WHEEL SMASHING LORD 3-101 to 3-102
Chapter: 3
“The Blue Faced Sage has one thesis that consistently earns him ire in the Lunar Courts. His argument is the following: that immortals, while said to possess the qualities and parts of mortal beings, such as thought, speech, and personality, must by necessity discard these parts or perish in mind and spirit both. These parts, he argues, are useful only to a being of a more limited existence, who must by nature participate in the world, while an immortal has no motivating impetus to do so, and no motivating impetus to interact with beings that have no more significant to a true immortal than a mote of sand. Therefore, the exercise of these parts is merely a curiosity, or worse, a manifestation of insanity.”
-Annals of the Yellow City
Mike Wazowski
Why do you use your powers, whatever they are, for evil?
Nicotine is stronger than death. It resists reincarnation and the resetting of existence. Cio has been craving for a puff in all cosmic iteractions.
I don’t believe it! I am in a panel of a webcomic!
I love this way too much
Eye think it was her I
We See, and We approve.
Even a worm will turn
You’d think your pal Gog-Agog would appreciate being involved for the sheer novelty of the situation!
I think she loves it, but it’s important to play your part to derive ultimate novelty! And there’s like two people total who can make Gog do anything, and one of them got decapitated on page one. So being dragged around the scene by a tiny little bug is the kind of novelty that needs to be appreciated by committing fully to the bit!
For someone like Gog, novelty is only fun when you’re also WINNING. Her Majesty the King put it quite well when she said that Gog is a sore loser.
With how many times the cycle seems to have repeated I bet she has helped for the novelty before. And has even done it so many times it is no longer novel.
Novelty is less fun when it is something you are pulled into against your will.
There is a lot of Gog, enough to both love it and hate it
The fear of mortality is that you will no longer get to participate in the world. Immortality is sought to alleviate that fear, what good is it then if you once having achieved it, elect to remove yourself from the world anyways?
This guy gets it
The act of achieving immortality IS removing yourself from the world.
What makes you think that?
The act of living is to be in the world, the act of dying is to achieve a state where death can no longer effect you, to remove the act of dying, and the state where death can no longer come for you is to, by elimination, remove living, and thus remove being part of the world, being at the top of the world, means to leave it, a bird doesn’t gain it’s view by staying among the grass
I could not possibly disagree more. This is a response to the idea being discussed, and not targeted at you as a person. Not you who I respond to, not anyone who reads this.
The elimination of biological death by no means removes the variety of experience. It only enhances it. Gog is a strawman of transhumanism. Which is fine, because I don’t read Gog as an argument against transhumanism per se. More of an argument against dissociation.
But the vast majority of experiences people can have are things humanity currently lacks words for, and that nobody even has schemas for.
Drug use gives an insight into some of those, and the vocabulary is as poor as you’d expect given most people arent into habitual thoughtful psychonautics. Human brains werent’ made to safely operate in those states. it is a rare person who can deal with and integrate drug experiences on a constant and consistent basis.
A tradition that has both extreme states of concioussness and huge nomenclative cqapacity therefore is bhuddism. But that is hardly surprising, given that the nomenclature is the result of thousands of years of tradition. Other attempts at nondrug psychonautic practice hardly do as wellm, and that is because they either existed for a lesser span or were persecuted at various points.
Both bhuddism and other traditions, drug and nondrug, suffer from a persistent tendency to lack a nice ivide between “Here is the experience described with rigor” and “here is what I think it means for religious purposes”.
Withuot that divide, a lot of work get retread almost endlessly. For example, tulpas. The bhuddist original has some theological implication attached; the wester secular version is not thelogised but arguably lingers in a less developed state due to non-integration of practical knowledge that is too theologised aout for mass acceptyance by a western audience of (mostly) judaeo-christian educated practicioners.
The set of experiences we can have is so vast it demands that we destroy death.
I would know.
My explicit life goal is to drink fully of the cup of life, but if I am to die in my seventies, then the majority of thecup will fall to the floor and shatter, spilling its contained experiences evertrywhere.
It is wasteful. And that is just my selfish argument.
My unselfish one is that if there is a good god then that god will not begrudge men to linger, but if nearly any specific human faith is right, avoiding death is imperative for all but those chose few, because torment beyond torment awaits them.
For example, I was abused terribly when I was young, and in a fit of rage, became an apostate to christanity, post baptism. Many variants of christianity have me permanently damned to eternal torment no matter what I do. Repent? Doesn’t matter. Good works? Insufficient. I’m just fucked. In many variants of christianity, if christianity is right and you are not a christian, the same fate awaits. I think that’s at least a plurality of all alive today.
Lets not roll the god dice please.
Secular is worse. If the world is secular, we just become nothing forever. Lmao no thanks, I don’t remember before I was born and that fucking terrifies me. I like being me, even though every day is so bad that I have to fight suicidal impulses. It’s better than being nothing, thanks.
Being scared by an idea is no reason to reject it. Why worry so much about the void?
Because I am a nihilist. It all has meaning because I choose to give it meaning. If I end, it was meaningless, because I will no longer exist to make that choice.
To say that it had meaning while I existed is insufficient. It is insufficient because of the principle of stochastic history. As time moves forward, the past becomes less certain. This is provable with certainty. To try to prevent a long digression, let’s acknowledge that the existence of certain sciences – archaeology, cosmological physics, paleontology, evolutionary cladistics, etc – prove it to be the case.
So sure, it has meaning now, but the world by its own law wants to deny that meaning. Take a maximally long view. The universe itself will decay, to the point that every last fundamental particle is perfctly isolate from all others. In that world, if we granted that solitary, singular electrons ciould be sapient – they cant, but this is to illustrate a point – their science would not include theories of anything that they could not observe. And what could they observe at all? Its not like they could build any tools to make observations.
Grant the electron senses an electron should have. Electrical ones. Magnetic ones. Could it ever understand the strong nuclear force existed, let alone that other electrons could exist?
Maybe with immaculate sciece, though I find it unlikely, and in any case, it would have no evidence for how the worl became what it saw. Far less than we would have. Its most likely theory would be an eternal cosmos of big rip, where it came into existence as a virtual particle whose partner got ripped into its own event horizon world at the same time as it was, due to being a bit too far apart ro mutually annihilate.
Our world? No. It could not observe that. Or infer anything like it.
We will, by that point, with certainty, have been erased from stochastic history.
If there was the certainty of a ledger, then I could say my life had meaning and agonise over how cruel and evil I find *involuntary* (voluntary is fine) mortality. Involuntary death. I have so many other reasons, and I cant even give them a serious think, because this world isn’t content to kill me, so far as I can tell.
It isn’t content to kill anybody.
It wants to erase us all, utterly.
My life has meaning because i choose to give it meaning. If no material testament of that choice remains, then I didn’t make it based on anything but faith.
Except, I’m faithless, right?
I have no faith. Because I see faith as a loosing game. Either god or the gods are good, and I have nothing to worry about because they are too damn good to even touch the idea of exporting a hyperviolent version of america’s prison system into the afterlife, or they arent’, and I’m fucked, and they, fr all their power, aren’t worthy of worship, but deserve contempt. So, you know.
I’ll just try my best, but I wont try to bribe the godhead, because that would be abasing myself of human dignty when I dont even know who to abase myself for. and if I’m wrong I might make it nearly infinitely worse than it already is if not straight infinitely.
Lmao even the bhuddists have unfathomable hells.
I dont think there is a hell, and if there is, I’m definitely going. Unless it’s like. Neil Gaiman Sandman hell. Then Im not. But in any case I’m not going to waste mental energy on matters beyond the carnal realm we live in save my own fictional works. Those are the only noumenon I *seriously* invest in.
So, right.
I have no religon to make me care about anything other than here and now. But the universe has declared through cold, immutable, immortal law, writ in its effects derived from the great first cause… that it is going to erase my everything so utterly it cannot be said to exist to begin with.
But I only believe in what can be observed. I have no fixed believe on cosmogony because I cannot observe it. And I will never be able to unless new science tears an irrefutability from the levels of stochasticity we have in our history.
…so I live in a world telling me I shouldn’t believe in myself, basically, because even as I perceive it, this truth cannot ultimately be proven. Solipsism might as well be the case in a world like that, but if it is, I am not its protagonist. That role belongs to something infinitely colder.Honestly, the only thing that separates me from Gog is ignorance, and a different persecutory body.
She suffers at Zoss’ whim, and broke.
I stared into the eye of entropy, and concluded I don’t know enough yet to break.
Short term, immortality. Long term, any means whatsoever to unhang my neck from the noose of the second law.
You know why I’m scared?
Because if you cant see it, it might as well not be real, and if you cant know it, it might as well not matter.
For example, people like nature, right?
Animals eat animals, and nearly all animals have pain receptors.
But they dont make human screams.
So who gives a fuck?
Trees.
Are pretty.
And they use that shade to murder those plants in their shadow. Arguably, a nonissue, but where exactly is sentience anyway? Arte we so sure plants lack the capacity for feeling?
Grass screams when we cut it, and we admire the smell.
I – unless I am very lucky – will one day be erased.
And I want to vomit at the idea of a being that looks upon a world including that erasure and calls it beautiful, because I fought to break my mind into the shape of something that would understand that *it is not beautiful at all*, so maye, in whatever small way I could, I could take all that screaming nobody cares about, and make it stop, and replace it with joy nobody fucking gives a shit about instead.
Anyone is free to call me a weirdo. I call myself a weirdo.
But my ideology is self-consistent.
Transicence is not beautiful when it is raped into you from long before your very birth. It might not even be beautful when it is chosen.
That notion of assumed beauty is just a veil of maya to savagery beyond most sane contyemplation.
But hey, for all I don’t really get Allison, for once, I can steal a quote from her for my recitation.
Mine is the path of mutilation.
What are your thoughts on Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence Demon and the law of thermodynamics/entropy that states energy cannot be created or destroyed, only change form?
i dont think ur a weirdo or stupid or anything but i think ur being VERY dramatic to the point of fulminating. ur not on the path of mutilation ur literally just a monkey with a neuron disorder. that doesnt mean the same thing coming from u because ur not a fictional character with the ability to flip determinism one way or the other or meaningfully opt out of suffering ur just posting sophomoric ramblings on the internet
like to be clear. these are all reasonable feeling to feel and thoughts to think. but u act as if ur thoughts n feelings on the matter are unique or in any way distinct from the average person’s or anyone else’s in history. wow ur accomplishments will be swallowed by the void and nobody will ever remember anything about you. welcome to the club literally the human experience IS the constant grapple with that notion. realizing its all hollow doesnt excuse solipsism because ur basically just rehashing thoughts humans have been having for millenia. maybe collectivism is the only sane path for a nihilist because u can at least buoy humanity at large with knowledge and compassion. maybe public autoflagellation is just kind of embarassing and pointless because ur acting like a universal problem is specific enough to u that u deserve individual attention for it
I dunno about the “constant grapple” and “buoy humanity at large” parts. This seems overdramatic, unnecessary and unfun, why not just vibe?
Public flagellation is a sacred pastime, it’s what language was invented for.
I highly recommend reading Blindsight ny Peter Watts, the Conspiracy Against the Human Race by Thomas Ligotti, and Susan Blackmoore on the illusion of the Stream of Consciousness.
Afterwards, read The Mind Illuminated by Culdasa, Liber Null & Psychonaut, and Understanding our Mind by Thich Nhat Hanh or Making Sense of Mind Only by William Waldron.
Then, read Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche and The Red Book by Carl Jung.
Read with Each and Every Breath by Ajahn Thanissaro or Keeping the Breath in Mind by Ajahn Lee. Go into your inner desert and find your soul.
The Tree of Life is the human nervous system, climb the tree and unite the serpent below with the dove above. The human being is an alchemical machine by which the celestial and terrestrial is brought into harmony and the all achieves supreme meaning and reflection in the one.
I don’t think you’re a weirdo. It seems to me like you’re reacting to mortal life in the way I react when my parents take me on a trip. I resent that they didn’t ask me if I wanted to go, so I rebel by refusing to enjoy it. I focus on how unfairly I have been treated, how early I have to wake up, all the things I could be doing if I were somewhere else. I think about these things and I complain about these things because it is a way of pushing back against what I perceive as an external pressure to enjoy something that’s been forced on me.
It is a way of reclaiming my autonomy. It is a way of sticking up for the downtrodden, of fulfilling my sense of justice. It is a way of taking the part of myself that feels ignored and saying to it: you matter. You are not powerless. You are not alone. I think this is what you are doing, when you stand against the world because we die in it. I think you are standing up for the part of yourself that feels helpless and alone. You are saying: I will not ignore you, I will not ignore how you feel. You felt scared and someone wouldn’t listen; the world scared you, and someone called it beautiful. I will not call it beautiful. I will not accept this condition. I will fight it for all I’m worth.
And I think that is very understandable. I’ve been taken on lots of trips. But let me tell you about the time I was taken on a trip and I decided that unhappiness was not a sufficient solution. I needed to COMPLAIN. I told my parents, I am unhappy because you are not treating me as someone with my own desires to be respected, and I cannot enjoy the trip feeling this way, so what is the point?
And they listened to me. They didn’t turn the car around, but they listened to me. They apologized. And I felt a LOT better. I felt so much better that I was like hey, the view from this car window is great. I’m actually enjoying this trip.
And you know, that’s kind of how I feel about the world. I didn’t choose it and it has a lot of injustice and pain. But I’m not alone in it. There’s a lot in it that I love. I want it to be better, but there’s people I want things to be better for. And I love the world, not because it’s a just place- it’s just a place- but because it’s where we get to live together. Longer, I hope, happier, I hope. But getting to live at all- I’ve complained about it so much that now I see it as a stroke of good luck.
So, I don’t think you’re a weirdo. But I think that the way you feel about the world changes as you connect with other people more and start having more fun. And you know, I saw your post and I felt inspired to respond. I enjoyed getting to read what you wrote, and I thought about what you thought, and I wanted to write something for you to see. You spoke out and became someone who matters to me. So keep complaining!
I like what you wrote, but would direct you towards the orthodox and less dualist faiths.
The fact that it’s hard to figure out our particular purposes in life is no reason to argue, as you seem to grasp, that there isn’t a purpose. You clearly grasp that the world, even when we suffer, is a gift. People have daddy issues so they miss the clear import of God as Father … fathers when functioning well want their kids to achieve their potentials and love life, themselves, others, and their fathers. The meaning of life is to love God and what he’s given us an achieve our potential. That will look different for each of us because we’re all different – not just “like” children but as children.
There’s that line in Tulsa Kings where the plumber father of the young man who’s decided to sign on as muscle tells him the hardest part of being a parent is to let your kid do something that’ll hurt him because it’s the right thing to do. Life’s all about choices … we chose to learn from them or not.
That’s the orthodox Christian and Jewish answer, all about freedom, and it is one of the common if less favoured answers in Islam, too (less favoured because a literal translation of “Islam” is “slavery” and the focus there is less on faith and a relationship with the Almighty than upon obedience).
Just something to think about. Jim Butcher, of all people, in The dresden Files gets that VERY clearly.
I do not follow your chain of cause and effect, there are some links missing.
Even atop a mountain, atop a throne, atop the wheel, my feet will still touch the world and I still stand in it.
Why limit the panoply of motivations which immortals might have? And what in the world makes you think anything, even immortality, could remove you from the world?
If the enemy is insurmountable, then why do you need a plan? It won’t make it any less impossible.
Guess her glasses won’t really work anymore.
Time to bust out the monocle!
oh, i have aarived early. most bingus.
Well at least she can get a calm and quiet cigarette. It’s a start
Killed, remade into a new body, and yet still can’t beat her nicotine addiction… Cio has it rough…
It’s not the nicotine – it’s the offered connection
All devils like smoking; the Hot Flame seeks it out and that is their core nature.
Or at least that is the lie they all tell themselves. Powerful lies are truths.
One cut will suffice!
Woerm go *pop*
White Chain and Solomon weren’t fighting, she’s just been doing squats for a really long time and it’s taking a toll.
crush six billion reps
I spit coffee
I offer you a useful towel.
I AM AND I ARE ALL WE
Welp, that’s one way to force Gog-Agog to help out!
Alison still not having a plan is… worrisome.
Never having a plan was one of Aesma’s greatest strengths and part of why she was YISUN’s favorite. With the power of gods to know is to be limited.
On the contrary, never have I ever been more certain that she’ll win. This is quite possibly the most important battle in the history of ever and she’s just… managed to simultaneously lock the fuck in and turn her brain off.
By the rules of this universe, this makes her the mightiest dumbass in existence.
Her brain is very much ON
She just put the gerbil cage in the back room & closed the door
No distractions
If the wheel has cycled through all inevitabilities, do something, uh… uninevitable?
AKA your plan can’t fail if you don’t have one.
A plain presumes failure if you do not follow it. Royalty simply acts, and the universe complies.
‘If we don’t know what we are doing, the enemy certainly can’t anticipate our future actions’
Wasn’t there something about warriors no fearing a great warrior, but fearing a bad one? Because you can never predict what they’re going to do? Seems like Allison has mastered this.
On the contrary, it would be worrying if she HAD a plan!
Planning didn’t work last time, just ask the Worm how planning goes
She merely follows the wisdom of her teacher’s teacher.
Meti’s 18 Precepts
#7: A brain is useful only up until the point when you are faced with your enemy. Then it is useless. The only truly useful thing in this cursed world is will. You must suffuse your worthless body with its terrible heat. You must be so hot that even if your enemy should strike your head off, you shall continue to decapitate ten more men. Your boiling blood must spring forth from your neck and mutilate the survivors
The quickest way to a girl’s heart?
Cio: Heart disease. And cancer. In a stick. Gimme!
>:=)>
Cio++: Fine, but I’m going to keep an eye on you.
OH SHE CUTE
If that’s not a nat 20 in rizz I don’t know what is
Just one moment of smoking together in the life with Cio she left behind and she’s ready to grab another cigarette with Nukoku.
Path of mutilation indeed.
Extremely pleased to see that Gog Agog is going to be around for the finale, and a little concerned that Alison might not quite grasp the cosmic horror of attaching herself to a eternity of worms if this all goes tits up.
I disagree with this Blue Faced Sage.
Mortality. Immortality. It’s all a matter of perspective. All our matter. All our para-matter or metaphysical-matter, the particles of our souls, all gets recycled. Upcycled even. When I am gone, I will be more than I ever was in life. And then I’ll be back in every breeze, every inappropriately timed laugh, every worm and dog that’s eaten from my feted corpse. I will be scattered across the cosmos, time and space, across even realities. And I will bring with me a terrible thunder that is awesome to behold. Even in the end, when there are but cold balls of steel slowly eroding into nothingness in an ever expanding void of nothing, I will be there, more Immortal than these foolish immortals can comprehend with their vision so clouded by ego.
Oh hey. Gog-agog figured out the “other points of view” thing!
Or, well, had it shoved onto her by Royalty. Close enough!
She had her face shoved into the concept by force, and immediately emerged from it, coughing and sputtering and vowing to never try it again. She’ll be back soon, I expect!
The sheer, unbridled aura of Royalty Allison is emitting right now… Crabsolutely staggering. Aesma would be pleased, and would probably also try to kick her teeth in for shits and giggles.
Allison messed with Gog so hard her speech bubbles went normal again.
Ah, so that is why it seemed so simple.