[Glorantha] Mind, Soul, Spirit, Essence

Hi Jane
>
> Thanks - nice to have some definitions and precise vocabulary. But I wasn't
> suggesting the mind is purely a property of the physical brain (and other
> squishy bits) and hence incapable of "post mortem survival" - software can
> have backups taken, and can be re-installed on another computer.
>
Yes, true enough! :) However the computer hardware here could be equated as the brain, that the mind is "running on"? Anyway best leave this fo rnow as it's veering wildly OT. There are also other brain/mind relationships proposed- serialism and paralleism are two. I happen to find it academically interesting, as I hold to a very unfashionable theory, dualism, but it's not Gloranthan so we'll pass for now if that is ok? I have bored enough people in my time!

>
>
>>i) immortality is conditional. The Atheist No-God folk do
>>not have it.
>
>
> That would appear to be the case, but I'm not all that familiar with them.
>

Neither am I sadly. I see them in terms of strong willed individuals who do not reject the existence of Gods per se, but just don't want aything to do with them, so live for today, and plan on death to escape the sufferring and joys of existence, content they have done all they want, and not to serve or continue as anything but what they are now...

CJ wrote
"
>>ii) conciousness appears to be a tripartite structure, where brain
>>activity in most Gloranthans is currently a mix of Spirit, Soul and
>>ssence working within a body.
>
> Jane wrote
> Mmm... Those are the three components of the "magic" side of things, at
> least. The interface between the middle world and the three Otherworlds.
> Brain activity concerned with normal life may well be something separate
> again."

Yep sorry. Tripartite structures in understanding personhood or mind are very common - Freud, Eric Berne, the classical Christain theological distinction between Spirit, Soul and Body (Body is also a seat of passions and hence impacts mind as mind is broadly described here; it seems to be a synonym for personhood.) However you are completely right, and I doubt that concentrated users possess a different kind of conciousness, merely a different harmony in the balance of the three forms of magic in their person.

> Jane wrote
>
> It's an interesting analogy. But doesn't that imply that the "real self" is
> split between three different Otherworlds, with only the physical body (and
> the non-magic part of the mind) as an interface between the three? That
> sounds as if it would have significant consequences. "Schizophrenia" is
> probably the wrong word to use (especially as the clinical definition does
> not mean split personality at all), but something vaguely along those lines?

Well we all have concious, unconcious and subconcious, or id, ego and superego, or Soul, Spirit and Body, or... Tripartite models of personhood seem quite normal. The mind, or personhood is the fusion of the whole, the sunm of relationships between the three, as in the Christian Trinitarian doctrine (at least in teh Cappadocian Fathers wonderful doctrine of perichoresis, which I love asit says our personhood is not just an internal set of realtionships, but also comprises our relationships with others - so our relationshuips with our friends are as much part of us as our desires and memories, f'r instance). So maybe if we think of the signals as potentials mediated by actions while living in Glorantha in to the individual personality. Tuning in to one by concentration does not destroy or replace the oher, but it deemphasises them and harmonises them with the doominant signal? dunno. Wild and wooly speculation on my part of zip value to anyone. OK, let's ignore this as worthless theory!

>
> I like the transmitter/reciever analogy, though, if one takes it no further.
> Where is the Otherworld? Right alongside this one. And in some cases, if we
> add in the "hardware/software" analogy, the whole "where" concept becomes
> obviously inapplicable - where are we having this current conversation? If
> we were using ham radio instead, would the question be any more meaningful?
>
  Yes, I like that idea.

(snip much good stuff by Jane as I have to go do some washing up shortly, but will return to it later)
>
>

CJ wrote

>>v) Post mortem existence loses individual personality and
>>self identity,
>>and instead enters the person back in to the collective.
>
>
Jane wrote
> Are we sure about that? Clan ceremonies that communicate with ancestors seem
> to be able to converse with individuals.
>
>
>>Ancestral Spirits are still to some extent individuals, but that
>>individuality may be a function of the living worshippers mind, derived
>>from the practitioners who invoke them.
>
>
> Hmmm... This seems to me to be heading towards the idea that Gods are also
> shaped by their worshippers, which in Glorantha as opposed to Discworld,
> they're not. I like the idea. I just suspect it doesn't work.
>

Nah, I certainly don't believe the gods are empowered by worship. I however do note that ghosts and spirits seem to only take on personality under certain very specific coditions, and that in the God World individuals are notoriously hard topick out. yet they retain those individual personalities as we know from something in the Star Ship epuisode. I wondered if we allowedthem to manifest them by our Living presence which removes them and distinguishes them from the collective identity of the afterlife. Again, wild theory, Greg could easily put us straight on this, if he has time, as he seems to be posting. :)

Anyway I had better go do the dishes. I wa stempted to look at Heortling concepts of life as breath, and draw analogies with Germanic (geist) and Greek (pneuma) thought and ancient semitic parallels, but I have waffled enough.

I have had an odd thought though. In Glorantha, is Death a positive metaphysical state, not merely absence of life? It appears to be. So what makes you die? Being hit repeatedly with a rock, burnt to ashes, or falling off a mountain would not be enough, it would just severely curtail bodily fuction. Death is an active principle, a spiritual reality, an is greater than mere cessation of brain activity, or whatever we undertand it as...

Mybe we should create a seperate "wild and inappropriate theorising about pointless philosophical minutiae of glorantha" list! ;) I'd be up for it it seems! I feel really guilty about this, because usually I try and focus on stuff relevant to my game. :(

cj x

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Received on Fri 06 Jan 2006 - 21:29:37 EET