Since the WOT is about seven ages. Do you think we are entering a new age?

[BookLover]

William B. Yeats eloquently showed about how humankind moved from one age to the next in the Second Coming.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

 

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

 

We appear to be in a transitional age now. Being a pro-humanist since I took note of all the sci-fi I read especially the warning from Battlestar Galactica about cylons (AI), what are your thoughts?

[wastingtime]

It definitely feels like we are transitioning through/into something right now. I can't help feeling it won't be good, but then again I'm probably just a pessimist...

[VooDooNut]

I used to be a humanist, but we humans are cruel creatures. Even the fewest of the worst of us can cause such overwhelming catastrophe while the passive remainder plods along toward the edge of our own mortality. If a new age does come, let it be one spared the pains of humanity. I think it would be better off.

 

I also suspect we will destroy ourselves in mind, or body, or both, long before our AI creations have the sentient capabilities to do so themselves.

 

Happy Sunday, ya'll!

[Juan Farstrider]

Wow, very thoughtful comments. Thanks everyone for sharing. 

I think being bombarded with slogans like "build back better" and "the great reset" indicates that there is a reshuffling that some are pursuing on behalf of us all. 

There are also certain cycles that have been observed in the geologic record that indicate we're due for a big change. 

There are also indications that something's a-brewing in predictions and warnings from Marian apparitions. "Whoa, hold on there little fella" you say, "that's quite a stretch from what we all see in the media and what geophysicists see in the geologic record to ... well crazy-talk". Maybe so, I won't contest that.  But the consistency of these warnings and their spacing across time and where to whom they occurred, to me they indicate something-- especially when seen as pieces of the same puzzle the other more hard evidence are part of. 

And it isn't just geophysics and stratigraphy that indicate there are cycles of disaster. Mass extinction events are seen punctuating the paleontological record as well, that coincide with the other cycles observed. Many questions about plate tectonics, that we just assumed would have easy answers, are still unanswered while the details about the structure of the earth make easy answers less forth-coming. The amount of water in the earth at great depth is surprising, especially since not long ago many assumed beneath a certain depth water could not exist. The relationship between electrical activity in the earth and in upper layers of the atmosphere at and before earthquakes is surprising, but only getting more firmly established every few months as new studies and papers are published. The movement of the magnetic poles, and the bulge of the earth's core (around Indonesia, where one of the poles seems to be heading) is also ... interesting. 

I think what ever is up will surprise us, but the geologic record is filled with frightening things. But, what else would it have? If you see excavation and dump trucks and all sorts of mess, you'd say "what a mess is going on", but a beautiful new building needs all that to happen. Then you tear the building down and rebuild elsewhere and you see no building, but the mess. Not a perfect analogy, but I think it's important to consider what can and what simple can't even be expected to be seen in the geologic record. 

Edited January 30, 2022 by Juan Farstrider
spelin'

[Asthereal]

If we discover the One Power soon, I'd say we'll move into the Second Age.

As far as I can tell, that discovery should be the event that gets us into the Age of Legends.

 

It's interesting to speculate and try to make WoT work in the real world. I'd say at least one of the Ages (potentially two) must be an Age without humans, lasting hundreds of millions of years. Maybe Rand's work means the Dark One is now safely tucked away for several Ages, meaning we won't need humans for a while (my personal theory is that the reason this world, humans, the Wheel and reality itself exist is solely to keep Shai'tan locked up and busy). If we don't need humans for a bit, they might go sort of extinct by the end of the Fourth Age, and the end of humanity might get us into the Fifth Age, which might last super long and introduce dinosaurs and the like.

 

Another possibility might be that this world has existed for four billion years or so before the Creator decided to use it to lock up Shai'tan, added humans and created the Wheel, turning time into a cycle. But the Breaking happening thousands of times should mean that at some point we won't encounter dinosaur bones and fossils anymore, making this theory a little less likely. And we know we're not the first cycle, as for instance the legend of Thor's hammer Mjolnir quite obviously comes from Perrin's new hammer Mah'alleinir. We just got the wielder wrong. ? 

 

Anyway, I don't think about WoT much at all. Really.

[Juan Farstrider]

3 hours ago, Asthereal said:

Anyway, I don't think about WoT much at all. Really.

I really wish we could click both a "like" and a laugh sometimes, and for this post (the whole post, not just the part that made me laugh) it's especially so. 

[Asthereal]

6 hours ago, Juan Farstrider said:

I really wish we could click both a "like" and a laugh sometimes, and for this post (the whole post, not just the part that made me laugh) it's especially so. 

Glad to have brightened someone's day.

 

A thought: I am somewhat worried about microplastics being literally everywhere. Is this an indication of us being in the so-many-eth cycle? Or is it just humanity's infinite stupidity? Hey look, this is cool! Let's make tons of it and regret it a few decades later. Cool new power you found there. Let's bore into it, even if we don't need it at all. Oops, that's Satan. Sorry! Bloody Mierin, think before you act!

Also, I wonder if I'd fit into the Brown Ajah okay. ? 

[Juan Farstrider]

Stupidity is usually the right explanation. It's worth making a distinction between ignorance and willful stupidity though. 

[Asthereal]

3 hours ago, Juan Farstrider said:

Stupidity is usually the right explanation. It's worth making a distinction between ignorance and willful stupidity though. 

True. Humans mostly just have overambitious tendencies and little regard for consequences. If we were to discover a power somewhere, we would definitely try to access it. It's just how humans work. RJ's take on this feels very realistic.

 

Though when we found out about the microplastics, it's not like we stopped making them. Though maybe that's just the darkfriends inevitably choosing evil. ? 

[BookLover]

I too have been just observing and watching all this darkness occur. I remember when I was younger I tried to warn people, but they thought I was crazy. I have not had much time to research Jordan, but he knew about geophysics, astrophysics, history, cultural studies, forbidden archaeology, and warfare. However, I think he was into sacred geometry and pursuing psychic abilities because we all have psychic gifts. What is positive is since the darkfriends have come out in the open, some people are finally waking up. My concern is AI. I just do not understand what Sci Fi fans that are in the computer field do not heed the warnings of Battlestar Galatica. At least for me, you cannot go wrong when you choose the light.  

[SinisterDeath]

Fiction =/= Reality.

Jordan wasn't a prophet, and the wheel of time books are not a holy set of scripture... I don't know why this needs to be stated every year... but it does...

[Juan Farstrider]

4 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

Fiction =/= Reality.

Jordan wasn't a prophet, and the wheel of time books are not a holy set of scripture... I don't know why this needs to be stated every year... but it does...

If fiction had nothing that was analogous to reality it would not resonate with anyone. The more people can find that resonates with reality as they see it, the more meaningful the fiction becomes for them. I think that's the gist of this thread even if it seems to read sometimes like people looking for proof of what they might see in the real world in the books, or read sometimes like people are getting the "which is a subset of which" switched around. 

[SinisterDeath]

On 2/11/2022 at 1:20 PM, Juan Farstrider said:

If fiction had nothing that was analogous to reality it would not resonate with anyone. The more people can find that resonates with reality as they see it, the more meaningful the fiction becomes for them. I think that's the gist of this thread even if it seems to read sometimes like people looking for proof of what they might see in the real world in the books, or read sometimes like people are getting the "which is a subset of which" switched around. 

My statement still stands.  
Wheel of Time is a work of Fiction, that takes place in an alternate universe with laws that are incompatible with our own universal laws.

We are not in the Wheel of Time "universe, and the "world breaking" due to "Channelers" freeing the dark one, isn't going to happen in our reality.

 

I'm merely hoping to reassert some semblance of reality for those that are teetering on the edge of madness, before they've become so fanatical about a work of fiction, that they've begun to believe that book is reality.

[Asthereal]

On 2/12/2022 at 8:44 PM, SinisterDeath said:

My statement still stands.  
Wheel of Time is a work of Fiction, that takes place in an alternate universe with laws that are incompatible with our own universal laws.

We are not in the Wheel of Time "universe, and the "world breaking" due to "Channelers" freeing the dark one, isn't going to happen in our reality.

 

I'm merely hoping to reassert some semblance of reality for those that are teetering on the edge of madness, before they've become so fanatical about a work of fiction, that they've begun to believe that book is reality.

 

I believe the official term for this stance is the "no fun police".

Of course WoT isn't real. No one here really believes it is.

But it's just a lot of fun to speculate and puzzle out the what ifs.

[SinisterDeath]

10 hours ago, Asthereal said:

I believe the official term for this stance is the "no fun police".

Of course WoT isn't real. No one here really believes it is.

But it's just a lot of fun to speculate and puzzle out the what ifs.

Don't be so sure about that. You do remember what the word "fan" is based on, right?

[Revenant13]

On 1/30/2022 at 12:37 PM, VooDooNut said:

I used to be a humanist, but we humans are cruel creatures. Even the fewest of the worst of us can cause such overwhelming catastrophe while the passive remainder plods along toward the edge of our own mortality. If a new age does come, let it be one spared the pains of humanity. I think it would be better off.

 

I also suspect we will destroy ourselves in mind, or body, or both, long before our AI creations have the sentient capabilities to do so themselves.

 

Happy Sunday, ya'll!

im an alien and believe human be no smart unless smart, so alien brain believe. 

[Revenant13]

On 2/11/2022 at 7:56 AM, SinisterDeath said:

Fiction =/= Reality.

Jordan wasn't a prophet, and the wheel of time books are not a holy set of scripture... I don't know why this needs to be stated every year... but it does...

lol the prophet Jordan... why would someone think these are prophecies? isn't there prophecies in the book about the "prophecy" someone believes in? 

[Mailman]

On 2/13/2022 at 6:44 AM, SinisterDeath said:

My statement still stands.  
Wheel of Time is a work of Fiction, that takes place in an alternate universe with laws that are incompatible with our own universal laws.

We are not in the Wheel of Time "universe, and the "world breaking" due to "Channelers" freeing the dark one, isn't going to happen in our reality.

 

I'm merely hoping to reassert some semblance of reality for those that are teetering on the edge of madness, before they've become so fanatical about a work of fiction, that they've begun to believe that book is reality.

The bible has as much facts backing it up as the wheel of time does. And look at the damage that work of fiction has done.

[Dagon Thyne]

If you go by the official book timeline, we are in the first age. 

Robert Jordan specifically included references to modern society, such as Mosk and Merc, the two giant brothers fighting with spears of fire (American and Moscow (Russia) fighting with nuclear missiles) Quen Lisbeth who rulled the World was a reference to Queen Elizabeth and the British Empire.

Lenn, who walked on the moon, and his daughter (can't remember her named) who flew on a eagle of fire are a jumble of references to the space race.  Lenn is supposed to be John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth.  The legend attributes other astroanughts accomplishments to him.  The giant Eagle is a reference to the space shuttle.  

 

There are plently of legends from the First Age that are references to modern society, because in the Wheel of Time universe, the books take place in the far future, thousands of years from now.  They even have a Chrystler hood ordament in a museum at one point, and the character who finds it (either Elayne or Nynaever, I can't remember) thinks it's strange because the material is softer than it looks (It's made of plastic, which hasn't been made since before the AoL)  

 

 

The second age begins when the global society is united due to the discovery of the One Power.  

Edited March 4, 2022 by Dagon Thyne

[Revenant13]

18 hours ago, Mailman said:

On 2/12/2022 at 12:44 PM, SinisterDeath said:

My statement still stands.  
Wheel of Time is a work of Fiction, that takes place in an alternate universe with laws that are incompatible with our own universal laws.

We are not in the Wheel of Time "universe, and the "world breaking" due to "Channelers" freeing the dark one, isn't going to happen in our reality.

 

I'm merely hoping to reassert some semblance of reality for those that are teetering on the edge of madness, before they've become so fanatical about a work of fiction, that they've begun to believe that book is reality.

The bible has as much facts backing it up as the wheel of time does. And look at the damage that work of fiction has done.

uhm... i thought that we established Jordan wasn't a prophet...right? And if ur talking about the book of Revelation, than be worried about that not on a simple discussion, with ALL due respect. Seriously, with all respect. 

[Mailman]

1 hour ago, Revenant13 said:

uhm... i thought that we established Jordan wasn't a prophet...right? And if ur talking about the book of Revelation, than be worried about that not on a simple discussion, with ALL due respect. Seriously, with all respect. 

No I don't believe Jordan is a prophet but the prophets in the bible where not really prophets either.

 

I have no respect for the bible or religion as a whole it has brought more harm and damage to the human race than any other factor in our history.

 

The WoT still has as much factual basis as the bible. If people came to worship the creator and renamed Satan to Shai'tan from the WoT books thousands of years ago and tacked onto the end of it that you now had to have faith rather than direct shows of powers there would be the same level of proof for both.

[Revenant13]

we all have our own religions here, so don't kick me off the chair because I mentioned the book of revelation. just leave it at that--what was once a simple conversation has been demented into something else, and I propose we do not stray from the original intent of said conversation. 

 

Agree? *reaches out to shake hand* *with hopeful smile*

[Mailman]

1 minute ago, Revenant13 said:

we all have our own religions here, so don't kick me off the chair because I mentioned the book of revelation. just leave it at that--what was once a simple conversation has been demented into something else, and I propose we do not stray from the original intent of said conversation. 

 

Agree? *reaches out to shake hand* *with hopeful smile*

I was initially just responding to a post in this thread that was basically saying it was lunacy to suggest that the WoT (a fictional series) could be equated to the the real world when I believe there is as much factual evidence for it as the bible.

 

It is hardly "demented" to mention the bible when the quote at the start does so and you yourself reference it via mentioning it links to revelations.

 

I am more than happy to speak in a friendly manner on the subject.

[SinisterDeath]

1 hour ago, Mailman said:

I was initially just responding to a post in this thread that was basically saying it was lunacy to suggest that the WoT (a fictional series) could be equated to the the real world when I believe there is as much factual evidence for it as the bible.

There's a difference between pointing out the various easter eggs that "show" it is set in a fictional future earth, and then there's actually believing the wheel of time is our future.

Take it from someone who's been apart of the DM community nearly 20 years, and has encountered my fair share of posts and emails from people who actually believe the books are reality.

I actually wish I was allowed to share some of the emails we get from people who want to "spread the word of Jordan", and tell us all about how prophetic the novels are.

[Asthereal]

11 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

I actually wish I was allowed to share some of the emails we get from people who want to "spread the word of Jordan", and tell us all about how prophetic the novels are.

 

How disappointed you must be in humanity... ?

I take back my "no fun police" remark.

 

Also, poor BookLover, who just wanted to launch a nice speculative thread about Age transitions, now having to see it derail into this within one page of posts.

Edited March 5, 2022 by Asthereal