Bad books, bad books...

[Kanastrous]

I think many 'classic' books suffer for cultural reasons. Shit like Great Gatsby or most of Dickens is glacial anachronistic shit, but in synopsis or broad terms, the narrative IS good, it IS interesting etc. It's just that writing standards/styles have changed so much that to a modern reader they are terrible.

I dig Dickens in large part because of the work's value as a documentary perspective upon the society of the time - and I happen to like the way he used the language. Also, Dickens is representative in a lot of ways of what we would probably call a 'progressive' social conscience, today.

[Samuel]

I promised a review, didn’t I?

Teacher seeks pupil.
Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person.

Yes, it is one of those books that has an extremely inflated sense of self importance.

“Third definition: culture. A culture is a people enacting a story.”
“A people enacting a story. And a story again is…?”
“A scenario interrelating man, the world, and the gods.”
“Okay. So you are saying that the people of my culture are enacting their own story about man, the world, and the gods.”
“That’s right.”

The author uses a radically different definition of the world culture than the rest of us.

Naturally you wouldn’t consider it a myth. No creation story is a myth to the people who tell it. It’s just the story.
…
“It all started a long time ago, ten or fifteen billion years ago,” I began a few minutes later. “I’m not current on which theory is in the lead, the steady-state or the big-bang, but in either case the universe began a long time ago.”
At that point I opened my eyes and gave Ishmael a speculative look.
He then gave me on back and said “Is that it? Is that the story?”
“No, I was just checking.” I closed my eyes and began again. “And then, I don’t know- I guess about six or seven billion years ago- our own solar system was born… I have a picture in my mind from some childhood encyclopedia of blobs being thrown out or blobs coalescing… and these were the planets. Which, over the next couple billion years, cooled and solidified… Well, let’s see. Life appeared in the chemical broth of our ancient oceans about what- five billion years ago?”
“Three and a half or four.”
“Okay. Bacteria, microorganisms evolved into higher forms, more complex forms, which evolved into more complex forms. Life gradually spread to the land. I don’t know… slimes at the edge of the ocean amphibians. The amphibians moved inland, evolved into reptiles. The reptiles evolved into mammals. This was what? A billion years ago?”
“Only about a quarter of a billion years ago.”
“Okay. Anyway, the mammals… I don’t know. Small critters in small niches- under bushes, in the trees… From the critters in the trees came the primates. Then, I don’t know- maybe ten to fifteen million years ago- one branch of primates left the trees and…” I ran out of steam.
“This isn’t a test,” Ishmael said. “The broad outlines will do- just the story as it’s generally known, as it’s known by bus drivers and ranch hands and senators.”
“Okay,” I said and closed my eyes again. “Okay. Well, one thing lead to another. Species followed species, and finally man appeared. That was what? Three million years ago?”
…
“Then what are you saying? Are you trying to tell me that this isn’t a factual account?”
“It’s full of facts, of course, but their arrangement is purely mythical.”
…
(Same start, but for the ending)
“But finally,” the creature said, turning quite pink with pride as he came to the climax of his story, “but finally jellyfish appeared!”

This is the big revelation. If you are unimpressed, that is because you realize that people make stories for other people.

“Of course. As you tell it, the birth of man was a central event- indeed the central event- in the history of the cosmos itself. From the birth of man on, the rest of the universe ceases to be of interest, ceases to participate in the unfolding drama. For this, the earth alone is sufficient; it is the birthplace and the home of man and that is its meaning. The Takers regard the world as a sort of human life-support system, as a machine designed to produce and sustain human life.”
“All right. That is the premise of your story: The world was made for man.”

Except not everyone views the Earth that way in our culture. Environmentalists would vehemently disagree.

Well, that is the start of the nuttiness. It gets worse the further on you go. Does anyone want me to continue or do you think the book is too stupid (although you will get a fun example of me, an antitheist, defending Christianity?) For example:

“It could indeed- but not as long as you are enacting this story. As long as you’re enacting this story, you will go on answering famine with increased food production. You’ve seen ads for sending food to starving people around the world?”
‘Yes.”
“Have you ever seen ads for sending contraceptives?”
“No.”
“Never. Mother Culture talks out of both sides of her mouth on this issue. When you say to her population explosion she replies global population control, but when you say to her famine she replies increased food production. But as it happens, increased food production is an annual event and global population control is an event that never happens at all”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Worl ... istory.svg

“Famine isn’t unique to humans. All species are subject to it everywhere in the world. When the population of any species outstrips its food resources, that population declines until it is once again in balance with its resources. Mother Culture says that humans should be exempt from that process, so when she finds a population that has outstripped its resources, she rushes in food from the outside, thus making it a certainty that there will be even more to starve in the next generation. Because the population is never allowed to decline to the point it can be supported by its own resources, famine becomes a chronic feature of their lives.”
…
“True. But all the same, it’s hard just to sit by and let them starve.”
“This is precisely how someone speaks who imagines that he is the world’s divinely appointed ruler: ‘I will not let them starve. I will not let the drought come. I will not let the river flood.” It is the gods who let these things, not you.”

The new Age movement- providing more way to justify not helping others.

Of course, this is false (see India), but like alot of the BS in this book, that doesn't stop him.

[Norseman]

You must go on! I mean I've read the reviews on Amazon, and...

It is heartbreaking that someone can read this book and still believe in civilization.

...

If you can read this book and go back to living as you would, instead of running naked through the woods with a panflute, then you're not human

I paraphrase, but there's so much crazy insane stuff there that I want to vomit.

[CmdrWilkens]

The funny thing is that every single one of these comes back to the central idiocy of "we all believe <blank>"
If there is anything that is truly understood in such a universal sense then I would be highly shocked.

[Samuel]

You must go on! I mean I've read the reviews on Amazon, and...

It is heartbreaking that someone can read this book and still believe in civilization.

...

If you can read this book and go back to living as you would, instead of running naked through the woods with a panflute, then you're not human

I paraphrase, but there's so much crazy insane stuff there that I want to vomit.

From now on I will divide books the books I have read into two categories- the ones I have read before Ishmael and the ones I have read afterward.
-Jim Britell, Whole Earth Review
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Dani ... shmael.jpg

The funny thing is that every single one of these comes back to the central idiocy of "we all believe <blank>"
If there is anything that is truly understood in such a universal sense then I would be highly shocked.

It gets even better when you look back at what happened just a couple years before. Remember the whole Spotted Owl Controversy, where people where pissed that the owls were being afforded more value than their livelihoods?

Since you guys want, I'll continue- I'll need to pick up the books at the library since the copy I was using is from De Anza and I had to return it- semester is over and all.

[Stark]

I dig Dickens in large part because of the work's value as a documentary perspective upon the society of the time - and I happen to like the way he used the language. Also, Dickens is representative in a lot of ways of what we would probably call a 'progressive' social conscience, today.

I like older fiction as well, but it's way, way different to modern fiction and novels - so much so that it doesn't surprise me that most people don't like it. The pace is slow because people had longer to devote to reading, it's anachronistic and attitudes are totally different, and they approach themes and ideas from a totally different perspective, which puts a lot of barriers up for the average reader. It's unfortunate, because (for instance) I really like the Great Gatsby, but I fucking hate reading it.

[Kanastrous]

I really like the Great Gatsby, but I fucking hate reading it.

That's how I feel about Tolstoy.

This is great literature! How come it hurts so much?

[Thanas]

I loooove reading Tolstoy. War and Peace is almost a historical debate and certainly is a philosophical one.

I guess that is the reason why most people I know are scared of it...and because of the size, though that is quite the norm with those novels of that period.

[Stark]

And how it's absolutely fucking glacial in pace and full of almost indishtinguishable characters. Old novels don't hold your hand as modern ones do; they almost assume that if you're reading at all you're obviously a person of culture and intelligence and can follow, whereas now things like Harry Potter are considered 'books for grown ups'.

[fgalkin]

And how it's absolutely fucking glacial in pace and full of almost indishtinguishable characters. Old novels don't hold your hand as modern ones do; they almost assume that if you're reading at all you're obviously a person of culture and intelligence and can follow, whereas now things like Harry Potter are considered 'books for grown ups'.

Well, that's because if you were reading it a hundred years ago, you WERE a person of intelligence and culture. If you weren't, you were reading penny dreadfuls

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Stark]

Of course; however, the entire modern novel industry is penny-dreadful these days due to the expansion of education. Millions of people who can read and have no taste? Run the Tom Clancy novel perl script and PUBLISH! The 'average reader' has definately changed in taste and expectations.

[fgalkin]

Of course; however, the entire modern novel industry is penny-dreadful these days due to the expansion of education. Millions of people who can read and have no taste? Run the Tom Clancy novel perl script and PUBLISH! The 'average reader' has definately changed in taste and expectations.

Yes, but how many of them have actual culture?

Some things never change. People reading Tolstoy, while others are reading Clancy. It's just that there's more of the latter now.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Mayabird]

I also have a very high tolerance for crap and also difficulty and annoyance and all sorts of other things. Dickens, for instance, is no problem for me. I just hate most of his books I've read because of their trite little endings. "Oh, Oliver Twist is actually a lord and that's why he was such a good boy and now he'll live happily ever after!" What the frak? It's all increasing levels of "life for the poor in the streets sucks total ass, HINT HINT gentle readers" and then "Magic happy ending!"

I am also of the opinion that Jurgis in The Jungle actually died alone and penniless in a ditch somewhere about two thirds of the way through the book and that whole "Hooray for Socialism!" thing tacked onto the end was his last fever dream as he died in despair.


But while I'm griping about older novels, though, Crime and Punishment. Allow me to summarize the plot:

Raskolnikov: I'm so awesome I can ignore the rules with impunity! Watch as I emulate Napoleon! [He kills two old ladies.] Oh shit, I feel bad! I'm not actually a Great Man who can trample over morality! [Five hundred pages of moping follow until he confesses and gets his sorry ass shipped to Siberia].

Five hundred pages. Cut that down by half, and I wouldn't have minded the book at all. We get it; he's emo and his girlfriend's a hooker. Can we get on with it?

[Junghalli]

“Famine isn’t unique to humans. All species are subject to it everywhere in the world. When the population of any species outstrips its food resources, that population declines until it is once again in balance with its resources. Mother Culture says that humans should be exempt from that process, so when she finds a population that has outstripped its resources, she rushes in food from the outside, thus making it a certainty that there will be even more to starve in the next generation. Because the population is never allowed to decline to the point it can be supported by its own resources, famine becomes a chronic feature of their lives.”
…
“True. But all the same, it’s hard just to sit by and let them starve.”
“This is precisely how someone speaks who imagines that he is the world’s divinely appointed ruler: ‘I will not let them starve. I will not let the drought come. I will not let the river flood.” It is the gods who let these things, not you.”

Because as we all know trying to alleviate famines never works. Bringing food in from other regions that have surplus does not work, and neither does creating technology that permit greater and more reliable food production. Am I rite?



What brainless luddite rubbish.

[Sidewinder]

I'm nominating some Japan-wanking books by Japanese authors. If you're sick and tired of America-wanking books by Tom Clancy and other right-wing nuts, you'll puke your guts out at what the Japanese do.

Kikuchi Hideyuki's Dark Wars: The Tale of Meiji Dracula. When I saw it, I thought, "Cool! Historical fiction by the author of 'Vampire Hunter D'!" But then Dracula is depicted as losing a duel to a Japanese swordsman afflicted with tuberculosis, and declining to fight a judo master because he knows he can't win. This same Dracula is depicted as strong enough to crush a Colt Lightning revolver with his bare hands! All that "superior" technique is useless if your opponent enjoys so overwhelming an advantage in strength and speed, he can kill you before your hands are in position to thrust your katana or perform a judo throw! And Dracula's statement that he fought and lost three sword duels to a time-traveling samurai, and him impaling his archers as punishment for "cowardly" shooting the samurai to death from a safe distance: This is a man who used scorched earth tactics on his own damn principality to say, "Fuck you!" to the invading Turks! Who ordered the slow and painful deaths of thousands of people, left the bodies rotting upon stakes and in plain sight, as a warning to all who opposed him! Someone this damn ruthless is more likely to impale his archers for not doing whatever it takes to win!

Miura Kentaro's King of Wolves. It's about a Japanese couple who find themselves sent back in time, specifically, 13th century Mongolia, where they meet Genghis Khan. They learn that Khan is actually Minamoto no Yoshitsune, who escaped from Japan (the "Yoshitsune" who died was his kagemusha, a body double who served as a decoy for would-be assassins) and made himself ruler of the Mongols. Yes, Khan specifically states he's Yoshitsune, not a son of Yoshitsune who was raised by the Mongols (still ridiculous, but more plausible, as this would get around the fucking obvious cultural and language barriers). What, Japan's tragic hero was the God Emperor of Mankind in disguise?

Koike Kazuo's Lady Snowblood.

Comic book character says, "The idea that the Japanese are an inferior, barbaric race, and therefore we must mix our blood with Caucasians and make English our national language... It's abominable! Monkeys of the Rokumeikan. How far will they curry favor with outlanders!?"

Narrator, i.e., the author himself, writes, "Both the Racial Improvement Theory and the idea of abolishing the Japanese language were seriously evaluated at the time. (Sidewinder's note: 'Lady Snowblood' is set in 1889.)

"All of this happened because of the Rokumeikan's motto that became the number one proponent of westernization.

"But what if these theories were actually executed? World War II might not have taken place, but you, readers, and I, Kazuo Kamimura, would not be here either. (Sidewinder's note: Kamimura is the artist for 'Lady Snowblood', while Koike wrote the script.) Which do you think is better?

"Oh well."

Note: The author actually thinks preventing Japanese people from marrying (or at least, having children with) members of other races, is a cause as noble as preventing a war that saw tens of millions of people die from violence, disease due to disruption of medical services, and starvation. That "not existing" because your ancestors would've married people of other races, was as bad as not existing because your ancestors died in a war that saw tens of millions of people join them in the afterlife.

[Samuel]

I am also of the opinion that Jurgis in The Jungle actually died alone and penniless in a ditch somewhere about two thirds of the way through the book and that whole "Hooray for Socialism!" thing tacked onto the end was his last fever dream as he died in despair.

I don't think alot of readers finished the book, so it works out the same. That man is as bad as C S Lewis when it comes to ideological coloring.

Because as we all know trying to alleviate famines never works. Bringing food in from other regions that have surplus does not work, and neither does creating technology that permit greater and more reliable food production. Am I rite?



What brainless luddite rubbish.

I'm sorry- you happen to be sane. You don't see the implications! This part was from him arguing that the same ecological rules that bind all other living things bind us. Of course, cities are net food importers, so... 3 billion people right?

It gets better when he argues... well, you know Mike's racism page? What could be more offensive than that? I won't spoil it for you, only tell you, that he makes those people look progressive and rational.

Dang, I need to check it out from the library to finish this.

What, Japan's tragic hero was the God Emperor of Mankind in disguise?

Fortunately Games Workshop made him Turkish (original, not current inhabitants), but I'm sure they can swing one of the shamans in...

Note: The authors actually think preventing Japanese people from marrying (or at least, having children with) members of other races, is as noble a cause as preventing a war that saw tens of millions of people die from violence, disease due to disruption of medical services, and starvation. That "not existing" because your ancestors would've married people of other races, was as bad as not existing because your ancestors died in a war that saw tens of millions of people die.

Wait- they are basically the Japanese version of the Turner Diaries?

[Sidewinder]

Note: The authors actually think preventing Japanese people from marrying (or at least, having children with) members of other races, is as noble a cause as preventing a war that saw tens of millions of people die from violence, disease due to disruption of medical services, and starvation. That "not existing" because your ancestors would've married people of other races, was as bad as not existing because your ancestors died in a war that saw tens of millions of people die.

Wait- they are basically the Japanese version of the Turner Diaries?

The Japanese are infamous for their xenophobia (see the Tokugawa Shogunate's isolationism), and have seen themselves as a "master race" since the Russo-Japanese War (see the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Eugenics in Japan, Honorary Aryan).

Koike Kazuo and Kamimura Kazuo might not have intended to make their work a Japanese version of 'The Turner Diaries', but if that's the impression you're getting (I've yet to read 'The Turner Diaries'), we can say 'Lady Snowblood' is an EPIC FAIL.

[CmdrWilkens]

“Famine isn’t unique to humans. All species are subject to it everywhere in the world. When the population of any species outstrips its food resources, that population declines until it is once again in balance with its resources. Mother Culture says that humans should be exempt from that process, so when she finds a population that has outstripped its resources, she rushes in food from the outside, thus making it a certainty that there will be even more to starve in the next generation. Because the population is never allowed to decline to the point it can be supported by its own resources, famine becomes a chronic feature of their lives.”
…
“True. But all the same, it’s hard just to sit by and let them starve.”
“This is precisely how someone speaks who imagines that he is the world’s divinely appointed ruler: ‘I will not let them starve. I will not let the drought come. I will not let the river flood.” It is the gods who let these things, not you.”

Because as we all know trying to alleviate famines never works. Bringing food in from other regions that have surplus does not work, and neither does creating technology that permit greater and more reliable food production. Am I rite?



What brainless luddite rubbish.

Its even better because the point isn't just that "it doesn't work" but also that if it somehow DOES work then we are just setting ourselves up for an even mroe epic fail sometime in the future.

Basically the more people are living the greater the number of deaths when society collapses because we are not in harmony with the natural order. This means we shoudl let famine victims starve and let the old folks die off now so they don't die off later in the apocalypse.

[Junghalli]

Its even better because the point isn't just that "it doesn't work" but also that if it somehow DOES work then we are just setting ourselves up for an even mroe epic fail sometime in the future.

Basically the more people are living the greater the number of deaths when society collapses because we are not in harmony with the natural order. This means we shoudl let famine victims starve and let the old folks die off now so they don't die off later in the apocalypse.

Except by that logic you can argue hunter-gatherers are setting themselves up for fail because they'll all be wiped out in the next KT-level asteroid impact (something an advanced technological society could prevent). Any culture is going to experience mass death if the fundamental basis of the society is fucked. Somebody should point out to this guy that humanity probably almost got wiped out by the climatic effects of a big volcanic eruption 70,000 years ago, and we were all hunter-gatherers back then.

[Norseman]

You know I often go trawling through the internet, because you won't bother, and I find such interesting websites. I particularly like this one called 5 Common Objections to Primitivism, and Why They’re Wrong it is so very, very interesting. In fact so interesting I feel the need to quote from it.

...

2. We have a stable, abundant supply of food. Primitivists want us to spend our lives desperate as to where our next meal is coming from.

Why, then, is it only agriculturalists who starve? In fact, civilization’s food supply has always been shaky and meager. It is only recently that industrialized nations have increased production sufficiently to reap the benefits of “affluent malnutrition.” That’s the key to the success of modern life. We still eat things that are terribly maladapted to our physiology, but we eat them in prodigious quantities, aloowing us to stay alive (if constantly sickly and degenerative) for the normal huma lifespan of about 70 years, surpassing the average lifespan of medieval European nobility, but still slightly shy of our Mesolithic ancestors.

As the elite of the world system, the industrialized world is able to enjoy this standard of livng because the non-industrialized world suffers chronic malnutrition and starvation. By contrast, foragers are transhumant omnivores–as well as being some of the most adaptable creatures on the planet. Foragers make their home among the islands of Tierra del Fuego, the frozen wastes of the Arctic, the Kalahari desert, and the thick jungles of the Congo–among areas so remote and desolate no crop would ever grow. To starve out foragers would require the end of nearly all multicellular life on this planet in the kind of mass extinction never before seen. By contrast, to starve out a bunch of farmers requires a slightly dry summer.

The idea that agriculture provides an abundant, stable food supply is demonstrably false. It is a myth. Agriculturalists rely on a small number of domesticable species–and those species tend to be closely related to one another, as well. It’s the fallacy of “putting all of your eggs in one basket.” By comparison, foragers rely not only on a much larger number of species, but a much wider diversity of species, as well. So, in fact, primitivists are advocating that we give up a higly unreliable and meager supply of fodd, for a supply that is genuinely stable and abundant.

3. Primitivism would mean a drastic reduction in quality of life–no more medicne, no more art or music. Instead, you get euthanasia, astronomical infant mortality, and a life expectancy of about 30.

...

The charge on medicine is common, but utterly anthropocentric. In the anthropology of medicine, one refers to “ethnomedicine”–whatever a given culture considers to be “medicine.” Given the overlap of food-as-medicine, this can be as arbitrary as how a culture divides up the color spectrum. Western biomedicine is our ethnomedicine. Every culture believes that their ethnomedicine is the only valuable one, and all others are naught but silly superstition. This is simply ethnocentrism. At the root of the claim that primitivism precludes medicine is precisely this ethnocentrism. In fact, when we look at the actual efficacy of the various ethnomedicines in the world, there’s very little variation. Most ethnomedicines are quite effective, just like ours; most have one or more area where they fail utterly (ours tries to ignore placebo rather than use it; shamanism is the opposite, but has no conept of surgery, etc.), and all end up being roughly interchangeable if one is only concerned with efficacy. So, by no means does primitivism require the end of medicine–it merely means a radically different, but equally effective, form of medicine. In fact, if we attempt a syncretic type of medicine that seeks to combine the best of several ethnomedicines, we may actually come up with one of the first medical systems that actually is more effective.

There is more, yes, so much more. Indeed that whole website is filled with such wonderful, thoughtful sentiments, the kind you can only hold if your longest exposure to nature was a one week camping trip in June.

[Junghalli]

Wow, just wow.

This is of course why hunter-gatherer populations are tiny and scattered. It's not because you can't possibly support more than a tiny handful of people on hunting and gathering at all.

And of course, the idea that scientific medicine is better is just ethnocentrism. Which is why average life expectancy today is massively higher than it was in Midaeval times.

Honestly, showing how that is stupid is like shooting fish in a barrel. Well, the Noble Savage myth is often popular with decadent city-dwellers who've never actually experienced the lifestyle they idolized. To quote Lawrence of Arabia, "no bedouin loves the desert."

I can't even bring myself to read the whole article. The concentration of weapons-grade stupid just burns too much.

[Norseman]

I can't even bring myself to read the whole article. The concentration of weapons-grade stupid just burns too much.

Article? There's a whole page of this stuff! It's amazing, it's like a window into madness! Just go anywhere, look at anything, you won't go far wrong.

EDIT: It's not just agriculture that's evil! Oh no! It's the English language! Read Rewilding the English Language for a good description of how you can talk in order to make the nice men in white coats come around. Seriously.

...

Some 2 millennia later, the “is” of identity has dominated the English language. So much so, that it seems nearly impossible to speak without it. Go ahead. Try speaking for five minutes without saying is, was, are, am, were, be, been.

Many problems occur when adapting to the Aristotelian Orientation of English. “To be” supposes that the world never changes, but remains in a fixed state. It casts the world into separate parts: black and white, good and evil. This “is” that. A man can only love a woman. A woman can only love a man.

The development and enhancement of the verb to be reflects civilizations quest for absolute control of the cosmos. To label things as fixed in time, you attempt to undermine the very essence of this universe: change. In a world where nothing can remain fixed, it seems a bit psychotic to perceive it as such, though I think you can probably imagine how a verb like this would have had an easy time developing in a sedentary, civilized culture. Civilization itself a product of agriculture, and agriculture an attempt to resist the changing world, to control the food supply. The unpredictable nature of change seems like the biggest threat to an agricultural based culture. They cannot move with the land, so they feel they must control it.

Without the verb to be, civilization’s prized philosopher Descartes could not have made his famous addition to civilized thought, “I think, therefore I am.” Nor could civilization’s prized playwright Shakespeare have written his famous line, “To be or not to be? That is the question.” Nor could civilization’s prized pacifist Gandhi have said the famous line, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” None of these statements make any sense in a real, constantly fluctuating world.

...

5. Tear Down the Prison of Identity

“Is that” a woman? “Is that” a man? “Am” I gay? “Am” I straight? “Am” I good? “Am” I evil? “Am” I Christian? “Am” I Jewish? “Am” I rewilded? “Am” I a Taker? “Am” I a Leaver? “Am” I an anarchist? Who “am” I?

You can”t even construct these pointless, meaningless questions in a language that sees the world as an active, creating, destroying, celebrating process. Even to call it a “process” creates a noun-state—more accurately, you could call it “process-ing”. Do you notice how that brings it alive, makes it vibrate, to acknowledge that it hasn’t stopped doing, and may do something else at any time? Fuck the verb to be.

Saying “I hunt and gather” rather than “I am a hunter-gatherer” pretty much encapsulates the whole idea, with a little bit of an E-primitive bias. You see, E-prime enthusiasts would mostly agree with the use of -er professional labels, as in “I make a living as a hunter-gatherer”. Hence my support of the E-primitive focus.

...

6. Break the Shackles of Factuality

Civilized peoples worship facts, reliable unchange-ables. A common defense of the concept of “fact” goes, “Well, it’s a fact that the sun will rise tomorrow. That we know.” Since I know of many Native American cultures that feel that in order for the sun to rise, they must call it up, and welcome it, and if they don”t, it may not rise that day, I know that it won’t surprise them when the Sun’s furnace goes cold, or if the earth itself gets pushed out of orbit by very real cosmic phenomena (asteroids, nomadic black holes, etc.). A civilized reaction to that would involve saying, “well, yes, our science predicts that, but you know it’s a fact that…”

Yes that's right you are imprisoned by the word "to be", by the idea that you are something rather than doing something, by factuality, by...

Believe it or not but there's more on this website, and it's all so totally and utterly bonkers that... Look I know there are a lot of groups we laugh at, lots of sub-cultures, lots of really bizarre stuff, but compared to the Anarcho-Primitivists there's scarcely a single sub-culture that doesn't look sane and well adjusted. This is just so utterly and totally insane that I have trouble understanding how these people can even try to function in the real world!

Sweet mercy... I think they are saying that Aristotelan rules of logic are bad.

It's like this parody suddenly made real! I mean ... this totally over the top parody, but these guys actually believe in this.

EDIT 2: I keep adding stuff but the further down the rabbits nest I go the more insanity I find, like this article stating that no you don't need pills to control your fertility. By means of lambskin condoms, abortions, and the rhythm method, since we all know how well that works.

[Junghalli]

I like how they work backwards and assume hunter-gatherers must have had effective birth control, as opposed to their populations simply expanding and contracting in a boom and bust cycle with available food.

Even more wonderful is the totally out-of-the-air assumption that STDs wouldn't be a serious problem. Um, why?

[fgalkin]

Veg, what part of "bad BOOKS" don't you understand? Sure, internet primitivists are endlessly amusing, and great for killing braincells and whatever else you wish to kill, but unless they put this stuff into a book, it's not allowed.

Or, as they say in the eloquent language of smileys,

Sorry

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[speaker-to-trolls]

I nominate Harry Turtledoves interminable Derlavai series. Dreary books full of annoying characters repeating the same damn dialogue ad nauseum for six hundred pages per book. I actually managed to get to the end of book 2 before thinking 'no, I don't care enough about the overall plot to plough through another x hundred pages of these dicks repeating the same conversations with the same crap fantasy-slang'. Besides which it's World War 2 with magic, I can hazard a guess as to how it ends.

The fantasy slang is truly crap, by the way. The soldiers use 'sticks' to 'blaze' at the enemy while throwing exploding 'eggs' at each other from catapults (ok, eggs isn't that bad). And I've heard that Turtledove has characters throwing out a lot of real racial slurs in the World War books, but he obviously can't make up his own, as becomes apparent when you read someone calling someone a 'damn stinking unkerlanter!' or 'trouser wearing kaunian' for the 90th time. Yes these seem like petty complaints but they really do wear you down over the course of 1200 pages where precious little happens.