You have returned,
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For awhile at least. I saw a thread on Void and Light and decided to comment since I spent an unhealthy amount of time studying that lore in particular.
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I submit that the Light as currently written is only tangentially related to “pure truth” or “pure beauty.” It may preserve them, but it doesn’t produce or embody them (that would be the old version of the Light).
I would say that you’re semi-correct, but it still fundamentally represents pure truth and beauty, it’s just that it doesn’t always know what the truth is and that beauty is a subjective concept. But the Light provides the structure for these things as an abstract idea. Under the Light there is one vision, one end point that you must endlessly strive towards which fits the idea of one thing being true while another is false. The Void however argues that the idea of truth in itself is nonsense, that there are many paths to a destination and that more then one of those paths can be correct, everything is truth but so is nothing, you only have the path you carve through life. Beauty follows this same idea, because the Light is undeniably beautiful in the traditional concept of beauty, but others would say that a bloodsucking vampire in gothic attire, something undoubtedly void oriented, is beautiful in it’s own way.
Which all goes back to that central point of order vs chaos. Either truth and beauty are rigidly defined, or they aren’t.
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Well–I’d look at it this way: just because an endless future of The Light wouldn’t be to most people’s liking, that doesn’t mean that pure truth and pure beauty aren’t as good as they’re cracked up to be, which is how I read your earlier message. It means that there’s no way to truly experience them, because The Light can’t really create or embody them; it can bring some measure of a certain type of truth and beauty, but it brings stifling stasis along with them, which counteracts the effect of what it does bring.
(“Pure life” is a trickier matter, so I’m setting that aside.)
I would say that pure truth and pure beauty are not desirable ideals, precisely because for them to be pure there needs to be one vision for them to happen and any deviation is imperfect, they can be ‘experienced’ if you merely cut everything but what you want out. Rather then change people the Naaru expressed this simply by reshaping what they could and freezing what rebelled, there’s nothing beautiful in death or pain(In their eyes.) so the only way to ‘make them beautiful’ is to lock them in place. The Light is not responsible for all destinies, and so it can only work with what it’s given to make things as ‘perfect’ as it can, that is the endless horror that the Void sees in the Light. Neither is right or wrong, they are parts of what make up the universe that are self destructive in their raw form.
Though their servants are another matter, when I read it out loud it makes it sound like the Naaru are deranged serial killers.
It’s also a sentiment echoed by Locus Walker and Alleria, just as it is the Forsaken, and the Apexis before them. If all of Azeroth knew that perhaps things would be better, but the tragedy is that those who study the void are those the most shunned.
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Ah, that’s where we disagree. I would say that pure truth and pure beauty would encompass all possible definitions of the words. Any version that sticks to only one vision is limited and therefore not pure. Or maybe a better word than pure would be ultimate, though something can be both ultimate and pure (in the sense of unadulterated).
it’s been fun discussing philosophy with you. 
I do find it interesting, yes. I would say however this depends on if you’re looking at the universe as a whole, or individuals.
And while the Light and Void are independent entities, they exist only as ambient energy without sentient beings to give them shape. Void Lords, Naaru, Lightforged, Void Elves, they’re only representatives acting in those powers as filtered through their own body. Without them the Light is just an unending ocean of matter, and the Void it’s absence.
Therefore you cannot really say these entities are the force itself, because the force is just a thoughtless mass of ideas that is given birth from our own minds. This is also why the Forgotten Shadow stresses the power of the individual, what ‘divine humanism’ is. They recognize these forces are nothing without us, they created us but we’re not shackled to them. The opposite is true, they’re shackled to us, we animate them and worshiping them is pointless because they are not gods, WE are the gods.
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Agreed, which is why I was puzzled to see you speaking as if the “mass of ideas” was bad just because a specific entity’s implementation of it was faulty.
Precisely because of the Void Lords and the Naaru. Being pure beauty is all well and good when there’s no brain wired up to it, but once you attach individual perception you quickly realize that pure light worship, and pure void worship for that matter, is doomed to drive you insane at some point. Neither one of these things can adequately make logical decisions as the more they expunge the other element from their body the more faulty their implementation becomes based on their limited perception of reality.
Ergo, having someone who wants pure light will inevitably end poorly for all living things around them, this desire for pure beauty and pure truth isn’t healthy because your brain just can’t encompass all of those subjects. The mass of ideas is very bad for Azeroth if you let it into your body and evict the other half of you.
It’s not that a specific entities implementation of it is faulty, it’s that EVERY beings implementation of it will be, by nature, faulty. So you’ve got to balance your light with your void, your bitter with your sweet, your coffee with your cherry pie. Even if it’s only a little bit like the priests of the Forgotten Shadow, enough to understand the other perspective, or these entities will eventually consume and destroy all life.
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But according to my definition, the Naaru aren’t pure beauty. They are perhaps unadulterated, but they only represent a specific version of beauty, and other beings can be forgiven for not finding that to their taste.
I don’t think that contradicts my earlier statement that there is no way to experience pure truth and pure beauty.
… Anyway, sorry, but I am about to go away for the weekend, so I think I should leave the conversation there. Nice chatting with you about ! 
Of course.
But the problem is not your perception of the Naaru as beautiful, the problem is if the Naaru see you as beautiful, or if any other Light worshiper does, that is where the harm comes in.
The contradiction is I do believe the light is pure beauty and pure truth, I don’t contradict that you can’t experience it though. In fact it’s the focus of my whole argument of why that ideal is harmful, the brains inability to understand every version of beauty is exactly why trying to become closer to the light without some capacity for nuance will inevitability lead to death and destruction.
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Took the weekend off, but just wanted to express my appreciation for the discussion that transpired while I was gone!
In response to your point about idealism being harmful, I think that the realization that we’re not getting the Full Monty is the key to any dialogue of the matter. I love how Plato’s allegory of the cave describes this dynamic, and though I’m not a full-blown Platonist, I think he’s really onto something in that the transcendental properties of being (truth/beauty/goodness) are necessarily subjectively experienced (by us mortal schlubs, anyway.)
Practical implications:
- There is some wisdom to gain in contemplating these things, but
- Caveat philosophus - it’s impossible for us to be certain of much
In accounting for the differences in the portrayal of this in terms of the Church of the Holy Light and the Cult of the Forgotten Shadow(s), I get the impression of a slight and perhaps unintentional bias against traditional religions. Just an impression, though.
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I would agree for the most part, though I would say that while there’s a bias against traditional religions, Blizzard just in general does a terrible job of portraying faith in general. Void worshipers are seen to have a better knowledge of what the truth of the universe is, but they are also somewhat unhinged. The Twilight Father was the pope of the Church of the Holy Light for all intents and purposes, but he could also be leveraged as a critique of the Forgotten Shadow since he came to his conclusions by following Selines doctrine.
Generally speaking the Cult of the Forgotten Shadow isn’t as prone to self destruction more because they are more decentralized and it’s hard to influence the undead with void magic, rather then them having the one and only truth. They have a piece, at the end of the day, a larger piece then most religions on Azeroth, but still just a piece.
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Maybe the Void represents creativity and the Light represents willpower.
The Light represents Willpower yes but the Void represents Madness of the Sheogorath variety(which interestingly enough has an underlining Order to it instead of Chaos)!
Of course too much Willpower and you get the Madness of Jyggalag who embodied Order to an absolute degree. Too little Willpower and you get Madness with an underlining Order as noted by the Mantid.
Yes! Omg yes, your comments about the Cult of the Forgotten Shadow are so on point. I was trying to kinda relate to it in another thread but yes, what you are saying is so important to the whole WoW narrative.
Divine Humanism.
There’s a line from the Velen short story that’s “every person is a universe.” Or something to that extent. So yeah all of the WoW cosmology and faith supports the idea of Divine Humanism..the Church of the Holy Light and the Cult of the Forgotten Shadow can be compared to the Occult and the Right Hand and Left Hand practice. WoW pulls more from Mystery Religions than mainstream religions as far as inspiration.