When did it start to move on? How did they now it was moving on?
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When did it start to move on? How did they now it was moving on?
Good questions. I am sure it didn't start to move one day to the other... and I am sure it had been moving on for a long while when they could notice it.
I am thinking there were small seemingly unimportant changes,
something subtle. Like lately my husband has said that on perfectly clear
mornings here before the sun rise that there is a significant amount of
water dripping from the trees in our yard as if it were raining ( he says he can hear it falling) my point is not everyone notices something but, little by little
the changes are piling up. Time ( a concept I do NOT believe in) distance
things of this nature began to stretch, or bend somehow, and the next ting you know BAM! the world has moved on.:ninja:
Wouldn't it have been as soon as the first beam was damaged enough to be broken? Or had the world been moving on for longer than that?
Interesting. I have just been thinking about this quite a bit whilst re reading. Could it be that something the old ones did triggered the moving on? From what I have read it seems that they did a lot of damage, like causing mutants.
Given my views that...
Spoiler:
I think the world[s] start to "move on" each time the cycle starts over again. It's a constant mythological cycle of creation/destruction. Once it gets back to the starting point it starts moving on until the destruction/rebuilding completes. It's like saying we start dying as soon as we are born. It's not a particularly pleasant way of looking at it, but it's no less true because of it. With each second our individual worlds "move on" just a bit, not just when something major happens to us. 01-07-2008 04:31 AMBricepatient: Could someone please help me. I'm hurting. I've been waiting for seven hours here.
linda: time does not exist
*patient jumps out window*
*ambulance drives around and brings patient back around to the er with concussion and several broken bones*
patient: This is unbearable. Will it ever end?
linda: time does not exist. :)
patient: Is anyone gonna get around to helping me?
linda: It is time for my lunch break.
patient: Wait, I thought you said time does not exist. When will you be back?
linda: time does not exist.
:P :P :P
I always got the impression that the "old ones" tinkering with technology led in part to the world moving on. Kinda' like they disturbed the natural order of things. 01-07-2008 04:38 AMjayson 01-07-2008 10:52 PMobscurejudeR of G. Whats the difference between Roland's world and New York? New York is described as a world that hasn't moved on several times, most notably when Roland first encounters it along the beach in DT 2. Is it somehow at the beginning of the cycle you described and if so, how? 01-08-2008 12:43 AMLettiYou know what?
I think the world is always moving on.
All the time.
That's how everything works.
But sometimes it's moving to the bad way... sometimes it seems to stop but it's still moving and sometimes it's moving to a nice direction. 01-08-2008 03:54 AMjaysonMy thoughts are that it is moving on, perhaps much less rapidly than Roland's is so he may not recognize it as such. In my view of it, all worlds are always moving on, though not at the same pace. I'm not sure I want to take a further guess as to how the metaphysics work because that's all it would be. 01-08-2008 04:23 AMTerribleTI've always had the philosophy that our lives are never static. That we are always moving in one direction or the other. My way of putting it is that I'm either moving forward, or backward. Sometimes I'm moving forward in some ways, and backward in others, and sometimes it's all full on reverse. There are rare times when EVERYTHING is moving forward. Do you suppose that King's concept of "the world moving on" is a metaphore for our own lives? 01-08-2008 04:25 AMTerribleTAnd if you take that out one step further and ponder the whole aspect of size, and hundreds of worlds all moving in different directions inside the tip of a pencil the way it's described in Roland's palaver with Walter, maybe even more so? 01-08-2008 04:32 AMJeanI am not sure it works that way. It seems that now we are looking at the phrase as a separate entity, outside the context. In this case there's nothing wrong about "moving on", and everything is surely moving on, and it becomes a mere synonym for "developing", while in the book it isn't. "Moving on" is always used as something ominous, loss of ability to coordinate and relate things, obliteration of consistency and relations, breach of ties and connections; "moving on", as I see it, is, within the context, always moving on towards chaos - the Random, - away from order - the Purpose.
(all of the above makes sense only if my memory serves me well, though) 01-08-2008 04:34 AMjaysoni think your memory is intact Jean because what you said made sense to me.:thumbsup: 01-08-2008 04:37 AMTerribleTIt makes sense to me as well, but the same is true of all life. We're all "moving on" in the sense that we begin to die the moment we are born. The second start to tick away at that very moment. No matter anyway, it was just a random thought that I basically blurted out :) 01-08-2008 04:40 AMjayson 01-08-2008 05:03 AMTerribleTDude, you and I agree on a LOT, and most of the places where we disagree, whether it be in Roland's world or our own, are mostly a matter of degrees, not concept. I did notice that you'd said the same earlier, and it's something I've always believed too.
Jean does it help if we toss in chaos theory? The idea that all complex systems are moving towards their collapse? 01-08-2008 05:07 AMjayson 01-08-2008 05:17 AMJeanTerrible: I think ageing, death, collapse, even degeneration may be all natural and part of the Purpose if they happen in accordance with laws, whether we are aware of these laws or not. It's when "things fall apart, the center doesn't hold" that the world starts really moving on; it might be birth of something twisted, or un-death, or ageing backwards, but it must be deterioration of consistence - which natural, law-abiding moving towards collapse, in my opinion, is not. 01-08-2008 06:21 AMLettiYesyes.
That's what I am thinking right now. I might change my mind I don't really know it yet.
Our world is moving all all the time to chaos (so is Roland's) that's why we humans always have to fight and give up and can't have a heaven-like life.
It doesn't make sense now. I will try to write about it more after work. :) 01-08-2008 06:39 AMBrice 01-08-2008 06:40 AMLetti 01-08-2008 06:48 AMjayson 01-08-2008 06:51 AMBrice 01-08-2008 09:59 AMalindaBrice,
I read this in our local library, and LAUGHED so hard, and so out loud
I may have likely been asked to "shhhhh" . Thank you for that, I
really needed it. Its funny also that for the past few years, the best
belly buster laughs I've had, were for the most part over something
said on TDT.sites. You are most definately wonderful for my health!!
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: PS The fact that I work in a hospital
made way for another entire perception to this joke! phew! funny stuff!
01-09-2008 12:17 AMAllieWow, thank you all for your awesome responses, its an interesting topic, so many meanings available to interpret.
What I always found an interesting paradox was that although everyone in Rolands world seemed to be aware the world was moving on, the animals seemed to be healing what hurts had been done to them, the threaded stock etc. So even if the world was moving on, it was also healing in ways, so what was it 'moving on' to? 01-09-2008 12:39 AMLetti 01-09-2008 11:31 AMBriceHa ha! I knew you worked in a hospital. :lol: That fact kind of led me to this joke a little. A few nights prior to that post I was stuck in the ER over night for a severe toothache, and ended up waiting for like seven hours before even being seen at all. The ER was empty that night...like barren and desolate empty. I saw tumbleweeds roll by between the waiting room chairs. :arg: There were no other emergencies and no ambulances came in, thus making my toothache one. When they finally took me to the back it wasn't ten minutes before I was being let go with scrips. I later found out they close half of the ER at night and on this night they had only one doctor in the ER, but apparently one patient was too many for him. :lol: Anyhow, your comment regarding there being no time just got me to thinking (while high on percs) and that's how one led to the other. I'm glad I could make you laugh. :huglove:
:D I think the natural order of things is a deepy intertwined random and purpose which can't be separated. Both are dependent on each other. Chaos and order need each other. They're like this: :couple: 01-10-2008 01:59 AMJeanthat's what I think, too. It's the breach of this balance (which I am not sure is 50/50, but rather some ratio that enables this balance to exist) that I see as "moving on". In the book it was shifting towards the Chaos pole; I wonder what it all would look like if shifting towards the Order pole - not less abominable, I believe, but very different. Like, everything becomes predictable and you can more and more easily calculate consequences of any action... and the number of options (for anything) is decreasing... and such like 01-10-2008 06:37 AMWuducynn 01-15-2008 05:18 AMLettiI guess it means you disagree, AllHail. Am I right? :D 01-15-2008 09:12 AMWuducynn 01-24-2008 03:44 PMTo The Dark Tower CameI personally think that the "moving on" was more important to the first, older print of The Gunslinger. The whole book is about the reasons, culminating in the palaver between Roland and Walter. Walter tells Roland to imagine a blade of grass that is dying and what if the world were just a speck withing that curling, browning blade? It's nature.
The "moving on" became somewhat less important, I think, as the series developed, because there was a deepening of the cosmology, it became about the beams and Tower, etc.
One can also use the "moving on" in a world within a world metaphor for the whole series. Roland's world has certainly moves on, with the sweeping away of Gilead and the fall of all In-World's structure. But in contrast, when the tet arrives in the Calla, the world there seems to be going on quite nicely.
True there are mutie problems, and the Wolves, but as far as farming, building, raising children, food, water, celebrations, civil order seems to be maintaining itself. So "the world moving on" is a relative term in the books. The mighty swept away while the regular people go on as they always have. 01-25-2008 09:42 PMLadyHitchhikerShould we worry about the when? Maybe it's a particular multiverse that deserves our attention, and not the time. 01-25-2008 10:45 PMATG 01-26-2008 12:13 AMLettiHmmm... I don't know. I felt the fact "the world has moved on" thing was quite in the cetral all the time in the series.
Anyway right now I think the world is always moving on. All the time, noone can stop it and it's natural. Everything is moving on all the time, stars... planets... dust... you... everything.
Moreover I say if the Tower fell the things the universes would stop moving on and that would mean the end of life... or all the lives it's hard to say which.
But
"moving on" and "moved on" are not the same (at least for me).
If we say the world has moved on it means that it left something that was important in the past. But it must happen... we can't help.
Roland world has moved on.
And I say our world has moved on, too.
That's how I feel. 01-26-2008 09:02 AMTo The Dark Tower CameI can understand thet, but I don't agree. While the wolves came and took 1/2 of each set of twins that were of a certain age, it didn't really change the over-all way of living. It mayhap made for a very sad occasion when Andy announced the coming, but basically the daily living (when we join the Calla folken at the beginning of Wolves) is the same. Farming goes on, the town leadership goes on, Callahan preaches, the Sisters throw their plates. And as we've seen, the Wolves had been taking children for generations, evidently the town was still having babies and sustaining the Wolves. So I didn't see much of the "moving on" as-it-were.
Just a horrible relationship of the Wolves preying on the Callas as they lived their lives. 01-26-2008 01:04 PMLetti