Contest of wills

[randsc]

If we're going to argue that Tuon resisting rand is nothing more than what the pattern dictates then I guess we could argue that everyone in the whole WOT has no willpower at all but are just being used by the pattern as it requires.

 

This is what really bothers me when people say that characters act in a certain way because 'The Pattern required it'. Everything happening due to the will of the Pattern is intensely depressing if you think about it. It means that there is no free will, everyone is a slave to the Pattern and the Wheel, and that Rand's epiphany on Dragonmount about second chances and whatnot was a load of bull because you'll be just as much a slave to destiny in your next life as you are in your current one.

 

The cosmology of the Wheel of Time is deterministic. It just is. Sorry if that's depressing.

[Pygmalion79]

The cosmology of the Wheel of Time is deterministic. It just is. Sorry if that's depressing.

Thus: Moridin.

[zidfrekle]

My vote goes to Birgitte

[SuperFade]

The cosmology of the Wheel of Time is deterministic. It just is. Sorry if that's depressing.

 

I don't have much of a problem with the cosmology. I have a problem with everyone attributing everything being the 'Will of the Pattern'. It seems like a cop out. If the Pattern is omnipresent and undefiable then it can just arrange for itself to be saved from the Dark One with no problems whatsoever. The DO will never have a chance of winning since the Pattern will always ensure that the right events unfold to ensure its continued existance.

 

It makes me think that Moridin was actually correct when he said that the Pattern needed to be destroyed. My hope is that in the end the DO will be destroyed, the axle of the Wheel will be broken and linear time will come into being. The idea that the world will cease to be if the DO is destroyed has always seemed silly to me; a cage doesn't disappear when you kill the prisoner within it. But that is a discussion for another topic.