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papa horny michael
Aug 18, 2009

by Pragmatica

the trump tutelage posted:

It's described as a prosthesis and a tool that helps the Ark read the "code" of life, which becomes more signal and less noise with deaths (and presumably with approaching the magic 144,000 number). If anything, it sounds like it's an embodied algorithm.

I don't have the conceptual language to discuss this well. I think of it as there is Something, the Inchoroi or a progenitor race, beyond the prosthesis of sarcophagus. Beyond Death. In a protected form of death, like inhabiting an Absolute Outside, unable to interact with anything or itself, and also is thereby protected from being influenced by other entities of the varying levels of the Outside, still striving to interact with itself and others.

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Crespolini
Mar 9, 2014

kcroy posted:

On rereading the ending - a few things popped out regarding the possession going on. It looked to me like Kellus made some sort of pact with the 4 horned god, allowing the possession - perhaps promising him the world in exchange for safety/kingdom in hell. And then does something to kick the God out. I mean I didn't see any actual activity that Kelmomas did to interrupt the possession.

Kelmomas fucks up god stuff in general, so it probably worked the same way it broke the Narindar & Sorweel.


kcroy posted:

There is also a weird sentence where one of the Mutilated acts like he is answering a question about Kelmomas, even though no one has asked one. As if he were carrying on a separate conversation with Kellhus that the others were not hearing.

He's talking about Ajokli, isn't he? Kellhus/Ajokli begins giving his pitch about them serving him as generals, one of the mutilated begins saying something about his siblings hunting him, and how he is hiding here, which I took to mean that the other Gods are pissed about him sneaking into the Granary.

kcroy posted:



Why can the Gods see Kellhus but not Kelmomas? Is it because he was destined to be / is the no-god?


Gotta be this, right? Kelmomas will become the No-God, the No-God is invisible, time is non-linear, therefor he's always been invisible.

Crespolini fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Jul 31, 2017

papa horny michael
Aug 18, 2009

by Pragmatica
"Author explained in Q/A: A better way to think of the No-God is as a philosophical zombie (p-zombie), of a piece with all the other soulless instruments of the Inchoroi. A perfectly unconscious god, and so in that respect, entirely at one with material reality, continuous with it, and so an agency invisible to the Outside."

Being one of the Few marks you irredeemably as damned to the World, with hooks on your soul to the Outside hells. Kellhus is Damned. This makes him unsuitable to function in the sarcophagus. Kelmomus has two souls inhabiting his body, and may view the Onta. Somehow this makes him suitable for usage in the Sarcophagus.

The functional sarcophagus/carapace then enables the No-god entity to somewhat function in the World. Without risking accessibility to the entity by the other entities in the Outside. Somewhat like a glove box in a lab.

Memnaelar
Feb 21, 2013

WHO is the goodest girl?

Crimpolioni posted:


Kelmomas fucks up god stuff in general, so it probably worked the same way it broke the Narindar & Sorweel.



He's talking about Ajokli, isn't he? Kellhus/Ajokli begins giving his pitch about them serving him as generals, one of the mutilated begins saying something about his siblings hunting him, and how he is hiding here, which I took to mean that the other Gods are pissed about him sneaking into the Granary.



Gotta be this, right? Kelmomas will become the No-God, the No-God is invisible, time is non-linear, therefor he's always been invisible.

Well, here's my alternative take on who he's talking about :

He's actually talking about Kellhus. Ajokli might think he's talking about him when he rips his face off, but it wouldn't surprise me if he's actually talking Kellhus - hiding from his fellow Dunyain within the other Decapitant via the Daimos... That's a lot of D's. Maybe that Mutilated is aware, before the others, that the real Kellhus is somehow no longer within that face and is about to say something when death comes swirling down.

kcroy
May 30, 2002

by Nyc_Tattoo

Memnaelar posted:

Well, here's my alternative take on who he's talking about :

He's actually talking about Kellhus. Ajokli might think he's talking about him when he rips his face off, but it wouldn't surprise me if he's actually talking Kellhus - hiding from his fellow Dunyain within the other Decapitant via the Daimos... That's a lot of D's. Maybe that Mutilated is aware, before the others, that the real Kellhus is somehow no longer within that face and is about to say something when death comes swirling down.

I can see that, but "siblings" would be a weird choice of words when they use "Brother" the rest of the time.

SickZip
Jul 29, 2008

by FactsAreUseless
Is it just me or does the 4 Revelations hint that the Womb Plague wasnt just All the NonWomen Get Sick And Die

From piecing together the thread of one of the narratives:

quote:

Aisarinqu screams and Aisarinqu screams, again and again, not so much words as a storm of occasions, her delicate face crushed into instants and flayed across an age, for theirs had not been a happy union.
...
That is the sole curse of the Ishroi, she hisses
...
To only hope they had fathered their sons!
...
The blackness falls away from her sagging face, and for an instant he gazes upon her, beloved Aisarinqu. A second, shrieking revelation. The white spark of some faraway light refracts in her tears, so that her contrition seems holy, and his embittered and profane. A wondering instant, before the wrath seizes his fists anew.

Theres more but the implication seems to be that he was the one that killed his wife and daughter. Which raises a whole lotta questions about why exactly the NonWomen are dead and partially answers why the erratic urge to remember seems to be so fixated on murder as the key. His murder of a human girl seems to be a direct recreation of his own daughter and wife's death

Speculation:

The Womb Plague, as described by the Nonmen, doesnt make sense. What kind of bioweapon renders the survivors immortal? Either they hosed up somewhere hard and it should have been much more or less deadly then it ended being or their goal with the Womb Plague was something much different then what ended up happening.

My rough idea is that I think they tampered with Nonman genetics to make the Nonmen more like them. While they later use philosophical conversion using the inverse flame, I think the womb plague was just straight out partial biological conversion. The Nonmen gained the Inchorois biological immortality but their children became as much the Inchoroi's as their own. The plague wasnt fatal, the Nonmans response to a kind of species wide cucking was. A murderous episode that they've buried deep but are driven to remember and recreate . Its a very Bakker twist and in retrospect it seems foreshadowed. The first Nonman we encounter in the first book says that the Sranc are their children now and, if you look at the timeline, the Sranc are only encountered after the womb plague.

SickZip fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Aug 1, 2017

Memnaelar
Feb 21, 2013

WHO is the goodest girl?

kcroy posted:

I can see that, but "siblings" would be a weird choice of words when they use "Brother" the rest of the time.

Not if he's a Brother to them, but they don't all see themselves as Brothers themselves -- i.e. one or two of them are either Sisters or not easily categorized. ;-)

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
lol at writing speculative theories in place of anything actually insightful.

SickZip posted:

Aisarinqu screams and Aisarinqu screams, again and again, not so much words as a storm of occasions, her delicate face crushed into instants and flayed across an age, for theirs had not been a happy union.
...
That is the sole curse of the Ishroi, she hisses
...
To only hope they had fathered their sons!
...
The blackness falls away from her sagging face, and for an instant he gazes upon her, beloved Aisarinqu. A second, shrieking revelation. The white spark of some faraway light refracts in her tears, so that her contrition seems holy, and his embittered and profane. A wondering instant, before the wrath seizes his fists anew.

This writing is awful. "Her delicate face crushed into instants and flayed across an age" is just non-sensical. It's a kind of Rothfussian thing where it sounds very evocative and weighty except when you think about it for just a moment.

kcroy
May 30, 2002

by Nyc_Tattoo

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

lol at writing speculative theories in place of anything actually insightful.


This writing is awful. "Her delicate face crushed into instants and flayed across an age" is just non-sensical. It's a kind of Rothfussian thing where it sounds very evocative and weighty except when you think about it for just a moment.

Not at all, the character speaking there is basically insane to start with - so we are getting some pretty stream of consciousness poo poo. I think he's also being burned alive at this point.

The nonmen are basically insane. As they get older they lose their memories and their sense of self. The set up here is the the more violent the memory, the more it is remembered, which allows them to retain their sense of self. So we are talking about a murder this character did, and how it both is extremely painful, but also a cherished memory in that it anchors him.

When he speaks of the face being crushed into instants, I'm reminded of these little shard and fragments - painful yet so important. Like glass.

And flayed across an age speaks to me of how these memories are hollow ( like the skin of something ), and also how thin it is stretched - referring to a single event of critical importance, but almost like a blanket being stretched across this vast chasm of time. I'm not saying I'm correct - I can see a few different interpretations, but it doesn't register as just random nonsense.

I mean, you might not like it, or find it too wordy or even just plain stupid - but it isn't nonsense. At least I don't see it that way.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

kcroy posted:

Not at all, the character speaking there is basically insane to start with - so we are getting some pretty stream of consciousness poo poo. I think he's also being burned alive at this point.

The nonmen are basically insane. As they get older they lose their memories and their sense of self. The set up here is the the more violent the memory, the more it is remembered, which allows them to retain their sense of self. So we are talking about a murder this character did, and how it both is extremely painful, but also a cherished memory in that it anchors him.

When he speaks of the face being crushed into instants, I'm reminded of these little shard and fragments - painful yet so important. Like glass.

And flayed across an age speaks to me of how these memories are hollow ( like the skin of something ), and also how thin it is stretched - referring to a single event of critical importance, but almost like a blanket being stretched across this vast chasm of time. I'm not saying I'm correct - I can see a few different interpretations, but it doesn't register as just random nonsense.

I mean, you might not like it, or find it too wordy or even just plain stupid - but it isn't nonsense. At least I don't see it that way.

So you're just saying that it makes sense, but it's just genre idiocy. Your defence is a belaboured explanation of how the sci-fi alien works instead of, you know, something on aesthetic grounds. Also lol at how desperately Rothfussian your reading gets at the end (what does 'a blanket being stretched across this vast chasm of time' actually mean?).

And it's more of Bakker's tiresome doom and gloom.

BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 10:32 on Aug 1, 2017

Lunchmeat Larry
Nov 3, 2012

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

So you're just saying that it makes sense, but it's just genre idiocy. Your defence is a belaboured explanation of how the sci-fi alien works instead of, you know, something on aesthetic grounds. Also lol at how desperately Rothfussian your reading gets at the end (what does 'a blanket being stretched across this vast chasm of time' actually mean?).

And it's more of Bakker's tiresome doom and gloom.

okay man I don't disagree with you at all and it was funny at first but it's getting a bit tedious now, take a break

Strom Cuzewon
Jul 1, 2010

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

So you're just saying that it makes sense, but it's just genre idiocy. Your defence is a belaboured explanation of how the sci-fi alien works instead of, you know, something on aesthetic grounds. Also lol at how desperately Rothfussian your reading gets at the end (what does 'a blanket being stretched across this vast chasm of time' actually mean?).

And it's more of Bakker's tiresome doom and gloom.

Regardless of how well Bakker achieves it (in that extract, not very) surely there's at least an attempt at an interesting aesthetic in the idea of your memories being gradually eroded whilst those that remain become indistinguishable from your present life?

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.
How did Kelmomas *get there*?

General Battuta
Feb 7, 2011

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.
Apparently a skin-spy brought him but if so I totally blanked it.

What the gently caress happened to the Dunyain kid from TGO?

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

Strom Cuzewon posted:

whilst those that remain become indistinguishable from your present life?

That's a fairly standard literary device.


Phanatic posted:

How did Kelmomas *get there*?

By letting the days go by

unlimited shrimp
Aug 30, 2008

General Battuta posted:

Apparently a skin-spy brought him but if so I totally blanked it.

What the gently caress happened to the Dunyain kid from TGO?

Yes to the skin-spy thing. For whatever reason, when I read it I thought they were headed for Cnaiur, so Kel being in the Golden Room came out of left field to me.

The other kid is running around the North still, I think.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

This writing is awful. "Her delicate face crushed into instants and flayed across an age" is just non-sensical. It's a kind of Rothfussian thing where it sounds very evocative and weighty except when you think about it for just a moment.
You've elided the preceding sentence ("Aisarinqu screams and Aisarinqu screams, again and again, not so much words as a storm of occasions,") which establishes that the character is remembering the scene like a series of disordered snapshots and not as a coherent memory. It's perfectly sensical.

SickZip posted:

Speculation:

The Womb Plague, as described by the Nonmen, doesnt make sense. What kind of bioweapon renders the survivors immortal? Either they hosed up somewhere hard and it should have been much more or less deadly then it ended being or their goal with the Womb Plague was something much different then what ended up happening.
From an author Q&A, it sounds like the Womb Plague was an unforeseen side-effect of the magic/tekne/whatever that gave the Non-Men immortality, which the Inchoroi were then able to weaponize.

Number Ten Cocks
Feb 25, 2016

by zen death robot
I can accept that mood altering effects were deliberately engineered into Sranc flesh, but the qirri stuff is super dumb. Evolved crematory super cocaine cannibalism? :lol:

General Battuta
Feb 7, 2011

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.
Snorting the ashes of extremely metal silmarillion dudes owns though

E: remember Earwa isn't causally closed so the effects can be metaphysical, not pharmacological.

Poldarn
Feb 18, 2011

I finished The Unholy Consult this morning. Overall I enjoyed it. Some thoughts that I'll spoiler just in case:


The first two thirds were kind of draggy with too much internal dialogging for my liking and were definitely "getting the band back together" for the final assault on Golgotterath.

The last third was frikkin' sweet kickass metal carnage and well worth the first part.

I want to know more about the Outside and Damnation. The "death came swirling down" parts implied that something does happen after you die. A few times characters died and it was stated that they went to hell, but there was at least one guy who died fighting went to his god's paradise..

When Mimara's second twin came out stillborn I realized the No-God was coming back!

I didn't re-read any of the other books before this one so maybe they answer it, but how do Nonmen become Tall and what does that even mean?

Kelhus getting salted got a big :wtc:, but someone below posted about his stuttering implied he was body hopping anyway so it might not matter.



Phanatic posted:

How did Kelmomas *get there*?


I think Kelmomas got left to die in the wilderness by Kelhus, but picked up by the New Sclyvendi Army and brought to the Golden Room by on the skin-spies impersonating Serwe/Esmenet. That skin-spy then picked up one of the Chorae that the other skin-spies in that room were holding and salted Big K. I still don't entirely understand how the White-Luck Warrior thing worked but maybe it'll get clarified in the next series.

papa horny michael
Aug 18, 2009

by Pragmatica

Poldarn posted:


When Mimara's second twin came out stillborn I realized the No-God was coming back!


Didn't even consider that Mimara's child will probably be twin souled also

SickZip
Jul 29, 2008

by FactsAreUseless

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

lol at writing speculative theories in place of anything actually insightful.

When I actually addressed you directly, you failed miserably at defending your own arguements beyond repetitious reference to how smart and right you hold yourself and them. I cant say I believe youre someone whose able, or even wants to, talk high lit instead of just being someone who wants to maintain the pretense he can and wants to.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

SickZip posted:

When I actually addressed you directly

You were spouting nonsense about assumed distinctions and emergent properties, and how talking about prose when it comes to prose fiction is useless. It was really just the standard fanboy appeal to how "it's not about the writing, man".

e: But I admit, your equation of artistic quality with physical quality of a medium was interesting, but not in the way you intended.

BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Aug 1, 2017

SickZip
Jul 29, 2008

by FactsAreUseless

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

You were spouting nonsense about assumed distinctions and emergent properties, and how talking about prose when it comes to prose fiction is useless. It was really just the standard fanboy appeal to how "it's not about the writing, man".

e: But I admit, your equation of artistic quality with physical quality of a medium was interesting, but not in the way you intended.

Weak. Just continued implication that theres something behind the curtain but never any willingness to pull it back.

You solemnly quote McLuhan to try and prove the point that the medium is the message and miss that McLuhan was using the expression to talk about print not prose. He developed it while studying television, not the script or the cinematography but the technological medium.

You want to argue that execution is everything and "art is really only its form" then have some courage and applaud Spider-Man: Homecoming. Because it may be dumb and empty but man is that some impressive form and execution. If you want to maintain theres a distinction in that kind of form/medium from the one youre refering to, then make your case and show your work because the people you're building off werent maintaining the sharp distinction you are.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

SickZip posted:

You solemnly quote McLuhan to try and prove the point that the medium is the message and miss that McLuhan was using the expression to talk about print not prose. He developed it while studying television, not the script or the cinematography but the technological medium.

What you're doing is ignoring the underlying philosophical principle of McLuhan's statement:

Marshall McLuhan posted:

Today when we want to get our bearings in our own culture, and have need to stand aside from the bias and pressure exerted by any technical form of human expression, we have only to visit a society where that particular form has not been felt, or a historical period in which it was unknown. Professor Wilbur Schramm made such a tactical move in studying Television in the Lives of Our Children. He found areas where TV had not penetrated at all and ran some tests. Since he had made no study of the peculiar nature of the TV image, his tests were of "content" preferences, viewing time, and vocabulary counts. In a word, his approach to the problem was a literary one, albeit unconsciously so. Consequently, he had nothing to report. Had his methods been employed in 1500 a.d. to discover the effects of the printed book in the lives of children or adults, he could have found out nothing of the changes in human and social psychology resulting from typography. Print created individualism and nationalism in the sixteenth century. Program and "content" analysis offer no dues to the magic of these media or to their subliminal charge.

(I trust you won't misunderstand the use of 'literary' here.)

What McLuhan meant when he stated "the medium is the message" is that content of media is utterly secondary to their form. Stories really only matter in how they're told, because all their content is dependent on how it is conveyed. The same principle applies to art. There are many inspiring subjects that have led to uninspiring art, and there are many uninspiring subjects that have led to inspiring art. Their content is at best secondary to their form. You haven't actually presented any counter to this argument, but instead became confused and assumed that this means judging different works of art and their versions by the quality of their production or physical medium, and then started mumbling about how judging prose fiction by its prose is like saying that biology is nothing but physics.

Homecoming was very lame in its execution. Superhero movies (including Spider-Man flicks) have had more impressive execution before.

BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Aug 1, 2017

Strom Cuzewon
Jul 1, 2010

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

What you're doing is ignoring the underlying philosophical principle of McLuhan's statement:


(I trust you won't misunderstand the use of 'literary' here.)

What McLuhan meant when he stated "the medium is the message" is that content of media is utterly secondary to their form. Stories really only matter in how they're told, because all their content is dependent on how it is conveyed. The same principle applies to art. There are many inspiring subjects that have led to uninspiring art, and there are many uninspiring subjects that have led to inspiring art. Their content is at best secondary to their form. You haven't actually presented any counter to this argument, but instead became confused and assumed that this means judging different works of art and their versions by the quality of their production or physical medium, and then started mumbling about how judging prose fiction by its prose is like saying that biology is nothing but physics.

Homecoming was very lame in its execution. Superhero movies (including Spider-Man flicks) have had more impressive execution before.

While an interesting point of sociology you still haven't shown how that has anything to do with how we should judge an individual work.

That quote also doesn't present an argument, it simply states a position. Your highlighted section is a classic example of begging the question - because he looked at content not form he was unable to make any interesting conclusions, therefore we should look at content not form. Nothing in that quote actually supports the statement "because he looked at content not form he was unable to make any interesting conclusions"

Rime
Nov 2, 2011

by Games Forum

Phanatic posted:

How did Kelmomas *get there*?

Esement tosses him a file when he is in captivity, and he subsequently escapes. He is shown later murdering a scylvendi scout and then being picked up by a skin-spy who has shifted to portray Esmenet. Behind the curtain of the interim I would presume he spouts off about how special he is and how Kellhus tried to have him killed, which prompts the skin-spy to bring him to the consult. Cue salting.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

Strom Cuzewon posted:

While an interesting point of sociology you still haven't shown how that has anything to do with how we should judge an individual work.

McLuhan offers a very simple and useful principle for judging media - focus on what the form is doing and saying.

Marshall McLuhan posted:

Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. For the "content" of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind. The effect of the medium is made strong and intense just because it is given another medium as "content." The content of a movie is a novel or a play or an opera. The effect of the movie form is not related to its program content. The "content" of writing or print is speech, but the reader is almost entirely unaware either of print or of speech.

Strom Cuzewon
Jul 1, 2010

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

McLuhan offers a very simple and useful principle for judging media - focus on what the form is doing and saying.

That quotes use of form vs content is fuzzy and contradictory, I don't see what it's trying to say. I think appeals to sociologists are just gonna bump into this issues of language and definition.

vvvvvv Yeah, I misread, phone posting is hard with double quotes.

It also says that looking at how they're used is the approach of the idiot, which doesn't really support you're claim about "look at what it's doing"

Strom Cuzewon fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Aug 1, 2017

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

Strom Cuzewon posted:

But you yourself have said that it's the form, not the message, that we should prioritise the doing over the saying. And this new quote seems to say that the message is the the "juicy burger" and we can disregard the form.

It specifically says "content" is the juicy meat. I've been talking about the relation of form and content in forming a message.

lol

e:

Strom Cuzewon posted:

That quotes use of form vs content is fuzzy and contradictory, I don't see what it's trying to say. I think appeals to sociologists are just gonna bump into this issues of language and definition.

Now you're just arguing that words can't mean anything.

BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Aug 1, 2017

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

McLuhan offers a very simple and useful principle for judging media - focus on what the form is doing and saying.

Man this is real interesting. You should make a thread about it and post there.

""The medium is the message" is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in any message it would transmit or convey, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived."

Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Aug 1, 2017

Strom Cuzewon
Jul 1, 2010

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

Now you're just arguing that words can't mean anything.

At least I'm not just quoting blind assertions. Why should this guy's approach to sociology have anything to do with how we critical evaluate literature? Those are different things, surely.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
What could a philosopher teach us about literature, the goon asked in the R. Scott Bakker thread.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

McLuhan offers a very simple and useful principle for judging media - focus on what the form is doing and saying.

Marshall McLuhan posted:

Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. For the "content" of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind. The effect of the medium is made strong and intense just because it is given another medium as "content." The content of a movie is a novel or a play or an opera. The effect of the movie form is not related to its program content. The "content" of writing or print is speech, but the reader is almost entirely unaware either of print or of speech.


Frankly, this is total nonsense. Which is to say that to the extent that it is coherent, it is dead loving nutso wrong.

Here, above you stated this:

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

What McLuhan meant when he stated "the medium is the message" is that content of media is utterly secondary to their form.

Except that's not what McLuhan meant when he said that. Which is funny as hell to me, because in the very next sentence of that work, McLuhan says what he meant:

Marshall McLuhan posted:

This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium — that is, of any extension of ourselves — result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.

"This is to say that the consequences of any extension of ourselves result from what is introduced by the extension of ourselves."

To the extent that is a correct statement, it is a trivial one. To the extent that is is a non-trivial statement, it is *objectively wrong*. He continues:

Marshall McLuhan posted:

Thus, with automation, for example, the new patterns of human association tend to eliminate jobs it is true. That is the negative result. Positively, automation creates roles for people, which is to say depth of involvement in their work and human association that our preceding mechanical technology had destroyed. Many people would be disposed to say that it was not the machine, but what one did with the machine, that was its meaning or message. In terms of the ways in which the machine altered our relations to one another and to ourselves, it mattered not in the least whether it turned out cornflakes or Cadillacs.

So first, this is nonsense. In terms of the ways in which the machine alters our relations to one another and to ourselves, yes, it matters a great deal whether the machine (which again, is an extension of ourselves) is turning out cornflakes or nerve gas. That's such a blindingly obvious fact you can only obscure it by burying it under pages of blather. Second, there are other terms on which to analyze things.

The ironic bit is that McLuhan's stuff is pretty much the exact sort of thing you consistently (and not wrongly) dislike about Bakker's prose: it's a bunch of coherent-seeming syntactically correct statements which upon actual examination are revealed as an incoherent semantic null. If Bakker writes something literally incoherent like "Her delicate face crushed into instants and flayed across an age," that's an example of the books being lovely. McLuhan writes something literally incoherent like "The electric light is pure information. It is a medium without a message, as it were..." and he's a cornerstone of your analytical technique.

When in reality, he's a purveyor of meaningless noise targeted towards an audience that loves sounding smarter than it actually is.


Also I'm amazed nobody's posted this yet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXJ8tKRlW3E&t=107s

Phanatic fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Aug 2, 2017

Strom Cuzewon
Jul 1, 2010

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

What could a philosopher teach us about literature, the goon asked in the R. Scott Bakker thread.

What could [guy who talks about changes in behaviour created by mass media] have to tell us about [critically evaluating a single work of literature]?

Because that is not an obvious thing.

unlimited shrimp
Aug 30, 2008
Reminder that for anyone who is actually interested in discussing the book specifically, as opposed to helping a sophomoric English student hijack an already low-population thread with their tedious opinions during release week, there is a fan forum available.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

Phanatic posted:

Except that's not what McLuhan meant when he said that. Which is funny as hell to me, because in the very next sentence of that work, McLuhan says what he meant:

quote:

This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium — that is, of any extension of ourselves — result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.

So you briefly glanced through Understanding Media and thought that the introduction of the initial essay was enough to understand it, and that phrase totally trounces my argument that the form of artwork is more important to its effect than its mere content. Tragically, you didn't read even that paragraph well enough to understand its context:

quote:

In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium-- that is, of any extension of ourselves -- result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.

This doesn't actually contradict my reading of McLuhan's motto. It's just an obtuse piece of rhetoric. Had you had the patience to look further, you'd notice that the book actually goes on a fair bit, including those early bits I quoted.


Strom Cuzewon posted:

What could [guy who talks about changes in behaviour created by mass media] have to tell us about [critically evaluating a single work of literature]?

Because that is not an obvious thing.

I put in very obvious terms:

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

McLuhan offers a very simple and useful principle for judging media - focus on what the form is doing and saying.

But which doesn't count because the quotes are "fuzzy" or something.

Strom Cuzewon
Jul 1, 2010

Yes, he does say that. In sociology, as I have said many times before.

But why does that apply to literary criticism?

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

So you briefly glanced through Understanding Media and thought that the introduction of the initial essay was enough to understand it,

No. I've read McLuhan thoroughly, I think in 1991 or 1992. There's precious little there to understand. That's the point of it.

quote:

and that phrase totally trounces my argument that the form of artwork is more important to its effect than its mere content.

No, that's been your assertion, not your argument. I mean, I've seen you make actual arguments before, in other threads, but here in this one you're actually starting to make me believe your critics: that you're not actually engaged in good-faith discussion, but are simply engaged in intellectual masturbation and like spurting your black seed around. And I'm beginning to see why you find so many reluctant to engage with you.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

McLuhan offers a very simple and useful principle for judging media - focus on what the form is doing and saying.

This is a category error you are making.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

Strom Cuzewon posted:

Yes, he does say that. In sociology, as I have said many times before.

But why does that apply to literary criticism?

Well like I've argued, the form of literature is what determines it's effect rather than its content.

For example, A and B are sequences of phrases with the same content but different form:

A.

I could say you're like a summer day, but I think you're even better than that. In May the wind can be rough, and summer doesn't last long enough.

B.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.


Why do they have such radically different effects? Because of their respective forms.


Phanatic posted:

quote:

McLuhan offers a very simple and useful principle for judging media - focus on what the form is doing and saying.

This is a category error you are making.

So why is it erroneous to focus on the form of artwork, like prose in the case of prose fiction?

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Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

Well like I've argued, the form of literature is what determines it's effect rather than its content.

For example, A and B are sequences of phrases with the same content but different form:
...
Why do they have such radically different effects? Because of their respective forms.

No, this is a sleight-of-hand you're trying to pull. These two passages differ radically in *content* and in form, *not* just in form.

quote:

McLuhan offers a very simple and useful principle for judging media - focus on what the form is doing and saying.

That might be a useful principle for judging *media*, but a given artwork is not a medium, and it does not follow that principles useful for judging the set are useful for judging the members of the set. This is the fallacy of division you are engaged in.

quote:

So why is it erroneous to focus on the form of artwork, like prose in the case of prose fiction?

I didn't say it was necessarily erroneous. It could very well be useful in a particular context, but it is not useful as a uniform approach. Frank Lloyd Wright not withstanding, function is primary over form, and focusing on the form gets you Frank Gehry architecture: fantastic, award-winning structures that are totally ill-suited to actually having people live and work in them, and hence failures.

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