Aes Sedai and the White Tower

[csarmi]

I can't believe people are arguing the fact that the Yellows (and mostly everyone else) should be out there, helping people.

This must be a joke.

 

Yea sure, people should come to the tower to get healed by the Yellows. 500 miles? No problem.

Actually, the borderlanders should just bring the trollocs and all those creatures in the blight to the tower so that the Green can shoot them down.

With that said, I also believe it would be easier if the male channelers just packed up their belongings and move to the tower too. They can be treated there and no reason for the Red to travel so much.

[Mr Ares]

One of the big problems that the Tower has had is that they have become stagnant. This is due, in a large part, to being the only channeling organisation of note on the entire continent. They have no competition. Other cultures, such as the Aiel and Sea Folk, keep their channelers away from the AS. The Kin keep below the AS radar and so are permitted to exist. That is no longer the case - the Kin are open about thier existence, as are the Wise Ones and Windfinders, and the Asha'man. People have other options, they can turn to places other than the WT. TV's relevance has diminished, and so they will have to adapt to this.

 

AS training does indoctrinate their initiates in the importance of the Tower, but it also discourages innovation and change - Novices are taught to do weaves and must do them over and over again, they're not allowed to channel without supervision. Trainee Wise Ones are shown a weave once and expected to replicate it. The AS value themselves so highly they have a training system that prizes them being very, very careful over anything else. Consequently, they end up with AS who are less likely to innovate, to make new discoveries, and more likely to come up with people who'll do as they were told. Experimentation is bad. And because they don't know how to do certain things, Talents that were once lost are less likely to be rediscovered. No AS can Travel - that's because none are strong enough. When faced with the Seanchan, they disbelieve that the Seanchan will have a significant number of a'dam - because they are ter'angreal, and no AS (and therefore no-one) knows how to make new ter'angreal, so they have to rely on finding them. And finding two of the same type is very rare. They become soaked in tradition, and forget what it's all for. Their attitudes harden, and there's been nothing to shake them out of it on anything more than the individual level since Hawkwing.

 

When faced with rising distrust, they get around this by binding themselves with the Three Oaths. You no longer fear an AS is lying to manipulate you - you fear she's selectively telling the truth to manipulate you. They fail to understand why people don't trust them, and thus are unable to effectively act against that lack of trust. They might reduce it somewhat, but don't actually solve the problem.

 

What do they do to help with the problems of the world? Many things. But they tend to do it from a rather blinkered perspective, which means that whatever good they do is potentially less than what could have been. For example, the lack of hospitals. I think it is pretty clear why they don't set them up. There aren't enough Yellows to go around. The more cities you try and cover, the fewer AS you'll have in each, and so each AS will be faced with an insurmountable tide of people with problems, far too many for the Sisters to deal with. If they relied on Wisdoms to heal most things and only dealt with the things they couldn't deal with, they'd be able to manage, but to most of them it probably doesn't occur to them just how effective non-Power related healing methods mights be, and of course if people are going to see a Wisdom they could do that anyway - having an AS in the hospital wouldn't help in those cases. Their blinkered belief in the superiority of their own methods leads to them underestimating how effective other methods are, and so they don't work alongside such methods. They help where they can but generally don't go too far out of their way to help because they can't help everyone. As for the Greens, they could station people in the Borderlands. But most Trolloc incursions are pretty small scale. If the AS were right on the Blightborder, they'd be too dispersed to be of use against larger attacks, and by being farther back, able to respond in force to threats along the whole line, then most of what gets through will be easily dealt with by the normal soldiers before AS can get there. They wil only be of use at the very largest of attacks - such as the Fall of Malkier. Otherwise they'll do a lot of sitting around, and blow up a few Trollocs that would have been brought down anyway without their help. Because the largest situations, where they will be of most use, will be few and far between they probably think their is precious little point in maintaining a permanent presence - but of course when they are needed they are unable to respnd in time. The Browns consider it their mission to rediscover lost knowledge, tp put it in the Tower library where anyone (who can come to TV) can see it. But they don't make a lot of new discoveries, nor do they do a lot to disperse knowledge, so far as we have seen. They do good. They help. But they don't do as much as they could, and they fail to see that due to their limited viewpoint.

[Puny]

One of the big problems that the Tower has had is that they have become stagnant. This is due, in a large part, to being the only channeling organisation of note on the entire continent. They have no competition. Other cultures, such as the Aiel and Sea Folk, keep their channelers away from the AS. The Kin keep below the AS radar and so are permitted to exist. That is no longer the case - the Kin are open about thier existence, as are the Wise Ones and Windfinders, and the Asha'man. People have other options, they can turn to places other than the WT. TV's relevance has diminished, and so they will have to adapt to this.

 

AS training does indoctrinate their initiates in the importance of the Tower, but it also discourages innovation and change - Novices are taught to do weaves and must do them over and over again, they're not allowed to channel without supervision. Trainee Wise Ones are shown a weave once and expected to replicate it. The AS value themselves so highly they have a training system that prizes them being very, very careful over anything else. Consequently, they end up with AS who are less likely to innovate, to make new discoveries, and more likely to come up with people who'll do as they were told. Experimentation is bad. And because they don't know how to do certain things, Talents that were once lost are less likely to be rediscovered. No AS can Travel - that's because none are strong enough. When faced with the Seanchan, they disbelieve that the Seanchan will have a significant number of a'dam - because they are ter'angreal, and no AS (and therefore no-one) knows how to make new ter'angreal, so they have to rely on finding them. And finding two of the same type is very rare. They become soaked in tradition, and forget what it's all for. Their attitudes harden, and there's been nothing to shake them out of it on anything more than the individual level since Hawkwing.

 

When faced with rising distrust, they get around this by binding themselves with the Three Oaths. You no longer fear an AS is lying to manipulate you - you fear she's selectively telling the truth to manipulate you. They fail to understand why people don't trust them, and thus are unable to effectively act against that lack of trust. They might reduce it somewhat, but don't actually solve the problem.

 

What do they do to help with the problems of the world? Many things. But they tend to do it from a rather blinkered perspective, which means that whatever good they do is potentially less than what could have been. For example, the lack of hospitals. I think it is pretty clear why they don't set them up. There aren't enough Yellows to go around. The more cities you try and cover, the fewer AS you'll have in each, and so each AS will be faced with an insurmountable tide of people with problems, far too many for the Sisters to deal with. If they relied on Wisdoms to heal most things and only dealt with the things they couldn't deal with, they'd be able to manage, but to most of them it probably doesn't occur to them just how effective non-Power related healing methods mights be, and of course if people are going to see a Wisdom they could do that anyway - having an AS in the hospital wouldn't help in those cases. Their blinkered belief in the superiority of their own methods leads to them underestimating how effective other methods are, and so they don't work alongside such methods. They help where they can but generally don't go too far out of their way to help because they can't help everyone. As for the Greens, they could station people in the Borderlands. But most Trolloc incursions are pretty small scale. If the AS were right on the Blightborder, they'd be too dispersed to be of use against larger attacks, and by being farther back, able to respond in force to threats along the whole line, then most of what gets through will be easily dealt with by the normal soldiers before AS can get there. They wil only be of use at the very largest of attacks - such as the Fall of Malkier. Otherwise they'll do a lot of sitting around, and blow up a few Trollocs that would have been brought down anyway without their help. Because the largest situations, where they will be of most use, will be few and far between they probably think their is precious little point in maintaining a permanent presence - but of course when they are needed they are unable to respnd in time. The Browns consider it their mission to rediscover lost knowledge, tp put it in the Tower library where anyone (who can come to TV) can see it. But they don't make a lot of new discoveries, nor do they do a lot to disperse knowledge, so far as we have seen. They do good. They help. But they don't do as much as they could, and they fail to see that due to their limited viewpoint.

 

+1. I´m wondering if the Aes Sedai become stagnant because the people in general are stagnant. You never hear of a farmer somewhere inventing something, or a nobleman stumbling on a discovery like would happen in our world. Maybe this sense of... status quo is in the Wheel´s nature.

[Guest PiotrekS]

One of the big problems that the Tower has had is that they have become stagnant. This is due, in a large part, to being the only channeling organisation of note on the entire continent. They have no competition. Other cultures, such as the Aiel and Sea Folk, keep their channelers away from the AS. The Kin keep below the AS radar and so are permitted to exist. That is no longer the case - the Kin are open about thier existence, as are the Wise Ones and Windfinders, and the Asha'man. People have other options, they can turn to places other than the WT. TV's relevance has diminished, and so they will have to adapt to this.

 

AS training does indoctrinate their initiates in the importance of the Tower, but it also discourages innovation and change - Novices are taught to do weaves and must do them over and over again, they're not allowed to channel without supervision. Trainee Wise Ones are shown a weave once and expected to replicate it. The AS value themselves so highly they have a training system that prizes them being very, very careful over anything else. Consequently, they end up with AS who are less likely to innovate, to make new discoveries, and more likely to come up with people who'll do as they were told. Experimentation is bad. And because they don't know how to do certain things, Talents that were once lost are less likely to be rediscovered. No AS can Travel - that's because none are strong enough. When faced with the Seanchan, they disbelieve that the Seanchan will have a significant number of a'dam - because they are ter'angreal, and no AS (and therefore no-one) knows how to make new ter'angreal, so they have to rely on finding them. And finding two of the same type is very rare. They become soaked in tradition, and forget what it's all for. Their attitudes harden, and there's been nothing to shake them out of it on anything more than the individual level since Hawkwing.

 

When faced with rising distrust, they get around this by binding themselves with the Three Oaths. You no longer fear an AS is lying to manipulate you - you fear she's selectively telling the truth to manipulate you. They fail to understand why people don't trust them, and thus are unable to effectively act against that lack of trust. They might reduce it somewhat, but don't actually solve the problem.

 

What do they do to help with the problems of the world? Many things. But they tend to do it from a rather blinkered perspective, which means that whatever good they do is potentially less than what could have been. For example, the lack of hospitals. I think it is pretty clear why they don't set them up. There aren't enough Yellows to go around. The more cities you try and cover, the fewer AS you'll have in each, and so each AS will be faced with an insurmountable tide of people with problems, far too many for the Sisters to deal with. If they relied on Wisdoms to heal most things and only dealt with the things they couldn't deal with, they'd be able to manage, but to most of them it probably doesn't occur to them just how effective non-Power related healing methods mights be, and of course if people are going to see a Wisdom they could do that anyway - having an AS in the hospital wouldn't help in those cases. Their blinkered belief in the superiority of their own methods leads to them underestimating how effective other methods are, and so they don't work alongside such methods. They help where they can but generally don't go too far out of their way to help because they can't help everyone. As for the Greens, they could station people in the Borderlands. But most Trolloc incursions are pretty small scale. If the AS were right on the Blightborder, they'd be too dispersed to be of use against larger attacks, and by being farther back, able to respond in force to threats along the whole line, then most of what gets through will be easily dealt with by the normal soldiers before AS can get there. They wil only be of use at the very largest of attacks - such as the Fall of Malkier. Otherwise they'll do a lot of sitting around, and blow up a few Trollocs that would have been brought down anyway without their help. Because the largest situations, where they will be of most use, will be few and far between they probably think their is precious little point in maintaining a permanent presence - but of course when they are needed they are unable to respnd in time. The Browns consider it their mission to rediscover lost knowledge, tp put it in the Tower library where anyone (who can come to TV) can see it. But they don't make a lot of new discoveries, nor do they do a lot to disperse knowledge, so far as we have seen. They do good. They help. But they don't do as much as they could, and they fail to see that due to their limited viewpoint.

 

+1. I´m wondering if the Aes Sedai become stagnant because the people in general are stagnant. You never hear of a farmer somewhere inventing something, or a nobleman stumbling on a discovery like would happen in our world. Maybe this sense of... status quo is in the Wheel´s nature.

 

I don't really agree that the people in Randland are stagnant. There are Rand's schools and all these people with inventions came from somewhere. There are also advencements being made in the channeling (new weaves, ter'angreals etc.). And what about Mat's dragons?

 

We are a little bit spoiled with the speed of technological progress nowadays, but it hasn't always been so and it doesn't have to continue that way.

You need to accumulate certain body of knowledge and experiences for the technological progress to accelerate. If you read any kind of timetable of main inventions, you'll see that first there were at least hundreds of years between main inventions, only after some time the process accelerated.

[capuga]

One of the big problems that the Tower has had is that they have become stagnant. This is due, in a large part, to being the only channeling organisation of note on the entire continent. They have no competition. Other cultures, such as the Aiel and Sea Folk, keep their channelers away from the AS. The Kin keep below the AS radar and so are permitted to exist. That is no longer the case - the Kin are open about thier existence, as are the Wise Ones and Windfinders, and the Asha'man. People have other options, they can turn to places other than the WT. TV's relevance has diminished, and so they will have to adapt to this.

 

AS training does indoctrinate their initiates in the importance of the Tower, but it also discourages innovation and change - Novices are taught to do weaves and must do them over and over again, they're not allowed to channel without supervision. Trainee Wise Ones are shown a weave once and expected to replicate it. The AS value themselves so highly they have a training system that prizes them being very, very careful over anything else. Consequently, they end up with AS who are less likely to innovate, to make new discoveries, and more likely to come up with people who'll do as they were told. Experimentation is bad. And because they don't know how to do certain things, Talents that were once lost are less likely to be rediscovered. No AS can Travel - that's because none are strong enough. When faced with the Seanchan, they disbelieve that the Seanchan will have a significant number of a'dam - because they are ter'angreal, and no AS (and therefore no-one) knows how to make new ter'angreal, so they have to rely on finding them. And finding two of the same type is very rare. They become soaked in tradition, and forget what it's all for. Their attitudes harden, and there's been nothing to shake them out of it on anything more than the individual level since Hawkwing.

 

When faced with rising distrust, they get around this by binding themselves with the Three Oaths. You no longer fear an AS is lying to manipulate you - you fear she's selectively telling the truth to manipulate you. They fail to understand why people don't trust them, and thus are unable to effectively act against that lack of trust. They might reduce it somewhat, but don't actually solve the problem.

 

What do they do to help with the problems of the world? Many things. But they tend to do it from a rather blinkered perspective, which means that whatever good they do is potentially less than what could have been. For example, the lack of hospitals. I think it is pretty clear why they don't set them up. There aren't enough Yellows to go around. The more cities you try and cover, the fewer AS you'll have in each, and so each AS will be faced with an insurmountable tide of people with problems, far too many for the Sisters to deal with. If they relied on Wisdoms to heal most things and only dealt with the things they couldn't deal with, they'd be able to manage, but to most of them it probably doesn't occur to them just how effective non-Power related healing methods mights be, and of course if people are going to see a Wisdom they could do that anyway - having an AS in the hospital wouldn't help in those cases. Their blinkered belief in the superiority of their own methods leads to them underestimating how effective other methods are, and so they don't work alongside such methods. They help where they can but generally don't go too far out of their way to help because they can't help everyone. As for the Greens, they could station people in the Borderlands. But most Trolloc incursions are pretty small scale. If the AS were right on the Blightborder, they'd be too dispersed to be of use against larger attacks, and by being farther back, able to respond in force to threats along the whole line, then most of what gets through will be easily dealt with by the normal soldiers before AS can get there. They wil only be of use at the very largest of attacks - such as the Fall of Malkier. Otherwise they'll do a lot of sitting around, and blow up a few Trollocs that would have been brought down anyway without their help. Because the largest situations, where they will be of most use, will be few and far between they probably think their is precious little point in maintaining a permanent presence - but of course when they are needed they are unable to respnd in time. The Browns consider it their mission to rediscover lost knowledge, tp put it in the Tower library where anyone (who can come to TV) can see it. But they don't make a lot of new discoveries, nor do they do a lot to disperse knowledge, so far as we have seen. They do good. They help. But they don't do as much as they could, and they fail to see that due to their limited viewpoint.

 

+1. I´m wondering if the Aes Sedai become stagnant because the people in general are stagnant. You never hear of a farmer somewhere inventing something, or a nobleman stumbling on a discovery like would happen in our world. Maybe this sense of... status quo is in the Wheel´s nature.

 

I don't really agree that the people in Randland are stagnant. There are Rand's schools and all these people with inventions came from somewhere. There are also advencements being made in the channeling (new weaves, ter'angreals etc.). And what about Mat's dragons?

 

We are a little bit spoiled with the speed of technological progress nowadays, but it hasn't always been so and it doesn't have to continue that way.

You need to accumulate certain body of knowledge and experiences for the technological progress to accelerate. If you read any kind of timetable of main inventions, you'll see that first there were at least hundreds of years between main inventions, only after some time the process accelerated.

 

You'll notice that none of the innovations you just mentioned were made from traditional White Tower thinking. They are all from people not associated with the White Tower or by women like the supergirls that have not been indoctrinated in the usual White Tower way.

[Guest PiotrekS]

One of the big problems that the Tower has had is that they have become stagnant. This is due, in a large part, to being the only channeling organisation of note on the entire continent. They have no competition. Other cultures, such as the Aiel and Sea Folk, keep their channelers away from the AS. The Kin keep below the AS radar and so are permitted to exist. That is no longer the case - the Kin are open about thier existence, as are the Wise Ones and Windfinders, and the Asha'man. People have other options, they can turn to places other than the WT. TV's relevance has diminished, and so they will have to adapt to this.

 

AS training does indoctrinate their initiates in the importance of the Tower, but it also discourages innovation and change - Novices are taught to do weaves and must do them over and over again, they're not allowed to channel without supervision. Trainee Wise Ones are shown a weave once and expected to replicate it. The AS value themselves so highly they have a training system that prizes them being very, very careful over anything else. Consequently, they end up with AS who are less likely to innovate, to make new discoveries, and more likely to come up with people who'll do as they were told. Experimentation is bad. And because they don't know how to do certain things, Talents that were once lost are less likely to be rediscovered. No AS can Travel - that's because none are strong enough. When faced with the Seanchan, they disbelieve that the Seanchan will have a significant number of a'dam - because they are ter'angreal, and no AS (and therefore no-one) knows how to make new ter'angreal, so they have to rely on finding them. And finding two of the same type is very rare. They become soaked in tradition, and forget what it's all for. Their attitudes harden, and there's been nothing to shake them out of it on anything more than the individual level since Hawkwing.

 

When faced with rising distrust, they get around this by binding themselves with the Three Oaths. You no longer fear an AS is lying to manipulate you - you fear she's selectively telling the truth to manipulate you. They fail to understand why people don't trust them, and thus are unable to effectively act against that lack of trust. They might reduce it somewhat, but don't actually solve the problem.

 

What do they do to help with the problems of the world? Many things. But they tend to do it from a rather blinkered perspective, which means that whatever good they do is potentially less than what could have been. For example, the lack of hospitals. I think it is pretty clear why they don't set them up. There aren't enough Yellows to go around. The more cities you try and cover, the fewer AS you'll have in each, and so each AS will be faced with an insurmountable tide of people with problems, far too many for the Sisters to deal with. If they relied on Wisdoms to heal most things and only dealt with the things they couldn't deal with, they'd be able to manage, but to most of them it probably doesn't occur to them just how effective non-Power related healing methods mights be, and of course if people are going to see a Wisdom they could do that anyway - having an AS in the hospital wouldn't help in those cases. Their blinkered belief in the superiority of their own methods leads to them underestimating how effective other methods are, and so they don't work alongside such methods. They help where they can but generally don't go too far out of their way to help because they can't help everyone. As for the Greens, they could station people in the Borderlands. But most Trolloc incursions are pretty small scale. If the AS were right on the Blightborder, they'd be too dispersed to be of use against larger attacks, and by being farther back, able to respond in force to threats along the whole line, then most of what gets through will be easily dealt with by the normal soldiers before AS can get there. They wil only be of use at the very largest of attacks - such as the Fall of Malkier. Otherwise they'll do a lot of sitting around, and blow up a few Trollocs that would have been brought down anyway without their help. Because the largest situations, where they will be of most use, will be few and far between they probably think their is precious little point in maintaining a permanent presence - but of course when they are needed they are unable to respnd in time. The Browns consider it their mission to rediscover lost knowledge, tp put it in the Tower library where anyone (who can come to TV) can see it. But they don't make a lot of new discoveries, nor do they do a lot to disperse knowledge, so far as we have seen. They do good. They help. But they don't do as much as they could, and they fail to see that due to their limited viewpoint.

 

+1. I´m wondering if the Aes Sedai become stagnant because the people in general are stagnant. You never hear of a farmer somewhere inventing something, or a nobleman stumbling on a discovery like would happen in our world. Maybe this sense of... status quo is in the Wheel´s nature.

 

I don't really agree that the people in Randland are stagnant. There are Rand's schools and all these people with inventions came from somewhere. There are also advencements being made in the channeling (new weaves, ter'angreals etc.). And what about Mat's dragons?

 

We are a little bit spoiled with the speed of technological progress nowadays, but it hasn't always been so and it doesn't have to continue that way.

You need to accumulate certain body of knowledge and experiences for the technological progress to accelerate. If you read any kind of timetable of main inventions, you'll see that first there were at least hundreds of years between main inventions, only after some time the process accelerated.

 

You'll notice that none of the innovations you just mentioned were made from traditional White Tower thinking. They are all from people not associated with the White Tower or by women like the supergirls that have not been indoctrinated in the usual White Tower way.

 

Of course, the White Tower is not innovative as was so persuasively argued in many posts above

Its structure, code of conduct and training process all tend to value conservatism. Also Aes Sedai think that the peak of their development came during the AoL, so they seem a little resigned to be just pale shadows of this glorious past. Defeatism was a strong feeling in the Tower in the first books. It is a waning world after all, where most important things are in decline so the Last Battle might come...

 

But society at large, on the other hand, doesn't seem more stagnant than any society at a comparable level of development.

[Cybertrolloc]

Offhand I don't think there's much to pull out of the books on the stagnation front.

 

- During the WoP/Breaking, a lot of people, infrastructure and knowledge were lost.

- White Tower and nations rise. Trolloc Wars: same thing happens.

- Another 1000 years of things getting put back together, the war over Hawkwing's empire does the same.

- 1000 years later, here we are.

 

From Mat's memories, armies were larger than currenty in general (see the numbers at Manatheran and so on). I don't think things military changed that noticeably otherwise, at least it's not specifically commented on. On other fronts...not much comes to mind.

 

Also, we can't look at it from our perspective that much, there's the whole Pattern thing :)

 

I'd need to think more about Mr Ares post. Pretty sure that it's mentioned somewhere in this thread that the White Tower is the least integrated into society of the channelers. They get involved, but they try to maintain an aura of infallibility and mystery...I'm sure that could be stated better :)

[Puny]

One of the big problems that the Tower has had is that they have become stagnant. This is due, in a large part, to being the only channeling organisation of note on the entire continent. They have no competition. Other cultures, such as the Aiel and Sea Folk, keep their channelers away from the AS. The Kin keep below the AS radar and so are permitted to exist. That is no longer the case - the Kin are open about thier existence, as are the Wise Ones and Windfinders, and the Asha'man. People have other options, they can turn to places other than the WT. TV's relevance has diminished, and so they will have to adapt to this.

 

AS training does indoctrinate their initiates in the importance of the Tower, but it also discourages innovation and change - Novices are taught to do weaves and must do them over and over again, they're not allowed to channel without supervision. Trainee Wise Ones are shown a weave once and expected to replicate it. The AS value themselves so highly they have a training system that prizes them being very, very careful over anything else. Consequently, they end up with AS who are less likely to innovate, to make new discoveries, and more likely to come up with people who'll do as they were told. Experimentation is bad. And because they don't know how to do certain things, Talents that were once lost are less likely to be rediscovered. No AS can Travel - that's because none are strong enough. When faced with the Seanchan, they disbelieve that the Seanchan will have a significant number of a'dam - because they are ter'angreal, and no AS (and therefore no-one) knows how to make new ter'angreal, so they have to rely on finding them. And finding two of the same type is very rare. They become soaked in tradition, and forget what it's all for. Their attitudes harden, and there's been nothing to shake them out of it on anything more than the individual level since Hawkwing.

 

When faced with rising distrust, they get around this by binding themselves with the Three Oaths. You no longer fear an AS is lying to manipulate you - you fear she's selectively telling the truth to manipulate you. They fail to understand why people don't trust them, and thus are unable to effectively act against that lack of trust. They might reduce it somewhat, but don't actually solve the problem.

 

What do they do to help with the problems of the world? Many things. But they tend to do it from a rather blinkered perspective, which means that whatever good they do is potentially less than what could have been. For example, the lack of hospitals. I think it is pretty clear why they don't set them up. There aren't enough Yellows to go around. The more cities you try and cover, the fewer AS you'll have in each, and so each AS will be faced with an insurmountable tide of people with problems, far too many for the Sisters to deal with. If they relied on Wisdoms to heal most things and only dealt with the things they couldn't deal with, they'd be able to manage, but to most of them it probably doesn't occur to them just how effective non-Power related healing methods mights be, and of course if people are going to see a Wisdom they could do that anyway - having an AS in the hospital wouldn't help in those cases. Their blinkered belief in the superiority of their own methods leads to them underestimating how effective other methods are, and so they don't work alongside such methods. They help where they can but generally don't go too far out of their way to help because they can't help everyone. As for the Greens, they could station people in the Borderlands. But most Trolloc incursions are pretty small scale. If the AS were right on the Blightborder, they'd be too dispersed to be of use against larger attacks, and by being farther back, able to respond in force to threats along the whole line, then most of what gets through will be easily dealt with by the normal soldiers before AS can get there. They wil only be of use at the very largest of attacks - such as the Fall of Malkier. Otherwise they'll do a lot of sitting around, and blow up a few Trollocs that would have been brought down anyway without their help. Because the largest situations, where they will be of most use, will be few and far between they probably think their is precious little point in maintaining a permanent presence - but of course when they are needed they are unable to respnd in time. The Browns consider it their mission to rediscover lost knowledge, tp put it in the Tower library where anyone (who can come to TV) can see it. But they don't make a lot of new discoveries, nor do they do a lot to disperse knowledge, so far as we have seen. They do good. They help. But they don't do as much as they could, and they fail to see that due to their limited viewpoint.

 

+1. I´m wondering if the Aes Sedai become stagnant because the people in general are stagnant. You never hear of a farmer somewhere inventing something, or a nobleman stumbling on a discovery like would happen in our world. Maybe this sense of... status quo is in the Wheel´s nature.

 

I don't really agree that the people in Randland are stagnant. There are Rand's schools and all these people with inventions came from somewhere. There are also advencements being made in the channeling (new weaves, ter'angreals etc.). And what about Mat's dragons?

 

We are a little bit spoiled with the speed of technological progress nowadays, but it hasn't always been so and it doesn't have to continue that way.

You need to accumulate certain body of knowledge and experiences for the technological progress to accelerate. If you read any kind of timetable of main inventions, you'll see that first there were at least hundreds of years between main inventions, only after some time the process accelerated.

 

You'll notice that none of the innovations you just mentioned were made from traditional White Tower thinking. They are all from people not associated with the White Tower or by women like the supergirls that have not been indoctrinated in the usual White Tower way.

I should have been more clear. They are from White Tower women being outside the WT or thinking outside the box, from the Asha´man or the School. But there is no sense, or hint these sort of things happened before the ta´veren came into the picture. And if this is because the last battle is here then we should have a hint of some decling being..ie things collapsing. But to be fair, that might have started before we as readers enter the picture.

[Mr Ares]

I´m wondering if the Aes Sedai become stagnant because the people in general are stagnant. You never hear of a farmer somewhere inventing something, or a nobleman stumbling on a discovery like would happen in our world. Maybe this sense of... status quo is in the Wheel´s nature.

Well, I'd say it's hard to be sure. After all, we only get a small snapshot of the world, so we don't know a lot of what is and has been going on. For example, we know precious little about the farming techniques in the Westlands, what innovations and changes have been made over the last 10, 20, 50, 100, etc. years. We know broadly that much was lost in the big catastrophes (Breaking, Trolloc Wars, War of a Hundred Years), and that since that last population levels have been in an inexplicable decline, but we don't know what advances have been made. Presumably there were some, we just don't know what they were. The academies should help foster technological progress.

[Puny]

I´m wondering if the Aes Sedai become stagnant because the people in general are stagnant. You never hear of a farmer somewhere inventing something, or a nobleman stumbling on a discovery like would happen in our world. Maybe this sense of... status quo is in the Wheel´s nature.

Well, I'd say it's hard to be sure. After all, we only get a small snapshot of the world, so we don't know a lot of what is and has been going on. For example, we know precious little about the farming techniques in the Westlands, what innovations and changes have been made over the last 10, 20, 50, 100, etc. years. We know broadly that much was lost in the big catastrophes (Breaking, Trolloc Wars, War of a Hundred Years), and that since that last population levels have been in an inexplicable decline, but we don't know what advances have been made. Presumably there were some, we just don't know what they were. The academies should help foster technological progress.

 

True, this is just speculation, cause we really don´t know. Maybe Brandon knows, if Jordan left some notes in regards to that subject. But I do get a sense that there was no thought of perserving knowledge, keeping it safe until Rand founded the School. Maybe that can serve as an inspiration to others in Randland. But may some people did perserve knowledge, like the Ogier, they were saddedning that humans had forgotten so much.

 

A totally offtopic question...

Mr Ares: What are you doing in Valhalla, shouldn´t you be on Olympus?

[USURP888]

A totally offtopic question...

Mr Ares: What are you doing in Valhalla, shouldn´t you be on Olympus?

 

 

probably due to a cultural exchange program

[Puny]

A totally offtopic question...

Mr Ares: What are you doing in Valhalla, shouldn´t you be on Olympus?

 

 

probably due to a cultural exchange program

 

Lol. Yeah, the Olympians have many things to learn from Asgard and the dead heroes of Valhalla. =P

[sleepinghour]

A totally offtopic question...

Mr Ares: What are you doing in Valhalla, shouldn´t you be on Olympus?

 

 

probably due to a cultural exchange program

I'm guessing it's because Valhalla had valkyries that served people mead, while the Greek gods at Mount Olympus only had a single male servant.

[Puny]

A totally offtopic question...

Mr Ares: What are you doing in Valhalla, shouldn´t you be on Olympus?

 

 

probably due to a cultural exchange program

I'm guessing it's because Valhalla had valkyries that served people mead, while the Greek gods at Mount Olympus only had a single male servant.

 

Tsk, tsk. But Ares was a womanizer so I´m not surprised! Oki, no more replies to this cause there will be no thread-jacking.

[lilltempest]

Personally, my opinion is thus:

 

As an organisation, the AS are not, at the time of the series, at the top of their game. Often, they are presented as arrogant, and seeming more concerned with people not showing them the respect they "deserve", than with serving the world. This can be seen in the way that other channelers view them. Windfinders hide themselves, because they don't wish to be controlled by the WT. The WO think little of the AS they meet, with few exceptions, and don't wish to be controlled by the Tower. Kings and Queens are supposed to bow to the Amyrlin Seat. And in the meantime, where are the WT sponsored hospitals, where the Yellow Ajah can practice? What use are they in the tower? Where are the schools and libraries from the Brown and White Ajahs? Where are the units of Green AS in the borderlands? Huge amounts of AS seem to live in the Tower for huge amounts of time, when there seems little point, given their Ajahs? We hear that Grey AS are often attached to rulers, due to their ability to solve disputes, which is one of the more useful applications, but what about having some of them run legal courts in various kingdoms? The Black Ajah has infiltrated it to the point that they are the largest Ajah (I believe), and two Forsaken have managed to infiltrate their way into the AS.

 

On the other hand, we know that historically, the WT HAS proved a force for good, in the battle against the shadow. We also know that its training has enabled a lot of women in the Westlands to learn to channel, have access to huge amounts of information, and do a lot of good with it. Moiraine, Siuan, Cadsuane, Verin, etc. All have done great things. All have been enabled, to some extent, by the WT and their AS training. Nynaeve has surpassed healing talents from the Age of Legends, in some cases. Problem is, these AS are often shown as "outside the norm"- they are AS that spend/have spent most of their time outside the tower, or who don't act like AS, or believe that the AS have lost their way. One is Black Ajah. Nynaeve's Healing, though the basic skills come from her training with the WT, has adapted her healing to be more effective than the type traditionally used by the AS. We have Egwene, who is shown to be a great Amyrlin, in that she has united the tower and opened the gates to more novices, but as far as the world outside, whilst she seems to reluctantly agree with some of what Nynaeve says, she doesn't seem to show signs of reducing the arrogance of the AS, and making them more servants of all. The strengthening of the WT is her primary goal, we'll see if this is still the case after the Last Battle.

 

So, yes, in conclusion, the White Tower HAS been a force for good, hugely so in the past. Maybe it can be so again, alongside the Asha'man. It has also enabled some of the main characters of our series to do great things in the war against the shadow, by training them to channel, teaching them about the DR, etc. But as an organisation as a whole, the AS seem more concerned with their own influence and standing in the world, and the strength of the WT, than the fact that TG is right on their doorstep.

 

I agree with all of this. I don't think it's a good sign that Egwene's primary concern (as you pointed out) is strengthening the WT and ensuring that all the monarchs obey her (she wants to replace Darlin because he didn't turn against Rand fast enough when she suggested it to him). Personally, I think the best thing for the WT's future is to have them destroyed entirely - much like the DO's prison, all the rubble must be cleared first. I think losing all of their influence and having to prove themselves to the world would be the best thing for them and for the world. Egwene has proven to be a unifier of Aes Sedai, but her main goal is complete control of everything and making sure everyone bows, scrapes, and obeys. That doesn't bode well for the world. She must learn that she cannot control everything and everyone, that she doesn't know everything, and that people don't have to drop to their knees in awe and obey her every whim. If she doesn't change her attitude, and the WT grows in power and influence again, then Egwene will become the worst tyrant the world has ever seen.

[Durinax]

my opinion is:

 

that they started in a good way, although they shouldnt have grouped together, rather they should have spread out to spread stability, with a central goverment (like the WT) to answer too. the way they have conducted their business though makes them a completely ineffective and useless society, which helps fuel suspicion and dislike (if not hatred) of people with their gift

[XXX]

Force against the shadow or useless meddlers?

 

 

LOL, Has everyone forgotten moriaine already?

 

Yup and she told Rand never to trust any Aes Sedai. Shows how much confidence she had in her other meddlesome sisters.

[XXX]

 

 

you will see first hand of that when the black tower is razed to the grounds in the opening few chapters of AMOL

 

If done,it will not be done by Aes Sedai alone(I expect the Dragon or Logain to lead a team of Asha'man and their bonded Aes Sedai to kick Taim out)..because Aes Sedai are an inferior fighting force compared to the Ash'aman or the Dammne. During the Seachen attack on the tower the leader of the Green Ajah,the Ajah which is supposed to know the most combat weaves had no idea about the weaves being used against them.So you can guess the combat ability of the rest of the nagging sisters. How do you intend them to beat the Ashaman...by having them commit suicide with their insufferable nagging?

 

Both the Ashaman and the Damane will and have had the Aes Sedai for lunch.