the land compared to our world

[illender]

anyone else feel when they read lord fouls bane that even the shit is about to hit the fan you'd still rather live there than in our world? donaldson's world in lfb in my mind makes our world seem like a horrible place to live.

[peter]

Thomas Covenants exchange with Mhoram summs it up.

TC. "In my world we call it scenery."
M. "Scenery? I do not know the word but I do not like the sound of it."
TC. "It's something we like, but we can do without."

(Or words to that effect.)

[Cambo]

Hile Troy has some interesting things to say on this. Some point early on in The Illearth War he says that "grey is the colour of 'reality'". There are very clear lines in the Land between good and evil, health and sickness, nature and Despite. The ability to directly perceive the nature of things is, I think, the cause of this. In our world, without health sense, we're limited to the surface of things, making all the lines and colours blur together, and making the true nature of things "grey" indeed. Also, the importance of the health sense is made clear when it is taken away in the millenia Covenant is absent from the Land. When he comes back, no-one sees the true evil of the Sunbane, and they're all shedding each other for blood left, right and centre.

[peter]

I saw a very interesting program the other day about our 'senses' and how they are not always what we think them to be. Parasthesiacs (I think they are called) seem to experience our world somewhat in a similar way to people in the Land, in that sounds and tastes have color and smells, sound etc. The most fascinating thing to me was when they gave a man a very lightly vibrating belt that would always vibrate only in the part facing North. Effectivly the man had a built in direction finder, and very shortly after starting to use it he found that he no longer noticed the vibrating but began to build the knowledge of his dirction into his orientation almost subconciously. When, after a few weeks the belt was removed from him he expeirienced a feeling of loss and disorientation akin to loosing a sense that he had always posessed. It seems that in the future we may indeed be fitted out with 'new' senses that may render our everyday experience more similar to that of the Lands people than is the case now.

[Zarathustra]

Maybe I'm biased because I grew up in the woods, but I can't relate to this sentiment at all. My instinct is to be a smartass and say, "Maybe you should get out of the city more," or "Maybe you should stop watching so much TV and/or wasting time on the Internet."

But having read the Chronicles, I understand where people are coming from. The Land sounds nice. Hell, the Land sounds wonderful. But remember, it's a Creation. It's *easy* for something to be wonderful when an infinite being creates it (but even then, it was flawed and has things much MUCH worse than our world ... like Ravers and possession). But our world is wonderful without even trying. Our world is a colossal accident of colliding matter left over after a star exploded, matter that just happened to accrete in the Goldilocks Zone for liquid water and ultimately life to evolve. That's pretty damn amazing, and it's more beautiful than any paltry work of Donaldson's imagination. I think for any of us to agree with Covenant that, "In my world we call it scenery," is to miss the entire point and to turn reality into a wasteland ... literally a land of wasted appreciation and opportunity. This world is freakin' awesome, man. All you have to do to turn "scenery" into a world of beauty/love/freedom is appreciate how precious and rare it is, and then go out and live your life in it. We already live in the Land. Turn on your own Healthsense.

[peter]

I am afraid in your answer Zarathustra you have already killed any beauty our world posseses. For your materialist belief system there is no such thing as beauty or love - just random existence possesing only things that furthur the prospects of bundles of uncaring genes and that have the cheap illusion of those things that you vaunt so much in your answer. For your system the creation has no purpose, no meaning - it just brutely exists like some thick witted skinhead forever going forward with no God, no end point of glory. You cannot introduce beauty and love into your system without aknowledging them as illusory. You cannot have it both ways.

[shadowbinding shoe]

I am afraid in your answer Zarathustra you have already killed any beauty our world posseses. For your materialist belief system there is no such thing as beauty or love - just random existence possesing only things that furthur the prospects of bundles of uncaring genes and that have the cheap illusion of those things that you vaunt so much in your answer. For your system the creation has no purpose, no meaning - it just brutely exists like some thick witted skinhead forever going forward with no God, no end point of glory. You cannot introduce beauty and love into your system without aknowledging them as illusory. You cannot have it both ways.

Do you believe small children that are ignorant about the existence of God have no love and beauty in their world? They just mechanically seek food sources and protection until the concept of God is revealed to them?

[Orlion]

I am afraid in your answer Zarathustra you have already killed any beauty our world posseses. For your materialist belief system there is no such thing as beauty or love - just random existence possesing only things that furthur the prospects of bundles of uncaring genes and that have the cheap illusion of those things that you vaunt so much in your answer. For your system the creation has no purpose, no meaning - it just brutely exists like some thick witted skinhead forever going forward with no God, no end point of glory. You cannot introduce beauty and love into your system without aknowledging them as illusory. You cannot have it both ways.

Not necessarily, sure in the Chronicles it's the Land that unequivocally has beauty that is palpable to the senses... but it's also the agent outside of this frame of reference, the one from a world that has no definite Creator, that has the power to preserve or destroy this beauty.

It's also interesting to note that part of Covenant's conflict and reason for his disbelief is that he finds the Land more desirable than his own life. However, such feelings can be destructive, even if he never returned to his own world. Consider Hile Troy.

[Vraith]

I am afraid in your answer Zarathustra you have already killed any beauty our world posseses. For your materialist belief system there is no such thing as beauty or love - just random existence possesing only things that furthur the prospects of bundles of uncaring genes and that have the cheap illusion of those things that you vaunt so much in your answer. For your system the creation has no purpose, no meaning - it just brutely exists like some thick witted skinhead forever going forward with no God, no end point of glory. You cannot introduce beauty and love into your system without aknowledging them as illusory. You cannot have it both ways.

No.
Without "brute things" you miss not only beauty and love, but everything else.
And simply because the existence of one thing depends on the existence of another does not mean it is illusory, and the necessary basis for a thing does NOT define or encompass that thing entirely. Everything, literally, depends on everything else. And everything, literally, changes everything else.
And it is essential for creation to have no inherent purpose or meaning...inherent purpose and meaning are exactly the opposite of what you claim: they are an indestructible cell without door, window, or freedom. Where is the love and beauty in that?

[Cambo]

I am afraid in your answer Zarathustra you have already killed any beauty our world posseses. For your materialist belief system there is no such thing as beauty or love - just random existence possesing only things that furthur the prospects of bundles of uncaring genes and that have the cheap illusion of those things that you vaunt so much in your answer. For your system the creation has no purpose, no meaning - it just brutely exists like some thick witted skinhead forever going forward with no God, no end point of glory. You cannot introduce beauty and love into your system without aknowledging them as illusory. You cannot have it both ways.

I disagree, Peter. I myself am no fan of materialism. I am a spiritual believer, broadly speaking a panentheist with Buddhist leanings. But I don't buy in to the assumption that atheists or materialists a priori exclude themselves from the world's beauty. Many spiritual and religious believers make this assumption, and I think it's a symptom of the arrogance that can come from the security of a personal faith.

I found Zarathustra's post very moving, and thought it conveyed wonderfully the amount of beauty atheists and materialists are able to perceive and relate. Have you ever read Richard Dawkins, or any evolutionist, most of whom are atheists, wax lyrical about the incredible, invaluable existence and abundance of life of Earth? These are men who understand beauty.

It's true that under the materialistic view love and perception of beauty arises from, and is utterly dependent on, the grey matter of our brains. It is true that you could conclude from this that love and beauty are illusory, in the sense that they exist only in our minds as our brains react to purely physical stimuli. The reality of anything we experience about the world comes into question at this point.

To bring it back to TC, wasn't that the entire point of the entire trilogy? Covenant had every reason to believe that the Land was a dream, existing entirely in his mind. But the objective reality of the Land was unimportant to him by the end. What was important was his love for it. Even if that love was directed at something entirely contained in his mind, it was worthy of preservation. Similarly, materialists may be aware that the love and beauty they find in the world around them are direct consequences of matter, and no more. Do you think this causes them to feel it less acutely?

What does it matter what system of belief we construct around our experiences of love and beauty, that I choose to call these divine and Zarathustra would contest there is no divinity? The experience is all that signifies.

"Beauty is truth, and truth beauty. That is all ye know in this world, and all ye need to know."

[Cambo]

Another thing occurs to me. You say Zarathustra can't have it both ways. Remember Linden Avery making just this assertion to Covenant?

His response:"Ah, but I have to have it both ways...The answer is in the contradiction."

This, I think is true for any kind of Unbeliever. If you do not have a non-rational faith such as mine, from which you draw supposedly inherent meaning from the world around you, you have to replace that unfalsifiable, comforting certainty with something or else lapse into nihilism. If you find no inherent, pre-existing meaning or purpose, you can and must create it for yourself, within yourself.

It's like Covenant's "outside" and "inside" explanations for the Land. On the outside, the world is a cosmic accident, brought together by an unintentional chain of action and reaction. On the inside, there is an observer that can behold this cosmic accident, and his place within it, and be moved.

The mind/matter duality is another contradiction. The consistent failure of anyone, materialist or spiritualist, to explain this contradiction satisfactorily is something I will be polite enough not to dig into

[Lord Zombiac]

Thomas Covenants exchange with Mhoram summs it up.

TC. "In my world we call it scenery."
M. "Scenery? I do not know the word but I do not like the sound of it."
TC. "It's something we like, but we can do without."

(Or words to that effect.)

One of my favorite passages from the chronicles!

[Lord Zombiac]

I think "the Land of Enchantment" is much like "the Land" in many ways.
Every time I go to Texas, I have to drive through Roswell. There's a huge ridge of land along the Pecos which always reminds me of Landsdrop.
The Land has its Illearth Stone and New Mexico has vast naturally occouring deposits of our own Illearth Stone-- Uranium!
One of my favorite places is a mountain lookout at around 10,000 feet (I only have to drive 8 miles to get there!) and it reminds me of Kevin's Watch.
Lincoln National forest, the first national forest in the USA, is my own personal Andelain.
In Albuquerque, there are a lot of Sikhs, and they kind of remind me of the Haruchai, even though I always viewed them as Bengalis.
Santa Fe is said to be a powerful spiritual place, which seems to me like earthpower. We have a large population of Natives here (my fiancée is a Native American and she has never seen so many natives as we have here) and they remind me of the Ramen.
The Wild Mustangs out here are from the first horses introduced to the Americas, from the conquistadors, and that would be your Ranyhyn.
White Sands reminds me of Bhrathairain.
I don't know when Donaldson moved to NM, but if it was prior to writing the chronicles, I'd bet moneys that this place inspired him.

[peter]

Do you believe small children that are ignorant about the existence of God have no love and beauty in their world? They just mechanically seek food sources and protection until the concept of God is revealed to them?

Of course small children have no understanding of love and beauty - that's why they pull the wings of butterflys.

(My the way - you focus way to much on the God thing. My argument is about the fundamental difference between the materealist and idealist world views.)

[peter]

Not necessarily, sure in the Chronicles it's the Land that unequivocally has beauty that is palpable to the senses... but it's also the agent outside of this frame of reference, the one from a world that has no definite Creator, that has the power to preserve or destroy this beauty.

It's also interesting to note that part of Covenant's conflict and reason for his disbelief is that he finds the Land more desirable than his own life. However, such feelings can be destructive, even if he never returned to his own world. Consider Hile Troy.

Remember that Covenant has concrete proof of the existence of the Land's Creator and is intimately familiar with the creations purpose. Also re his finding the Land more desirable - how could he not?

[peter]

Without "brute things" you miss not only beauty and love, but everything else.
And simply because the existence of one thing depends on the existence of another does not mean it is illusory, and the necessary basis for a thing does NOT define or encompass that thing entirely. Everything, literally, depends on everything else. And everything, literally, changes everything else.
And it is essential for creation to have no inherent purpose or meaning...inherent purpose and meaning are exactly the opposite of what you claim: they are an indestructible cell without door, window, or freedom. Where is the love and beauty in that?

I spoke not of brute things Vraith, but of 'brutely existing'. Besides, beauty is surely entierly subjective and the yardstick of having that which is ugly in order to appreciate that which is beautiful implies a common standard that exists outside and aloof from our own individual standpoint.

And I believe that a Universe without purpouse or meaning IS a lesser thing than one with these attributes. To me, that is the very reason for OUR existence; to quote a much wiser man than me 'We are the eyes through which the universe sees itself, the ears through which it hears itself'. We are here to give reality to the very existence of the Creation by our acknowledgement of it's beauty and glory. Is this not a noble reason for our being here - are we thus imprisoned?

[peter]

I disagree, Peter. I myself am no fan of materialism. I am a spiritual believer, broadly speaking a panentheist with Buddhist leanings. But I don't buy in to the assumption that atheists or materialists a priori exclude themselves from the world's beauty. Many spiritual and religious believers make this assumption, and I think it's a symptom of the arrogance that can come from the security of a personal faith.

I found Zarathustra's post very moving, and thought it conveyed wonderfully the amount of beauty atheists and materialists are able to perceive and relate. Have you ever read Richard Dawkins, or any evolutionist, most of whom are atheists, wax lyrical about the incredible, invaluable existence and abundance of life of Earth? These are men who understand beauty.

It's true that under the materialistic view love and perception of beauty arises from, and is utterly dependent on, the grey matter of our brains. It is true that you could conclude from this that love and beauty are illusory, in the sense that they exist only in our minds as our brains react to purely physical stimuli. The reality of anything we experience about the world comes into question at this point.

To bring it back to TC, wasn't that the entire point of the entire trilogy? Covenant had every reason to believe that the Land was a dream, existing entirely in his mind. But the objective reality of the Land was unimportant to him by the end. What was important was his love for it. Even if that love was directed at something entirely contained in his mind, it was worthy of preservation. Similarly, materialists may be aware that the love and beauty they find in the world around them are direct consequences of matter, and no more. Do you think this causes them to feel it less acutely?

What does it matter what system of belief we construct around our experiences of love and beauty, that I choose to call these divine and Zarathustra would contest there is no divinity? The experience is all that signifies.

"Beauty is truth, and truth beauty. That is all ye know in this world, and all ye need to know."

Cambo, Cambo, Cambo! Of course I have read Dawkins who's fundamentalist atheism can be summed up in the following sentence "The Bible contradicts itself therefore God does not exist. The true arogance of those who believe they know the secrets of existence beyond all credible doubt is the only one I know. What is the shame in being prepared to say 'I have thought about these things - but in truth I don't know'. I'm sorry, like it or not the materealist position requires at it's bedrock a universe that has evolved by random chance within the physical parameters of the universal constants. Love, beauty truth can never exist for the materialist exept as by products of a system internally geared to promote the future propogation of it's progeny. There is no higher truth, no higher purpose, no world of spirit or ideal. Thus is the experience diminished.

[peter]

Another thing occurs to me. You say Zarathustra can't have it both ways. Remember Linden Avery making just this assertion to Covenant?

His response:"Ah, but I have to have it both ways...The answer is in the contradiction."

This, I think is true for any kind of Unbeliever. If you do not have a non-rational faith such as mine, from which you draw supposedly inherent meaning from the world around you, you have to replace that unfalsifiable, comforting certainty with something or else lapse into nihilism. If you find no inherent, pre-existing meaning or purpose, you can and must create it for yourself, within yourself.

It's like Covenant's "outside" and "inside" explanations for the Land. On the outside, the world is a cosmic accident, brought together by an unintentional chain of action and reaction. On the inside, there is an observer that can behold this cosmic accident, and his place within it, and be moved.

The mind/matter duality is another contradiction. The consistent failure of anyone, materialist or spiritualist, to explain this contradiction satisfactorily is something I will be polite enough not to dig into

Can I refer you to my answer to Vraith above Cambo for a version of 'my' answer to our existence. I have never had a problem with the mind/matter duality thing. For me science is a means of constucting 'models' that answer problems, not a means of establishing reality. Each model, as it becomes more refined, becomes better at doing this, but the world is therefore not a thing of constantly changing 'truths'.
Science is a tool for calculating cause and effect, not a bible for dealing with the big 'WHY' questions.

[peter]

I think "the Land of Enchantment" is much like "the Land" in many ways.
Every time I go to Texas, I have to drive through Roswell. There's a huge ridge of land along the Pecos which always reminds me of Landsdrop.
The Land has its Illearth Stone and New Mexico has vast naturally occouring deposits of our own Illearth Stone-- Uranium!
One of my favorite places is a mountain lookout at around 10,000 feet (I only have to drive 8 miles to get there!) and it reminds me of Kevin's Watch.
Lincoln National forest, the first national forest in the USA, is my own personal Andelain.
In Albuquerque, there are a lot of Sikhs, and they kind of remind me of the Haruchai, even though I always viewed them as Bengalis.
Santa Fe is said to be a powerful spiritual place, which seems to me like earthpower. We have a large population of Natives here (my fiancée is a Native American and she has never seen so many natives as we have here) and they remind me of the Ramen.
The Wild Mustangs out here are from the first horses introduced to the Americas, from the conquistadors, and that would be your Ranyhyn.
White Sands reminds me of Bhrathairain.
I don't know when Donaldson moved to NM, but if it was prior to writing the chronicles, I'd bet moneys that this place inspired him.

Lord Zombiac, you write with such passion about your area of the world that like Gimli in TLOTR, I am compelled to build it into my future travel plans!

[Lord Zombiac]

Peter, I plan on attending Elohimfest to promote my novel and meet some of the outstanding people here at Kevin's Watch.
You are certainly welcome to join me.
Be aware, however, that my fiancée and I live in a one bedroom cabin with no living room. Hopefully by next summer we will be able to build out on our deck and I planned on putting a Yurt or a Teepee out there as a guestroom.
We will also be purchasing a camper for my daughter to stay in with us and my parents live two houses away and have plenty of room if you don't mind sleeping on a couch.
Our little village is less than three miles away from Mescalero, the homeland of Geronimo's Apache.
There is snowboarding and skiing in the winter and we have (much to my displeasure) three casinos.
If you are a nature lover, you will love it here!