Sazed lucked out a bit- He will always be sane

[KaladinWorldsinger]

One of the things that kinda bugged me is that sazed taking up two shards instead of the traditional one, seems to have been more of a detriment than an advantage. The two intents are against each other, so he finds it difficult to act or do anything. He needs agents like Wax to be able to do anything. That kinda sucks, doesn't it? Especially since it seems like he needs to fight against Trell, a new shard on the planet.

Unless it's a blessing in disguise. Because what do we know about the original shareholders? That most of them fall prey to the intent of their power, slowly growing insane with time. 

But harmony is not in that danger. Preservation by the end could not even muster up the courage to stab elend in secret history. Ruin lost his humanity and became a force of destruction.

But with harmony's two powers cancelling each other out, I suspect that harmony is in no danger of ever losing his sanity. He can go on for maybe eternity and still be as human and caring as he used to be and make the difficult choices his position requires.

I don't think the cosmere will go on for that long, but i think we will never have to worry about sazed going insane.

Add to this the harmony/discord issue and the excess ruin that elend burned off slowly coming back, we could have some interesting plots

[CryoZenith]

Well, hm, yes and no. Mostly yes. I think it's fair to say that Sazed is resistant to the Intents of Harmony when it comes to his thinking. So you could call him personally lucky. But his external actions, the way he actually interacts with the world, regardless if he's personally retaining his sanity and humanity, ARE severely censored by the shardic Intents, even now, after only 300 years as vessel. So I don't know if I would call the people of Scadrial lucky for having a sane/human Vessel as a shard, since he can't act on that sanity/humanity.

[HSuperLee]

31 minutes ago, CryoZenith said:

Well, hm, yes and no. Mostly yes. I think it's fair to say that Sazed is resistant to the Intents of Harmony when it comes to his thinking. So you could call him personally lucky. But his external actions, the way he actually interacts with the world, regardless if he's personally retaining his sanity and humanity, ARE severely censored by the shardic Intents, even now, after only 300 years as vessel. So I don't know if I would call the people of Scadrial lucky for having a sane/human Vessel as a shard, since he can't act on that sanity/humanity.

I do think Harmony has more freedom of action than he lets on. It seems to me that at least part of his hands off approach to Scadrial is by choice rather than by inability. He defines the combined Intent of his Shards as, "The point is Harmony, creating a way for as many as possible to make their own choices." There are a lot of possible directions this idea could be taken, and Sazed seems to have chosen the one that will allow the Scadrians to "grow up" the most. When he first ascended, Harmony meant creating a world where people could make decisions, opposed to being, you know, dead due to volcanic destruction. Unfortunately, he believes he overdid it by creating a paradise, and now, when people have all the resources necessary to make whatever decisions they want, they instead choose to be relatively stagnant. There are many paths that create ways for people to make their own choices, but Sazed now seems to want them to have an incentive to make the right decisions. He and Wax discussed a hypothetical situation where Harmony makes all resources unlimited, replenishing anything that is taken and erasing the consequences caused by the overtaxing and pollution that results. I genuinely believe Harmony could do that. It wouldn't violate his Intent because he'd be giving everyone more resources to make more decisions. But instead he has chosen inaction, which seems to be something he can do as a result of holding two opposing Intents.

This is where I agree with KaladinWorldsinger, in that Sazed's sanity is a massive over other Shards in that he can choose not to act. I'm not so sure other Shards are capable of that. I won't go into Cosmere spoilers since this is in the mistborn fourm, but basically, the fact that Sazed isn't constantly driven to act out his Intent like Ruin was is probably more of a blessing than we'd usually consider it, simply because we're used to being able to do nothing. Sure, there are many things Sazed can't do, but he does still have the option of saying, "My Intent isn't helpful here, so I'm going to pull back slightly and let others do what must be done." That is not to be overlooked.

Edited February 15, 2022 by HSuperLee

[CryoZenith]

The feeling I had from how he talked about needing a "sword" in the form of Wax is that it was, to a certain degree, a need, and not just him choosing to delegate jobs that he could do himself. I don't think Sazed is, for example, in a position like Edgli, where she can directly smite people if she needs to. And there really are circumstances of "need" plausibly on the horizon for Scadrial.

Like, sure, for example, Sazed can make an argument that it's better to let Scadrians learn how to handle pollution by themselves and grow from that instead of autoclearing it, but that line of logic is much more tenuous when you consider, say, the Set's recent change of plans about wiping out Scadrial. That's enough of an existential risk that it's hard to argue against direct intervention, and if we're assuming that Sazed is a nice guy (which we are), the fact that he isn't leads me to believe that he can't.

[HSuperLee]

4 minutes ago, CryoZenith said:

The feeling I had from how he talked about needing a "sword" in the form of Wax is that it was, to a certain degree, a need, and not just him choosing to delegate jobs that he could do himself. I don't think Sazed is, for example, in a position like Edgli, where she can directly smite people if she needs to. And there really are circumstances of "need" plausibly on the horizon for Scadrial.

Like, sure, for example, Sazed can make an argument that it's better to let Scadrians learn how to handle pollution by themselves and grow from that instead of autoclearing it, but that line of logic is much more tenuous when you consider, say, the Set's recent change of plans about wiping out Scadrial. That's enough of an existential risk that it's hard to argue against direct intervention, and if we're assuming that Sazed is a nice guy (which we are), the fact that he isn't leads me to believe that he can't.

I actually agree with pretty much everything you said here, but I think it suggests that there's more going on with the Set than Sazed allowing them to exist because it in some way leads to more Harmony. We can't forget that somehow Trell is involved, and a lot of Sazed's attention is directed to whatever that red mist thing is. But Sazed also said (or at least implied) that, in general, he does prevent the worst outcomes from ever happening, so that most people were never aware they were possibilities to begin with. Because we only see things from the human character's perspectives, we don't actually know what exactly Sazed has done in his time as god of Scadrial. For all we know, he has prevented some really really bad stuff from happening and his inability to deal with the Set is due to the intervention of other Shardic activity.

[KaladinWorldsinger]

On 2/15/2022 at 9:23 PM, CryoZenith said:

 So I don't know if I would call the people of Scadrial lucky for having a sane/human Vessel as a shard, since he can't act on that sanity/humanity.

I thought about this a lot and i think the people of scadrial are actually lucky. Like think about it. Harmony is forced to rely on Wax as his sword for a lot of affairs instead of himself, which might be better for scadrial overall. 

Maybe this is actually better. Like shards are such powerful people, their tiniest decisions can have huge ramifications for generations and generations. By empowering his own people fight against other threats, Harmony can let them be responsible for their own future. Other shards can't wait like that, make humans their swords and stuff, cuz they will slowly lose their minds to their intent. But not harmony.

Preservation used Vin to fight Ruin, instead of fighting Ruin himself. Because humans have more choice, less restricted by their powers and their mistakes can't be as catastrophic as a shards.

Maybe Wax is supposed to defeat trell and stuff, not Harmony

On 2/15/2022 at 9:51 PM, CryoZenith said:

Like, sure, for example, Sazed can make an argument that it's better to let Scadrians learn how to handle pollution by themselves and grow from that instead of autoclearing it, but that line of logic is much more tenuous when you consider, say, the Set's recent change of plans about wiping out Scadrial. That's enough of an existential risk that it's hard to argue against direct intervention, and if we're assuming that Sazed is a nice guy (which we are), the fact that he isn't leads me to believe that he can't.

Ya, I also think that sazed can't rather than won't. But i think that's still lucky for scadrians. For example, about the world ending threat, in the new blurb its written that harmony's future sight does not work in a city. Boy isn't it really good that he has a very reliable and powerful follower who can actually change things? Because human beings are not completely powerless, they have other advantages. Adonalsium did get murdered by 16 people after all. 

 SA spoilers-ish

Spoiler

Harmony did say that Hoid was more wise in not taking the shardic power