tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post116845169704607515..comments2024-03-15T00:12:57.489-07:00Comments on Covenant Zone: Extra, Extra, Read all about it!truepeershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-1168506621619073002007-01-11T01:10:00.000-08:002007-01-11T01:10:00.000-08:00It may be worth reflecting on why the gnostic left...It may be worth reflecting on why the gnostic left is so indebted to the "hate speech is not free speech" mantra and why they would condemn writings like yours, Dag.<BR/><BR/>Their basic assumption is that all the conflicts in the world are somehow caused by invidious selfish forces (like "capitalism", or "Israel") that have escaped the mediation of the "international community" and all its experts, judges, and negotiators. Their basic assumption is that violent conflict is avoidable, or best limited, if only enough law can be brought to bear and reign in parties so that no one need negotiate with the reality of a knife at the throat.<BR/><BR/>On the other hand, the "hate monger" like Dag seems to assume that conflict is inevitable in the human condition and that the best way to deal with it is to bring it out in the open, to say, e.g., "Islam sucks" and see if anyone will step up to seriously debate and defend a different opinion. If that debate could happen, in many arenas today, then we would get a much more realistic understanding of where the real important differences lie in the present global conflict, and then we might have some hope of mediating them successfully. But first, Islam has to become accountable to its critics, and not sheltered by the ludicrous notion that criticism of Islam is some kind of taboo.<BR/><BR/>If, however, we accept the position of the gnostic leftists who would shout down all "hate speech", we are much less likely to ever understand the anthropology that truly underlies our conflicts. If we can't bring our differences onto a shared scene of debate, conflict, and honest struggle for a shared transcendence, we will be stuck in a fantasy world where endless experts mediate, trying to keep a lid on things, paying each other off, but never really getting to the existential heart of things. The "hate speech is not free speech" mantra is really a recipe for some catastrophic explosion down the road when the legitimacy of vigorous and vicious debate in the name of truth is abandoned and the system becomes increasingly dependent on human sacrifice to relieve tensions, unwilling to believe in any higher, universal truths.<BR/><BR/>It is better that we allow people to express their resentments than to pretend that resentments aren't necessary in the first place. What a shame that after a 100 million dead to "communism", we still live at risk of some global catastrophe wrought by utopian leftists, today ever more in partnership with the fantasy ideology of an Islamist imperialism that knows how to extort and blackmail those with no real moral centre because they lack the honesty to recognize the inevitability of hatred and conflict, and this honesty is necessary to learning any true morality and humility.truepeershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-1168505159396970222007-01-11T00:45:00.000-08:002007-01-11T00:45:00.000-08:00I think of literacy as akin to Prometheus bringing...I think of literacy as akin to Prometheus bringing Man the gift of fire: both are easily misused and easily justifed in the doing so. Literacy is improtant only insofaras people use it wisely and temperately. If they use it to neglect other important aspects of their lives and the lives of the polis, then it's worthless or even harmful to them and others. Plato iis right that memory suffers from the ease of books; but who has an eidetic memory? and what happens when that person dies or moves away in any other sense? I look at books as a way of communicating with the dead. I see real people in books, especially as I age; and see that though someone might have written the Epic of Gilgamesh thousands of years ago he is really not too much different from me and my concerns about life after death and the meaning of it all. Books are my hand holding the hand of the dead. but those lives aren't mine. I have to distinguish between those who are obviously brilliant and those who are so and also honest and insightful. But i can only judge that on my own terms, not knowing how others will read and understand the same text I read. So I hope that people will read many authors on many topics and focus on something to learn well and examine closely with the goal of not concluding but of becoming resigned to endless and happy curiousity. The voices of the dead and the lives of the living are important, and I hope that people have the god sense to choose their books with the same critical concern with which they pick their friends. That is, too often, exactly so. But if people have a wide array of friends with whom they can compare themselves, learn from, compete with, it's better than hermitage. Some people have a wide variety of criminal friends. There's only so much one can hope for. <BR/><BR/>I celebrate Kenneth Robeson above and William Bullock especially because they bring to Everyman the chance to learn through literature, however basic. In my own life I went from reading Doc Savage novels to reading Leibnitz. There was little transition for me. Books were rare. I took what I could get. Thanks to Tynedale and Wesley and Bullock and many others, I and others like me have a chance to learn what we can and then test it against reality if we so choose-- and if we so dare. Many, I suspect, feel that they "will always have Paris." Yes, they saw Casablanca, and from that they have an experience. But some of us, living in the remote mountains, actually go to Paris because of books, and in Paris look and know and see and feel the lives of our friends before us, and perhaps the lives of those who will follow us. Ah, Racine, you beautiful thing! Rimbaud, you're beautiful too. I know those men because of their voices from books and my feet on the ground they walked on. And they speak to me because I live a life in the real world of living men. books are a gift to me, and I use them as such, not as the whole of life but as a portal to life. That portal is open to the likes of me because of Bullock's totally cheap penny-dreadfuls. Thanks to Doc Savage I could turn to Liebnitz. And then beyond my little garden and into the world at large.<BR/><BR/>The Internet is similar: it's a portal to greater things if one has the will to know and the sense to think. Or one might use it to burn down the whole world. In that view I tend to understand what Charles and Truepeers refer to when they speak of faith. I think true and decent men will prevail, and that the Internet will be one great conduit to Human life in the pursuit of the Moral.<BR/><BR/>In the companion piece below I rail about educated idiots, and above Charles nails shooled fools. Honesty and the dedicated pursuit of truth don't automatically come from reading. But books can help if those who wish to use them rightly attempt it honestly. It makes a good man better able. And the rest of us might suffer less if we learn more, even if we don't get it straight away. <BR/><BR/>Yeah, I have faith, thanks to Doc Savage. Thanks to Bullock. And thanks to being alive in a world of sensible people who take time to teach in person.Daghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664271893389366772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-1168485337343874582007-01-10T19:15:00.000-08:002007-01-10T19:15:00.000-08:00Enjoyed the article, Dag. I think Socrates has a g...Enjoyed the article, Dag. I think Socrates has a good point. and I'm sure Plato agreed on the same grounds as he disdained theater - it brings out the worst, most emotional, possibly irrational side of people. The problem with books is not the books themselves, but how to know what to read. People can go hog-wild over inane ideas they find in books and children can be completely indoctrinated by bad books. Only experience plus knowledge handed down from our elders can point us to the books that are going to help us and not hurt us. Of the two, experience is more important, since lore can be fallacious. But there's something else and I don't know what to call it except 'nature' - our inner nature determines whether or not we learn the lessons that our experiences make obvious. Or whether we refuse to learn them and continue on an erroneous path.<BR/><BR/>It's all uncertain: a person laden with diplomas who has read hundreds of books can still arrive at fallacious conclusions. And a simple worker with little education can see more clearly. So emotions enter into it even when there are no books, or few. <BR/><BR/>Still, I buy more books than I can ever read. I look back in anger at the time I wasted trying to make sense of bad books with bad ideas that nonetheless sounded impressive. The Internet is good because if I find a blogger I like, then I more or less trust his opinion on books. Reading those reviews at Amazon sometimes helps, too.tibergehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17738716899363426734noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-1168483115285738152007-01-10T18:38:00.000-08:002007-01-10T18:38:00.000-08:00Loved the ending where the bad guy has a choice of...Loved the ending where the bad guy has a choice of dying by lava floe or turning, which he does, to be eaten by the monster dinosaur who is in turn melted by lava, a kind of double death for the bad guy.<BR/><BR/>It's the kid in me.Daghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664271893389366772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-1168467783464217712007-01-10T14:23:00.000-08:002007-01-10T14:23:00.000-08:00Socrates may have decried Thoth, but I feel safe i...Socrates may have decried Thoth, but I feel safe in asserting he would have relented his position, had he lived long enough to read Kenneth Robeson's wonderful Doc Savage pulp novels, of which the Man of Bronze was the first. <BR/>What a shock to see one of my favorite childhood memories emblazoned at the top of this post! I'm afraid I'll be too busy reminiscing to comment on the other points for a while..<BR/>(the best Doc Savage story was the second one, with the dinosaurs... The Land of Terror!)Charles Henryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18168475254263681673noreply@blogger.com