jtr7 on 14/12/2007 at 20:23
Quote:
"Even a tree can become the house of the builder and a sword of steel can be used to spread chaos."
Heh heh. I don't know where that comes from. I can find no possible candidate. May it have come from an FM? Another language version of Thief? It compliments canon, but I've never seen it before.
____
Unless Selete has been lurking without logging in, he hasn't been back since his last post. If so, I'm afraid he's using up a lot of project time.
Mikael Grizzly on 15/12/2007 at 11:33
That was from a Hammerite book from Deadly Shadows, where the priests remind other Hammerites of the folly of Mechanist beliefs.
jtr7 on 15/12/2007 at 11:55
This one?
HIkarras.sch: "All that is metal is not of the Builder alone, as all that is wood is not of the Trickster alone. Wood canst be shaped and carved, so that it serveth as part of a great house for the Master Builder. Even iron canst serve contrary to its nature, for the glory and service of false gods. If thou doubtest these words, turn thine eye only to the ruin of Soulforge, where the Builder himself smote down the workings of the heretic Karras and his wicked crafts."
Beleg Cúthalion on 15/12/2007 at 12:09
I knew I read it! Hehe...
Since we're already talking about Hammerites and religios philosophy (although in the real world it always meant to adjust ancient/greek philosophy to a certain religion) ... I always wondered why there are so few elements of care and love among the Hammerites although all monotheistic religions usually have these elements as their core. I understand that due to the general dark and dystopic world we don't see a lot of them, but I'd still like trying to show more good sides of the Hammerites. Otherwise (i.e. just as a force of order and justice) they could not work imho.
PS: Another interesting thing could be to analyse the changes in the order (why is it apparently both religion and order?) after the theses and achievements of Karras. Time for philologists!
jtr7 on 16/12/2007 at 00:51
Quote:
"Even a tree can become the house of the builder and a sword of steel can be used to spread chaos."
I read that as a quote with rough wording, instead of the paraphrase/summary it is. :) Mikael's post prompted me to search my database for "Karras" within TDS's books.
order...
5 a group or class of persons set off from others by some trait or quality
6 a) a group of persons constituting an association formed for some special purpose
[the Order of Knights Templars] b) a community of monks, nuns, etc. following a rule
[the Benedictine order]...
8 a state or condition in which everything is in its right place and functioning properly :p
...
11 a distinctive group; class; kind; sort
[sentiments of a high order] 12 an established method or system, as of conduct or action in meetings, worship, court, etc.
Selete on 16/12/2007 at 01:11
Quote Posted by Zillameth
Be careful with Karras. He sounds philosophical, but there are obvious missteps in his reasoning (because, as we know, he's mad). As far as I can tell, my grasp of philosophy being fairly basic, this reduces the value of his thoughts to nil.
I've always perceived Karras and all Mechanists as a kind of follow-up to the Hammerites. Hammer texts present a draft of a "real" philosophy - a consistent system of values and symbols. Even the tenets follow a certain train of thought provided by this system. TMA shows how this system is warped into its own contradiction by an ill mind. It also illustrates how the rhetoric replaces the philosophy, when followers no longer recognize values represented by symbols (that is, they no longer understand what those symbols "really" mean).
For example, the Hammerites talk a lot about hammers, they even say things like "blessed be the hammer" and such. In their philosophy, hammer is an alegory - it represents honest work, justice, and, most importantly, their faith. So when they say "blessed be the hammer", they really mean "we value honest work, and we worship the Builder". Mechanists get it all wrong, because they take the tenets at face value. When they say "blessed be the cog and the boiler", they literally mean that cogs and boilers are holy. I don't think their set of beliefs can be called a philosophy, because it quickly reduces itself to absurd. For instance, because cogs and boilers are holy, and all that is organic is inferior, then the Mechanist paradise consists of machines only, therefore it cannot sustain itself. [SPOILER] TMA ending cutscene shows how quickly the machines at Soulforge cease to work, in spite of their immunity to rust gas. They worked for as long as humans cared for them, and when there were no more humans around, they just stopped. [/SPOILER] The Mechanists must have realised this, because they had to maintain their machines on a daily basis. But, in their way of thinking, to say "Builder's Children cannot exist without us" would be a heresy.
Well, in this argument, I'm using Karras as a bit of a straw man. He's meant to be ridiculous - otherwise, I would never have chosen a character from a computer game. At the same time, he's also meant to be iconic. While what you say is true, but what I'm really looking at with Karras is (A) the harshness of the religion, as parodied by the fact that only robots can perfectly carry it out, and (B) what jtr7 (thank you for the concern, by the way :) ) is talking about here:
Quote:
Really, Karras is a mad genius, who gets crazier and crazier and even more egocentric as the story progresses, until he begans to equate himself with The Builder (subtly and overtly), and even famously reducing The Builder to an afterthought.
That is, in fact the quote I was thinking of when I chose him for the paper.
However, I must disagree - to the Mechanist, the fact that cogs and gears are holy doesn't reduce them to their absurd physicalities. It does sever them from everything biological, which is a downright stupid philosophy if you want people to be happy and believe only people can experience emotion (which Karras doesn't, and many philosophers don't, either,) and Karras himself is stupid for not forseeing the event you describe in the spoilerbox, but IF machines fit the mechanist ideal of things, then the machine
would be holier than the hammer to a Mechanist in a way which is very symbolic.
The hammer is powered by the hand, which has flaws, because the hand is meat, which is chaotic and unpredictable. The gear is powered by steam or spring, which is perfectly predictable and orderly. The mechanist ideal of the world is a world completely untouched by free will and its fleshy muckings. If the Mechanist religion's commands don't need to be done with free will, then a perfect, self-repairing and sustaining machine would be perfectly holy.
The fact that there is no perfect machine doesn't make Karras' logic invalid. It DOES mean that his logic isn't
sound, because his premise - machines are perfect - isn't true. (As long as an argument is consistent, it's valid. It has to have true premises to be sound, though.)
... and the fact that I knew I start doing this sort of thing is exactly why I've been lurking rather than logging in. ^^; Still, thank you for your concern, JTR7. Plus, for future reference, I'm a she. And thank you, everybody who's commented. You all have made me giddy with excitement. :D
jtr7 on 16/12/2007 at 01:15
You know, I had a feeling you were female!
Sorry, heh.:o
And, you're welcome.:)
DarkElf_Mairead on 16/12/2007 at 01:32
Let us know what kind of grade you get :)
