The Wheel {As a sentient being}

[Tyzack]

I have been thinking about this for a while, with regards to RJs statement that a perfect Creator would never involve himself in his creation, leaving his oppisite, the Dark One, as the only super-human being to be able to influence Creation.

 

I would like to know what is the communities opinion on the actions of the Wheel as a counter to the DO - instead of the Creator.

 

I am struggling to put words to this, but what does the community think of this?

 

Is the intelligence driving the wheel the balance of the intelligence driving the dark one?

[Barid Bel Medar]

Here are some quotes that may help you to better refine your theory

 

INTERVIEW: Jul, 2002

COT: 'Glimmers' Ebook Q&A (Verbatim)

 

QUESTION

Does ta’veren-ness ebb and flow as needed? If Rand, Mat, and Perrin were all ta’veren growing up, it seems that the Two Rivers would have had a lot of odd events occurring, but no mention is made of it.

 

ROBERT JORDAN

You might say that ta’veren-ness ebbs and flows. For one thing, remember that even for someone like Rand, the effects are really occasional, not continuous. Even when he is causing dozens of coincidences in a particular place, many more events pass off quite normally. For another thing, no one is born ta’veren. Rand, Mat, and Perrin only became ta’veren just before Moiraine appeared. You become ta’veren according to the needs of the Wheel. Like the Heroes linked tothe Wheel, who are spun out as needed to try to keep the weaving of the Pattern straight, a man or woman becomes ta’veren because the Wheel has “decided” to use them as an influence on the Pattern. And, no, the Wheel isn’t sentient. Think more of a fuzzy logic device that uses feedback to correct what it is doing in order to do it in the most efficient way.

 

INTERVIEW: Sep 4th, 2005

DragonCon Report - Matt Hatch (Verbatim)

 

QUESTION

At the end of The Great Hunt when Rand and Ishamael were fighting in the air above Falme, they appeared in the sky over many places and my question is whether this is something done by the One Power or something done by the Creator? How did they appear in the sky?

 

ROBERT JORDAN

An effect of the Wheel, really. It wasn't the Creator. The Wheel is more than a simple mechanism. Remember the Wheel can spit out ta'veren, can spit out Heroes as a self-correcting device because the Pattern is drifting from what it is supposed to be. We are not talking about something as simple as a spinning wheel at all, we are talking something more along the lines of the most complex computer you could possibly imagine. There were at that time, two, there were false Dragons that had a chance to create a lot of disruption. By the appearance in the sky at that battle, not just in Falme but in other places, those false Dragons were taken off the board because there was only room now for one, for one Dragon.

 

 

INTERVIEW: May 12th, 2010

JordanCon: Interview with Alan Romanczuk by Richard Fife (Verbatim)

 

RICHARD FIFE

That is a very impressive feat. So, it has been twenty years since The Eye of the World. Looking back, has there been anything that surprised you that the fans clued in on, similar to Asmodean's murder? Or perhaps anything they missed that you thought they should have been all over?

 

ALAN ROMANCZUK

 

One thing that strikes me is people's perception of the Wheel of Time. The Wheel of Time is just a structural device: it has seven spokes which represent the seven Ages.The Wheel turns; people forget about the previous Age and a new Age is entered. It goes around seven times and it starts again from square one. Very similar patterns of events occur in each Age, but they are changed, just as two people can have very similar personalities but still be very different people in many other respects. The same way with the different Ages.

So the Wheel does not have a specific purpose. It does not have a motivation. It is not a conscious being. The Wheel is just there, operating as an organizing principle of the world. Jim played down the religious aspects of all this. There is a creator, but there is not even a notion that the creator is God. The creator, of course, is God, but it is the creator. And the creator is not given much of a personality in these books. The creator is a stand-back kind of entity, less so than the Dark One, which opposes the creator and everything the creator has created, which is mankind.

And so, that's all I'm saying: don't read too much into the Wheel of Time. I think the Wheel of Time is also drawn in part from the Buddhist concept of the Wheel of Life.The Wheel of Life is something that we are on. In creation, we are created in who knows what form, evolve through many, many lifetimes, until we no longer have to be onthe wheel. We have reached our goal, which in Eastern Thought is being one with God, part of the infinite ocean. In Jim's world, it is not so cut and dried. As far as we know, individuals stay on the Wheel of Time forever.

[Tyzack]

Errr...so the Wheel will not prevent the DO from destroying it, but it will weave the pattern in such a way as to make it very difficult for that to happen?

 

How is this not intelligence?

[cwbys21]

The quote of a computer AI kind of answers that. Its the same as a video game's AI isn't really thinking for itself, but reacting to your input along the guidelines of the developers rules....maybe...your character may die but in the end you always win...or something.

[Tyzack]

I hope that this does not descend into a debate about sentience vs intelligence. I was merely questioning if the "balancing logic" that the wheel seems to poses can be seen as a very basic safe guard against destruction by the DO.

 

It is still allowing its own destruction to happen if the souls it weaves make certain choices, but it can, and does, try to intervene to the best of it's abilities to insure that they make decisions beneficial to its own survival.

[Edynol]

Think of the pattern as a firewall and the wheel as the security scan. The DO is the virus and his minions are the .hack algorithms trying to pick apart the Firewall and gain control of the Creators harddrive while the security scan is sending its own algorithms(Ta'veren and their allies) to battle back and keep the computer running properly.

[Tyzack]

Wow, this just got way too nerdy for me...

[Edynol]

Ain't everyone on the net a nerd? Don't tell me I'm all alone!

[emozilla]

(this is a website for discussing fantasy books what do you expect :-))

 

Perhaps the Wheel's only real "prime directive" is to ensure the 7-age structure. If that were so, it would explain why it spins out ta'verean counter-measures to the DO; it's not the evilness of the DO it's fighting but rather just his desire to break the cycle of the ages. If the DO was just content with murdering and other acts of "normal evil" perhaps he'd be fine.

[TheePazuzu]

I’ve always considered The Wheel of time as a program that is being run in Ter'angreal’s and possibly the Creator and the Dark One are just sentient Ter'angreal’s; basically the last of some ancient computers that were used to control the environment of the world. The Dark One having been infected by a virus that’s now out of control and the Creator trying to rectify all the problems it is creating.

[Barid Bel Medar]

Perhaps the Wheel's only real "prime directive" is to ensure the 7-age structure. If that were so, it would explain why it spins out ta'verean counter-measures to the DO; it's not the evilness of the DO it's fighting but rather just his desire to break the cycle of the ages. If the DO was just content with murdering and other acts of "normal evil" perhaps he'd be fine.

 

Pretty much. It's much like anti-virus software, updates itself constantly to combat whatever threats via ta'veren etc.. You are correct to say that if it was just "normal evil" it would be fine. Aside from RJ pretty much saying the same thing, Moiraine explains it in the books, tDR I think. When Perrin or Rand asks why bad things happen if the Pattern makes ta'veren to correct the pattern etc..

 

Basically, it is there to stop the "world" in the form of the Pattern, from being destroyed. Theoretically you could nuke the crap out of the mainlands, but if it doesn't actually rip the pattern apart, no ta'veren to stop you. Or else there would be ta'veren everywhere to stop every little crime.

 

And of course, the Pattern cannot act directly. So it can't just send a lightning bolt to strike someone down if they are trying to do something bad. It creates, or makes people ta'veren to combat these threats.

 

The tricky part is when you get the DO, who is completely outside the pattern. The Pattern can't predict what the DO will do, since its outside of the Pattern, and thus orders from the DO are unpredicted.

 

So while the Forsaken are part of the pattern, the ties they have with the DO create a certain unpredictability, so the Pattern cant anticipate and combat the threat. (this bit is just my own conclusion)

 

So it spins out ta'veren with the power to fix everything up and are guided (loosely) by the Pattern, but there is, of course, no guaranteed success, for the DO can rip the Pattern to shreds, and no ta'veren can fix that once it has happened.

[Dream]

If the purpose of the Wheel is to maintain the structure of the Seven Ages (which I agree with), does this mean that when the Second Age comes around the Wheel will ensure that someone comes along to poke a hole in the Pattern?

 

Taking this a bit further, did the Wheel spin out LTT in anticipation for a need to (temporarily) seal the Bore or did the Wheel spin out LTT to bring about the end of the Second Age (i.e., to both cause and seal the Bore)?

 

Something to think about, Lanfear wanted two things: LTT and power. LTT dumped her, so she went after power...