From: Richard Melvin (rmelvin@radm.demon.co.uk)
Date: Tue 04 Aug 1998 - 02:29:52 EEST
In article <199808031626.QAA17584@chaosium.com>, The Glorantha Digest
<owner-glorantha-digest@chaosium.com> writes
>
>Nothing against this concept. What I'm saying is that in Glorantha magic is
>part of thep physical processes and impersonal forces.
>And as in the RW we can look at humans from a POV based purely in physical
>processes and impersonal forces; in Glorantha we can do the same in what
>concerns spirits and gods.
>So, this substantiates my argument that shamanism and polytheism are
>materialist.
No, what that proves is that shamanism and polytheism produce results
that are visible from an external materialist POV. Initiates see the
gods walking the earth, outsiders see a picturesque, magically effective
ritual.
In crude caricature:
- - shamanism is treating spirits as people
- - polytheism is treating spirits as gods
- - materialism is treating spirits as objects
- - monotheism is treating philosophical principles as gods
- - 'hsunchenism' (ugly word! - totemism?) is treating animals
as people
- - autism is treating people as objects
(OK, I said it's a crude caricature)
[I keep wanting to rearrange the above, but I don't think it'll
get any less wrong. Maybe it'll get the point across though.]
To be slightly less flip, there three ways of relating to
something: as a person, as an object, and as a deity.
This classification, and a whole bunch of capabilities
for dealing with each type of thing, is probably buried
pretty deep in either western culture or the forebrain[1].
You can see divisions along these lines in current RW
culture. Different people treat different kinds of animal
as 'essentially human'[2].
The difference is not in the animal, but in the human: consider a
farming family who adopts one pig as a pet, and eats the rest.
Orlanthi probably regard Meldeks[3] as suffering from a disease
like autism. The part of the brain/spirit that should be
relating to the gods is not working.
In fact, it probably gets burnt out in some kind of hideous sorcerous
ritual. Which will have to do as the game-relevant bit of this post.
Richard
[1] The existence of autism would argue for the forebrain, if a
disease can effectively lead to the loss of the ability to relate to
people as people. See Oliver Sacks for details,
and counter-arguments.
[2] frex, the English generally treat anything with eyes as at least
the equal of a human, whereas the French treat anything edible
as potential food.
[3] Emptied ones - one of my favorite Gloranthan words.
- --
Richard Melvin
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End of The Glorantha Digest V6 #74
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