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Adonalsium's Intent


Yolenlightweaver

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Hey all, thanks for the help in the past. I have been trying to look and have only seen one or two things on this. If there is another discussion or something more concrete, let me know!

When Sazed combined the powers of Ruin and Preservation, they became Harmony. In effect, a new intent that is a combination of the others. Does that mean Adonalsium had an overarching intent? If so, what would that have been?

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Adonalsium was creation incarnate. He was life and death, alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. He could literally do anything. Except travel backward in time. Nobody can travel back in time. they can only stretch the timeline and jump forward in time.

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16 minutes ago, Chinkoln said:

Adonalsium was creation incarnate. He was life and death, alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. He could literally do anything. Except travel backward in time. Nobody can travel back in time. they can only stretch the timeline and jump forward in time.

I thought all we knew is that Adonalsium didn't have a predecessor. Do we know if it was the original, or are we led to simply assume that currently? Also, along that vein, do we know if he was omniscient and omnipotent? Thanks!

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A bunch of relevant WoBs:

Quote

Questioner

Was Adonalsium the one who created the cosmere universe as a whole?

Brandon Sanderson

That is widely assumed to be the case.

Calamity Seattle signing (Feb. 17, 2016)
Quote

Arithered

Would it be correct to view pre-Shattered Adonalsium as either a perfect God or perfect power of creation?

Brandon Sanderson

That would be one way of viewing things. Depends on your perspective.

Arithered

So basically, RAFO??

Brandon Sanderson

Not TOTALLY a RAFO. More a “That works. But some would not agree.”

General Twitter 2013 (Sept. 11, 2013)
Quote

KingSloth

Do all the shards have a 'secondary' imperative of some degree, to create?

Brandon Sanderson

You could say this.

/r/books AMA 2015 (June 8, 2015)

We know the intents of the Shards come from Adonalsium and it's implied that the secondary impulse to create comes from him as well. However, whether Adonalsium actually created the Cosmere (or the wider universe) are unknown and the fact that the God Beyond is going to remain an unanswered question in and out of universe means that there are some things we're just not going to be able to answer. If the God Beyond exists then you could assume it is the omnimax God and Adonalsium is somewhere below that level, but Brandon's never going to answer that one, or whether the Beyond exists and if so what its nature is. That said we know Adonalsium had futuresight so if he wasn't omniscient he was at least very good at making use of the Spiritual Realm. If Adonalsium's mind arose naturally from Investiture and it lacks the limitations of the Vessels' expanded but finite minds, it's possible Adonalsium was much closer to if not actually omniscient whereas the Shards are only sort of omniscient.

TLDR: Some people in-universe believe Adonlsium was the ultimate creator of everything, others disagree, we're never going to get a firm answer.

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13 minutes ago, Weltall said:

If Adonalsium's mind arose naturally from Investiture and it lacks the limitations of the Vessels' expanded but finite minds, it's possible Adonalsium was much closer to if not actually omniscient whereas the Shards are only sort of omniscient.

Ive always thought he had to have been something akin to a spren or a seon

Edited by Eternal Khol
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Suppose you start with a normal, human mind. Then a bunch of ants find a way to break up that "mind" into 16 pieces representing different aspects of it, and graft it onto themselves. So one Shard of that mind represents a human's drive to love, one captures their capacity for growth, one represents their sense of fairness, etc. The ants, having weak ant minds, are pretty quickly influenced by the Shard they hold, and soon become single-mindedly driven by their Shard's intent.

And then the ants wonder - how could the original mind have even functioned, pulled in 16 separate directions by these 16 powerful Intents? Or would they have combined into one overarching intent?

...the answer, of course, is that when you had all the parts together, you had a normal, functioning mind, which balanced all of those at the same time, and it wasn't even particularly hard. It just worked. People have competing drives all the time, and part of normal day-to-day consciousness is realizing "hey I want this and that and I feel this and that, but THIS is the one of those feelings/desires that takes priority/is important right now, and this is one that I shouldn't act on at all".  (Though god, on some days, it sure is hard to balance the part of my mind that needs to Work with the part of my mind that wants to play Videogames!)

That's how I think of the relation between Adonalsium and the Shards/Shardholders. With humans as the ants in the above analogy, and Adonasium as the one mind. When all the shards were together, they formed one mind - and yes, that mind would incorporate some hatred (Odium) and some drive for destruction (Ruin), but also a drive for fairness (Honor) and growth and change (Cultivation) and so on and so forth. It's the breaking up of that mind into individual Shards which was unnatural, and created these strange single-minded "intents".

Edited by ftl
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4 hours ago, ftl said:

Suppose you start with a normal, human mind. Then a bunch of ants find a way to break up that "mind" into 16 pieces representing different aspects of it, and graft it onto themselves. So one Shard of that mind represents a human's drive to love, one captures their capacity for growth, one represents their sense of fairness, etc. The ants, having weak ant minds, are pretty quickly influenced by the Shard they hold, and soon become single-mindedly driven by their Shard's intent.

And then the ants wonder - how could the original mind have even functioned, pulled in 16 separate directions by these 16 powerful Intents? Or would they have combined into one overarching intent?

...the answer, of course, is that when you had all the parts together, you had a normal, functioning mind, which balanced all of those at the same time, and it wasn't even particularly hard. It just worked. People have competing drives all the time, and part of normal day-to-day consciousness is realizing "hey I want this and that and I feel this and that, but THIS is the one of those feelings/desires that takes priority/is important right now, and this is one that I shouldn't act on at all".  (Though god, on some days, it sure is hard to balance the part of my mind that needs to Work with the part of my mind that wants to play Videogames!)

That's how I think of the relation between Adonalsium and the Shards/Shardholders. With humans as the ants in the above analogy, and Adonasium as the one mind. When all the shards were together, they formed one mind - and yes, that mind would incorporate some hatred (Odium) and some drive for destruction (Ruin), but also a drive for fairness (Honor) and growth and change (Cultivation) and so on and so forth. It's the breaking up of that mind into individual Shards which was unnatural, and created these strange single-minded "intents".

This is an amazing explanation, great job.

I'm reminded of the WoR letter, where Odium is described as, "He bears the weight of God's own divine hatred, separated from the virtues that gave it context." I've always found this quote interesting, because it implies that all the Shards hold (as I would describe them) "broken virtues." Divine hatred (also called wrath) often means justice, with the idea being that it is good for evil to be punished. Odium seems to be just the punishment without the justice, which actually might mean that if the Odium Shard merged with the Honor Shard you might have a possibility to get a Justice Shard. But that's neither here not there. The point is just that, as ftl said, the complexities of the Shards actually improve each other rather than hindering each other. It just happens the human (and possibly non-human) mind is not good at balancing the overwhelming presence of the intents.

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6 hours ago, ftl said:

That's how I think of the relation between Adonalsium and the Shards/Shardholders. With humans as the ants in the above analogy, and Adonasium as the one mind. When all the shards were together, they formed one mind - and yes, that mind would incorporate some hatred (Odium) and some drive for destruction (Ruin), but also a drive for fairness (Honor) and growth and change (Cultivation) and so on and so forth. It's the breaking up of that mind into individual Shards which was unnatural, and created these strange single-minded "intents".

I really like that example, thanks! I guess this goes into spit-balling about a deity, but if he was in control of what he wanted to do, was he completely just and fair, or could he have been a normal dude that would just kind of do what he wanted? We see shards manifesting empathy for the different races, but that might not have been true to Adonalsium. Who is to say that his Cultivation/Ruin side often prevailed, like for certain humans, or the Honor/Devotion side? Do you think he varied like a person, or was he just on a higher level and wouldn't change that much. Along with that, did he have a purpose of his own or did he just like watching ants scurry around?

1 hour ago, HSuperLee said:

I'm reminded of the WoR letter, where Odium is described as, "He bears the weight of God's own divine hatred, separated from the virtues that gave it context." I've always found this quote interesting, because it implies that all the Shards hold (as I would describe them) "broken virtues." Divine hatred (also called wrath) often means justice, with the idea being that it is good for evil to be punished. Odium seems to be just the punishment without the justice, which actually might mean that if the Odium Shard merged with the Honor Shard you might have a possibility to get a Justice Shard. But that's neither here not there. The point is just that, as ftl said, the complexities of the Shards actually improve each other rather than hindering each other. It just happens the human (and possibly non-human) mind is not good at balancing the overwhelming presence of the intents.

I love that quote too! It makes you think about even how someone like Harmony is completely out of context making him almost immobile while trying to do things. We could assume that with context, Adonalsium focused on Justice, but could he have enjoyed chaos? A lot of religions these days see more benevolent deities, but in the past, (like greek pantheon) they viewed their Gods as often self-centered or flippant with a passing soft spot for the human race. Would all the Intents that made up Adonalsium have made up the same type of person in another situation, or does Adonalsium manifest different intents more that others? I hope that make sense, let me know what you think!

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