Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
[X] Speak on the nature of power, of the innate ambition of dominance and command that underlies Sovereignty (Additional Exploration and XP to Power Concept)
I think a discussion on power dynamics is super key for one with so many Spirit companions like LQ.
I think a discussion on power dynamics is super key for one with so many Spirit companions like LQ.
- Location
- United States of America
I disagree. In this situation where a being attempts to change the perfectly stagnant location, they wouldn't even be able to enter, as that would be a change to the perfect stagnation. So they would have to change it from the outside of the area, and they would fail in that regard. Is that being then powerless for failing to change the area of perfect stagnation? No, they can still do other things, they still have their abilities, authority, wealth, connections, skills, etc. All of that is simply ineffective against the hypothetical perfect stagnation.
My argument, more succinctly, is that being unchanging is a source of power, even if you are no longer able to effect change yourself.
See, that elaboration, to me, highlights the issues with the proposition that "Power is the ability to effect change" rather than resolves them.
The question becomes, should we take Shen Yue's statement as true that the ability to effect change = the ability to resist change? This is vital as the only way the proposition "Power is the ability to effect change" works is if the ability to effect change = the ability to resist change.
So, are there other ways to phrase the idea that "the ability to effect change = the ability to resist change" that would be substantially similar, but cause questions as to its authenticity? Well, let's look at this, "The ability to overcome inertia = inertia."
To me, "the ability to effect change = the ability to resist change" is substantially similar to "the ability to overcome inertia = inertia." Inertia is the ability to stay the course, to be the same. To change something, you need to be able to overcome that thing's inertia.
Now, to me, it is much tougher to sell as true that the ability to overcome inertia is the same as inertia. One requires an external force while the other is a natural product of existence. To say they are the same thing does not ring true to me. This leads me back to not believing as true Shen Yue's elaboration on her statement to justify the proposition that "Power is the ability to effect change." And a less hypothetical example of my issue with Shen Yue's proposition is a pebble.
A pebble has no will, it has no ability to effect change in the world around it. However, it is able to resist change to it, at least for a little while. Despite the insistence of wind and rain, the pebble will remain a pebble for some time, and in this way, it is resisting change. According to Shen Yue, this is power, the ability to resist change. But, if it has power, it should be able to effect change. Yet a pebble can not, it does not have the will or ability to change anything about itself or the world around it.
So, according to Shen Yue's elaboration, the pebble has power. Yet, according to the proposition originally proposed, "Power is the ability to effect change," the pebble shouldn't have power. And that creates an issue. Is the elaboration a better statement on the nature of power than the proposition it proposes to elaborate on? I think so. And this also means that I don't think Shen Yue's proposition "Power is the ability to effect change," is true.
I think this discussion misses the point of how LQ is examining power. For LQ, I argue, Power is two things, and therein lies her conflict:
The sovereigns we meet have largely discarded this concern. To them, Power is nothing more than power. Your Law is their world, and this is the inescapable truth. Any question of ethics is a separate concern.
This is not an invalid answer. And yet... for LQ it's missing the point. Power is a means to an end - happiness - and for that she requires it be ethical. It may be that to resolve this question for her will require shifts. Perhaps Power will need to evolve, perhaps it will need to split, or be used in conjunction with other concepts. But resolve it she must, and I don't think she wants to resolve it by becoming a Hard Woman Making Hard Decisions like Shenhua did.
... thinking about it then Jiao's experiences are potentially of interest here given we know one of his concepts was Virtue.
- Power is Agency. Power is Free Will. The ability to, as you say, push back on the world and make the choices you wish. To pursue your own happiness and defend yourself against the abuses of others.
- Power is Dominance. Power is abuse. LQ is deeply aware of how power is used in the world to force one's will on others, to control and harm. Indeed, one could argue that the entire point of Power is to be able to elevate your will over that of others. Can this do anything but lead to abuse?
The sovereigns we meet have largely discarded this concern. To them, Power is nothing more than power. Your Law is their world, and this is the inescapable truth. Any question of ethics is a separate concern.
This is not an invalid answer. And yet... for LQ it's missing the point. Power is a means to an end - happiness - and for that she requires it be ethical. It may be that to resolve this question for her will require shifts. Perhaps Power will need to evolve, perhaps it will need to split, or be used in conjunction with other concepts. But resolve it she must, and I don't think she wants to resolve it by becoming a Hard Woman Making Hard Decisions like Shenhua did.
... thinking about it then Jiao's experiences are potentially of interest here given we know one of his concepts was Virtue.
- Location
- CA
"Inertia" is the name for a category of forces acting upon an object, whether those forces be friction or air resistance or gravity. "The ability to overcome inertia" is force too. If you're doing basic physics, both of these are force vectors, and whichever one is larger determines whether the object moves or whether it stays the same.
So treating power as Force makes the "ability to affect change" definition make perfect sense. Saying "power can't be Force because air resistance makes an object stay in place rather than moving it" is like saying "an apple can't be fruit because grapes are fruit and grapes grow on a vine instead of a tree." If you focus on the wrong part of an analogy, it stops being instructive.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
This is where you assume your conclusion. The ability to apply force and the ability to resist force are not the same thing, as you yourself point out by using wind and water as examples later. Water can apply enormous force, but it can only resist force very weakly.
The leap between them and Ling Qi is the conviction that your Law will make the world a better place. Once you've interrogated, as the author said, the single crystalized moment that is what you remain after ascension from white, and you truly believe that making it a part of the world will make the world better, then ethics becomes a resolved concern.
Edit: <side-eyes the guy who made it so all immortals can still get drunk>
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- Location
- United States of America
Inertia isn't a force vector though. Inertia is the tendency of an object to resist change and is measured by mass.
Perhaps in physics calculations or more advanced applications of physics, it is simpler and easier to treat inertia as a force vector, but to say that inertia is the same as a category of force does not ring true with anything I remember from classes or what I've been able to find on the subject.
I'm not sure what the argument is against my substation of terms in order to demonstrate my argument that the ability to apply force is not the same as the ability to resist forces. However, I'm not arguing that "the ability to overcome inertia = inertia," what I'm doing is using that rephrasing of Shen Yue's elaboration to demonstrate the issues I have with Shen Yue's proposition that "Power is the ability to effect change."
EternalObserver
eYe Gaze baCk
- Location
- The Void
- Location
- Spain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Speak on the nature of power, of the innate ambition of dominance and command that underlies Sovereignty (Additional Exploration and XP to Power Concept)
[X] Speak on the nature of power, of the innate ambition of dominance and command that underlies Sovereignty (Additional Exploration and XP to Power Concept)
[X] Speak on the nature of power, of the innate ambition of dominance and command that underlies Sovereignty (Additional Exploration and XP to Power Concept)
I think this makes sense in the wake of the Choice vote. Power dynamics are a very awkward subject to work around, especially with cultivators involved, and one that Ling Qi needs to focus on if she wants to consider communication, community and choice. Even if she doesn't intend to limit her community's choices, any perceived risk from Ling Qi by the other party may cause them to limit their own choices. So considering what Ling Qi wants to do with that situation sooner than later is best imo.
I think this makes sense in the wake of the Choice vote. Power dynamics are a very awkward subject to work around, especially with cultivators involved, and one that Ling Qi needs to focus on if she wants to consider communication, community and choice. Even if she doesn't intend to limit her community's choices, any perceived risk from Ling Qi by the other party may cause them to limit their own choices. So considering what Ling Qi wants to do with that situation sooner than later is best imo.
[X] Speak on the nature of power, of the innate ambition of dominance and command that underlies Sovereignty (Additional Exploration and XP to Power Concept)
[X] Speak on the nature of isolation, of the innate division between things, of the lonely void that grew with each realm. (Additional Exploration and XP to Isolation Concept)
[X] Speak on the nature of isolation, of the innate division between things, of the lonely void that grew with each realm. (Additional Exploration and XP to Isolation Concept)
- Location
- Rivendell
This is a very interesting argument, one worth examining in a little more detail.
"Power is the ability to affect change." At a first glance, this seems like a correct statement. And yet for Ling Qi it is subtly wrong. Not as in it feels wrong but actually fully the incorrect answer to the question we're trying to ask.
Because without agency a sovereign would still be able to achieve this. Take for example a fully realised sword cultivator that sacrificed everything except the ability to cut. Their cuts will chape the world, change the world, thus they have power by Senhua's definition of it. Yet what if they also sacrificed their ability to stop cutting? They cannot stop, must not stop or their very Way and Self with shatter to pieces. Do they still hold agency over their own power? They have become more like a force of nature, forced to repeat the same method of cutting over and over again.
Forged by the choices of their past self, they have become more like an algorithm obeying set instructions imprinted on the self. In a sense, such a being, while being a terror to those around them, would have become completely powerless.
They lack choice. There's more to power than the ability to cut, the ability to affect those around you. And who better to ask then Xin and Sima Jiao? After all, they both exerted their agency at a critical moment to choose each other instead of blindly following the instructions carved into their being by their greater self and way respectively.
Does this make them less powerful than our theoretical sword cultivator, or more? While their raw ability to affect change could potentially be lesser, the type of choices they can now still make remains much greater, and with it the types of change they can seek to inflict are much more varied. Their retain their agency.
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Theaxofwar
Definitely not a Bunny Cat in disguise.
- Location
- Standing right behind you
[X] Speak on the nature of power, of the innate ambition of dominance and command that underlies Sovereignty (Additional Exploration and XP to Power Concept)
Yes, if cutting is what they want to do.
If cutting isn't what they want to do then they fucked up their Way.
- Location
- CA
Mostly off the cuff, with some basic fact-checking to make sure I'm not messing this up too badly:
It's a conflation issue. In the First Law of Motion sense used to define inertia, it's an observation that everything is reduceable to force vectors: if something is moving, it is moving because some force is moving it, whether it be a past or present force vector; if something is not moving while force is being applied, that is because some greater force vector is opposing the moving force. This definition of "inertia" is as present in the universe as math, in that it's reflected in the world while simultaneously not actually existing in it, because it's not a force itself but a human observation relating to the interaction of forces.
But Newton didn't know about all the forces in play (and neither do we, really), and he didn't actually use the word "inertia" in the definition of the First Law. He was instead using inertia to describe a force that keeps an object in place, and assumed at least some of that was inherent to an object rather than being wholly external. So Netwon's non-First Law sense of "inertia" doesn't exist as a force in and of itself, he was working off of a false premise. But insofar as the thing being described there does exist, it's the resistive summed force vector of gravity + air resistance + friction + etc that keep an object in place when something attempts to move it, many components of which do relate to an object's mass.
So, everything is force vectors, force vectors being "the ability to affect change." Gravity can hold a thing in place, but it can also move it if the object is moved above ground level; air resistance and friction can help keep something in place, and also actively slow it down in motion.