Re: Adept's questions on chaos

From: valkoharja <rintasaa_at_uuSm-2hZdgIJGA6GPaBN0GUzvCll9Dc_xfptBGd-2uFOolYYZTdWxLIx-mShcM6BlGd>
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2007 11:42:20 -0000

Ah. _That_ one.

While it's an interesting bit of sophistry, and something I'd expect to hear from a Gloranthan philosopher, I've never seen it as an objective explanation.

I guess I'll try to type in some of the relevant bits here. From the Cult Compendium:

"[Our] philosophers deduce chaos to be the passionate refusal to recognize the limits of the natural and moral universe. It is part of the mortal condition that this limitation should be vital to decent life for any of us, but in extreme it is manifested in the so-called chaotic creatures in whom it is virtually the sole passion. Chronic discontent with the limited world therefore causes the chaotic creature to ... dispise life and the limited happiness it yields when compared to the possibilities of transcending the world. The chaotic are arrogant: they want to be in the world, but not of it.   This passionate refusal has odd consequences. Whereas a man might decide to commit murder for financial or moral reasons, the chaotic being will consider murder because it is forbidden, and he cannot endure bieng forbidden to act. This refusal of the chaotic to so submit allows him to draw upon the Power of primordial chaos, and thereby partially transcend the rules of the world. Yet those rules still determine the chaotic's actions: you and I obay the laws, because they are laws; the chaotic must disobey the laws, because they are laws. Since even the most powerful chaotic cannot defy all laws at once, they feel forever enslaved by all those checks on their freedom. The true chaotic, sucha as the two-headed dragonsnail, must be then both miserable on Glorantha, and a menace to the societies of it, and a warrior does both the afflicted being and all of usa favor by killing it.
  ...Chaotic features are the consequence of a particular combination of feeling and ... philosophy characteristic of a chaotic spirit, and could not be induced in you or I by anything liess than attunement of a cursed crystal. Less intimate connections, such as the ability of some to converse mentally may allow thoughts and feelings to be known, but does not alter the personality structure....

                                translation by Ray Turney


           

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