do you think the Lone power was right or wrong in creating death and entropy?

[Rhi]

Well, yr, a world where everyone's happy would have people who perceived the world as always being happy and would never have known any other emotion besides being happy, so they wouldn't know that they were missing anything. And their happiness would probably have degrees to it, like we have sadness, pensiveness, depression, melancholy-ness (I know that's not a word, gimme a break )...In fact, we have degrees of happiness too, not just happy, there's joy and bliss and hyper-i'm-just-so-glad-to-be-alive-ness and warm fuzzy feelings and quiet contentment....see, happiness isn't just one emotion See all the different kinds of smilies?

[Dragon Writer]

maybe that would be true for them...but would you, with all the emotions you now have, give it all up? would YOU give up your choices in your life? would you go from a world where every person has the free will to grow, and do good things, or not, to a world where you can do THIS good thing or THAT good thing, but never really change because you never really have a challange...the degree might change, but it all comes down to the same general GOOD thing in the end, since ther'es no BAD things to be had...maybe it would be like the world of the crab people. :P i think it was aalu, or somehthing like that, where the people couldn't change...they couldn't move on, they couldn't evolve, they couldn't die. it would be like that, with us never able to grow and change, because there'd be nothing else to change into....just happy. just good. we might be content not knowing any better, but we'd loose all our diversity, our adventurousnesss, our ability to say i'm unique, because all you could judge yourself by is degrees of wonderfulness....everyone repeats, even though they may not be the same, because there's only so many ways you can be completely and utterly one hundred percent good...particularly if you never had the choice to be anything else to begin with. *hopes heaven isn't like that* otherwise, i'd want OUT....*decides to choose reincarnation if i get the choice* *awaits more arguements...* even if you agree with me, i'll most likely switch to the other side since i have oppinions for both the evilness and the rightfullness of what the lp did...it's not exaclty clear cut you know!

[Reen]

The Lone Power my have invented death so that the beings in the new universe would have to many imperfections to become Power's themselves. He invented the imperfections that came with disease, pain and of course death, but if he hadn't invented death, we wouldn't be us. Imperfections and the way we deal with pain, is what defines us as people. The way people lift each other up when face to face with that power that is the father of entropy. However, death needs to be, but suffering, and disease does not.

[EricG1793]

(Not reading the previous posts and flat-out answering the original question...)

It depends.

Death simply has to be. I think so, anyway. If there wasn't death, planets would be more than overpopulated. Food would be a massive issue, which would cause hate and anger.

In terms of entropy, in some forms it's good, in some it's terrible. If you're talking about entropy to a car, school bus, etc. then I think that's OK. The old ones have to go to make room for the new ones, with better safety features, better fuel economy, that make less pollution, etc. I don't think entropy in buildings is a good thing, though. Houses get old, they get really old, the owner gets old, and by the time they die the house gets ruined and nobody wants it. So it gets torn down. Then, all the materials need to be used to build another house in its place, wasting resources, depleting energy.

So I think the Lone One was right (Look at the rest of the sentence before you severely disagree!! ) in creating death, because again, population and food issues. It really depends for entropy; I suppose it's more bad than good.

[Anya Prynn]

(Just answering the original question, I haven't read all the other posts yet.)

I don't really know. My first impulse would be to say wrong, because it created pain, greed, and everything else we think of as "evil". But without death, there would be too much of everything (humans, mostly). But then, entropy, things running down . . . that just doesn't work. I think it was Nita or Kit in one of the YW books (or one of the feline wizards books? Can't remember) said that the Powers must have had an alternate way to run the universe and manage energy. Maybe something like the cat wizards have, lives after lives, and then the eternal life at the end. That would have been interesting to see. If death isn't permanent for anyone, then that would work, and you could almost say that the Lone One was right in creating death, so that people can move on to bigger and better things. So, I think it really depends on your worldview. I guess what I'm trying to say is that entropy is wrong, and that death is only wrong if it's permanent.

[magicmaster]

The LP is justified in creating death and entropy in a way. Without death, life cannot really exist at least without the agony part. Whether the LP created agony and suffering or not it would probably be created of its own accord if nothing could die. If nothing could die then everything would all starve. Think about it, if nothing can die then nothing can be killed. That means we can't kill other animals for food. We can't cut down trees, or eat fruits and vegetables because they are living things. Since nothing can die, nothing can be killed or eaten for food, other than dirt ^_^. New children would be born into the world of suffering and agony. New children would be born into the world hungry. It wasn't justified by the fact that eventually the sun, planet, and everything else that is essential for survive will eventually die.
So the LP was justified in creating death. Creating agony and suffering though it wasn't justified other than the fact we would never learn. We learn from the consequences from our mistakes. If we could not face the pain the consequences of our mistakes then we would never learn. Nearly everything we discover is through trial and error. If there is no pain, whether mental or physical, we wouldn't be able to realize our errors.
In a way it was also justified in creating evil. Think about it, without evil we could not really think for ourselves. Everything would seem good. No matter how horrible things were, they would seem good. Evil is just perception. Whats evil to one person may not be evil to the person commiting the evil. Just as the person trying to eliminate the evil thinks their in the right, the person commiting the evil thinks their in the right. So murders would seem good without evil. People dying of disease and hunger would seem good and not evil. Greedy people would seem good. Nothing would be evil, and there for people could get away with what ever they want. In a sense total anarchy would appear, even if people will not recognize it as anarchy.

[Rhi]

...maybe it would be like the world of the crab people. :P i think it was aalu, or somehthing like that, where the people couldn't change...they couldn't move on, they couldn't evolve, they couldn't die. it would be like that, with us never able to grow and change, because there'd be nothing else to change into....just happy. just good.

Okay, I believe it's Wizard's Holiday that you're referring to. The people couldn't change because they had basically frozen their world as it was when they hid their kernal, so they couldn't move on. It didn't really have to do with the utter contentment of the species, and also, they did move on, after Kit and Nita's intervention - they evolved to a state of being that didn't require bodies, because they didn't need them anymore, and so the crabs of Alaalu began to build their civilization that they had had to been tearing down continuously before. I think (hope) I have my facts straight on this; it's been a while since I read WH. That was my interpretation of the book, anyways.

I think it was Nita or Kit in one of the YW books (or one of the feline wizards books? Can't remember) said that the Powers must have had an alternate way to run the universe and manage energy.

Yeah, I remember reading that, I think it's in The Book of Night With Moon

Whether the LP created agony and suffering or not it would probably be created of its own accord if nothing could die. If nothing could die then everything would all starve. Think about it, if nothing can die then nothing can be killed. That means we can't kill other animals for food. We can't cut down trees, or eat fruits and vegetables because they are living things. Since nothing can die, nothing can be killed or eaten for food, other than dirt

In Deep Wizardry, S'ree talks about the Sea as it had been before LP brought it's "gift" to them, telling Kit and Nita that "there was already a sort of death in the Sea, but only the kind where your body stops. Everyone knew it wasn't permanent, and it didn't hurt much; you might get eaten, but you would go on as part of someone else. No one was afraid of not being his own self anymore...It swore to attach fear and pain to it (death) and make it a lot more interesting (DW, page 45 in my copy of it)" Okay, I know, that was kind of a long quote, sorry about that. But anyways...so it seems that death kind of already existed even before the LP came up with entropy; it was a way of life, something as natural as breathing. It was the pain and fear that we bought into.

So, if I'm to tenaciously connect these two ideas, maybe after death we don't need our bodies anymore, and we don't fear death anymore because we've already died, so we live as the Powers (or gods or fate or something) had intended us to live in the first place. Maybe. I'm actually not quite convincing myself

[EricG1793]

Replying to Magicmaster, your last post, the last section of it:

Whats evil to one person may not be evil to the person commiting the evil. Just as the person trying to eliminate the evil thinks their in the right, the person commiting the evil thinks their in the right.

That's really true. I have the same opinion. I never thought of it that way. Yes, it is definitely all about perceptions.

So murders would seem good without evil.

That, however, I completely disagree with. If there wasn't evil, there wouldn't be murders at all, would there? Or would there be.... Well, I'll think about it step by step: If there was no evil, people wouldn't have a reason to be angry with one another, since we'd all be happy all the time. Therefore there'd be no reason for murdering anybody, right? However that interferes with what you just said about perception.... To some people, murdering isn't considered evil.

I love having these conversations, where we ask questions, give answers, and we try to come up with a possible overall solution but then we hit some snag and have to rethink everything.

[magicmaster]

thanks for catching that Eric. Note to self: check post to make sure I don't have things that contradict. It was late and I wanted to wrap my post up as fast as possible.

Rhi, is was talking about if death never existed. As if nothing can die. Attaching fear and pain to death is a good and bad(its not entirely good or bad. Its kind of in between. It also has to do with perception a bit.) thing. It s a bad thing because we have to live in constant fear that our time is short and its drawing to an end. I suppose its a good thing because it will force MOST of the non-psychotic people to live their lives to the fullest.

I know how I wrote the above sounds contradicting but I can't think of any better way to describe it. I hope you at least get the idea of what I mean. If you can describe what I wrote in a better way so it doesn't contradict please do so.

PS: Thats my opinion of it described as good as I can get it. You may have a different opinion. When it comes to this, it will just be a matter of perception.

PSS: I tried to make this as brief as possible. Didn't turn out that way -.-

[Dragon Writer]

you assume the world would still be structured the same way though. How do we know the orriginal plan didn't come with these things in mind? I mean, maybe there was infinate space orriginally...or who knows? who's to say we needed to eat? i mean, we eat to get energy, which we then use up making a bit more of it unusable, and that's entropy basically, i think...take out the need to actually get and use up that energy through eating, and killing you might find yourself with something else entirely.
and look at time heart! i think a lot more people have died since the universe began then there are people still living, yet time heart isn't the least bit crowded!

[DairineRules!]

You all seem to be forgetting that death existed before the lone power offered his/her gift in Deep Wizardry

[Dragon Writer]

that's the problem though: the pain. There IS often pain, as likely as not. and even when there ISN"T pain, life ends to often prematurely, causing, at the least, others pain and grief and horror. We might not need to worry about death for ourselves, but can we help but worry about those we leave behind?
The lone power might not have completely invented death, but he changed the nature of it, and not neccesarily for the better....ANd then there's entropy too. It's one thing to die and become part of something greater, going on another adventure. It's something else entirely for everything to be eradicated...of course, even in the horrors there's always a glimmer of hope: even as the world is eradicated, chances are it'll simply collapse in upon itself and life will begin a new, so all isn't lost...but it still isn't neccesarily a good thing.
(in case you're wondering at my conflicting arguments for both sides, i have multiple oppinions about it all. :P plus, bringing up all sides of the argument insures the question really gets looked at.)

[EricG1793]

Hey, we have many more frequent posters around who registered after this thread was last posted in....

Newbies, what do you think about this?

[wolf_wizard]

I think that the entropy part was wrong. But the death part- in that I think the Lone Power was unconciosly right about that. I mean, if you think about it, without death there would be little room for creation by the other powers. I think this because the new planets would just be inhabited by other beings whose growing populations required a new planet to live on because it was to big (the population). This would keep more life from existing, so I think the Lone Power, by destroying (partially, not all the way, as there is always Timeheart) the other power's creations, impowered them to make more, and continue using the full extent of there power. So, though the Lone Power intended it to be such a bad thing, it was really a positive one. Sorry if I babbled to much, but it is a (kind of) complex issue.

[Dragon Writer]

You're thinking too much about our own world. We have no idea if our world is structured the way it was supposed to be structured, or if it had to be changed in order to accomidate the existance of death and entropy. Notice that time heart is never filled up. How do we know the universe wasn't going to be like that?