Entropy and Despite--the need for dual confrontations

[Zarathustra]

In various thread, we've talked about SRD's "enduring solution" to the problem of evil. But this is conflated somewhat with the problem of entropy (e.g. mortality, decay, etc.). SRD added to this confusion by saying that his goal was also to write a story that tells the truth about entropy. So the issues have always been linked. Now that we have the ending, we can see how SRD links them and yet keeps them straight in his own mind.

It was by considering these two issues that I've arrived at an understanding of why Covenant and Linden both had "final showdowns" with symbolic beings of mythical statures. In other words, there are significant reasons why these were counterpart confrontations, as well as not merely redundant repetitions of each other. SheBane was not merely Linden's female Despiser. [Though SheWho was almost certainly Linden's counterpart to Covernant's Foul ... see the SheWho thread for my argument for that point.]

In my reread this year I've noted how Linden is given several hints that she must not attempt transcendental solutions. The most literal hint is Covenant's, "Trust yourself." Not, "trust your friends, trust Fate, trust the Creator, trust me." No, she must trust herself. [I am myself!]

The second hint is the horserite vision. In the Runes dissection I noted how the ranyhyn were trying to tell Linden that she didn't need to surpass herself--as Elena attempted. You don't need help from Absolute authority figures or from beyond the grave in order to preserve Beauty, Life, etc..

"Sure," she went on, "Kelenbhrabanal's despair didn't save the Ranyhyn. I get that. But what did?

"It wasn't anything grand. It wasn't Lords or Bloodguard or white rings or Staffs. The Ranyhyn weren't preserved by Vows, or absolute faithfulness, or any other form of Haruchai mastery. That was the real warning."

"Linden Avery?" Stave sounded implacable, ready for scorn.

But she had come too far, and needed him too much, to falter now. "It was something much simpler than that. The plain, selfless devotion of ordinary men and women." The Ramen. "You said it yourself. The Ranyhyn were nearly destroyed until they found the Ramen to care for them.

Obviously, the danger of attempting transcendental solutions was dramatically shown when Linden used Staff+ring+krill to resurrect Covenant, waking the Worm. Looking for transcendent answers to "the problem of entropy" or Wildwood's question causes us to destroy what we love (desecration), betray what we love (breaking the Law of Death), or to destroy ourselves in fury and frustration that we are not more than ourselves.

The reason Linden doesn't need a transcendental solution is because SRD is trying to tell the truth about entropy, as he said. Well, the truth is that magic can't get rid of death (though death/decay can be resisted). Entropy is a real, physical thing. It's not a spiritual concept like Despite, which occurs only in the human soul or psyche. Though we can use our Love to fight against decay--the Power that Preserves--this is a battle fought (primarily) on a physical ground, not the spiritual ground of our inner landscape.

A battle against our own Despite, on the other hand, is more of a spiritual battle. While that battle can spill out into the world (if we don't control our Despite), ultimately a battle against Foul is internal.

“So Wildwood's question--while somewhat linked to the quesiton of how to beat Lord Foul--is a distinct and separate question. While we can defeat LF, we'll never be able to stop Truth and Beauty from utterly passing, eventually. The trick will be to not allow that fact to cause us to resurrect Foul, or to unleash our own inner Despiser upon the world in retribution for those things we cannot change.

Acceptance. Be True. I think that's the answer to Wildwood's question.”

So, perhaps this is why Linden had to face She, while Covenant had to face Foul: we have two separate issues here. It was Linden who brought back the memory of forbidding, brought back forestals, and made it possible to preserve beauty. And because Linden’s task is not transcendental, she does not join with her own metaphor, as Covenant does. Because resisting entropy doesn’t take magic, nor is it something we do in a spiritual realm (e.g. we can do it by recycling our trash or using solar energy), Linden just needed to be herself. We can have the “power to forbid” entropy by nursing our own power to preserve. Like the Worm’s approach, we can’t Forbid it entirely, but we can still alter its trajectory. While our efforts to that end are not transcendental, they are still effective.

And yet that power to forbid is also the same power that allows us to control our own inner Despiser. Just as we can say, “no” to degredation of the earth, we can also say “no” to our own hate. Both are the same power of personal will, applied in two different directions. So there’s the issue of resisting the natural decay of time (Linden’s promise to Wildwood), as well as resisting one’s own tendency to help nature along its own destructive path with your own Despite. Each required its own metaphorical showdown.

Linden's struggle is the external counterpart to TC’s inner struggle.
TC’s struggle was more “transcendental” because you can beat Foul. While struggles against death my not be an "enduring solution" (as SRD said of the problem of evil), you can achieve a lasting victory over your own inner Despiser. You can’t transcend the Worm, but you can transcend your own inner Despiser. In fact, you can subsume Him.

So, Covenant takes Foul into himself--both accepting and resisting Foul--while Linden allows She to escape Time, because entropy and death (symbolized by carrion sensation) are as eternal as Time itself. They can't be stopped. But Linden can stop being the person who betrays her own Power to Preserve by accepting herself for who she is--as her own person--rather than merely the sum of her losses, or the Mom or Lover who sacrifices Beauty/Life of the world by trying to redeem other people, rather than herself.

So both Covenant and Linden embrace themselves in ways that still resist, and by doing this they both become whole, but their forms of redemption are inverted versions of each other because they are directing their acceptance/resistance toward Evil and Entropy, respectively. Inner-directed vs outer-directed.

[Zarathustra]

I wanted to add a point about absolute values. By accepting his Despiser as part of himself, but not surrendering completely (as he did in 2nd Chrons), TC has effectively made a statement about absolute Good and Evil. He didn't get his ultimate redemption by purification. He wasn't raptured into pure spirit, cleasned of all his sins. He accepts that "good" and "evil" are parts of all of us, and we'll never get rid of them. But we can defeat them by accepting-while-containing.

It's closely related to forgiveness--but again, not forgiveness from a Creator. It's forgiving yourself for being human, allowing yourself this freedom to be human an imperfect.

Linden could let SheWho go because Linden forgave herself. SheWho wasn’t Linden’s own Despite. There was no danger in letting that force loose upon the universe, letting Her escape Time. SheBane was Linden’s failure, her “sin.” Sin is self-betrayal, because you’re not being true to yourself, to your values. So by letting go of her own guilt, by forgiving herself through love, Linden became whole by symbolically letting SheBane escape, rather than internalizing her failures as inherent to her identity—as TC does when he internalizes Foul. As Linden said to Jeremiah, we aren't defined by our failures. Sure, we own up to them, but they aren't the sum of our identity. We're not exactly identical to them. Therefore Linden can inhabit the Bane long enough to spread this newfound forgiveness around, getting the other women out, but then once Linden is the only woman left in the Bane--when she symbolically *is* the Bane, she lets it go.

The difference between She and Foul would be the “sin” vs the “sinner.” There is a part of us that makes us not be true to ourselves. That’s the Despiser. And then there are the acts that we do when we’re not true to ourselves. Those are sins. But the power of forgiveness allows us to be ourselves, and not our sin. Acceptance of one’s Despiser, combined with forgiveness of oneself for that fact.

This forgiveness + acceptance is another way of saying that our good and evil are self-contained, self-defined, and not imposed from outside us in the form of Absolutes.

[lurch]

Yea...enduring solution is...Love....and..in a world where no two people see a car accident the same way...the Subjectivity of " Absolute Values" becomes obvious. There is at least a 500 word essay in me on Logic and its Absolute Values , which boils down to ,,when discussing ones Humanity, please lets not talk about Logical and its absolutes. You want to build a robot then use logic. You want to build a Human Being...use Love, hope, intuition, etc.

[TheFallen]

Excellent post, Zar... very insightful. You're absolutely right to highlight the difference in final confrontations between TC and Linden. In the light of your post, I'm reminded of the well-known Serenity Prayer:-

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.

As you rightly say, there are things within us that we cannot rid ourselves of. Our capacity for evil, our inevitable proneness to temptation, the call of our darker side - that element of Despite if you like - it's an intrinsic part of what it is to be human... we're all flawed (just like white gold). A Catholic would term this as original sin...

As the Serenity Prayer suggests, fighting against what one cannot change is at best only going to provide a temporary solution (TC in TPTP, as you point out). Surrendering to it is no better (TC in WGW - it's Linden that heals the Land). One has to acknowledge one's capacity for Evil, accept its existence, subsume it, if only to become able to guard against it. (Insert a whole heap of Jungian claptrap about individuation here... or not). That's as you state what TC does - it's his solution to Despite.

Linden however does embody the other thread of the Serenity Prayer, in that she gains "the courage to change the things" she can. She faces up to the externalised embodiment of her fear of rejection, of not being worthy of love and conquers it. She doesn't surrender and she doesn't accept - she rejects it, and in such rejection heals both SWMNBN and herself.

So yes absolutely, differing existential challenges require differing solutions. We can overcome our internal Despisers and we can have the courage not to give into hopelessness - but we do need the wisdom to tell the two struggles apart. Or as you put it, we can become the masters of ourselves and corral our flawedness, our Evil while also not becoming slaves to the inevitability of Entropy.

As I said, a thoughtful and perceptive post, Z. If only the Good Post button were to make a reappearance...

[Zarathustra]

Ah, thanks. I reread the OP last night and realized it needs some major revision ... too redundant and long. But I'm glad a few were able to get through it.

[Zarathustra]

An idea came to me from the recent question/thread about why Jeremiah didn't try the Harrow's suggestion of trapping the worm. My response was that perhaps Jer did exactly as the Harrow suggested. Maybe the (new) earth is a structure that traps the Worm ... for a little while.

And that led me back to my "counterpart solution" thoughts here. The earth *is* a place that "traps the worm." On earth, we experience local increases in order, at the expense of increase of disorder to the larger reference frame of the solar system. We receive energy from the Sun, which drives all the cycles here on earth that produce life, beauty, order. This is the *only* way you can resist entropy, literally: by local increases in order made possible by greater increases in chaos for the larger environment. In other words, by the death of the sun, by the death of stars, are our planets given the renewing power of life. [Note that the sun was the first casualty of the Worm, and then stars in general.]

And since Linden's task was to fight against entropy (while TC's task was to fight Despite), it makes even more sense that SHE was released beyond the earth. That was increase in disorder to the larger environment, which allowed a local increase in order (i.e. the creation of a new earth).

Holy crap, I think I just found a way to make peace with the epilogue! It wasn't magic/spirit/miracle. It was perfectly aligned metaphorically with a literal truth! That's the literal counterpart to the magical symbol that I was looking for, the real world fact that would allow even an atheist to see the beauty of this ending.

And this finally brings Jeremiah back into the picture. I was puzzled how he fit into my dual confrontation thoughts. Covenant beat Despite. Linden resists entropy. And Jeremiah supplied the specific structures in which this resistance would take shape and bear fruit.

[ussusimiel]

Good post, Z!

It resonates a bit with my own experience. I've taken a somewhat different view from you, but, the completion of the series and the final outlining of SRD's whole vision has allowed me to finally engage positively with the Last Chrons.

u.

[Edit: to fix typo.]

[iQuestor]

An idea came to me from the recent question/thread about why Jeremiah didn't try the Harrow's suggestion of trapping the worm. My response was that perhaps Jer did exactly as the Harrow suggested. Maybe the (new) earth is a structure that traps the Worm ... for a little while.

I'll have to go back and research this, but where does the Worm fit in with the Creator?