{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1011",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1011,
    "subject": "Questions Keep Questing",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-07-20T04:11:00+00:00",
    "last": "1998-07-20T04:11:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0017-0044@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-07-20T04:11:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Questions Keep Questing",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Adam,\n\nFWIW I didn't take your post in a querulous mode.  And I'm glad that\nsomething I wrote seemed clear and enlightening, but of course I was\nonly shooting in the dark and I can't hope to hit a homer every time,\neven if it is a room full of ancient Greek poets who are blind, just\nto mix metaphors (and this one is for raster--don't think I didn't\nlaugh on that homer quip).\n\nI'm comfortable with the paradoxes I hold in suspension on this one.\nIf I can continue to explain what I see, maybe you can see it even if\nyou don't particularly believe it.\n\nThe Peter Principle is about the triumph of mediocrity, I think.\n\nIl Principe is Machiavelli's work about amoral statecraft.\n\nPeter Wright's papers on the \"Fictions of the New Sun\" provide a\nMachiavellian reading (which, in turn, makes Severian's narrative\nmuch closer to Herbert's DUNE series than Tolkien's LOTR).\n\n\"Sirens of Titan\" is another good touchstone and I'm glad you brought\nit up.  This is the \"sarcastic\" or \"cosmic joke\" answer to the Big\nQuestion, and I think we can all agree that it isn't an\noverwhelmingly fitting solution to the Briah/Yesod situation.\n\nSome of your questions can be answered: The situation facing Severian\nrides a tightrope between free-will and pre-destination.\n\nThis by itself is a huge topic.  Philosophy, physics, metaphysics,\netc.\n\nIn practical terms, we rejoice that Severian took the brown book,\nrather than Canog's Book of the New Sun, because this \"opens the\nloop\" and makes the oracular power of the tales work their magic on\nSeverian, which then helps him behave in a certain way, which is then\nfaithfully recorded as Canog's Book of the New Sun.  If Severian had\ntaken Canog's, it would have been a closed loop \"blueprint\"; Severian\nwould have been reduced to being a robot--and maybe would have\nresisted doing it, and the whole thing would collapse.\n\nLikewise, nobody with any authority and/or knowledge could ever \"tell\nSeverian the truth\" or \"what to do\" or anything like that.  For the\nsame reason.  They tell him just enough and just in time.  He has to\nbe guided to the right decision, but he cannot be simply told, nor\nforced to do something.\n\nMaybe we could liken it to developing a photograph: it is done in the\ndark, by mysterious rituals and formula, but there is a goal in mind\nand it begins to materialize until finally it is done and we can turn\non the light and see it clearly.\n\nAs for why does Yesod care.  Well, one model is that Briah and Yesod\nare two halves of the same creature--one is male and one is female,\nto use the crudest analogy.  They must have an exchange of\ninformation to ensure their own future survival: Urth gets a New Sun,\nand Yesod gets the next stage closer to Hieros . . . who will then\nmake hierogrammates.  It all is a reproductive rite; as if homo\nsapiens were to guide australopithecus toward becoming homo erectus,\nso that homo erectus would give way to homo sapiens.\n\nWhich brings us to another dicotomy: the breaking of the human\nexperience into Pure Order and the wild things.  Cyriaca's tale of\nposthistory tells us that the First Empire was founded upon the one\n(Order) and brought down by the rejected other (non-order).  The\nimplication being (I think) that there should be a balance, within\nthe individual and within the culture.\n\nNot to be \"zen\" about it, nor too smug, but questions about the very\nmysterious first half of URTH should not be focused entirely in the\n\"logical\" or \"rational\" mode.  If Order leads to brick walls of\nconfusion, see if Non-order can lead to a doorway.  If \"modern\nscience\" can't answer, try \"cave painting poetry\" instead.\n\nIf you haven't already, you really should read Wright's essays.  You\nmight find that they fit you like a tee.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}