Oddly missing spren

[Dihatimus]

So I was chatting with my sister just now and saying how I love Syl. Thought for a bit and realized that there haven't been any love spren. I mean there is anger spren, why not love spren? Thought a bit more, there are no adoration, lust, or embarrassment spren. It isn't that there wasn't ample opportunity for them. Sadeas's lust for a shardblade, Renarin's adoration of Adolin, Adolin explaining how to defecate in shardplate, etc.

 

Could you imagine, the sequence of spren that you would attract if you saw someone you secretly loved, causing lust or love spren to appear, that person seeing your spren and attracting disgust spren, and ending with you attracting embarrassment spren. 

 

I think we are missing something here.

[bdoble97]

Man I would have been embarrassed a lot in high school then

[Shlee]

There are passion spren:

Not quite the same thing, but still potentially embarassing lol

Quote

He’d told himself he would never allow this. He had denied himself feelings for Navani the moment Gavilar had won her hand. Dalinar had stepped aside.
But the taste of her—the smell of her, the warmth of her pressed against him—was too sweet. Like a blossoming perfume, it washed away the guilt. For a moment, that touch banished everything. He couldn’t remember his fear at the visions, his worry about Sadeas, his shame at past mistakes.
He could only think of her. Beautiful, insightful, delicate yet strong at once. He clung to her, something he could hold onto as the rest of the world churned around him.
Eventually, he broke the kiss. She looked up at him, dazed. Passion-spren, like tiny flakes of crystalline snow, floated down in the air around them. Guilt flooded him again. He tried gently to push her away, but she clung to him, holding on tight.- WOR Chapter 4

 

[1stBondsmith he/him]

A few more: Determination spren, Mirth spren, Riot spren, Charity spren, Compassion spren, Mourning spren.

Boy, Embarrassment spren would be everywhere in schools, and what hormones could bring on in teens!. Imagine a spren that would give away your deepest desire to hide something! I have really wondered what it would be like to live in a world where every emotion was visible to everyone else. There would be a great market for schools to train emotion from your response. Oh wait, they have that. It's called Calculus!

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

2 hours ago, Dihatimus said:

So I was chatting with my sister just now and saying how I love Syl. Thought for a bit and realized that there haven't been any love spren. I mean there is anger spren, why not love spren? Thought a bit more, there are no adoration, lust, or embarrassment spren. It isn't that there wasn't ample opportunity for them. Sadeas's lust for a shardblade, Renarin's adoration of Adolin, Adolin explaining how to defecate in shardplate, etc.

 

Could you imagine, the sequence of spren that you would attract if you saw someone you secretly loved, causing lust or love spren to appear, that person seeing your spren and attracting disgust spren, and ending with you attracting embarrassment spren. 

 

I think we are missing something here.

Obviously this is just speculation, but I propose that spren are more-or-less limited to appearing for relatively simple and easily defined emotions or sensations.  The emotion/sensation spren that have been observed so far include: Anger, Anticipation, Awe, Exhaustion, Fear, Glory, Hunger, Pain, Passion, and Shame.  These sensations are, in my opinion, each relatively simple, easily expressed, personified or just relatively consistent in how they are experienced and perceived between individuals.  Feelings and sensations that are fleeting, multidimensional, unique to each person, experienced in a multitude of different ways by a single person over a short period of time, or necessarily accompanied by a whole suite of other emotions/sensations, would therefore be less likely to produce a spren.

Love.  Where do I even begin?  A single person can easily feel a hundred completely unique and independent forms of love in a single day with little if any appreciable objective overlap or consistency between them.  Love for one's grandmother, wife, and side-chick shouldn't draw the same spren, so I think it's appropriate that they don't.

I'd further propose that spren whose appearance would be highly likely to draw numerous other spren, regardless of the situation, would be unlikely to achieve the sense of identity and individuality required to materialize in the first place.  Drawing a lust-spren or an imminent-intent-to-commit-a-violent-crime-spren, would probably draw immediate negative attention to a person, resulting in shamespren, angerspren, or a whole host of other spren, to come flooding in for everyone with a line of sight.  People would be unlikely to commit the collective cognitive resources toward personifying these types of sensations to result in a spren in the first place due to this conflict.

I totally think adoration-spren ought to exist, I don't have any argument here, it's pretty much a hole in the story as far as I'm concerned.  Adoration (perhaps admiration would be better?) is, in my opinion, a pretty simple, pure, and relatively common emotion.  It might be prone to attracting glory spren in an individual if they were specifically receiving the adoration/admiration I guess, but I feel like that is a pretty flimsy excuse for this particular feeling/sensation since adoration and admiration don't need to be directed toward individuals.

Also, recall that really, REALLY negative spren may very well exist and just not have been seen yet if they belong to Odium.  I'm thinking hate-spren and contempt-spren, but things like lust-spren and disgust-spren might be capable of sowing enough discord with their appearance that Odium would be inspired to unleash them on the people of Roshar...

[Djarskublar he/him]

1 hour ago, hwiles said:

Obviously this is just speculation, but I propose that spren are more-or-less limited to appearing for relatively simple and easily defined emotions or sensations.  The emotion/sensation spren that have been observed so far include: Anger, Anticipation, Awe, Exhaustion, Fear, Glory, Hunger, Pain, Passion, and Shame.  These sensations are, in my opinion, each relatively simple, easily expressed, personified or just relatively consistent in how they are experienced and perceived between individuals.  Feelings and sensations that are fleeting, multidimensional, unique to each person, experienced in a multitude of different ways by a single person over a short period of time, or necessarily accompanied by a whole suite of other emotions/sensations, would therefore be less likely to produce a spren.

Love.  Where do I even begin?  A single person can easily feel a hundred completely unique and independent forms of love in a single day with little if any appreciable objective overlap or consistency between them.  Love for one's grandmother, wife, and side-chick shouldn't draw the same spren, so I think it's appropriate that they don't.

I'd further propose that spren whose appearance would be highly likely to draw numerous other spren, regardless of the situation, would be unlikely to achieve the sense of identity and individuality required to materialize in the first place.  Drawing a lust-spren or an imminent-intent-to-commit-a-violent-crime-spren, would probably draw immediate negative attention to a person, resulting in shamespren, angerspren, or a whole host of other spren, to come flooding in for everyone with a line of sight.  People would be unlikely to commit the collective cognitive resources toward personifying these types of sensations to result in a spren in the first place due to this conflict.

I totally think adoration-spren ought to exist, I don't have any argument here, it's pretty much a hole in the story as far as I'm concerned.  Adoration (perhaps admiration would be better?) is, in my opinion, a pretty simple, pure, and relatively common emotion.  It might be prone to attracting glory spren in an individual if they were specifically receiving the adoration/admiration I guess, but I feel like that is a pretty flimsy excuse for this particular feeling/sensation since adoration and admiration don't need to be directed toward individuals.

Also, recall that really, REALLY negative spren may very well exist and just not have been seen yet if they belong to Odium.  I'm thinking hate-spren and contempt-spren, but things like lust-spren and disgust-spren might be capable of sowing enough discord with their appearance that Odium would be inspired to unleash them on the people of Roshar...

That was a truly fantastic post. One of the best I've seen recently. Have an upvote. I was nodding my head through the whole thing. Others who read this: pass him some too!

[Dihatimus]

I agree with Djarskublar, that was a great response. Nwhiles' explanation on the variability of emotions such as love makes sense. Nuanced emotions may have a hard time being personified, sprenified, sprenpomorphized, whatever. I think I finally found a question I would ask Brandon if i ever get a chance to though. So i got that going for me, which is nice.

[Demiandre he/him]

13 hours ago, hwiles said:

Obviously this is just speculation, but I propose that spren are more-or-less limited to appearing for relatively simple and easily defined emotions or sensations.  The emotion/sensation spren that have been observed so far include: Anger, Anticipation, Awe, Exhaustion, Fear, Glory, Hunger, Pain, Passion, and Shame.  These sensations are, in my opinion, each relatively simple, easily expressed, personified or just relatively consistent in how they are experienced and perceived between individuals.  Feelings and sensations that are fleeting, multidimensional, unique to each person, experienced in a multitude of different ways by a single person over a short period of time, or necessarily accompanied by a whole suite of other emotions/sensations, would therefore be less likely to produce a spren.

Love.  Where do I even begin?  A single person can easily feel a hundred completely unique and independent forms of love in a single day with little if any appreciable objective overlap or consistency between them.  Love for one's grandmother, wife, and side-chick shouldn't draw the same spren, so I think it's appropriate that they don't.

I'd further propose that spren whose appearance would be highly likely to draw numerous other spren, regardless of the situation, would be unlikely to achieve the sense of identity and individuality required to materialize in the first place.  Drawing a lust-spren or an imminent-intent-to-commit-a-violent-crime-spren, would probably draw immediate negative attention to a person, resulting in shamespren, angerspren, or a whole host of other spren, to come flooding in for everyone with a line of sight.  People would be unlikely to commit the collective cognitive resources toward personifying these types of sensations to result in a spren in the first place due to this conflict.

I totally think adoration-spren ought to exist, I don't have any argument here, it's pretty much a hole in the story as far as I'm concerned.  Adoration (perhaps admiration would be better?) is, in my opinion, a pretty simple, pure, and relatively common emotion.  It might be prone to attracting glory spren in an individual if they were specifically receiving the adoration/admiration I guess, but I feel like that is a pretty flimsy excuse for this particular feeling/sensation since adoration and admiration don't need to be directed toward individuals.

Also, recall that really, REALLY negative spren may very well exist and just not have been seen yet if they belong to Odium.  I'm thinking hate-spren and contempt-spren, but things like lust-spren and disgust-spren might be capable of sowing enough discord with their appearance that Odium would be inspired to unleash them on the people of Roshar...

Really cool, and I totally agree, some concept are too different for two people to have an "unanimous" representation in the Cognitive Realm for an entire planet.

Or on the other side, they do exist, but can't manifest in the Physical Realm. Maybe you can see them in Shadesmar only.

Concerning adoration, an existing one is awespren. But I don't know if it is what you meant.

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

Wow, thanks for the love everyone!

@Demiandre to elaborate a little more on my opinions concerning Admiration-spren:

I believe admiration is a relatively simple sensation, relatively uniform in how it is experienced by individuals of diverse backgrounds, experienced with some measure of frequency in just about every person's life (maybe not every day, but definitely not once-in-lifetime), while also being a pretty intense sensation usually brought on by a powerful or moving experience.  It's not fleeting, but it's also definitely not omnipresent either.

Every person doesn't admire the same things, but there are still some pretty common themes in what is admired and how admiration is experienced.  It's not unusual for entire groups of people who hear a heartfelt/moving speech or who see a truly wonderful work of art report feeling the same "chill" run down their spines in unison.  Admiration can actually be observed as a detectable release of chemicals in the human brain (much like intense anger, fear, passion, or shame) that is fairly uniform between individuals.

I concede that you could probably safely get away with substituting in an Anticipation, Awe, Glory, or Passion spren in place of an Admiration-spren in many situations.  However, I do feel like I can admire something intensely without feeling awed by it, or even being particularly passionate about it.

I've had similar musings on things like Reverence-spren or Joy-spren and find their apparent absence slightly disappointing...So yeah, there are definitely some spren that I think ought to exist that apparently don't...Then again, they could just be rare; I think Sanderson made excellent use of the unveiling of Passion-spren to concisely highlight and augment the scene between Dalinar and Navani.

Spren open up a whole new literary device by which the author can, through introducing only a very small amount of new information (like silver snowflakes popping into existence), completely change or wildly intensify the emotional tone of a scene, all without getting bogged down in countless pages of describing how loud everyone's gasps were, or how much someone was pulling on their braid in irritation (wheel of time reference, sorry).  I could definitely see a less careful author falling into the trap of abusing or overusing the mechanic, so I definitely appreciate the slow and sporadic spren reveals, rather than just dumping a whole slough of them into every scene.

Anyway, that's my two-cents on the matter.

[desi_sparta]

Didn't Kaladin's mother say that sprens materialise whenever something changes? I mean that's the only reason I can think of for the existence of some emotion sprens and the absence of others. For example, contrary to popular belief, you don't immediately start loving someone, it's a gradual process. But you can suddenly become angry at someone, become jubilant, etc etc

Edited November 20, 2016 by desi_sparta

[nervousnerd he/him]

Some spren are also not visible to most people (despite existing in the physical realm) and we almost certainly haven't seen all of the different types that exist yet.

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

I got the impression that Kaladin's mother's musings on spren were more like folk-knowledge than an informed critique on the nature of existence and cosmere physics.

Spren showing up when "something changes" doesn't actually tell us much, because everything is always changing.  It's a neat and interesting idea, but it fails to identify why spren only seem to show up when relatively specific things change in relatively specific ways.

[Demiandre he/him]

2 hours ago, hwiles said:

Spren showing up when "something changes" doesn't actually tell us much, because everything is always changing.  It's a neat and interesting idea, but it fails to identify why spren only seem to show up when relatively specific things change in relatively specific ways.

It might be a cognitive reaction (I warn you, I'm going to go a bit wild sometimes). If someone is, so to speak, atuned to an emotion, a brutal change toward another emotion could fracture the border between physical, cognitive (and maybe even spiritual) realm. That would open the door to the appearance of spren (and why not the unlocking of the soul for the Nahel Bond ? [==> then, have we noticed more spren around Radiants/Proto-Radiants than other people ?] ). The more tied or attracted they are to the Physical Realm, the more visible they are. The Horneaters may also have a stronger connection to the Cognitive Realm which enables them to see the spren more easily.

The fact that some spren do not appear may then come from different possibilities :

- They are here, but not visible

- They are not here

-They do not exist

[Farnsworth]

Similar to Demiandre, I think that there are many invisible spren, or spren that a person can only see when it happens to them, like deathspren. Spren exist in the cognitive realm, so there isn't really any reason for them to manifest at all in the physical realm. There could be many more spren, but they don't choose to leave the cognitive realm.