Thomas Hood wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote:

Thomas Hood wrote:Robert, do you have a suggestion as to how this can be done?

Tom, yes I do have a suggestion, but it is a secret. . .

Alas, Robert, had I but world enough, and time, I'd read everything at BookTalk, but Time's winged chariots are hurrying near. The solution to the redemption of technology is as old as The Antigone. The only secret is how closely Gaiman approximates the ancient answer. Technology can be redeemed by a successful technology of the self, productive of self knowledge, that is, a perfection of Tiresian learning.

Tom

Robert Tulip wrote:The Diagram of the Vedic Yuga and the Great Year is a fruitful tool for analysis. We can see that the centre of the Golden Age, at +- 12882 years AD/BC, coincides with the time when the South Celestial Pole is closest to the star Canopus. Hence, the Golden Age of Awareness of God coincides with a time when Canopus is the Pole Star. Invisible from northern latitudes, Canopus is the star of Osiris. This is informative as a way to imagine how Egypt built the pyramids, which encode immense ancient wisdom. The pyramids link the earth at its central focal point to stars including Sirius, Orion and Draco. It may be that earth had links with these stars, but the knowledge of these links has been forgotten, and will gradually re-emerge as we move towards a new Golden Age.

A puzzle here is that writing was only invented about 5000 years ago, and it is hard to imagine how a Golden Age Atlantean civilization could have disappeared. How I imagine this is that Atlantis was built on floating freshwater sacks in the open ocean, deliberately avoided interaction with the continents, and was destroyed by a global tsunami, only remembered as the flood. This theory of Atlantis matches the Egyptian idea of the realm of the dead as the field of reeds, which could have been an Atlantean freshwater lens located in the Mediterranean Sea, due west of the mouth of the Nile, as a point of interaction between humanity and the Gods. This mythological speculation provides a hypothetical way that Osiris, Isis, Horus, Nephthys and Thoth could be refugees from Atlantis to Egypt, building the high ancient star wisdom into the pyramids. Without such a hypothesis, I find it hard to see how the Egyptians built the pyramids at such a large scale with such high precision and mystery.

Robert Tulip wrote: Maybe The Antigone would be a good book to read.
. . . How do you see it relating to the redemption of technology?

Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man; the power that crosses the white sea, driven by the stormy south-wind, making a path under surges that threaten to engulf him; and Earth, the eldest of the gods, the immortal, the unwearied, doth he wear, turning the soil with the offspring of horses, as the ploughs go to and fro from year to year.

And the light-hearted race of birds, and the tribes of savage beasts, and the sea-brood of the deep, he snares in the meshes of his woven toils, he leads captive, man excellent in wit. And he masters by his arts the beast whose lair is in the wilds, who roams the hills; he tames the horse of shaggy mane, he puts the yoke upon its neck, he tames the tireless mountain bull.

And speech, and wind-swift thought, and all the moods that mould a state, hath he taught himself; and how to flee the arrows of the frost, when 'tis hard lodging under the clear sky, and the arrows of the rushing rain; yea, he hath resource for all; without resource he meets nothing that must come: only against Death shall he call for aid in vain; but from baffling maladies he hath devised escapes.

Cunning beyond fancy's dream is the fertile skill which brings him, now to evil, now to good. When he honours the laws of the land, and that justice which he hath sworn by the gods to uphold, proudly stands his city: no city hath he who, for his rashness, dwells with sin. Never may he share my hearth, never think my thoughts, who doth these things!

Robert Tulip wrote: Hi Krysonda. I don't think Wednesday betrays Shadow. Czernobog comes up with the hammer idea, and Wednesday is genuinely shocked and recommends Shadow not bet with Czernobog. The issue here is that the battle of old and new is genuinely dangerous and unpredictable, so if the hammer deal is a betrayal you could say that Wednesday betrays Shadow just by employing him. I don't think this is true, as it means that any risk that goes wrong becomes a matter for accusation of guilt and blame about who betrayed whom. Wednesday is honest to Shadow in their mead and spit deal, and tries to look after him when they recruit Czernobog. Wednesday needs allies, but each ally has his or her own interest. A theme illustrated here is the purity of sacrifice with which Shadow puts his life at the service of Wednesday. Initially this reads as a moral sacrifice, but later appears more ambiguous.