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Edward
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May 07, 2012 12:44PM
I just finished chapter four (again). I'm going to get it out of my head for a few hours, and then come back to tune it up before posting it. I hope y'all will enjoy it a lot more than the old edition.
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Stephanie, have you posted any of this prequel, or are you going to keep it to yourself until you're done?
Well the short story, Ribbon of Time, is kind of a taste of it. That scene probably won't be in it exactly. I've written less than a page of it. I know, I'm really bad. I do want to write but I moderate a Rick Riordan group and it's kind of hard to moderate a spoiler thread when you haven't finished the book so I'm trying to finish The Serpent's Shadow today. Incase anyone's wondering, it's really good. I would probably have it finished already if I hadn't insisted on reading Insurgent first.I'll probably have it finished in an hour or two. Then I'll go gush, then I'm planning on writing. I could definitely post the prequel as I go if you're interested though. I didn't think anyone was really all that interested in it. You know, a short story is one thing, a book is another type thing.
I liked "Ribbon of Time" so I'd say I'm interested. Also, I'm completely about writing all summer long, which includes reading and critiquing other's writing to keep my mind sharp. Do you mind if I criticize a little?
Not at all. Sometimes it's hard to see the flaws in ones own work. You can't get better if someone doesn't tell you how to improve. Plus, you can't get published if you're not willing to hear that type of stuff. I'll see if I can't post something today or tomorrow. Honestly, it's nice to know someone's interested enough to want to even read it willing outside of a contest. I mean, my mom has read some books I've written and I know she doesn't lie when she says that she likes them, but it's different when complete strangers say hey, nice job.
This is completely random, but for a post-apocolyptic story how does this sound for a local natural currency: honey? It'd be rare enough to be valuable, common enough to be circulated, practical enough that survivalists wouldn't think it's a waste of space, frivolous enough that it would casually traded-off, and it is the only natural food that doesn't rot or go rancid. The only drawbacks are that it isn't terribly portable (though not the worst thing to transport either) and it's consumable - both of which were problems with spices when they were used as currency in the Middle East.Guy, does that seem at all feasible?
How can something be rare and casual at the same time?
Honey is something that makes bland food taste decent; it's important, but not a necessity to a survivalist's mentality. Remember, this is specifically for a post-apocolyptic story.Also, it isn't extremely rare, just kinda rare so that not everyone has a ton of it lying around - like spices in the Middle East. It also has to be common enough that everybody has a least a little.
Anyway, I can kind of see how it would start: Some kid barters off a jar of honey to a group of cut-throat bikers for some clothes, the bikers keep it on them for a time but forget about it because they are too tough to complain about how their food tastes, then they remember it when they need to trade for gas, they find that the people holed up in the church pay a lot to make their rations taste barable, get the idea that everyone loves honey, start collecting it when they scavenge just like food and ammo, people notice that they're doing well for themselves (and aren't as violent), figure out it's because of the honey, and mimic them.
Oh, okay. That makes sense. Sounds like an excellent idea to me but this is purely from a reader's perspective. I've never written anything post-apocolyptic before.
Neither have I, but I'm building towards that.
It sounds like you have a very good grasp on how things are going to work. I would think that writing a post-apocolyptic novel would be fun. It sounds like it; to me at least.
I have a book called "The End of the World as we Know It." It's a little alarmist. (Although, from what I've read, there are about a dozen different reasons why our first world, high technological society will collapse. None of the people the suggested these hypotheses look like they've peaked at each other's play book, so somehow they've all come to the same conclusion from a different starting point. That can give one pause.) It is, however, very informative on a lot of things ... and then some things it fails utterly at. For one, the barter system he stresses so much would only last so long; eventually a type of natural currency, something that is generally accepted as good trade, will show up. (At least, that's what I've gathered from my history of economics books.)Anyway, post-apocolyptic stories are certainly fun to read. I get a little annoyed at the over-blown "rules have changed" mentality that many of those books have. Sure, we don't file taxes in spring anymore and don't have to follow speed limit signs, but some rules are just kinda obvious regardless of how anarchic the world is.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, you always have that one character that's squemish about "looting." Okay, if the place was personally owned by some guy (still alive) living in a flat upstairs, there would be a legitimate problem, but grabbing some food from a Wal-mart is just stupid to feel guilty about. Even if there was a legal owner left alive (which is a complicated business in of itself, as everything is technically owned by thousands of people today), they could never cash in on their merchandise. They would never care and would probably not even consider themselves owners at all. The worst thing to do in this case is not take it - that is, squander the opportunity for some food, clothes, and guns.
However, there will probably be a hundred other people at that Wal-mart, so getting caught in a blood bath is probably best to avoid anyway.
Wow. You've certainly done your homework. This all looks a little complicated. :)
I picked up "The End of the World as we Know It" because I thought it was either a joke or a fiction book. Sadly, it was neither.Anyway, the first thing to consider is how it happens: Nuclear war, simple economic crash, Terminators, EMP, a sudden "light" wipe out all electronic technology and explosives (Dies the Fire), zombies ... I'm writing a group of stories called "Fourteen Deaths of the World" that details a series of different things happening that leaves the world in shambles.
The only story I've written is the zombie one. Zombies are a little trendy at the moment and certainly seem goofy, but there's something immensely satifying about killing something that isn't alive. It's the total lack of guilt, I suppose. Anyway, unlike any zombie story I've read, this one is about how it starts. I have to make it ironic, so ...
It's in my writing if you'd like to read it.
So how does the world end in your post-apocolyptic novel?
It starts with something called the Chicago Incident, followed by an X-men like war between magic users and non magic users (which technically don't exist, but anyway), which triggers a vampire revolt, followed by a worldwide blackout, a covert take-over of America, a zombie virus, WWIII, EMP wiping out Japan, economic collapse (which was pretty inevitable at some point anywhere, but there's a specific story there), power grid failure (again, inevitable), another virus that gives people the power of a pagan god and a few days to live, California nuked and turned into the glass coastline, and after that things start to get weird.It sounds a little befuddled out of context, but when everything is linked together it should make more sense.
Here's the zombie one, by the way: http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/2...
You've got a lot of things going there! Wow.
Yeah ... it's going to be so easy to mess up.Although, when you think about it, a lot of the supposed apocolyptic scenarios are temporary at worst - especially the zombie one. Nuclear war would probably be the most permenant, but I decided to put that later so that it would wipe out everyone.
Easy to mess up, yes. But if you don't mess it up, I bet it'll be complimented by everyone who reads it. To accomplish all of that in one story takes talent.
Edward wrote: "Honey is something that makes bland food taste decent; it's important, but not a necessity to a survivalist's mentality. Remember, this is specifically for a post-apocolyptic story.Also, it isn'..."
It is certainly feasible — everything has been used for money in the right circumstances.
Is it okay if extend your thought / suggest some options? If not, stop reading now. Otherwise...
too late!
The honey idea can be made to work with the fact that bees are dying off - a weird parasite and spontaneous hive collapse being the most commonly, albeit still rarely discussed, threats. Now throw in the reality of mono-crop agri-business practices: bees cannot survive in areas with just one kind of plant growing, which is why we now have a bee-trucking business. The hives are in tractor trailer rigs that travel from field to field to pollinate different crops.
Finally, there is the existence of Monsanto's genetically modified seed practices, which preclude the need for pollination and hence the field need for bees. In fact, Monsanto's aggressive practices could even been linked to their sabotaging the bees to ensure that their seeds are not 'accidentally' pollinated with that being a threat to their (near) monopoly seed practices.
So, back to honey. To make this idea work a bit more realistically you may want to see that the powerful seek to monopolize the honey. This allows for the conflict between the real and counterfeit honey producers. Link that back to today's agricultural and business practices, and you could make a crackling sweet story - but not too sweet.
If part of the story is to explore economic alternatives, you may want to consider the economics of the Cherokee nation on their reserve in Florida before they were forced to leave their community under threat of death. That death march has come to be known as 'The Trail of Tears' because of how many died during their expulsion. The Cherokee, having been forced to a reserve, set up an economy with no property ownership. Initially the American politicians praised the community for its high level of health, education, and well being and for how quickly they had achieved it. Pragmatically, hey had successfully pursued happiness, having had the wisdom to understand that that is distinct from the pursuit of wealth. However, the powerful of America did not want this economic experiment to inspire the rabble to forsake the pursuit of wealth for the pursuit of happiness, and so destroyed that experiment, and had it expunged from the history. (See Chomsky, Noam: Year 501: The Conquest Continues, pp 229-232 and the references he sites.) The expansion and evolution of 'wage slavery' as it was called in the 1800s, was pursued vigorously and, unfortunately, successfully.
During the construction of my 'anti-' economics economics course, 'Economics Debunked' I came to realize that money has only one purpose. Do you know what that purpose is?
Control, I would assume. It seems that the wealthier you are the more control you have over your life and, for the extremely wealth, the lives of others.Ah, Monsanto. I made a crack at them in last week's story, though I didn't mention the name. There's an evil corporation if there ever was one.
Part of the advantage of writing in post-apocolyptic world is that you can make up so many circumstances and even though there's probably about a .5% chance of it happening as you write it that's about equal to the other two hundred possibilties.
Given that scenario, economies would become more regionalized, right? So it could take place in an area that naturally has very few bees. (Hasn't midwest America had some "disappearing bee" problems?) It could be the tale of how a clever dictator gain power through bee farming!
Also, it would be funny to have someone travel from another region that uses, say, comic books as currency. (Papa and I were joking about that on Free Comic Book Day when he brought up the fact that even free comics appriciate over time.)
Perhaps I'll restart my economic readings. I haven't opened up a book on economics since... I started college. Go figure.
Control has been chosen by a few as their answer to my query, and it is indirectly correct. Actually, the 'real' purpose of money is to separate the haves from the have nots. Control is what is used to ensure that money is being used in the society to effect that separation. Money is a token, a proof of your worthiness to have access to the society's 'wealth'. This came to be with the advancement from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural city-states: the silo-ization of food meant that the citizenry had to prove their right to access it. The control was the enforcement of the token system of food access by, originally, religious based military or para-military organization.Next question: what is the purpose of taxes?
Ostensibly, to provide funds for common defense, peace-keeping, and a justice system - among other things, depending on the country - but I suppose you might have a more exact explanation.
Again, you have provided the 'accepted' answer. Guy's 'real' answer is different, and will take a bit of explanation.Within a system of money, and one in which profits are derigeur, money flows upwards into those making profits. How/why? To be profitable the business by definition cannot pay its labour even as much as it charges for the goods/services it produces. This is true at the individual business level, but collectively as well. And it is true for each and every level of business, which means that collectively the groups or individuals who are not making profits, will be receiving less and less over time. (History shows this true, empirically both within so-called 'true' capitalist systems, but also monarchies, religious oligarchies, etc.)
So, how do the profits return to the hands of the labour? Wages are not enough, because if they were the collective owners/profiteers would not be making profits - by definition. Thus, the purpose of taxes in a 'democratic' social structure is to make sure money returns to the bottom of the pile in order to ensure that the wage earnings will be able to continue to afford purchasing the goods and services they are making to the profit of the business owners.
The purposes you site will largely arise naturally from the needs of the society, but more often than not they are used as an excuse to keep the taxes from being spent on health, schools and welfare.
But if this is true, how come capitalism has survived this long? Well, it hasn't been stable, as booms and busts are crude redistribution methods - the bankrupt investment 'transferred' wealth to labour, and did not make a profit. More recently, we have gone down an interesting path since the huge re-investment of money into the hands of the poor from the 1930s. After the middle class economic boom of the 40s and into the 50s, the call to make more profits while coping with high wages was to convince everyone to spend their savings. It took time, but eventually we collectively did. Then when the savings became exhausted, the next thing was to convince everyone to buy on credit. Then business extended that with cashless sales and balloon like payments. When that began to show signs of weakening, with the threat to profitability, the drive was to reduce the cost of labour. (Reagan and Thatcher.) When that showed signs of approaching exhaustion, the move to outsource production was undertaken. So, here we are: corporate profitability is at phenomenal highs, wages are down, debt is astronomical, and the governments are now trying to eliminate themselves by outsourcing government functions: military, prisons, schools, maintenance, water management, weights and measures.
The purpose of taxes is to make sure that the money does not pool at the 'top', but returns to the 'bottom' where it can be spent and provide the income to business and labour, and to provide the social goods we ostensible want: schools, health, good roads, and a means of enforcing fairness.
Eh, try not to bring up public education with me; I'll probably rant about it, and it has nothing to do with economics.This is a lot to process, if only because it goes against most of what I've learned about economics. I've never thought about the fact that owners can't pay laborers enough for them to buy their own product. Reminds me a bit of Hilarie Belloc's Distributism idea, where he basically suggests that people actually own a majority of their own work. (Of course, Distributism is more of an economic mindset, rather than an economic system.)
Well, the longer we go without a bust, the greater the imbalance would be, and more devestating the bust would be, right?
I'm going to have to kick this around in my head for a long while to process it fully. I work very well off of examples, even (or especially) hypothetical ones.
In the book Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West John Ralston Saul pointed out that much of the economic boom around America's expansion west was based on the boom and bust of the railways. Huge capital was invested in track (wages, of course), but for the reasons above wasn't financially viable. After their bankruptcies, the railways became viable and allowed for the economic expansion west.The recent banking bankruptcies offered America a similar means by which to (temporarily) fix their economic doldrums and the continuing erosion of a viable middle class: allow the banks to go bankrupt because the wealth will have transferred to those holding the physical assets. Now these people would be asset rich, cash poor, and would immediately be in position to borrow from the remaining banks against their equity and inject that money back into the economy.
Saul, in Voltaire's Bastards notes that Athens (350BC??) was faced with a similar bankruptcy situation, which was resolved by tearing up the debt. Afterwhich Athens flowered.
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein concludes with the observation that some of the pulverized South American economies are beginning to recover now that they have extracted themselves from the World Banking system and the onerous payback conditions. (Interesting current examples are: Greece and Ireland and Iceland.)
Thanks for the reading material. I think I'm actually going to make a reading list with those on it.Seriously, thank you very much for the lesson.
As to how bad the busts are, yes, history is full of them. When they are held off for extended periods of time, the busts are known in history as revolutions. If you look back at the various social revolutions you will see that they are about the redistribution of wealth from where it had pooled in the hands of the few. In almost all cases those with wealth walked and talked as if everything was fine and ignored the signs that they were not. Some of those signs: huge emphasis on 'games' (sports) - big BIG money invested in distracting the masses; the growth of taxation through lotteries; increased presence of the law (new laws and expanded law enforcement) to enforce the the illegality of poverty; denigration of the unprivileged classes; expanded child poverty and starvation; the contracting out to mercenaries of military defense.
I don’t think anybody really expects the “masses” (whoever they may be) to somehow wake up and take responsibility for their addiction to mindless diversions (e.g. television), for their idolizing of the least responsible members of society (celebrities), for the infantilism that inevitably increases with each generation as people come more and more to rely unquestioningly on the media for their socialization, and to expect governing bodies to be a parent to them, to order their lives through a proliferation of laws occasioned by identity politics--laws that, terrifyingly, prescribe how a person may think and feel about things.A problem I always had with Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is that a people so unable to think for themselves, so out of touch with their principles, that they can be easily swayed by oratory have no republic to lose.
Maybe that was Shakespeare's point. I haven't read/seen Julius Caeser so I can't be certain.Sounds like you and I have similiar worldviews, M. I'm highly suspicious of government involvement in anything that doesn't involve the basic three (defense, peace, justice) because I think it makes us reliant on government. Sometimes it isn't until one tries to avoid government help (to do their own thing) that they realize how oppressive a seemingly innocuous or even beneficial law can be.
I think that’s extremely well put. I think it might be nice to be clearly conservative or liberal, in one camp or another. My parents are conservative, and it was a surprise to me to realize, when I got older, that I was conservative in some ways, liberal in others, but that I differed with both conservatives and liberals in a way that, to me, is crucial. Conservatives and liberals I’m acquainted with seem to have ideas about what the government should do about things. My feelings are that the government shouldn’t have any right to do a lot of the things it already does. To me, the government has become a bloated thing, a manifestation of a society that wants to have its cake and eat it, too. So, to me, the thrust should be to trim it down. Some people would say that’s a conservative perspective. The conservatives I’ve talked to, though, seem to differ from liberals mostly in their ideas of what they want the government to do. I don’t know a lot of people who, like me, would prefer to see the government stripped of many of its powers that allow it to interfere in the private lives of its citizens.
When my mum and I looked up details on how to farm, instead of finding some articles on water and soil requirements for different plants or feed consumption for animals, we found several solid Google pages on farming restrictions. That was a red flag to me. Similiar things happened when I looked up security consulting, private investigation, and different aspect of being a liason for hire (a job I made up, whose role is a bit like a temp agency with more specialized jobs). Those jobs, which are services not strictly necessary for living, were actually easier to find information on than simple farming. It's weird.When talking about the type of government America has, I like to emphasize the constitutional part of Constitutional Democratic Republic. The constitution is basically a law that even government must follow, which I think is an even more important part of the recipe than the democratic republic part. It's also the part most ignored these days.
Hm ... Yeah, I think my views about arrogant, over-bearing organizations comes out in my writing; my major antagonists almost always have a grand plan to save the world. The protagonists are usually scrambling to help people right in front of them.
I just read the first scene of Julius Caesar. First of all:MARULLUS You, sir, what trade are you?
2 CITIZEN Truly, sir, in respect of a fine
workman, I am but, as you would say, a cobbler.
[...]
FLAVIUS But wherefore are not in they shop today?
Why dost thous lead these men about the streets?
2 CITIZEN Truly, sir, to wear out their shoes, to get myself into more work.
That is hilarious.
Two, the entire character of Marullus and Flavius seems to be a joke; they are livid about these people praising Caesar because they seem to think him a tyrant, yet are forcing people out of the streets for some vague charge of vagrancy.
FLAVIUS It is no matter; let no images
Be hung with Caesar's trophies. I'll about,
And drive away the vulgar from the streets;
So do you too, where you perceive them thick.
These growing feathers pluck'd from Caesar's wing
Will make him fly and ordinary pitch.
Who else would soar above the view of men,
And keep us all in servile fearfulness.
The first scene alone set my head whirling.
It may seem odd, because of how I have come to understand how my arguments are understood, that I am heart basically an anarchist — I'd rather that each individual had complete freedom to choose. What this means, however, is that the I am basically against any power structure, be it government or some kind of social class, be it religious, aristocratic, private or oligarchic.I am reminded of how my CMA friends mis-understood me when I argued that unions are a natural growth, and perhaps even a required one, when private enterprise is allowed to work without regulation. I personally thinks unions are often tedious, inefficient, easily corrupted and petty. No hardworking persons wants to be a part of one. But, I argued, greed is far, FAR more stupefying than sex and unions would never come into existence if two things were to be maintained by the business owner: pay their labour enough to feed and house their families, with perhaps enough to enjoy a beer at least a couple of times a week, and do not kill them because of poor safety standards. I pointed out that greed is so stupefying that these two conditions will never be met without government intervention, or the presence of unions. And history is blunt: greed always ensures that labour will be killed in unregulated employment, and that their wages will always be crawled back towards poverty.
An interesting example is death by fire. There is a documentary recently released about the Triangle sewing sweat shop fire, that even in a brutal time was considered heinous and resulted in changed government regulation. That fire was in the early 1900s. So, my challenge to you is to find how many industrial deaths by fire have happened since the fire that was going to change work safety forever? An interesting example is the ToysR Us fire on the early 1990s, in which the scores of dead found, when the fire broke out that the fire escape doors had been painted against the cement walls. There are many other instances.
A past example, which William Blake well documented, was the ABSOLUTE brutality of private enterprise, perhaps epitomized but not limited to the existence and treatment of chimney sweeps. For more than 250 years the sweeps suffered from bone deformation and early death from cancers of the skin, scrotum, and/or various lung diseases and, of course, getting trapped in flues. If a sold or abandoned child refused to go into a 4" flue, they would be encouraged with fire to the feet. Sometimes, in order to minimize the cost of having the chimneys swept, the fires would remain on and the children forced into them hot.
Contemporary example. On Anderson Cooper's talk show today I watched today Susan Sarandon talking about a woman in Cambodia who has rescued an estimated 7,000 girls and young woman from enslavement in the sex trade. The sexual exploitation of children is a perfect example of a free market, 'free' choice activity. The people running the services, and the patrons both are engaged in free choice. Is this an example of government failure to regulate and police? Or is it an example of the government properly allowing the free market to make the decision?
What I have come to understand from the empirical record of history is that governance by private interest, be it very direct with little if any government, or in an oligarchic structure in which the governance is being managed to the benefit of the rich, is just how absolutely brutal it is. History is blunt: when greed is a good, and those who practice it are given the keys to the hen house, the hen house will be decimated.
Part of the confusion, especially in North America, is the role of private propaganda to confuse and conflate arguments regarding both the role of governance and the role of private interest. This is an argument I cannot make in a few words, but suggest that you read at least two books: Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media and Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies by Noam Chomsky.
Chomsky makes some interesting citations. This one I find particularly striking:
A manual of the public relations industry by one of its leading figures , Edward Bernays, opens by observing that "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society." "But clearly it is the intelligent minorities which need to make use of the propaganda continuously and systematically", because it is only they, "a trifling fraction" of the population, "who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses" and are therefore in a position to "pull the wires which control the public mind." In its commitment to "open competition" that will "function with reasonable smoothness", our "society has consented to permit free competition to be organized by leadership and propaganda", a "mechanism which controls the public mind" and enables the intelligent minorities "so to mould the mind of the masses that they will throw their newly gained strength in the desired direction", thus "regimenting the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments the bodies of its soldiers". This process of "engineering consent" is the very "essence of the democratic process", Bernays wrote 20 years later, shortly before he was honoured for his contributions by the American Psychological Association in 1949 (Chomsky Perspectives on Power: Reflections on Human Nature & the Social Order. 231, with citations to L. Bernays Propaganda (1928) Chps. 1,2).Also:
The "crisis of democracy," which is not my term, happens to be the title of an important book published by the Trilateral Commission in 1975, their one major book-length publication. The Trilateral Commission was established by David Rockerfeller. It includes the more or less liberal elite elements from the three major centres of industrial capitalism, the United States, Japan, and Western Europe. Hence Trilateral Commission. This book reflects the result of an extensive study they did of the phenomenon that they referred to as the crisis of democracy. The crisis, as they outline it, has to do with the fact that during the 1960s and the early '70s substantial sectors of the population which are usually apathetic and passive became organized and began to enter the political arena and began to press for their own interests and concerns. That created a crisis because that's not the way democracy is supposed to work. The chief American contributor, Harvard professor Samuel Huntington, stated that, back in the days of Truman, before the crisis of democracy, policy could be executed simply by a handful of Wall Street lawyers and financiers. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but it expresses the conception of the Commission as to the way democracy ought to function.
That was threatened in the 1960s as minorities, youth, women, aged people, all sorts of groups began to be organized and enter into the political system. That world-wide crisis, the participants agreed, had to be overcome, and the population had to be returned to its proper state of apathy and ignorance, returned to its task. Namely, that of ratifying decisions made by elites (Chomsky Chronicles of Dissent: Interviews with David Barsamian. 78-9)."
Other books to consider:
Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics by Jane Jacobs;
Stone Age Economics by Marshall Sahlins;
Cities and the Wealth of Nations by Jane Jacobs;
The Wealthy Banker's Wife: The Assault on Equality in Canada by Linda McQuaig;
Year 501: The Conquest Continues by Noam Chomsky;
The Twilight of American Culture by Morris Berman;
Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West by John Ralston Saul;
Politics by Aristotle;
The Prince; by Machiavelli Nicolo Machiavelli;
No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs by Naomi Klein.
Edward, JC is an excellent play. Well worth reading and seeing.
Propoganda works until someone points out that it works.Anyway, controlling the masses is actually a laughable idea. Every single person I've met breaks "the rules" of how they're supposed to act. My best friend is a rebel without a cause, and he follows the typical path of going to college to get a degree which he probably intends to use for his diabolicable plans. I'm the tucked-shirt kid who always follows the rules and the one that enjoys learning for the sake of learning, but I see no purpose in social norm of college whatsoever. My not-by-blood sister is training to be a neat-buttoned, tough-talkin' Marine Corps Officer. Her style? Girly goth.
I used to listen to the cynics who said that no one is really free, that we all fall into some trap of being controlled by some outside (usually political or some big business) force, but my (albeit limited) experience suggests that ones who think they're in control are the ones that are fooling themselves.
Anyway, in the information age where one can get fifty different opinions on the source of the paper used to print the Hunger Games, propoganda is actually become a less effective means of control. Propoganda is about controlling what the masses see, controlling information ... which is about the last thing that the American government can control. At best, they can run interference by clogging the information pipeline with a bunch of things that don't really matter, but they can no longer show us just one concept on an issue. Some college kid with the screen name Machiavelli Shakespeare is bound to contradict them.
As for all those terrible events, I don't see any kind of system stopping them completely. Not anarchy, not totalitarism, and nothing inbetween.
I just read Act I scene 2. I like Cassius's sardonic sense of humor.CASCA He fell down in the market-place, and foam'd at mouth, and was speechless.
BRUTUS 'Tis very like. He hath the falling sickness.
CASSIUS No, Caesar hath it not; but you, and I,
And honest Casca, we have the falling sickness.
Note, above I'm talking about control through propoganda. I think the government can control people other ways (force and bribery) and that it needs to be considerably lessened.
You may well be right, but I suspect that you are not. LoL. In the long run it doesn't matter, anyway. I look forward to seeing how your post-apocalyptic story turns out. I have read Margaret Atwood's, and they are excellent and will be a tough pair of books to match.
It would be nice if the government were ultimately to blame. The horror of it is that the people are to blame, though not in any way that blame can be affixed to any particular persons, for so much that happens takes place collectively, in the form of movements that, in and of themselves, have no awareness and wind up as currents of history.I can’t remember who said that there’s no ox dumb as orthodox, but my experience is that Jung is right that a group is mindless, that a capacity for introspection and feeling exists only in the individual, and that the individual is society’s only hope--I would add: insofar as the individual can become conscious enough, thoughtful enough, to realize that the nurturing of a civilized society is the paramount thing.
It seems paradoxical to me that with the philosophic mind comes the realization that society must come first; that a sign of the individual is a recognition of the importance of the group.
M that is very well said. The challenge is that we all think of ourselves as individuals, and loathe being called part of a group. In a sense, a measure of the degree to which a person is un-individuated is the degree to which they proselytize their individuality. A simple but I think accurate example of this is teen-age fashion and taste: they dress to separate themselves from the adults, to assert their individuality, but do so by dressing the same as their peers. Amusingly enough we adults tend to do the same thing as we move from being dependent on our parents to parents ourselves.Self-awareness is difficult and most choose to remain unaware and even unaware that they are unaware. One of the odd things about having gotten older is that when I was young I thought that the fairy tale of the naked emperor was an impossibility. Now I recognize it as the norm. Now I am always looking around and in a mirror to try to see whether or not I am really naked or not. Rather amusing.
I ... don't really dress like my peers. I dress more like my dad. My dad is cool, though.Y'all both have interesting points, but I don't really have anything else to add.
I read Guy’s #756 early this morning, but I need to revisit it a few times.
Oddly enough, I didn't either. Does that make us outsiders, then, a member of the group of societal outcasts and misfits? LoL. Al, good luck with your doctor appointment. You are in my thoughts and I wish you well. (My wife has been going through major doctor stuff.)
That goes with being an INFP. They have, bizarre, individualistic taste in clothes. I’m one of the few exceptions.
I wear boots, jeans, MMA shirts, polos, or plaid button-ups that are always tucked in, and a messenger-boy hat that I never wear indoors. Not terribly unique, but nothing like my friends.
So, I'm playing chess with myself and somehow I ended up with the queens facing each other, like a criminal and cop pointing guns at each other, and whoever moves first loses the advantage.Yeah ...
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Books mentioned in this topic
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Falling Worlds (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Elias Canetti (other topics)Morris Berman (other topics)
Noam Chomsky (other topics)
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