Tribalism

[desecration]

Eventually someone will discover the skyscrapers and talk about a race of giant gods.

It's kind of funny how the last time people attempted a Keynesian socialist government, the 1970s, we got all of these films and literature about the end.

Logan's Run seemed to really capture the public attention for awhile.

 

[JoePepsiCo]

The book was better. I used to read a lot of Science Fiction. Too much Science Fiction...

 

[JoePepsiCo]

Even Star Trek has a tribe...

 

[desecration]

The book was better. I used to read a lot of Science Fiction.

Me too. Bradbury, Lewis, Heinlein, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Card, various incarnations of Buck Rogers, even some Asimov. In my view the genre began with Frankenstein and I am rather fond of that author as well. This is where Romanticism crossed into modernism.

Sci-fi crosses over into postmodern fiction with Vonnegut.

And then there was the political fiction, all of which seems to descend from The Secret Agent. Much of that overlaps with sci-fi as well. The Quiet American is worth study for anyone who enjoys the type of plotting that is common in sci-fi. Just finished re-reading Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Red Storm Rising.

Sometime in the 1980s, sci-fi and fantasy merged, probably because Dune and The Lord of the Rings were having revivals. While I liked Herbert, I never read Tolkien until the 00s, except for The Hobbit which everyone read.

 

[Wat_Tyler]

I never read The Hobbit.

 

[desecration]

I never read The Hobbit.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy is probably the better book. The Hobbit is designed to pick up where Winnie-the-Pooh left off.

 

[JoePepsiCo]

In High School, a close friend urged me to read The Hobbit. I was not impressed.

It was years later when I read the LOTR trilogy. It was a little better, but still fantasy.

Heck. Last weekend, I reread The Foundation trilogy. Now I have a Musashi-based novel and The Book of Five Rings next to my bed.

 

[JoePepsiCo]

The Lord of the Rings trilogy is probably the better book. The Hobbit is designed to pick up where Winnie-the-Pooh left off.

Okay. I laughed...

 

[desecration]

I reread The Foundation trilogy.

I think of Hober Mallow often. Parts of Out of the Silent Planet (by another author, but related) come up when I read the news as well. And who can forget The Martian Chronicles or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Where sci-fi overlaps with politics...

 

[Chobham]

America WAS an ideal, a goal. As imperfect as it was the notion transcended any superficial artifice like race, creed, or gender. Unless that goal is restored all is lost for everyone.

Equality is being replaced by equity and merit is being replaced by having the correct, for now, superficial quality. People are being place in positions of power, in government and industry, that got there through no particular merit on their own, no track record of success. And once there they busily create products that no one wants to buy and then they turn around and blame the customer. They are angry and they're going to want revenge for their rejection. They are tribalists of the very worst sort.

 

[Wat_Tyler]

The Lord of the Rings trilogy is probably the better book. The Hobbit is designed to pick up where Winnie-the-Pooh left off.

I did read The House At Pooh Corner.


I may still have a copy of it . . . .

 

[JoePepsiCo]

I never did. Does that make me illiterate or the converse?

Even as a child, I just regarded it as a kid's book and I was too "erudite" for that. (And comic books.)

 

[Wat_Tyler]

I never did. Does that make me illiterate or the converse?

Even as a child, I just regarded it as a kid's book and I was too "erudite" for that. (And comic books.)

Never got into comic books. Or baseball cards.


Pooh was chill . . . .

 

[JoePepsiCo]

We played baseball night and day. Even in the snow.


Pooh went into the toilet... Metaphor for honey pot?

 

[Wat_Tyler]

I thought that Honey Pot was a metaphor/euphemism for vagina . . . .


I know a woman whose father named her cat Snatch.

 

[JoePepsiCo]

Hmmm...

That might make the book more interesting. Had I have known that...

 

[Wat_Tyler]

And then there were all of Rabbit's "friends and relations." I think that was code for clusterfuckery.

 

[desecration]

Even as a child, I just regarded it as a kid's book and I was too "erudite" for that.

Beatrix Potter took things about to their limit, and the Frog and Toad series. After that, Winnie-the-Pooh and Peter Pan seemed kind of halfway between childhood and the next step. I think their original audience read earlier and more widely than modern kids do.

 

[JoePepsiCo]

I know I was reading before school age.

I was fascinated by our rack of books which had been declared verboten, but I gravitated to them even more because of the prohibition in a young display of basic human nature; craving that which is denied. That and television was primitive, black and white, with only two channels and a limited broadcast day and children were not allowed to watch because it would rot our brains. (The exceptions were rocket launches and "the" assassination.)

I detect a lot of rot in this place. Probably started with Teletubbies and graduated to Sesames Street and then just hung out there even in the adult years...

 

[desecration]

America WAS an ideal, a goal. As imperfect as it was the notion transcended any superficial artifice like race, creed, or gender.

This was never true; see the 1790 naturalization act.

 

[desecration]

I was fascinated by our rack of books which had been declared verboten, but I gravitated to them even more because of the prohibition in a young display of basic human nature; craving that which is denied.

Same with the nerd herd. When we couldn't find what we needed in libraries, we found them in dumpsters or on other people's computers (oops).

 

[Chobham]

This was never true; see the 1790 naturalization act.

What part of "imperfect" did you not grasp?

 

[desecration]

What part of "imperfect" did you not grasp?

This was an act passed the same year as the Bill of Rights. That was not an imperfection; that was the design. The FFs generally disliked slavery but were not pro-diversity at all.

 

[JoePepsiCo]

Same with the nerd herd. When we couldn't find what we needed in libraries, we found them in dumpsters or on other people's computers (oops).

My dad's computer was eight feet high, twenty, thirty feet long and required an air-condition floor to run...



... on punchcards.

We didn't even have calculators until High School. The old Texas Instrument that was immediately banned.

 

[JoePepsiCo]

Hell, they didn't even like slide rules in school and you had to show your work.