Re: A sense of scale

From: Peter Metcalfe <metcalph_at_uzIAnLcFiXvOf7Zq3Z2HRI8fs4WBWJk9f8CTZ7Ovi27IbvxyWVWX2sTrscHEPZT7ChS>
Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2011 18:34:39 +1300


On 11/12/2011 4:15 AM, jorganos wrote:
>> The material innovation in their lives are attempts to the shortcomings in their lives that were once hidden but have become serious.
> Not true.

It is so true.

> In the beginning, Kadenit and his descendants helped create the ideal material environment for a perfect society.

Why did they need to do such a thing? Because the Cosmos had changed. The whole point of the Five Actions is that they were an attempt to understand the increasing gulf between the Malkioni and the Invisible God. Saying that change since the first action cannot be one of decline misses the point that *every* change since the Green Age is one of decline.

> This way, the Kadeniti were doomed to reach a standstill.

The Kadeniti are only "doomed to reach a standstill" through a highly contrived and distorted interpretation of the Five Actions. There's nothing else requiring them to have such a doom.

> IMO the Logicians projected this flaw on the outside interferences which hampered their fractal improvements to the point that made repair of collateral damage take up most of their activity.
The Ancient Malkioni are not Mostali. Their actions should not be understood in terms of Repair of the Cosmos.

> The Enrovalini, who formed the core of the refugee colony in Brithos, perhaps were better off as the Philosophers whose working material was Thought and Mind rather than material things. However, I have a hard time dealing with a population of philosopher farmers and soldiers, and I feel that only the Zzabur caste really participated in the expansion of Knowledge, the rest stagnating as good as they could while providing the infrastructure for the thinkers to follow their ideas.

The Envoralini did not form the core of Brithos. By the time Brithos was established, the six tribes were as remote as the Twelve Tribes of Israel to our age and no longer useful to Malkioni society. The Zzaburi caste was not just the Thinkers but also Writers and Magicians. The Builders Tribe had become Commoners which they shared with the Farmers, Explorers and Sailors. Two new castes, the Fighters and the Leaders, fulfilled functions that were not needed in the time of the Six Tribes. And the Speakers had become redundant because everybody spoke. The Six Tribes had gone the way of the Durevings in Vingkot's time.

> "Their explorations in magic" actually captures my complaint about the West and its material culture. The descendants of the Erasanchula mostly did the magic of being, of performing the assigned tasks of their ancestors in caste, tribe and other concepts. I strongly suspect that the Burtae concept applied to the rank and file people of Danmalastan.

I'm sorry, I really don't understand your complaint. All Malkioni are descended from the True Beings. The farming magic of the Malkioni is for example is derived from their experiences in the mythical times. Same for war magic and what not. So what if the Malkioni are not all Thinkers? Similar degeneration in power could be made about every other human society in glorantha.

>> Before Brithos was the Storm Age Republic of Zerendel, a society that was as vibrant as Dara Happa or the Vingkotlings.
> Sure... if you ask the Zzaburi. I doubt that the farmers went anywhere towards new heights of insight or culture.

So the Vingkotlings and Dara Happans were not vibrant societies because their farmers didn't go anywhere towards new heights of insight or culture? This is what I dislike about your pronouncements. You take some observation (farmers in the Storm Age had it tough), turn it into a major flaw to make unnecessary generalizations. I don't think it productive to do so for the Vingkotlings and the Dara Happans and so I fail to see why the Malkioni and the Zzaburi should be so condemned.

--Peter Metcalfe            

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