What is Law?

[TheFallen]

Actually, "form vs. essence" is a very neat way of describing the antithetical polarities of Vain and Findail that get melded together to achieve balance.

I'm confident that Vain represents entropy, an ultimately chilled stasis, a sterile perfection where absolutely nothing can happen. It's the endpoint of your 2nd law of thermodynamics. Where I struggled was coming up with a term to adequately describe the exact opposite state as represented by Findail. What is a correct term for the obverse of entropy? What's the term for the start of the 2nd law of thermodynamics' arrow of time? Maybe also...

Single inert culmination vs. boundless unrealisable potentiality, or

Ultimate control vs. ungovernable power.

Or some similar terminology to capture the difference between quintessential structure and quintessential fluidity. It's hard to express.

If we're to carry on down the scientific analogy route, we could get all quantum here. If Vain represents perfect yet inert stasis, then he could be described as eternally fixed position. And if Findail represents boundless yet unrealisable possibility, then he could be described as eternally untrackable momentum. On that basis, Linden could be taken to use wild magic to solve Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in creating the new Staff of Law. By merging Vain with Findail in the furnace of transcendent wild magic, she creates an instrument of power that simultaneously both understands position and direction. With such complete knowledge of the "rightness" of things, natural balance can be maintained.

Oh and by the way, that last paragraph above is only partly tongue-in cheek...

[ozrics]

Wow, quantum theory, maybe the worm is everywhere and nowhere, love it!

[lurch]

Coo Coo Ka Choo...The Worm is Us...

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

I think in TIW the Lords sing a song that says the Law is the Land's Creator's self-control. Think on that, and be dismayed...

[Zarathustra]

I'm confident that Vain represents entropy, an ultimately chilled stasis, a sterile perfection where absolutely nothing can happen. It's the endpoint of your 2nd law of thermodynamics.

Perhaps I've lost the nuance of your reasoning by responding back to this after so much time, however the endpoint of entropy is heat and maximum disorder, not chilled stasis or sterile perfection. You're right that nothing can happen at the end of the universe (its "heat death"), but that's the opposite of Vain's poised potential.

Where I struggled was coming up with a term to adequately describe the exact opposite state as represented by Findail. What is a correct term for the obverse of entropy? What's the term for the start of the 2nd law of thermodynamics' arrow of time? Maybe also...

Single inert culmination vs. boundless unrealisable potentiality, or

I would say that Findail is more like kinetic energy than any kind of potential. Elohim in their "natural state" are shown to be continuously flowing and changing.

Ultimate control vs. ungovernable power.

That's much better, and I think much closer to a literal translation of SRD's symbolism. Control is the circumference of passion, as he's fond of saying.

[TheFallen]

I'm confident that Vain represents entropy, an ultimately chilled stasis, a sterile perfection where absolutely nothing can happen. It's the endpoint of your 2nd law of thermodynamics.

Perhaps I've lost the nuance of your reasoning by responding back to this after so much time, however the endpoint of entropy is heat and maximum disorder, not chilled stasis or sterile perfection. You're right that nothing can happen at the end of the universe (its "heat death"), but that's the opposite of Vain's poised potential.

You're right - the analogy doesn't quite work. Your understanding almost certainly exceeds mine, but the point I was groping to make is that the ultimate end of our universe - its "heat death" - is only "hot" if our universe is "closed". If it's "open" or "flat", we'll have a "big freeze". Both states represent maximum entropy, i.e. total thermal equilibrium, but I was more along the lines of version 2 where nothing happens and nothing can react with anything else... hence, perfect chilled stasis.

Where I struggled was coming up with a term to adequately describe the exact opposite state as represented by Findail. What is a correct term for the obverse of entropy? What's the term for the start of the 2nd law of thermodynamics' arrow of time? Maybe also...

Single inert culmination vs. boundless unrealisable potentiality, or

I would say that Findail is more like kinetic energy than any kind of potential. Elohim in their "natural state" are shown to be continuously flowing and changing.

Ultimate control vs. ungovernable power.

That's much better, and I think much closer to a literal translation of SRD's symbolism. Control is the circumference of passion, as he's fond of saying.

That's a neat comparison of Findail with kinetic energy. I'm tempted to tweak it slightly and say that Vain is all mass - he's impossible to move, remember? - whereas Findail is all velocity - most of the time he's impossible to locate. It's the combination of the two that give rise to momentum, to the power to effect change. Speed without mass is as ineffectual as mass without speed.

Or alternatively, maybe I should abandon a Newtonian paradigm entirely and stay with my part tongue in cheek quantum analogy. Since Vain is impossible to move, he can be considered as never-changing position. And since Findail is impossible to locate, he can conversely be considered as ever-changing direction. The two fused together solve uncertainty.

[Zarathustra]

Light is pretty darn fast and massless. It's also pretty effective, depending on what you want to do.

Anyway, we're probably both way off base looking for scientific metaphors. But if Donaldson hadn't mentioned entropy, this can of worms wouldn't need a nutrition label.

[wayfriend]

I'm still in favor of the notion that Law is the rules that the Creator set forth about how things on Earth should work. They are "natural laws".

Where they get tricky ... where they deviate qualitatively from our world's laws of physics, chemistry, and biology ... is that it's possible to go against them if you work really hard. The rules can be broken.

Consider again the Giant Raver raising the storm at Seareach. Storms, as has been pointed out, are natural. But they arise under certain natural conditions. Creating one with the Illearth Stone is not the way they come to be. Hence that storm is unnatural, not because wind and rain are unnatural, but because coercing the Sea with the Stone to make one is unnatural. Unnatural-by-cause rather than unnatural-by-form.

Who knows how such a storm might be qualitatively different than a normally-arising storm? If the way it is created has any affect on how it behaves, then it will not behave like a natural storm.

Certainly, then, anything that arises through the use of the Illearth Stone, or white gold, can be seen to be unnatural. Because they aren't part of the natural order set out by the Creator, all that arises from their use is unnatural-by-cause.

The Demondim-spawn seem to fit into the category of unnatural-by-cause. It is natural to have arms and legs and breathe and eat and think and strive. However, they are unnatural by how they were brought into being.

But then we hit a blurry line. Why did the Creator intend Viles to live, but not intend Viles to create Demondim and ur-viles? You can argue that's completely arbitrary. But one clue we have is that the Demondom-spawn would not have existed except due to the manipulations of Foul. Perhaps this is where the Creator's intentions went awry.

The Creator didn't create a world were unnatural things were impossible. That get's back to the idea of breaking rules. Unnatural things are possible. You can break the Law of Death, and the Law of Life. You can create ur-viles. You can poison the Great Swamp.

I think no Laws were broken to make Giantships or to weild Earthpower. I think that natural beings, left to themselves, do natural things, and it was all as the Creator intended things to be.

But the Law of Death was broken with Earthpower. And the Law of Life was broken with Loric's krill, made to be an implement of Law. If they're natural and lawful, what makes these things different?

Extremis. The use of a lot of power. Power wielded against the natural order by someone with an intent to break the rules. Some fighting Lord Foul. Lord Foul has his hands in the till every time. He drove Elena to be so desperate. He drove Caer Caveral to take such dire risk. He drove the Viles to create the Demondim.

If you look at it that way, the world was Created in such a way that such extravagant risk wouldn't naturally be necessary. Foul's presence changed the equation. He made it necessary, or at least seem necessary, to break Law. He certainly made it necessary for people to choose between Life and Law.

Is there really "good" and "bad" in Law? Possibly there is only, really, "included in the Creator's intent" and not.

Nothing that is in a fantasy holds up under a microscope. But I am happy seeing Law as reflecting the Creator's intent, and "unnatural" as that given rise by Foul, or his banes such as the Illearth Stone. Even if it's a bit indirect to tie Foul to all unnatural things, I think it's fair to say that had Foul not been cast into the Earth, such things would not have happened. And I would also say that anything arising from someone summoned to the Land, or their white gold, is just as unnatural, for the same reason - but even that you can blame on Lord Foul.

[Zarathustra]

I was hoping to see your input, WF. This seemed like a topic you would enjoy putting under the microscope as much as I do. While not everything will hold up under that view, where it breaks down can be just as interesting as where it coheres ... and indeed, illuminate exactly those points.

If corruption of Law is made possible by Lord Foul and the Banes he placed here, and he and those Banes are the closest thing we have to "objective evil" in the Creator's world (rather than merely our opinion or preference), then it seems to me that some implication of good/evil is intended by the author in the corruption of Law. Sure, things like the Staff and the krill can also be used to violate Law, but that's usually when people are succumbing to some variation of Despite, which at least symbolically has its source in the Despiser, even if literally it's their own fault.

Law supports Beauty and Truth, both of which are our "duty" to preserve as long as possible, according to SRD in the GI as he described the "morality" of his story. He said he was looking for solutions to the problem of evil, and resisting entropy, or fulfilling Wildwood's question, was part of that.

So we almost have a nature-religion in the Land, where Good is equated with "natural" and that means the processes of growth, health, weather patterns, seasons, Time, and strict distinctions between Life and Death ... or perhaps an authenticity in our attitudes toward those distinctions, which requires a recognition of the paradoxical nature of this effort: resisting death/decay while not denying its ultimate necessity; accepting it while resisting it.

So perhaps paradox is the answer to some of my other questions, as well. You say the distinction between natural and unnature lies in their cause, which is true, but it's also true that things can defy their own cause (as Esmer pointed out to Linden in FR). So the Demondim spawn--while unnatural and violations of Law--nevertheless rose above this to become Good by embracing Creation rather than Despite.

So while Law participates in good/evil, it is not the full account of morality. It's a very interesting interplay between many different concepts and paradigms.

[wayfriend]

I am not equating something unnatural with breaking Law or with corruption of Law. I consider "unnatural" to be something like nudging the natural course of things off it's tracks, but the tracks are still there and they are still sound. While breaking the Law is breaking the tracks so that they don't work, and corruption of Law is like warping the tracks and rerouting them to different places.

I think any of that is possible without requiring something external like Foul or his banes or wild magic. But I think those things make it easier and more likely.

I guess my big point though is that, even though it's possible to break the Law with what the Creator himself placed there ... no one would have been driven to the extremity where this seemed like a good option if Foul and his evil banes had not been added to the world. It's as if the Creator had prepared for every contingency in his Law, and then Foul dropped in and changed all the assumptions. He's a monster on the tracks, and now you have to jump those tracks, or move them, or break them, to avoid the monster.

Surely, though, the notion of good is linked to Law and evil to it's opposite. And yes, it's not the full account of morality. If it were, then Despite could never have been possible, because Law would preclude it.

The Creator's risk in having breakable Laws and corruptible Laws is that such actions can be for the good or for the bad, or (more in line with the Last Chronicles) for both in some degree. This ties in with the notion that there is real risk (save or damn) in one's actions. The Creator isn't going to save you, not even indirectly by creating a world that can't succumb to evil or is resilient to your tampering.

In a way, the day the Law of Death was broken, responsibility for the continuation of the Land (or even the Earth) shifted from the Creator to the people. It's not running on the tracks the Creator made any more, it's running in the new way that people made for it. When another Law breaks, it shifts even more. This isn't bad: when there's a monster on the tracks, the operator needs to take evasive action. But once you're off the tracks, there's nothing guiding you any more, you gotta figure it out for yourself.

In other words, when you change the world, in a small sense you create a new world, and you are in a sense it's creator. The responsibilities of creation ensue. Covenant understood this in the Soothtell.

[Zarathustra]

I don't disagree with your main points, but the analogy of a monster on the tracks in need of avoidance seems manufactured to give justification for breaking laws, an excuse which makes such breaking "okay." [Note: if I misunderstand you on this point, it's entirely my own fault, and not intentional misrepresentation.] No law needed to be broken to deal with or avoid this monster. No Ritual of Desecration, no raising dead Kevin, etc. Those actions didn't avoid Foul, they made the problems worse. Granted, Covenant and Linden later turned those failures into victories, but Foul's presence only made those failures "necessary" (or rather, likely) in the sense that his presence caused Despair.

You seem to be making an "ends justifies the means" argument, which Donaldson explicitly denied in the GI. The ends of adjusting the tracks to avoid Foul cannot justify the means of rerouting the tracks.

[wayfriend]

I don't think the ends justify the means.

[Zarathustra]

Okay, I misunderstood your obstacle on the track analogy, apparently. However, I wasn't trying to imply that *you* think the ends justify the means. Obviously, one can make an arguement about the author's intensions without endorsing those intensions as his own. Perhaps you could expound upon how your analogy isn't an "ends justify the means" explanation of SRD's conception of Law?

[wayfriend]

Saying that doing A is justified in order to accomplish B is not saying that everything is justified if it is in order to accomplish B.

Caer Caveral certainly thought breaking the Law of Life, at just that time, was justified in order to defeat Foul.

Some actions against Lord Foul must be justifiable, else how could anyone fight him at all?

The Oath of Peace said, "kill not where maiming is enough," but neither killing nor maiming was completely off the table.