Memetic Metaphysics: Explaining the Amaranth and the Elder Scrolls

The discussion going on here in the Newcomers’ thread inspired this post. In initially responding to /u/AzorBronnhai’s question trying to “rank” the Scrolls somehow, I realized I might as well just make a post presenting my interpretation of these things.

A note: I am explaining how the Amaranth and Scrolls work from the point of view of me, the flesh-and-blood human typing these words. I have had one or two people suggest that my interpretation is

An Amaranth is a holon. I will quote the relevant part of the definition so we’re all on the same page here:

> A holon is a system (or phenomenon) that is an evolving self-organizing dissipative structure, composed of other holons, whose structures exist at a balance point between chaos and order. […] A holon is maintained by the throughput of matter–energy and information–entropy connected to other holons and is simultaneously a whole in and itself at the same time being nested within another holon and so is a part of something much larger than itself. Holons range in size from the smallest subatomic particles and strings, all the way up to the multiverse, comprising many universes. Individual humans, their societies and their cultures are intermediate level holons, created by the interaction of forces working upon us both top-down and bottom-up. On a non-physical level, words, ideas, sounds, emotions—everything that can be identified—is simultaneously part of something, and can be viewed as having parts of its own, similar to sign in regard of semiotics. In 2013 Australian academic JT Velikovsky proposed the holon as the structure of the meme, the unit of culture […]

It is a collection of lots and lots and LOTS of little memes -- elements of of story at their most basic. The genetics of myth. The identity of the Amaranth is determined by the way these memes combine and express themselves. The Amaranth can be personified but it is not exactly a person -- the Amaranth's "will" is a matter of memetic prerogative shaping the universe and vice-versa. It is born with all these stories inside of it -- or "prophesies" if you will -- and it "wants" them to be fulfilled the same way our genes "want" the raw flesh of our infant cell masses to grow two eyes of a certain color in a certain place, a nose of a particular description, and all the other limbs and markings and whatnots that make us each a unique alive human person.

Every Amaranth is like that -- from the moment it is born, it begins to populate itself with raw habitats made to be mined and dressed and eaten and destroyed, and then with beings fit to form such mighty limbs -- the size of a whole universe, each war a new finger, each religion a strand of hair, the features of its face are suns and moons and the planets hosting life forms, its sex is the tapestry of heaven, and its gender is the shapes of the constellations its native jesters see among them.

Each of those features on this homunculus Amaranth is preceded by the terms of its existence -- let us rename the concept of the universe's right hand, and call it instead "the Nerevarine." This is a feature of the Amaranth's form that its memetics demand must grow. That concept of the Nerevarine requires a certain number of beings to behave in certain ways -- also there must be uncertain parents, a constellation, an imprisonment -- all of the identifying elements enabled this person to be given their role, and then empowered them to perform the deeds that place that piece of identity into the world as a real thing that happens in time and space in a way that changes the universe's body and expands it. Behold, the universe looks slightly different now, and has gained the uses of a new hand! Too bad the first thing it does with it is pop a zit…

The Elder Scrolls themselves contain little snippets of the universe's DNA. They are difficult to read, but for those who can do it, what they will read is not a coherent narrative, but more like a list of memes that will make up bones of the new limb of the universe when it is finished growing. I imagine the Moth Priests being able to read some building blocks of THOSE building blocks, probability factors that line up like ghosts, fading in relevancy and likelihood the further they get from being directly responsible for the limb's finished form.

That is why the "who" and "where" and "when" details are so vague. That is why there are examples where the prophesy "failed." The Amaranth is not a child moving their empty golem toys around their castle in exactly the way they choose.

The Amaranth is a living system whose memetic imperative is to tell the Story of itself — Fill existence with the full experience of all of its endless potential and variation, budding, blooming, thriving, wallowing in the perfect-imperfect-perfect-ALL of every molecule contained in its incomprehensible vastness as it spills its toddler phase across dimensions, fledging through its first nursery rhymes with orgasmic vehemence, preaching the triumph of every cycle of molecule-chemical-life-death-life-life-LIFE-LIFE, its animal scream of Being that is the deafening silence of its own places of beloved Void becoming a scream of adoring anguish (“Hallucinations become lucid under His eye and therefore, like all parents of their children, the Amaranth cherishes and adores all that is come from Him”) through birthing pains, that scream harmonizing with the wail of its every infant’s first story: “I AM”; and the sound of them all together, the Amaranth singing the heartbeats of its native beings, the lullabies of adoration to its offspring, the love-song to its Dreamer, and the breathless songs of Sequence and of Shadow, of Memory and Madness, this cacophonous celebration that has sustained US! — HERE IN THE WHOLE WORLD OF I AM! — since we first awoke from our long evolution with an Intelligence that let us learn to lie (the best and highest Truth that there can be) — this symphony is the completion in dreams of what we cannot yet express through our own literal godhoods, and its sound is “I ARE ALL WE.”

The Amaranth is a very amazing thing, but it is not literally a person, and it is not literally a god. and it is not sentient in the way you and I experience sentience. It is exultant in its own existence; I would not say that it is capable of acts of Love but rather that it IS an act of Love; it is capable of “love” in a kind of quantum-mechanical-chemical-reaction sort of thing — its “offspring” may bear no resemblance on the surface, but they share memetic DNA, and so the Amaranth recognizes its offspring Amaranths as another form of self-growth — further expansion of its own Being, which is an act of Love. Love begetting Love. The Story being retold in a new form. Evolution.

But I digress. Back to the Nerevarine. There is no real One True Being created specifically and alone by a sentient universe for the sole purpose of carrying out the functions that turn a root-ball of memes into a living story. There is a memetic prerogative such that, when the time comes for one of the essential myths to be told in real-time and embodied as real people, the universe — which has been shaped in every way specifically to ENCOURAGE THIS TO HAPPEN — starts making circumstances ripe for the creation of its main characters ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE. All over the place time and time again, from every race and every walk of life, circumstances lead time and time again to variations on possible heroes. They are let loose at the right place and time with the right parents and stars and birthmarks and all, and they will walk the path of Prophesy until they wander off of it. Most leave by accident, never knowing they were born casting Nerevar’s shadow until they grew out of it. Some leave by choice — let’s call them the ones who went through a “really religious phase” at some point and were SO into worshipping the Tribunal and went to the Temple like EVERY DAY and then they grow out of it. Some leave… less by choice: These ones recognize their potential, but either “forget how to walk as soon as they think about doing it,” or associate too carelessly with untrustworthy heathens and get themselves murdered. And then, VERY rarely, a few of them might get as far as to seem to almost succeed, but then at the last moment, something essential goes wrong — these are the “failed prophets,” the ones who were missing a meme. The limb was rejected, the universe shed it and kept trying. The Amaranth will keep trying to grow into its true and fully mature form forever. Eventually, the right circumstances will all line up with the right person, and growth will continue.

That is why this information, these Elder Scrolls that spell out the genetics of the next stage of the universe’s growth, is important to hold power over and useful for those who can decipher it: Because once people in power are aware of what the universe wants, they can start to help the circumstances along, and train the universe’s new limb to work in their favor. On a basic level, this can mean arranging for politics and people to sway their actions using bribes and intimidation. On a more advanced level, it means things like mantling, and Thu’um. On the most advanced level, this is part of CHIM. But it’s always a dance. There is always the tricky element of an individual’s own free will (or lack thereof) to contend with, and even if one attains CHIM, even then, one must still exercise the powers of a limitless god within the confines of one’s native Amaranth’s structural memetic rules, until one chooses to leave that universe. There are no certainties, and influencing the formation of the universe is no easy task.