From: Peter Metcalfe (P.Metcalfe@student.canterbury.ac.nz)
Date: Sun 17 Nov 1996 - 04:24:22 EET
Evolutionism:
=============
A lot of people have been commenting recently that the 'evolutionism'
viewpoint takes away the 'magic' of glorantha by denying the existance
of the gods. The point about Glorantha is that it is not just a place
with gods in it - it is a place where humans can do magic. How they
view their use of magic is the driving force behind glorantha IMO, not
'the existance of gods'. As far back as Cults of Terror, it was known
that there were four seperate ways of looking at the universe.
MYSTICISM: Found in Kralorela [according to CoT, the geographical
distributions of all four viewpoints has changed a bit since the
God Learners]. Views the world as an Illusion with the Void as the
only reality.
THEISM: Found in West-Central Genertela. Views the world as
a result of the interaction of Gods.
HUMANISM: Found in the West. Views the world as an interaction
of inanimate forces that can be moulded by human actions.
NATURALISM: Found in places where the others are not. Views the
world as an interaction of spiritual forces.
Now what the God Learners discovered that all these viewpoints
are _equally_ valid. A humanist for example may see the sun
as the abode of the Fire Rune where a theist would call it a
God. The Mystic would call it the Mind of the Cosmic Dragon
as percieved by corrupt human senses whereas the Naturalist
might call it as the glowing tip of the Earthmakers Firestick
(which is much bigger than his own which he uses to make magic).
Everyone acknowleges that the Sun is a powerful Otherworldly
force. The humanist may not call it divine but that is semantics.
Each can interact with the sun in his or her own way and every
one of those beliefs is valid. To assume that the Theist alone
has privileged information is jarring IMO.
Thus saying statements like 'The Gods, being concrete realities,
made the world' implies that the viewpoints of the sorcerers,
the shamans and the mystics are objectively false. And this
I feel diminishes Glorantha *more* than assuming that peoples
views of the nature of the universe changed over time.
- --Peter Metcalfe
------------------------------
End of Glorantha Digest V3 #290
*******************************
RuneQuest is a trademark of Avalon Hill, and Glorantha is a trademark
of Chaosium. With the exception of previously copyrighted material,
unless specified otherwise all text in this digest is copyright by the
author or authors, with rights granted to copy for personal use, to
excerpt in reviews and replies, and to archive unchanged for
electronic retrieval.
Send electronic mail to Majordomo@hops.wharton.upenn.edu with "help"
in the body of the message for subscription information on this and
other mailing lists.
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 13 Jun 2003 - 16:53:55 EEST