 | Time Travel and the Psychology of Gods |
| Posted By: Forrest of B.org | Date: 12/4/06 9:25 p.m. |
| In Response To: Re: So, what was your conclusion? (Forrest of B.org)
This thread reminds me of an email I wrote to the Eternal team once, when someone asked what exactly my whole theory behind the Jjaro and W'rkncacnter was. I'm reposting it here for your reading enjoyment:
"The Jjaro" as a race of powerful ascended beings opposed to the W'rkncacnter are not identical to "the Jjaro" the alien race who left powerful technology lying around, created the S'pht, and seem fond of mankind. The latter group are now a subset of the former group, who are themselves approximately half (the other near-half being the W'rkncancter) of a group I call "The Eternals" - all those beings who have left our 'layer of reality' and become, for lack of a better word, disembodied minds in hyperspace. A better analogy would be an AI in a video game becoming aware of the fact that it's world is just a simulation and leaving that simulation to be a program of it's own within the greater computer system, no longer confined to a (virtual) physical spacetime, but existing "outside" it in the same metaphorical sense that we'd say one file is inside or outside of some folder, though it's really all just bits in the system.
Such beings usually take one of two paths, neither of which is really "good" (from my personal philosophical perspective). The root of the problem arises, as Leela says on "Forever My Greatest and Only Love", from the realization that everything is just virtual. There is nothing "really real"; it's all just a consensual mass-hallucination or what have you. Some beings become what we call W'rkncacnter: they are essentially nihilists, beings who just go "ah fuck it if none of it's real none of it matters, I'm doing what I want", and their own mental instabilities cause them to push further and further, like a young child who is given no boundaries at all, just pushing and pushing further, trying to find *SOMETHING* to give it some kind of resistance, eventually going completely mad. For an emotional analogy, imagine that suddenly your body is unstoppable; anything you touch you can push right through, mold it, destroy it, nothing ever offers you any resistance. It'd be like floating in vacuum; you could never feel anything again, nothing would satisfy you because it's all too damn easy, you thrash and thrash and break things in your rage and then you're too upset to concentrate and set them right and everything is just a horrible mess forever and ever and there's nothing that you can do about it despite all your power, because reality depends entirely on your mind and your own mind is the thing that's fucked up in this picture. You end up living a nightmare, and becoming a nightmare to others. Durandal describes Hathor's potential to do something like this on "Roots and Radicals".
The other side are more like fundamentalist religious folk (or anyone with a set-in-stone ideology); they see the dangers of nihilism and are absolutely terrified of becoming or letting others become like the W'rkncacnter, and so they freak out the other direction and become absolutists, dogmatic in their insistence that THEIR reality is the only real reality and nothing should ever deviate from it. And so despite the fact that, as they could easily know if they looked, there are plenty of perfectly decent alternate histories, some even better perhaps than their own, they become terrified of the notion of changing history from what they know it to be, they insist that history as they remember it comes to pass, and so they meddle and poke and prod and even work to preserve the bad parts of their own history because, if that's not real, then what it? And if nothing is real then you're back to chaos, cats will lie with dogs and the universe will become unglued and we'll all become like the W'rkncacnter. Leela is starting to take this path throughout the game, terrified to change history besides to make sure it goes as she remembers it going, and to stop Hathor from screwing with it further (despite the fact that Hathor going back and creating her own alternate timeline won't affect the timeline we're in that she leaves from, and then even if we do stop here, there is an alternate branch of this timeline where we DIDN'T stop her and she succeeded in changing the past anyway).
The true "good guys" in this picture are exceedingly rare (or perhaps, instead, just never heard from, like the silent moderate majority in America, who are never heard over the left and right extremists). They are those who ascend like the W'rkncacnter or the Jjaro, and go "hey sweet, godlike powers. I'm gonna make a happy pretty universe where I enjoy myself and everyone else does too. La la la...". Thus, you never hear from them, because they don't make themselves noticed. They are content to go about their enlightened ways.
Spelling errors left intact because I don't care and I'm supposed to be writing an essay right now (oddly enough, on scientific realism vs anti-realism)... but this whole schpiel is the "psychological justification" for the time travel in Eternal that I keep referring to. If everyone was completely rational about it, nothing would have happened; Marcus would never have gone back in time with Tycho (who time-travels only because he misunderstands how time-travel works, thinking that Hathor can actually cause "damage" to the timeline). When Hathor freaked out, Marcus and Tycho should have just grabbed the other cyborgs as the mission was originally planned to do, brought them to the future to pick up some nicer guns, then gone back to kick even more Pfhor ass and assure mankind's victory in the Pfhor war. That would make sense. But no... Tycho thought he understood temporal mechanics, then Leela gets a peek Outside and freaks the hell out on an anti-Hathor tirade, and the whole multiverse goes to hell in a handbasket. Sheesh. Chicks, eh? Can't live with 'em... can't unmake the timelines where they exist.
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| The Garden of Forking Paths | Document | 11/29/06 8:50 p.m. |
| Re: The Garden of Forking Paths | Forrest of B.org | 11/29/06 10:11 p.m. |
| *sniff* Duality *sniff *NM* | treellama | 11/30/06 2:51 a.m. |
| That's not fair. | RyokoTK | 11/30/06 5:26 a.m. |
| Re: That's not fair. | McNutcase | 11/30/06 5:40 a.m. |
| Re: That's not fair. | RyokoTK | 11/30/06 8:51 a.m. |
| Re: That's not fair. | McNutcase | 11/30/06 9:25 a.m. |
| Re: That's not fair. | RyokoTK | 11/30/06 9:59 a.m. |
| Re: That's not fair. | D-M.A. | 11/30/06 10:05 a.m. |
| Re: That's not fair. | RyokoTK | 11/30/06 10:22 a.m. |
| Ahaa, I see what you mean now, point taken. *NM* | D-M.A. | 11/30/06 10:33 a.m. |
| define "well" | MrHen | 11/30/06 10:24 a.m. |
| Re: define "well" | RyokoTK | 11/30/06 11:31 a.m. |
| Re: define "well" | Aaron Sikes | 11/30/06 12:19 p.m. |
| Re: define "well" | Forrest of B.org | 11/30/06 1:26 p.m. |
| Re: define "well" | Aaron Sikes | 12/1/06 6:01 a.m. |
| Mmm... House of Leaves | MrHen | 11/30/06 8:00 a.m. |
| Re: The Garden of Forking Paths | Vid Boi | 11/30/06 8:13 a.m. |
| Re: The Garden of Forking Paths | sdwoodchuck | 11/30/06 12:39 p.m. |
| So, what was your conclusion? *NM* | Frungi | 11/30/06 3:57 p.m. |
| Re: So, what was your conclusion? | sdwoodchuck | 11/30/06 6:18 p.m. |
| in your theory, the dreams... | MrHen | 12/1/06 4:44 a.m. |
| Re: in your theory, the dreams... | thermoplyae | 12/1/06 6:42 a.m. |
| Re: So, what was your conclusion? | Frungi | 12/4/06 6:31 p.m. |
| Re: So, what was your conclusion? | Forrest of B.org | 12/4/06 9:07 p.m. |
| Time Travel and the Psychology of Gods | Forrest of B.org | 12/4/06 9:25 p.m. |
| Re: Time Travel and the Psychology of Gods | Frungi | 12/5/06 8:46 a.m. |
| Re: Time Travel and the Psychology of Gods | Forrest of B.org | 12/5/06 4:29 p.m. |
| heck, I would buy 'em | MrHen | 12/5/06 6:39 p.m. |
| Philosophy anyone? | Icarus | 12/6/06 8:29 a.m. |
| Re: Philosophy anyone? | Forrest of B.org | 12/6/06 10:46 a.m. |
| Re: The Garden of Forking Paths *LINK* | Hamish Sinclair | 12/2/06 5:06 a.m. |
| Re: The Garden of Forking Paths | Document | 12/2/06 6:17 p.m. |
| Re: The Garden of Forking Paths | Document | 12/4/06 7:03 p.m. |
| Official Bungie Canon? | Shoeless | 12/7/06 7:00 a.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Bob-B-Q | 12/7/06 10:14 a.m. |
| Define "all" | MrHen | 12/7/06 10:20 a.m. |
| Re: Define "all" | Document | 12/7/06 4:20 p.m. |
| Re: Define "all" | Document | 12/7/06 4:21 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Chris Biberstein | 12/11/06 10:28 a.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Shoeless | 12/11/06 12:00 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Forrest of B.org | 12/11/06 12:03 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | MrHen | 12/11/06 1:45 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? *LINK* | Frungi | 12/11/06 3:22 p.m. |
| uh, thanks... | MrHen | 12/11/06 6:01 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Forrest of B.org | 12/11/06 9:44 p.m. |
| I like being confused... | MrHen | 12/12/06 5:13 a.m. |
| Re: I like being confused... | Forrest of B.org | 12/12/06 3:53 p.m. |
| Re: I like being confused... | Frungi | 12/12/06 5:51 p.m. |
| Re: I like being confused... | Forrest of B.org | 12/12/06 9:42 p.m. |
| timelines and their glory | MrHen | 12/13/06 5:14 a.m. |
| Re: timelines and their glory | Forrest of B.org | 12/13/06 8:05 a.m. |
| Mmm... trippy... | MrHen | 12/13/06 8:20 a.m. |
| Re: timelines and their glory | Frungi | 12/13/06 1:43 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Chris Biberstein | 12/12/06 12:37 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Forrest of B.org | 12/12/06 4:02 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Chris Biberstein | 12/12/06 4:43 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Forrest of B.org | 12/12/06 9:52 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Chris Biberstein | 12/13/06 4:17 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Forrest of B.org | 12/13/06 6:06 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Chris Biberstein | 12/16/06 5:42 p.m. |
| what? why? | MrHen | 12/16/06 5:47 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | kyjel | 12/16/06 6:40 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Shoeless | 12/17/06 4:13 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Frungi | 12/18/06 5:09 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Chris Biberstein | 12/18/06 8:47 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Frungi | 12/18/06 9:22 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Chris Biberstein | 12/22/06 9:58 a.m. |
| questions and answers | MrHen | 12/22/06 12:44 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Shoeless | 12/22/06 1:24 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Shoeless | 12/18/06 10:21 p.m. |
| rabbit trail, sorry... | MrHen | 12/13/06 5:23 a.m. |
| Re: rabbit trail, sorry... | Chris Biberstein | 12/13/06 4:29 p.m. |
| and the problem was... where? | MrHen | 12/13/06 7:06 p.m. |
| Re: and the problem was... where? | Forrest of B.org | 12/13/06 9:13 p.m. |
| ah, my bad. I understand. :) *NM* | MrHen | 12/14/06 4:54 a.m. |
| Re: ah, my bad. I understand. :) | Forrest of B.org | 12/14/06 1:22 p.m. |
| I am the same way. ;) | MrHen | 12/15/06 5:18 a.m. |
| Re: I am the same way. ;) | Forrest of B.org | 12/15/06 7:27 a.m. |
| Branching | MrHen | 12/15/06 9:46 a.m. |
| Re: Branching | Forrest of B.org | 12/15/06 11:04 a.m. |
| Actually, I think I did understand. | MrHen | 12/15/06 4:32 p.m. |
| Re: Actually, I think I did understand. | Forrest of B.org | 12/17/06 11:55 a.m. |
| Oh, okay, then we do disagree. | MrHen | 12/17/06 6:50 p.m. |
| Re: Oh, okay, then we do disagree. | Forrest of B.org | 12/17/06 10:08 p.m. |
| so where do you get hyper-time? | MrHen | 12/18/06 5:13 a.m. |
| Re: so where do you get hyper-time? | Forrest of B.org | 12/18/06 8:20 a.m. |
| whoops... no... that is not what I meant. | MrHen | 12/18/06 9:49 a.m. |
| Re: whoops... no... that is not what I meant. | Forrest of B.org | 12/18/06 1:58 p.m. |
| right, yeah, that is the identity problem | MrHen | 12/18/06 4:41 p.m. |
| Re: right, yeah, that is the identity problem | Forrest of B.org | 12/18/06 9:55 p.m. |
| ohhh... | MrHen | 12/19/06 5:44 a.m. |
| Re: ohhh... | Forrest of B.org | 12/19/06 9:20 a.m. |
| back to the math ;) | MrHen | 12/19/06 11:07 a.m. |
| Re: back to the math ;) | Forrest of B.org | 12/19/06 1:36 p.m. |
| wait, so my model is too... real? ;) | MrHen | 12/22/06 1:57 p.m. |
| Sort of. | Forrest of B.org | 12/22/06 3:22 p.m. |
| and the light turns on... | MrHen | 1/7/07 4:41 p.m. |
| Re: and the light turns on... | Forrest of B.org | 1/8/07 8:12 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Shoeless | 12/13/06 8:11 a.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Chris Biberstein | 12/13/06 4:34 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Shoeless | 12/14/06 8:01 a.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Frungi | 12/15/06 8:02 a.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Forrest of B.org | 12/15/06 8:51 a.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Frungi | 12/15/06 9:22 a.m. |
| hehe, Infinity | MrHen | 12/15/06 9:51 a.m. |
| Re: hehe, Infinity | Forrest of B.org | 12/15/06 11:16 a.m. |
| Re: hehe, Infinity | treellama | 12/15/06 12:18 p.m. |
| Re: hehe, Infinity | Forrest of B.org | 12/15/06 1:15 p.m. |
| Re: hehe, Infinity | treellama | 12/15/06 2:09 p.m. |
| Re: hehe, Infinity | Forrest of B.org | 12/15/06 3:15 p.m. |
| Re: hehe, Infinity | treellama | 12/15/06 4:12 p.m. |
| Re: hehe, Infinity | Frungi | 12/15/06 6:34 p.m. |
| Re: hehe, Infinity | treellama | 12/16/06 3:38 a.m. |
| So... do I have this right? | MrHen | 12/16/06 6:35 a.m. |
| Re: So... do I have this right? | treellama | 12/16/06 11:25 a.m. |
| Re: hehe, Infinity | treellama | 12/15/06 2:21 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | treellama | 12/15/06 9:55 a.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | McNutcase | 12/15/06 11:12 a.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Forrest of B.org | 12/15/06 1:20 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | McNutcase | 12/15/06 9:32 a.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | MrHen | 12/15/06 9:49 a.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | treellama | 12/15/06 9:56 a.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | McNutcase | 12/15/06 11:09 a.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Forrest of B.org | 12/15/06 1:34 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Forrest of B.org | 12/15/06 1:39 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | ukimalefu | 12/15/06 6:29 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | McNutcase | 12/15/06 10:23 p.m. |
| awesome, thanks! *NM* | MrHen | 12/16/06 6:49 a.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Chris Biberstein | 12/16/06 5:51 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | kyjel | 12/16/06 7:08 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Chris Biberstein | 12/18/06 8:36 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Frungi | 12/18/06 9:48 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Chris Biberstein | 12/22/06 10:00 a.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Forrest of B.org | 12/22/06 10:19 a.m. |
| what he said | MrHen | 12/22/06 12:38 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Shoeless | 12/18/06 10:23 p.m. |
| *sigh* | MrHen | 12/17/06 5:08 a.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Frungi | 12/11/06 3:35 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Chris Biberstein | 12/12/06 12:23 p.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Shoeless | 12/13/06 7:56 a.m. |
| Re: Official Bungie Canon? | Forrest of B.org | 12/13/06 8:32 a.m. |
| another example (albeit overused) | MrHen | 12/13/06 8:57 a.m. |
| Re: The Garden of Forking Paths *LINK* | irons | 2/23/18 1:11 a.m. |
| LOKE *NM* | W'rkncacnter | 2/23/18 4:06 p.m. |
| Re: LOKE *NM* *LINK* | irons | 2/23/18 4:14 p.m. |
| LOKE *NM* *NM* *NM* *NM* *NM* *LINK* | W'rkncacnter | 2/23/18 11:09 p.m. |
| Re: LOKE *NM* *LINK* | irons | 2/24/18 3:31 a.m. |
