{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2945",
    "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": 2945,
    "subject": "mishima death cult",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "2002-02-10T21:26:37+00:00",
    "last": "2002-02-10T23:32:29+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0202-126@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "maa32",
        "address": "maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu"
      },
      "date": "2002-02-10T21:26:37+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) mishima death cult",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Mantis wrote:\ntranscendent in the Mishima death cult way<"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I'm so glad Mishima came up in this debate.  If we pare down his ideas to \ntheir essential level: beautiful things should be destroyed before they become \nugly -> by destroying something you provide it with an immortal beauty that \nsurpasses its temporal existence ... with people this involves dying at your \nbest to achieve immortality (kind of like Bruce Lee).  To that we can throw in \nsomething about returning power to the Emperor, but I think Mishima believes \nthat only because it is the most aesthetically pleasing doctrine (and we have \nheard \"loyalty to the monarch\" expressed in Malrubius' lesson in Shadow of the \nTorturer by Wolfe).  \nWhat would Wolfe feel about this?  Wolfe can be transcendent, and death is the \nmost obvious apotheosis ... but destroying yourself would not seem to be a \ngood manner of going about things ... but we have the suicide of Thecla, her \nexperience with the revolutionary which proves that internal conflict is the \none that mankind need fear the most, her glorification through Severian (she \nis NOT really punished for her suicide -> she lives on in Severian [then \nagain, maybe that could be a punishment]).\nHorn also gives his life in what could be called suicide by relinquishing the \nbody of Silk ...Silk may have tried to kill himself.  And we have the possible \nstruggle between Pas and Silk as their personalities (might) battle to control \nthe whorl's destiny as one being.  So Suicide does not appear to lead to \ncertain damnation in Wolfe's work ... but seems almost a transcendent passage \nthat Mishima would definitely jive with.  By denying and destroying the self \n(he who would throw his life away will save it, in the words of Krait by the \npit) it appears that several of Wolfe's characters actually achieve the \ntranscendent qualities that Mishima's ideals seek to enforce.\nIn any case, Mishima's preoccupations have often reminded me of things that \noccur in Wolfe, and I think he would be appropriate to discuss in this \nsuicidal squad conversation.\nMarc Aramini"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0202-127@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Andy Robertson",
        "address": "andywrobertson at clara.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "2002-02-10T23:32:29+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) mishima death cult",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0202-126@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "----- Original Message -----"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "From: \"maa32\" <maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu>\nMantis wrote:\nWhat would Wolfe feel about this?  Wolfe can be transcendent, and death is\nthe\nmost obvious apotheosis ... but destroying yourself would not seem to be a\ngood manner of going about things ..."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Wolfe would identify it as demonic, aand parabolically condemn it as such.\n\nSpecifically, the real-life Japanese kamikazi is an expression of a religion\nwhich literally deifies a tribal leader - the Emperor.\n\nCatholics regard this with horror.\n\nSee the mystical/Catholic poetry of Charles Williams, TALIESSIN THROUGH\nLOGRES and THE REGION OF THE SUMMER STARS, for a powerful expression of this\nhorror.\n\nTyphon is  **specifically**  this: a man who tries to raise himself to\ndivine stature and power, and demands *worship*, including suicidal worship.\n\nThus, all kamikazis die in the service of \"Typhon\"\n\n\n\nOur disccussion of \"Hour of trust\" has used \"kamikazi\" in a slightly\ndifferent and kinder sense.  There, people die voulntarily as an expression\nand agent of tribal war: but the blasphemy of the human-as-god demanding\nthis is not present.\n\n\n    hartshorn"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}