» Thu Jul 31, 2014 8:38 pm What is truth?
We’ve had an extensive conversation on the meaning of ‘love’ in the Lessons/Loveletter/C0DA (notably these threads, started by http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1443590-what-is-love/?p=22245352, http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1393740-what-is-love/?p=21163821, and http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1331662-chim-and-love/), but there’s been less discussion of the meaning of ‘truth’ in that same context. And the more I look at it, the more I think that understanding Vivec’s usage of ‘truth’ is central to understanding the philosophy behind the Lessons. Because truth, to Vivec, is a hammer. To explain that, let’s take a look at the role of Molag Bal in the Lessons, their central message of ideological domination, and their instructions on the use of the hammer.
Molag Bal is the God of Truth
Sermon Thirty-One: Truth is like my husband: instructed to smash, filled with procedure and noise, hammering, weighty, heaviness made schematic, lessons learned only by a mace.
Sermon Thirty-Six: Ayem took from the star its fire, Seht took from it its mystery, and Vehk took from it its feet, which had been constructed before the gift of Molag Bal and destroyed in the manner of truth: by a great hammering.
Here truth is directly linked to Molag Bal and domination. This is because Vivec views truth as inherently domineering, and thus part of Bal’s sphere. This is the idea that any assertion of truth, no matter which philosophy it comes from, is an attempt to control the thoughts, beliefs, and actions of others. To Vivec, truth is a hammer you beat people with to make them do what you want. This feeds directly into the central message of the Lessons, which I think is…
Be the Boss by Controlling Belief
Or, in other words, ‘reach heaven by violence.’ This equation doesn’t make that much immediate sense to me, but it helps to realize that Vivec thinks truth is a hammer. Hir also gives language violent denotations – ‘the six-death of language.’ Also Sermon Seventeen: ‘Vivec wanted to show the Hortator the fighting styles of foreign tongues. They learned the idiom stroke from the pillow book of the Tsaesci king. It is shaped like the insight of this page.’ There’s also the fact of mythopoeia, so ideological domination can directly manifest as physical tyranny.
This pops up quite a bit in the Sermons – I think more often than I’ve discovered yet. Here’s one:
Sermon Eleven: ‘'There is once more the case of the symbolic and barren. The true prince that is cursed and demonized will be adored at last with full hearts. According to the Codes of Mephala there can be no official art, only fixation points of complexity that will erase from the awe of the people given enough time. This is a secret that hides another. An impersonal survival is not the way of the ruling king. Embrace the art of the people and marry it and by that I mean secretly have it murdered.’
If you wield truth properly, you’ll win in the end. There’s no objective reality, just mutable truths created by people. Rule by stealing existing symbols and filling them with your own meaning.
Here’s another: ‘When Nerevar returned, he saw the frozen comet above his lord's city. He asked whether or not Vivec wanted it removed.
'I would have done so myself if I wanted, silly Hortator. I shall keep it there with its last intention intact, so that if the love of the people of this city for me ever disappear, so shall the power that holds back their destruction.'
Nerevar said, 'Love is under your will only.'
Vivec smiled and told the Hortator that he had become a Minister of Truth.’
Remember that Lie Rock housed the Ministry of Truth, where the Temple imprisoned and re-educated heretics – that’s why Nerevar became a Minister of Truth with that first line of propaganda. So Vivec uses the Ministry of Truth directly to enforce hir orthodoxy, but also suspends it as a threat for the Dunmer. This leads us into how Vivec thinks truth, or the hammer, should be used.
[censored], for your Own Good
Less bluntly, ze thinks that you should use the concept of truth to destroy the beliefs of others, so that they can reach ‘enlightenment.’ I.e., you should bully people with truth so they think what you want instead. Basically, Vivec thinks that being brutalized as he was by Molag Bal is the quickest way to reach enlightenment – when you’re getting beaten up by someone with a truth hammer, you learn very quickly how the world works and how to use it to your advantage. See here:
Sermon Thirty-One: ‘Third, he recalled the Pomegranate Banquet, where he was forced to marry to Molag Bal with wet scriptures to cement his likeness as Mephala and write with black hands.’
And here:
Sermon Thirty-Five: ‘Late is the lover that comes to this by any other walking way than the fifth, which is the number of the limit of this world.’
The Ruddy Man, an old skin of Molag Bal, was Vivec’s fifth child, the ‘catastrophes’ of Vivec’s love come from the five corners, and I think some of the other scriptures tie brutality to the fifth walking way.
After you’ve endured this brutality, Vivec tells you to rejoice that you now understand the nature of truth, according to the Scripture of the Mace: 'In the end, rejoice as a hostage released from drumming torment but that savors his wound. The drum breaks and you find it to be a nest of hornets, which is to say: your sleep is over.' Vivec hirself received CHIM from Molag Bal, after all. Further, don’t apologize when you enact this philosophy on others, as Vivec did with the Dwemer:
Sermon Thirty-Six: ‘Each of the aspects of the ALMSIVI then rose up together, combining as one, and showed the world the sixth path. Ayem took from the star its fire, Seht took from it its mystery, and Vehk took from it its feet, which had been constructed before the gift of Molag Bal and destroyed in the manner of truth: by a great hammering. When the soul of the Dwemer could walk no more, they were removed from this world.’
Finally, I’ll just point out that this is what Vivec hirself did to the world – ze hammered the Heart, destroyed the existing history, and rewrote hir life a la the Sermons.
What else does this mean?
A lot, honestly. There’s tons more to discuss – the ‘curative’ nature of truth, the water face, the ‘eating’ of words, etc. I do have thoughts on those, but I’d rather hear what you guys have to say about them in light of truth as a hammer, Molag Bal as its god, the Sermons as a guide to ideological tyranny, and brutality as a path to ‘enlightenment.’ As well as your thoughts on my understanding of things, of course. How do you see it?
Oh, one last note: this perspective came out of brainstorming for the latest Wy-Naught, so if you're interested in a thematic exploration of these ideas you can take a look at http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1505123-wy-naught-and-her-own-good/#entry23718782.
