Yes, that's why the list could be in a descending order of subgradients.


STASIS did something because CHANGE got it too. IE Padomay "creating" Sithis made Anu create Anuiel to fill the void of Sithis.




I still don't see LOVE as a force.


TIME (more along the lines of STABILITY) could be. SPACE, not so much. That's too Sci-Fi.


CREATION is the interplay of STASIS and CHANGE, not CHANGE by itself.


WAR, yes. CONFLICT, no. Why? Because CONFLICT has been going on since STASIS AND CHANGE, making it a viable force. Although, CONFLICT could be seen as a piece of CHANGE.


Those are more mortal things. Yeah, they have something resembling power, but they don't form a block of creation.

Same place the old Daggerfools went. I miss those guys some times.

The Psijics keep to themselves these days, even more than before, and we cannot speak for them. But one wonders about the efficacy of inventing their theology so indiscriminately. Eleven is a number, but if Taheritae had spoken of the Multitudinous Forces, it would have been a theologically unimportant distinction.

Whatever the case, all can be certain that they do not adopt any of the peculiar pretensions of diction that have appeared so far. Adopting them yourselves will get you no closer to their ideology. The Marukhats are not in communion with the Psijics, but perhaps this advice - the earth is there to leap from, do not crawl on all fours to examine it.

Tam! RUGH!

Yeah, whatever.

So, basically, you're saying we're way off!

I often wondered why the number eleven was chosen. I guess only Ted may know. I'm sure it wasn't a very important piece of information at the time it was written. We're the only ones who would sit around, trying to list them. Most people probably couldn't care less.

As a side note, when I first read about the Psijics in Daggerfall, I thought the word was 'elven'. Just goes to show you that one needs to slow down when reading.

What about VOID as the opposite of ELEMENTS, or perhaps something entirely different being the opposite of say PRESCENCE

If you consider LOVE as a force then we must consider HATE a force too to preserve duality. Or something close to it.

Some say disregard is the opposite of love but it is to "meh, I don't care about it" to be a force to me.

I'd call it CONFLICT before I'd call it HATE. Main reason I haven't been trying to contribute to this list is because people have been putting emotions up instead of what I perceive to be forces.

That's kind of a dumb reason. LOVE is an emotion, too, you know. It just seems to have a certain amount of power in the TES universe.

Perhaps they're akin to the eleven Sephiroth or theosophical numerology?

I'd say that the concept of force excludes STASIS (which might be seen as the default position). TIME is a consequence of CHANGE and therefore either the same force or something not on the same level as CHANGE.
CHAOS might be a force, however.

This is like trying to determine a line using one point.

More like trying to figure out the geometry and curvature of a massive featureless plane.

That works, too.

I don't like the idea of emotions as forces either, though that would make this much easier. If you want to assume Change as the beginning, then the rest appearing in pairs in decending order, emotions are an easy fit (they all have counterparts). You could go hope and fear all the way down to love and hatred. I also don't get why Love is so important, so maybe my ignorance is causing me to be bias.

If we want to say that Change has no focus or origin, then it becomes an intersting concept. No origin means it is something from nothing. No focus means that something has no purpose or reason. It then becomes easier to come up with "subgradients" (as other called them) of change that include focus and origin. Again, this seems to easy.

Can someone come up with a better definition of Change? It seems impossible to proceed to a conclusion, because we don't even understand the starting point properly.

LOVE IS NOT AN EMOTION IN REAL LIFE OR OUTSIDE IT

And that's all I'll say on that matter.

In any case:



I was going to say something like this. We should really be looking for eleven truly FUNDAMENTAL forces -- those which make up all the others. While some (like LOVE) can have an origin, I think they should all be elemental enough that they can be seen as the cornerstones of the greater metaphysics of the cosmos as a whole. So, for instance, I wouldn't rule out STASIS.

I really like:

STASIS
CHANGE
CONFLICT
LOVE

Perhaps MYTHOPOEIA? Or is that too nonspecific?

I damn near like it just because I like the word, lol.

Perhaps its one of them? I hate that we have no other references besides the Guide to the Psijic Order.

Everyone ignored this but I liked it. I think we should, perhaps, be thinking more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah, who turned the inscrutable Divine into a series of interconnected and sometimes even opposed forces that made up the fabric of (meta)reality. Or something like that.

I like it! I knew there was a reason why I liked you. I think that it would stand on some subgradient, so if we are sorting it in terms of gradients, I'd put this in the middle. If we aren't sorting in terms of gradients, then I think perhaps PAIR or DUALITY would work fine since those seem to be the purest of forms. About your MYTH suggestion: I like it because it represents the weight symbols carry in TES, but I also agree with Verlox as they seem a little too focused at the mortal level. I'll think on it and try to push another suggestion.

Hush, we can have our moments of rhetorical bliss. We know that this wild speculation isn't going to give us anything deeper than some self-satisfaction.

I, personally and probably a few others around here, don't know all that much about Jewish mysticism. So I'm not going to even dream that I can couch things in Kabballahic terms.

While I don't think we have many bases to go on when trying to determine these forces (I tried once), I am pretty confident that Love, in the sense that we see the word scattered across Vehk's writings, is not one of them. It's not because one important person holds something in high esteem that others do. In this case, there is a wide ideological gap between the Endeavor-minded Dunmer and the Psijics, each party considering the other wrong-headed. (See Vehk's Teachings.) The Endeavor is a transcendent ideal, which gives us reason to believe the Psijics are against searching for transcendence, as the other Mer of various creeds were.

In a dusty corner of my memory I still remember having the concept of Love, as it is functions in Elder Scrolls Lore explained to me as the mental state by which a (divine) entity can cherish and interact with other beings in the full realization that all those beings are in fact part of itself. In other words, to deny existence outside of oneself, but to love it nonetheless. This places Love distinctly in the transcendental category.

May I ask you guys what is the definition of FORCE first? We need to understand and agree of the definition of the FORCE before we go any further.

Definitions of force that I found:
1. a powerful effect or influence; "the force of his eloquence easily persuaded them"
2. coerce: to cause to do through pressure or necessity, by physical, moral or intellectual means :"She forced him to take a job in the city"; "He squeezed her for information"
3. (physics) the influence that produces a change in a physical quantity; "force equals mass times acceleration"
4. impel: urge or force (a person) to an action; constrain or motivate
5. physical energy or intensity; "he hit with all the force he could muster"; "it was destroyed by the strength of the gale"; "a government has not the vitality and forcefulness of a living man"
6. push: move with force, "He pushed the table into a corner"
7. group of people willing to obey orders; "a public force is necessary to give security to the rights of citizens"
8. impose urgently, importunately, or inexorably; "She forced her diet fads on him"
9. military unit: a unit that is part of some military service; "he sent Caesar a force of six thousand men"
10. wedge: squeeze like a wedge into a tight space; "I squeezed myself into the corner"
11. violence: an act of aggression (as one against a person who resists); "he may accomplish by craft in the long run what he cannot do by force and violence in the short one"
12. force into or from an action or state, either physically or metaphorically; "She rammed her mind into focus"; "He drives me mad"
13. power: one possessing or exercising power or influence or authority; "the mysterious presence of an evil power"; "may the force be with you"; "the forces of evil"
14. pull: cause to move by pulling; "draw a wagon"; "pull a sled"
15. a group of people having the power of effective action; "he joined forces with a band of adventurers"

I just cut and paste the whole thing (I know some are not right). Let's think a bit, which one(s) of these are the FORCE that we talked about?

For me it's number 1 and 4.

So for me DUALITY is not FORCE

but what about VOID and PRESENCE, VOID represents nothingness, the basis of Sithis, it is the result of sithis' work where all turns to nothing, PRESCENCE is the opposite where something is made, something has substance within that space.

CHAOS is also Sithis, whose opposite is Anuiel, the totality of CREATION.

Hi Xan.

Ah nix.

:chaos:

I agree with you on this. The others are too specific and mundane for me.