A Different Theory of the Recreance

[Confused]

I’ve been touting the “investiture imbalance” theory of Desolations. Please read that post for the theory. I cited Nale’s desire to kill surgebinders as evidence, since surgebinding IMO breaks down Stormlight into its three constituent investitures, though only using Honor’s and Cultivation’s. Surgebinding thus frees Odium’s unused investiture, creating the investiture imbalance that can cause a Desolation.

 

I now posit that the KR’s discovery of this fact caused the Recreance. Recreance theories have run aground on the question: what would lead every KR to “kill” his/her spren simultaneously? I think knowledge that surgebinding could cause a Desolation would suffice.

 

Perhaps Nale told the Orders what they were doing. Forum consensus favors the theory that Skybreakers were the Order that used “great subterfuge” to secrete themselves. They would be the one Order that could maintain the discipline not to surgebind.

 

Thanks, as always, for any responses and comments!

Edited February 20, 2016 by Confused

[kaellok]

That still doesn't explain why there was no record of anything left to say that that's why they were doing it.  There is no control to prevent Radiants in the future, thus necessitating the whole thing all over again.

 

If you told me that in order to save the universe, I had to murder my best and closest friend in the entire world--I might not do it.  If I did, you can be damnation sure that I'd make sure that it would protect the universe forever.

 

One great way to do this would be to, oh, leave a message with the spren that stuck around.  If the Stormfather said, "If you Bond and become a Radiant, then there will be Desolations," don't you think that would be a kinda big deal?  Or they could have started a secret society to preserve the knowledge of how to look for Radiants, find them, and let them know what they were causing. 

 

Instead, at best, they left a book--and one with not enough copies to last into the future.  If they were going to do that, I'd think at least a hundred million copies would ensure that the knowledge would probably last at least a thousand years.

 

Maybe you're right and they did none of those things--but it seems like sheer folly to plot the murder of your best friend to save the world, and not prevent others from having to do the exact same thing in the future.

Edited February 19, 2016 by kaellok