Metaphysics of the Dark One

[WhiskyJack]

i've seen no evidence of the dark one's near euqality to the creator yet. he and his minions mainly seem to spin their wheels and lose a lot, in the long run. maybe we'll RAFO different.

 

 

In an interview RJ has confirmed that DO and Creator are very much on same power level.

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

he said so many things. . . my personal feeling is if it doesn't come across in the books, it doesn't come across.

 

and as i've said, a lot of things about the WOT don't make sense to me, and this dark one business is one of the big ones. i'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. i stated my opinion as asked by the OP and i'm content to leave it there.

 

you know, how people can't accept how he wrote certain characters (*cough*egwene*cough*) and nothing will ever make them understand it any different? this is one of those things for me.

 

and once again, back to your story.

[Guest PiotrekS]

you know, how people can't accept how he wrote certain characters (*cough*egwene*cough*) and nothing will ever make them understand it any different? this is one of those things for me.

 

What can I say?

 

But to the point, I think that certainly it is very unclear what exactly is the nature of both the Creator and the DO. It seems RJ purposefully wanted it that way, first to keep the story interesting and also to give himself some creative freedom.

 

If it was obvious that the good Creator is able to smash the DO any time he wants the whole conflict would lose any sense, because there would literally be no way it could be lost by the Light. RJ took from different theologies and created something that served his purposes for this particular story and there were plenty of those where the good and evil deities were equally powerful and where life was an eternal struggle.

 

It is funny though that he took the Last Battle (Ragnarök, Apocalypse) and the cyclical time, which would make this momentous Last, Final, Decisive Battle just one of millions Last Battles fought without end...I am really curious whether this quote from RJ about the idea of linear time being the best invention of the Greeks will turn out to have some bearing on the final resolution. Maybe the Wheel will indeed be broken and the DO will die with it, therefore leaving the world more like we imagine it to be now?

[Guest PiotrekS]

Edit: double post, sorry.

 

Could somebody please delete it? It seems I can't...

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

('k, please don't take this as any sort of argument or debate, just a small clarification of my personal opinion which is only mine and doesn't have to be anyone else's - while i do think the creator could destroy the DO in the WOT any time he wants, i believe he does not want to because the DO is part of his plan for creation, as is the struggle between "good" and "evil" or more properly, between life and death, order and chaos, because life can't exist without death and order can't exist without chaos, to define them, to make them meaningful. . . i am obviously unable to state this in a way that anyone outside my head can understand, so let me just say, go egwene! )

[Guest PiotrekS]

('k, please don't take this as any sort of argument or debate, just a small clarification of my personal opinion which is only mine and doesn't have to be anyone else's - while i do think the creator could destroy the DO in the WOT any time he wants, i believe he does not want to because the DO is part of his plan for creation, as is the struggle between "good" and "evil" or more properly, between life and death, order and chaos, because life can't exist without death and order can't exist without chaos, to define them, to make them meaningful. . . i am obviously unable to state this in a way that anyone outside my head can understand, so let me just say, go egwene! )

 

Hehe, that was funny (I mean Egwene part) It is good I'm strong and I'm even avoiding a newest Egwene-bashing thread

 

Of course your opinion is equally valid as mine and I have neither evidence nor will to try to disprove or dispute it. I have other feeling from the books, but it is always great when the text can be interpreted in many ways...

 

As to the deeper argument you're making -the sense of evil, death etc. - which is present in every religious or philospophical debate, I will say only this (since this is a WOT forum, we should stick to the topic and all that)-I used to think the same but now I don't. I don't think life needs death to exist nor happiness suffering to make it meaningful or to be defined by it...

 

Look at children playing and laughing, they're yet unaware of their own mortality and the limits of their existence. Yet they're happy and their life is meaningful and rich with emotions, feelings and thoughts, their happiness everything we could wish for.When you look at them you might also feel happiness, but always bitter sweet, because you're aware it will pass and be gone, their childhood and happiness and sweet innocence doomed to fail and change from the first second they began breathing.

 

Is your bitter sweet happiness, already marked by sadness you know will come sooner or later, somehow better, more meanigful than the simple joy of children who are happy for the moment and have no idea that this moment is so precious because it will not last forever? Maybe it is, I don't really know. Although, I can no longer accept with full conviction the arguments that without death our lives would be less meanigful, without suffering our moments of happiness less precious. Maybe it is true, but we can't know, bacause we have never seen any world where it would be possible. We are not really able to imagine life neverending, happiness not soured with suffering and life that is just good being, without any ultimate goal we would strive to reach. Because our life is everything but.

 

And all that is somehow connected to WOT

[Mr Ares]

The phrase "Lord of Chaos" means something like a fool. The Darksiders use it to refer to Rand, not the Dark One.

When? When do they refer to Rand as the Lord of Chaos?

 

The Feast of Fools

Celebrated in Tammaz (in Arad Doman and the Borderlands) or Saven (everywhere else), the exact day varying according to locality. A day in which all order is deliberately inverted; the high perform low tasks (running errands, serving at table, etc.) while the low do no work and give orders to their usual superiors. In many villages and towns the most foolish person is given a title such as Lord/Lady of Unreason/Misrule/Chaos or King/Queen of Fools. Not an honor sought, but for that one day everyone has to obey whatever orders, however foolish, are given by the chosen one. (Called the Festival of Unreason in Saldaea; the Festival of Fools in Kandor; Foolday in Baerlon and the Two Rivers.) Note: In Tear, Illian, and the southern half of Altara, the time between the Feast of Abram and the Feast of Fools is considered the most propitious for a wedding.

Now who do you suppose that the Darksiders consider "the most foolish person" or the "lowest person" whom they might decide to allow to "rule" temporarily? Whom do they want to spend his time making things worse through foolish decisions preparing the way for the "true" chosen rulers of the world to return? Is there any person but Rand?

 

This is what the Dark One means when he tells Demandred to "let the Lord of Chaos rule." He is saying, "Let the Dragon do this thing for now. The time will come for the rightful rulers--just me really, but let's pretend that you might be one too Demandred--to return, but right now we're going to let the Lord of Chaos rule and let his foolishness serve our ends." What ends were those? The Dark One and Moridin knew that the purpose was the destruction of the pattern. They wanted the pressure of ruling to drive Rand insane. But the others could plausibly have thought that Rand was simply meant to muck things up while they prepared their armies etc. to take over his dispirited subjects.

I refer you to KoD Epilogue, where Taim uses the phrase to refer to Reds Bonding Asha'man. I refer you to KoD Prologue, where Semi uses the phrase to refer to her murder of the Imperial family. In PoD and CoS, Graendal and Sammael reflect on orders to spread chaos. I refer you to LoC, where someone privy to the "Let the Lord of Chaos rule" order imprisons Rand in a box - which I consider a funny way to let someone rule. So no, they never use it to refer to Rand. A BWB quote and some very loose interpretation is not enough to overrule the evidence in the books.

 

 

opinion - nothing in creation can successfully defy the will of the creator, including the dark one.

How very Christian. However, I would disagree, firstly on the grounds that Shai'tan is not part of Creation, and secondly because the theological underpinnings of the series are not Christian - the dualistic theology is more akin to Zoroastrianism, for example.

while christianity may have its roots in kabbalah, the "theology" i opine here, while not completely kabbalistic (because there's no dark one in kabbalah, or anyone that could rival the creator, cause, he's like, the creator), is the nearest i can come to fitting the DO into anything that makes any sense to me. personally, i find it a bit silly that any "creature" could be outside "creation" by definition.

Think of it this way: you create a model house, with little model people in it. This house is your creation, and you are its creator. Things exist outside your model, outside your creation - including yourself, and the dark one who wants to smah it to little bits. Now imagine that instead of a model house, you have the entire universe, and instead of you, you have a god - that combines with the notion of other gods, and potentially other creations. I'd say that is the situation we have here.

 

as for why kabbalah (and not christianity, not that there's anything wrong with that), that's because the WOT is chock full of kabbalistic imagery, vocabulary, concepts, what have you. and lots and lots of freemasonry, though i don't know how that relates to kabblah, as i do not build anything.

Well, I don't know much about Kabbalah, so I'll have to take your word on that one, but there are concepts from a variety of sources in the series - Arthurian legends, Norse mythology, Hinduism, Manichaeism, Christianity. Of course, Christianity does have a "dark one" in the Devil, who is a lesser figure than God. Hence my identification of your theory as being somewhat Christian.

 

he said so many things. . . my personal feeling is if it doesn't come across in the books, it doesn't come across.

A fair point. While his interviews and suchlike can provide interesting background information, the books are the primary canon and you shouldn't really need anything outside the books to know what's going on. Given that both the Creator and Shai'tan are mostly offscreen - one unwilling to interfere, the other largely unable - I'd say it's hard for the books themselves to give a huge amount of traction to either side in such an argument.

 

 

It is funny though that he took the Last Battle (Ragnarök, Apocalypse) and the cyclical time, which would make this momentous Last, Final, Decisive Battle just one of millions Last Battles fought without end...I am really curious whether this quote from RJ about the idea of linear time being the best invention of the Greeks will turn out to have some bearing on the final resolution. Maybe the Wheel will indeed be broken and the DO will die with it, therefore leaving the world more like we imagine it to be now?

Personally, I felt that theory was much stronger before TGS. To go from Rand's epiphany - cyclical time gives everyone a second chance - to the creation of linear time seems a little bit odd. Especially as this was all planned for one last book.

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

hi PiotrekS - regarding the innocent joy of children, may i just say lord of the flies, and leave it at that. apologies for thread derailment, i didn't forsee all this.

 

hi Mr Ares - thanks for explaining that in a way i can understand. and i agree that there's not enough in the books to objectively support any conclusion on the subject of the OP. if what i understand you to be saying is what you are saying.

[Guest PiotrekS]

hi PiotrekS - regarding the innocent joy of children, may i just say lord of the flies, and leave it at that. apologies for thread derailment, i didn't forsee all this.

 

hi Mr Ares - thanks for explaining that in a way i can understand. and i agree that there's not enough in the books to objectively support any conclusion on the subject of the OP. if what i understand you to be saying is what you are saying.

 

Hi Cindy That was just an example but I get your point.

 

Mr Ares - you made some good points. Rand's epiphany certainly allowed him (and us) to see some sense in cyclical time, but this coin has two sides - you get the second chance to do it right, but also to do it wrong (if you did it right last time). And the third chance, and the forth...

What's the mistake in Ishamael's reasoning? He is right if the probability of DO winning in every one turning of the Wheel is bigger than 0... He is wrong if the DO cannot in fact ever win.

[Durinax]

I see it more as the DO pushing against a solid wall, he knows he cannot push it over unless it is chipped away from the other side so that is why he gets followers

[Stitch]

But does he NEED those followers? Or are they merely there to kill or annoy any masons who might come and try to repair the wall?

 

edit: Ishamael's arguments are quite sound, however he does not account for the possibility of a complete loss for the dark one, only set backs. It may be possible for the dark one to face a final defeat - however Ishamael cannot perceive a way that this might occur (one of the main reasons for this is that he may consider such a loss to be the result of a struggle of might vs might, in which case the DO is more powerful than anyone except maybe the creator... since the creator does NOT take a hand then if it is a contest of pure might then the DO can never lose... however it may be possible for the DO to face absolute defeat without being overpowered. Personally I dont Ishamael accounts for this possible scenario... because it assumes some sort of critical flaw in the DO which can be exploited (so serious a flaw that even humans might prevail)... and thus far the DO has shown no such flaw...