Search the Community

This is a sort of corollary to my Shardic Constructs theory, it's been a work in process for a while (Although corollary sounds a tad pretentious...). However, it got stopped by a problem that I couldn't seem to get around for quite a while. So I'll start there and then move onto some other stuff. In the old topic, someone brought up this quote. I couldn't get around this. I believed that Cognitive aspects were created by the interaction of Spiritual and Physical aspects. But how could one exist primarily in the Cognitive Realm? I think I have a potential answer to this question now. Humans are primarily Physical, right? They exist on the Physical Realm, everything they consciously interact with and see is in the Physical Realm. So presumably the same would be true of a creature that was primarily Spiritual in nature. But what if a creature was more balanced? Nearly half of both? I think that they would "exist" primarily in the Cognitive Realm, and would live and interact there. So hopefully this is that problem solved. Now, onto what I'd planned on saying the whole time. Last time I connected Spiritual energy to sentience, how it interacts with the Physical portion of a creature gives it a mind. However, given a little thought, it's obvious that it's not quite as simple as that.After all, Radiants get filled with Spiritual energy all the time, yet their mind isn't too enhanced. Returned and Awakeners don't seem to be any more intelligent than your average person. There are minor Cognitive changes, but as a whole, it's not doing a lot. So, what gives? I think the reason for this disparity we're seeing here is that the Spiritual power needs not just a Physical conterpart, but a Physical structure to create a Cognitive aspect. To use a poor analogy, this is like the difference between dipping a chip in some dip, and baking a several layer cake. Returned, for example, are suffesed with power. But it's not built into their Spiritweb, it's just sitting on top of them. A layer of Spiritual power, like dip sits on a chip. Same goes for the Radiants. However, when this power is added to the Spiritweb, such as in Hemalurgy, it can work to create sentience. The perfect illustration comes, I think, when you look at the Divine Breaths and Seons. Divine Breath is not sentient. It's not structured at all, so it's not really conscious either. But then again, look at the Seon. The Aon itself is the Splinter, and it has a structure, a Physical form in the shape of an Aon, so it is sentient. A thought that just occured to me right now is that this structure could be responsible for the Splinters that have their own intents separate from the larger Shards. It's obvious that unstructured Splinters like the Divine Breath don't really have an intent. But a structure could posssibly constrain a Splinter's larger intent into something more specific. It would probably be worth asking if the personality of a Seon is affected by that Seon's Aon. All right, what do you guys think? Comments and disagreements are always welcome, that's how we figure out so many cool things!