlanth is the King of the World" for
> example ; the Lunar Empire is challenging this assertion...

I'd quibble with calling that a quibble; more like 180 degrees opposite of what Graham was saying, as best as I could judge...

I think I have to disagree with you both; it's _possible_ to have, essentially by fiat, an outside PoV in the sense Graham seems to mean, and in some sense useful -- perhaps for the purposes of my game, I want to predetermine that yes, Orlanth really _is_ the King of the Middle Air (or contrariwise, that the Red Goddess is). Hopefully in the interests of dramatic tension, I don't share this decision with my players... Or equally, let's suppose that Greg or Mark decides to inform us of one or other such fact. In what sense is this more positive knowledge than a Gloranthans experience of this truth? (Or these truths...) In one sense, it's entirely less "positive", as it's beyond any verification, whereas experiential knowledge has at least vicarious verification available to it.

A further question is: are such 'facts' about the world, which by assumption are unverifiable within it, a "good" thing to have? In the sense of "useful campaign assumption", I've already stipulated that they are, in some sense. But in the broader, "diagrams of the ineffable" sense I'd say they are not, especially wherein they're represented as being in any sense a "better" class of knowledge than the other. To pick up on the example of HQ challenges, let's say, these are not flaws in one's perception of Gloranthan reality, they are aspects _of_ that reality; a truth that omits such considerations is distinctly suspect, rather like classical physics kvetching about the 'imperfections' of quantum mechanics, if you will.

Cheers,
Alex.

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