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To whom "Romeo and Juliet" makes no sense?

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Ilya2

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Sep 24, 2009, 10:49:59 AM9/24/09
to
I was going to post it on "We're at a moment in time..." thread, then
decided it should be a thread of its own.

Some critic of transhumanism (Leon Kass? Fukuyama?) had said that a
transhuman is someone to whom Shakespear's plays make no sense. IOW,
someone whose experiences and worldview are different enough that
"timeless stories" are not so timeless any more. Which of course he
saw as a terrible thing to be prevented at all costs.

I emphatically disagree with this critic's conclusion, but I think he
has a point. "Romeo and Juliet" is a story about two lovers whose love
is doomed because they belong to two irreconcilably hostile factions.
It would have made sense in 2000 BC, it made sense in 1600, and it
made sense in 1950 -- "West Side Story". Clearly it is a timeless
story, and anyone who, for whatever reason, fails to empathize with it
is not fully human. Or is he?

According to my 17-year old, most of her peers do not in fact
empathize with Romeo and Juliet. The concept of "one true love" is
alien to them, in part because they have so many more options than
vast majority of people in 2000 BC, 1600 AD, or even in 1950 AD.
Juliet is a Capulet? Bummer. Back to Facebook.

And I suspect that by the time these teenagers are 80 years old and
still healthy, vigorous and sexually active (which I do not think is
at all unlikely), the concept of "Juliet is a Capulet" would ITSELF
make no sense. One universal aspect throughout human history was that
groups live much longer than individuals. A person dies; a tribe,
nation, religion, even merchant company, endures. Allegiances are set
at birth or early one, and changing them is bad; changing them many
times is horrid. Romeo and Juliet are doomed because enmity between
Capulets and Montagues was before them and will remain after them
(implied not forever, but long enough).

That is no longer true. Millions of people throughout the world how
identify themselves most strongly not with a nation or a religion, but
with some group, Internet-based or not, which did not even exist when
they were born. Nations, for that matter, have been coming into
existence like mushrooms after a rain. Modern communications allow one
to network with sommon-minded people across the globe, with little
regard for birth or location. Allegiances and group identities change
and shift depending on one's changing worldview. Again, by the time my
daughter is 80 (and with luck, I am 105 ;) I suspect it will be a
universally accepted fact that individuals outlive groups. At that
point "Romeo and Juliet" -- and "West Side Story" for that matter, --
truly will make no sense at all. Will that make them transhuman, even
if they are "only" modestly endowed with neural interfaces?

On a somewhat different note, in "We're at a moment in time..." thread
Remus Shepherd quoted Heinlein: "a man must be able to change a
diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a
building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone,
comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone,
solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a
computer, cook a tasty meal, and fight efficiently". Actually, the
quote ends with "fight efficently, die gallantly". That too, has been
a timeless human quality -- everyone dies sooner or later, and one
should make the best of it when it comes. But for immortal (meaning
"unaging, but can be killed") people, I suspect the concept of "dying
gallantly" will make as much sense as midaeval vows to wear hairshirts
and wear chains make to us. Getting oneself killed, for whatever
reason, will mean FAILURE, to be viewed with contempt rather than
admiration. Perhaps giving up one's life for one's children or spouse
will still be seen as something noble, but still incompetent -- an
immortal worth his salt ought to be able to save his family AND to
provide them with his continuous presence. Once "everybody dies" meme
is gone, ethics will become very different. And not conducive to
characters modern readers could identify with. Yet.

Remus Shepherd

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Sep 24, 2009, 11:22:07 AM9/24/09
to
Ilya2 <il...@rcn.com> wrote:
> Some critic of transhumanism (Leon Kass? Fukuyama?) had said that a
> transhuman is someone to whom Shakespear's plays make no sense. IOW,
> someone whose experiences and worldview are different enough that
> "timeless stories" are not so timeless any more. Which of course he
> saw as a terrible thing to be prevented at all costs.

There's a bit of circular reasoning going on in that criticism.
It defines someone as transhuman if they no longer think like a human
being. But that's just a side effect -- the definition of a transhuman
should take into account somehow the ways in which they are above and
beyond human beings, physically and mentally. That criticism is damning
a potential side effect of transhumanism; a side effect that might not
occur.

Maybe that gives us shades of transhumanism we can agree upon.
Maybe we can agree that transhumans that are incapable of thinking like
human beings are bad. That frees us up to argue over the transhumans
that can still think like human beings. :)

> On a somewhat different note, in "We're at a moment in time..." thread
> Remus Shepherd quoted Heinlein: "a man must be able to change a
> diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a
> building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone,
> comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone,
> solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a
> computer, cook a tasty meal, and fight efficiently". Actually, the
> quote ends with "fight efficently, die gallantly".

Yeah, I left that last part off because it conflicted with my next
statement: A transhuman should be able to do all of those things at
the same time. But there I was defining a transhuman based on their
abilities, not on their psychology. That definition is not widespread,
judging by the responses I got.

> Once "everybody dies" meme is gone, ethics will become very different.

Agreed.

> And not conducive to
> characters modern readers could identify with.

Disagree. There are plenty of characters with weird or ineffable
ethics in fiction. It may not be *easy* to write those characters as
sympathetic, but it can be done and has been done.

... ...
Remus Shepherd <re...@panix.com>
Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/remus_shepherd/

Walter Bushell

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Sep 24, 2009, 1:39:35 PM9/24/09
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In article
<2b39be38-4e66-45d0...@33g2000vbe.googlegroups.com>,
Ilya2 <il...@rcn.com> wrote:

> Nations, for that matter, have been coming into
> existence like mushrooms after a rain.

States have, nations not so much. Problem is many states contain several
nations and divide nations. Like the Kurds who ended up in several
states which want them to abandon their identity as Kurds and become
Turks or Iranians or Iraqis.

--
A computer without Microsoft is like a chocolate cake without mustard.

Ilya2

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Sep 24, 2009, 3:45:49 PM9/24/09
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> > And not conducive to
> > characters modern readers could identify with.
>
>    Disagree.  There are plenty of characters with weird or ineffable
> ethics in fiction.  It may not be *easy* to write those characters as
> sympathetic, but it can be done and has been done.

Sorry for being unclear. By "not conducive" I meant "possible, but
difficult".

Mike Van Pelt

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Sep 24, 2009, 3:46:55 PM9/24/09
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>Again, by the time my daughter is 80 (and with luck, I am
>105 ;) I suspect it will be a universally accepted fact that
>individuals outlive groups.

"There are no ordinary people. You have never met a mere
mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations, these are
mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat."

-- C. S. Lewis, sometime around the middle of the last century

Of course, he meant something a bit different by it...

--
Mike Van Pelt "If they're going to talk about
mvp.at.calweb.com Camelot, then we get to talk about
KE6BVH The Lady in the Lake." - ?

erilar

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Sep 24, 2009, 4:12:39 PM9/24/09
to
Rather than answer Ilya2's post bit by bit, I just want to point out
that I think there will always be irreconcilable groups, individuals
from which may want to join together, whether in love or deep
friendship. The groups just change. I can't throw out a science
fictional example at the moment, but there have been some with close
relationships between aliens and "humans" viewed with horror by both
"groups".

--
Erilar, biblioholic

bib-li-o-hol-ism [<Gr biblion] n. [BIBLIO + HOLISM] books, of books:
habitual longing to purchase, read, store, admire, and consume books in excess.

http://www.chibardun.net/~erilarlo

Dorothy J Heydt

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Sep 24, 2009, 4:50:39 PM9/24/09
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In article <drache-2B7533....@news.eternal-september.org>,

erilar <dra...@chibardun.net.invalid> wrote:
>Rather than answer Ilya2's post bit by bit, I just want to point out
>that I think there will always be irreconcilable groups, individuals
>from which may want to join together, whether in love or deep
>friendship. The groups just change. I can't throw out a science
>fictional example at the moment, but there have been some with close
>relationships between aliens and "humans" viewed with horror by both
>"groups".

Well, back in the fifties H. L. Gold, then editing _Galaxy_,
tossed off a phrase in an editorial (I cannot now remember
the context), "Perhaps the aptitude groups will turn out to
be the true races of mankind."

Whereupon Fred Pohl wrote a story called "My Lady
Greensleeves,"

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi

in which the aptitude groups *are* considered the races of
mankind, and there are civil rights protests and
anti-miscegenation laws and the whole nine yards. "She's
in jail for violating the Categoried Classes. She's a
figger-lover."

And at the end, somebody points out that people have always
divided themselves into groups, with associated hostility
toward groups other than one's own, and tells the following
story out of ancient history:

"The Ladies' League of [placename] was holding elections for
chairwoman. Mrs. O'Malley got thirty-five votes, and Mrs.
Goldberg got six. After the results were announced, Mrs.
O'Reilly leaned over to Mrs. O'Malley and whispered, 'Good for
you! But isn't it terrible the way these Jews stick
together?

And the young woman answeres, "Well, I do have one question.
What's a Jew?"

--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at hotmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the hotmail edress.
Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's filters.

David Johnston

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Sep 24, 2009, 5:27:54 PM9/24/09
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On Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:49:59 -0700 (PDT), Ilya2 <il...@rcn.com> wrote:

>I was going to post it on "We're at a moment in time..." thread, then
>decided it should be a thread of its own.
>
>Some critic of transhumanism (Leon Kass? Fukuyama?) had said that a
>transhuman is someone to whom Shakespear's plays make no sense. IOW,
>someone whose experiences and worldview are different enough that
>"timeless stories" are not so timeless any more. Which of course he
>saw as a terrible thing to be prevented at all costs.
>
>I emphatically disagree with this critic's conclusion, but I think he
>has a point. "Romeo and Juliet" is a story about two lovers whose love
>is doomed because they belong to two irreconcilably hostile factions.
>It would have made sense in 2000 BC, it made sense in 1600, and it
>made sense in 1950 -- "West Side Story".

And it made sense in 1980 when Dire Straits released their single
entitled "Romeo and Juliet"

It made sense in 2000 when "Romeo Must Die" came out

And it made sense in 2009 when this hit single by Taylor Swift came
out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxdrgYy_SE8&feature=related

Sure it rewrites the story to give it a happy ending, (Romeo and
Juliet are parted, but years later reunited when the problems about
their relationship are no longer an issue) but the original still
clicked enough that someone wanted to bother.


Clearly it is a timeless
>story, and anyone who, for whatever reason, fails to empathize with it
>is not fully human. Or is he?
>
>According to my 17-year old, most of her peers do not in fact
>empathize with Romeo and Juliet.

I suspect that only a minority at any point in history would have
regarded Romeo and Juliet as anything except the young idiots they
were, particularly at the end. In a classic tragedy, the protagonists
are destroyed by their flaws, not their virtues. R&J adolescently
inane infatuation is a character flaw like MacBeths corruptibility,
Lears insanity or Othello's jealousy.

The concept of "one true love" is
>alien to them, in part because they have so many more options than
>vast majority of people in 2000 BC, 1600 AD, or even in 1950 AD.
>Juliet is a Capulet? Bummer. Back to Facebook.
>
>And I suspect that by the time these teenagers are 80 years old and
>still healthy, vigorous and sexually active (which I do not think is
>at all unlikely), the concept of "Juliet is a Capulet" would ITSELF
>make no sense. One universal aspect throughout human history was that
>groups live much longer than individuals. A person dies; a tribe,
>nation, religion, even merchant company, endures. Allegiances are set
>at birth or early one, and changing them is bad; changing them many
>times is horrid. Romeo and Juliet are doomed because enmity between
>Capulets and Montagues was before them and will remain after them
>(implied not forever, but long enough).

Note that in West Side Story the warring factions are much younger
than their participants and will not outlast them. Or for that matter
are even likely to outlast their reaching middle age, since the
entrenched long-term gangs of the seventies were yet to be seen.

>
>That is no longer true. Millions of people throughout the world how
>identify themselves most strongly not with a nation or a religion, but
>with some group, Internet-based or not, which did not even exist when
>they were born. Nations, for that matter, have been coming into
>existence like mushrooms after a rain. Modern communications allow one
>to network with sommon-minded people across the globe, with little
>regard for birth or location. Allegiances and group identities change
>and shift depending on one's changing worldview. Again, by the time my
>daughter is 80 (and with luck, I am 105 ;) I suspect it will be a
>universally accepted fact that individuals outlive groups. At that
>point "Romeo and Juliet" -- and "West Side Story" for that matter, --
>truly will make no sense at all.

I strongly suspect differently. There's a gigantic and still growing
industry which sells fantasies of Love, Twue Love which triumphs over
great obstacles. Romeo and Juliet resonates with any teenager or
ex-teenager who has had their parents tell them that that the one
they'd like to be with is bad for them for whatever reason and they
aren't to see them again, and it has something to say for the parents
in that scenario as well. The fact is, Hamlet's far more impenetrable
to modern sensibilities since we simply don't realize that there's a
Norse taboo against killing the insane which helps makes sense out of
Hamlet's silly plan but we still get his depression and suicidal
ideation.


Will that make them transhuman, even
>if they are "only" modestly endowed with neural interfaces?
>
>On a somewhat different note, in "We're at a moment in time..." thread
>Remus Shepherd quoted Heinlein: "a man must be able to change a
>diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a
>building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone,
>comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone,
>solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a
>computer, cook a tasty meal, and fight efficiently". Actually, the
>quote ends with "fight efficently, die gallantly". That too, has been
>a timeless human quality -- everyone dies sooner or later, and one
>should make the best of it when it comes. But for immortal (meaning
>"unaging, but can be killed") people, I suspect the concept of "dying
>gallantly" will make as much sense as midaeval vows to wear hairshirts
>and wear chains make to us.

And yet if they aren't self-deluded they must realize that that there
is in fact no such thing as immortality. However long we live, death
comes for them all, by accident, catastrophe malfunction, a failure to
keep your injections up to date, or the heat death of the universe.
Some at least will realise this.

Wayne Throop

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Sep 24, 2009, 5:43:07 PM9/24/09
to
:: According to my 17-year old, most of her peers do not in fact

:: empathize with Romeo and Juliet.

: David Johnston <da...@block.net>
: I suspect that only a minority at any point in history would have


: regarded Romeo and Juliet as anything except the young idiots they
: were, particularly at the end. In a classic tragedy, the protagonists
: are destroyed by their flaws, not their virtues. R&J adolescently
: inane infatuation is a character flaw like MacBeths corruptibility,
: Lears insanity or Othello's jealousy.

Sure, but the question is, are R&J's flaws empathizable and/or plausible.
I suspect you'd find a higher percentage empathizing with them in a
culture with arranged marriages and other formidable impediments to
marrying whoever you wanted to. Rather than in a culture where the
"so your families disapprove; they can lump it" option is a "well DUH"
obvious alternative. That is to say, I'm not sure folks in our culture
appreciate their form of teen angst. I could of course be wrong.
And of course R&J never appealed to me much.


Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw

Dorothy J Heydt

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Sep 24, 2009, 6:04:05 PM9/24/09
to
In article <akmnb518fl73fkph5...@4ax.com>,

David Johnston <da...@block.net> wrote:
>
>I strongly suspect differently. There's a gigantic and still growing
>industry which sells fantasies of Love, Twue Love which triumphs over

ITYM Wuv Twue Wuv.

>great obstacles.

Louann Miller

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Sep 24, 2009, 7:00:09 PM9/24/09
to
David Johnston <da...@block.net> wrote in
news:akmnb518fl73fkph5...@4ax.com:

> I strongly suspect differently. There's a gigantic and still growing
> industry which sells fantasies of Love, Twue Love which triumphs over
> great obstacles. Romeo and Juliet resonates with any teenager or
> ex-teenager who has had their parents tell them that that the one
> they'd like to be with is bad for them for whatever reason and they
> aren't to see them again

Write your own "Twilight" snark here. Back in my day it was "Endless Love."

trag

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Sep 24, 2009, 7:11:55 PM9/24/09
to
On Sep 24, 5:04 pm, djhe...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
> In article <akmnb518fl73fkph5bnasigs95g6jk3...@4ax.com>,

> David Johnston <da...@block.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> >I strongly suspect differently. There's a gigantic and still growing
> >industry which sells fantasies of Love, Twue Love which triumphs over
>
> ITYM Wuv Twue Wuv.

But you must wear the "impressive clergy" hat when you say it.

Moriarty

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Sep 24, 2009, 7:27:22 PM9/24/09
to
On Sep 25, 7:27 am, David Johnston <da...@block.net> wrote:

<snip>

> I strongly suspect differently.  There's a gigantic and still growing
> industry which sells fantasies of Love, Twue Love which triumphs over
> great obstacles.  Romeo and Juliet resonates with any teenager or
> ex-teenager who has had their parents tell them that that the one
> they'd like to be with is bad for them for whatever reason and they
> aren't to see them again, and it has something to say for the parents
> in that scenario as well.  

The whole "Twue Love that can never be together" is the basis for the
plethora of vampire romance out there. "He's a vampire, she's a
mortal. Will there love survive against the odds?"

The short lived TV series Kindred: The Embraced, based on the RPG,
even had an episode called "Montague and Capulet" where the lovers
were from different, warring clans of vampres.

>The fact is, Hamlet's far more impenetrable
> to modern sensibilities since we simply don't realize that there's a
> Norse taboo against killing the insane which helps makes sense out of
> Hamlet's silly plan but we still get his depression and suicidal
> ideation.

The Norse must have had a taboo against killing lame whiny-arse cry-
babies as well. Nothing else could explain Hamlet's survival beyond
Act 1.

-Moriarty

Dorothy J Heydt

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Sep 24, 2009, 7:42:50 PM9/24/09
to
In article <b6836349-f5c8-428e...@u36g2000prn.googlegroups.com>,

Well, he was grown by then and pretty good with a sword.

What Claudius *should* have done was send him back to
Wittenburg, the way he wanted, and get him the hell out of
(a) his hair (b) Denmark.

Dorothy J Heydt

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Sep 24, 2009, 7:41:17 PM9/24/09
to
In article <5213b04e-89e1-4bd3...@e34g2000vbm.googlegroups.com>,

Don't have one. Will my Spectacles of Unimpressed
Dowagerhood do?

Robert Bannister

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Sep 24, 2009, 8:14:43 PM9/24/09
to
Ilya2 wrote:

> That is no longer true. Millions of people throughout the world how
> identify themselves most strongly not with a nation or a religion, but
> with some group, Internet-based or not, which did not even exist when
> they were born.


How strange then, that today we have more violence, wars and genocide
then ever. And some of the worst ones (Afghanistan, Congo, Sudan,
Rwanda) have been purely about tribe.


--

Rob Bannister

Dorothy J Heydt

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Sep 24, 2009, 8:50:23 PM9/24/09
to
In article <7i2gbjF...@mid.individual.net>,

Robert Bannister <rob...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>Ilya2 wrote:
>
>> That is no longer true. Millions of people throughout the world how
>> identify themselves most strongly not with a nation or a religion, but
>> with some group, Internet-based or not, which did not even exist when
>> they were born.
>
>
>How strange then, that today we have more violence, wars and genocide
>then ever.

Not necessarily. It's just that we *hear* about them more.
Intertribal violence in, say, southern Africa in, say, the
fourteenth century would have never made the news in, say,
Yorkshire.

And some of the worst ones (Afghanistan, Congo, Sudan,
>Rwanda) have been purely about tribe.

Always has been.

Johnny Tindalos

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Sep 24, 2009, 9:10:53 PM9/24/09
to
djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote in news:KqI4zz.1xp9
@kithrup.com:

> In article <7i2gbjF...@mid.individual.net>,
> Robert Bannister <rob...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>>Ilya2 wrote:
>>
>>> That is no longer true. Millions of people throughout the world how
>>> identify themselves most strongly not with a nation or a religion, but
>>> with some group, Internet-based or not, which did not even exist when
>>> they were born.
>>
>>
>>How strange then, that today we have more violence, wars and genocide
>>then ever.
>
> Not necessarily. It's just that we *hear* about them more.
> Intertribal violence in, say, southern Africa in, say, the
> fourteenth century would have never made the news in, say,
> Yorkshire.

I read that it has in fact been calculated that a lower proportion of the
global population ever spends any time at all in a warzone than at any
previous time in history.

Of course, the population size is greater, but that also means that more
people spend their whole lives outside a warzone than at any time before.

David Johnston

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Sep 24, 2009, 9:44:13 PM9/24/09
to
On Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:43:07 GMT, thr...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop)
wrote:

>:: According to my 17-year old, most of her peers do not in fact
>:: empathize with Romeo and Juliet.
>
>: David Johnston <da...@block.net>
>: I suspect that only a minority at any point in history would have
>: regarded Romeo and Juliet as anything except the young idiots they
>: were, particularly at the end. In a classic tragedy, the protagonists
>: are destroyed by their flaws, not their virtues. R&J adolescently
>: inane infatuation is a character flaw like MacBeths corruptibility,
>: Lears insanity or Othello's jealousy.
>
>Sure, but the question is, are R&J's flaws empathizable and/or plausible.
>I suspect you'd find a higher percentage empathizing with them in a
>culture with arranged marriages and other formidable impediments to
>marrying whoever you wanted to.

I think MORE people would empathize with them in that fewer people
would think they were doing anything wrong.

Dorothy J Heydt

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Sep 24, 2009, 9:35:19 PM9/24/09
to
In article <Xns9C9116326DF65Ja...@216.196.109.145>,

Wellll... the US is fairly large and has a largish
population, and we haven't had any kind of an act of war on
our shores since WWII. Chiefly Pearl Harbor, of course, but
there were a couple of itsy-bitsy submarine and balloon
attacks that killed, I think, one person. The US at that
time was certainly at war, but the lower forty-eight weren't
in a war zone.

No, I do not include the 9/11 attacks, because they weren't
the act of a nation against another nation.

Ilya2

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Sep 24, 2009, 10:19:02 PM9/24/09
to
> How strange then, that today we have more violence, wars and genocide
> then ever.

Absolutely false:

http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge206.html#pinker

"Global violence has fallen steadily since the middle of the twentieth
century. According to the Human Security Brief 2006, the number of
battle deaths in interstate wars has declined from more than 65,000
per year in the 1950s to less than 2,000 per year in this decade. In
Western Europe and the Americas, the second half of the century saw a
steep decline in the number of wars, military coups, and deadly ethnic
riots.

Zooming in by a further power of ten exposes yet another reduction.
After the cold war, every part of the world saw a steep drop-off in
state-based conflicts, and those that do occur are more likely to end
in negotiated settlements rather than being fought to the bitter end.
Meanwhile, according to political scientist Barbara Harff, between
1989 and 2005 the number of campaigns of mass killing of civilians
decreased by 90 percent."

Mike Ash

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Sep 24, 2009, 10:29:41 PM9/24/09
to
In article <7i2gbjF...@mid.individual.net>,
Robert Bannister <rob...@bigpond.com> wrote:

Others have thoroughly covered the refutation of this idea. What I would
like to know is this: what was it that made you think this? (Or if
somehow the refutations haven't taken hold, what is it that still does?)

Honest question. I see people making this claim, but have never been
able to figure out how people get to believe it, beyond hand-wavy things
like blaming it on TV.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon

Tue Sørensen

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Sep 25, 2009, 3:04:47 AM9/25/09
to
On 25 Sep., 01:27, Moriarty <blue...@ivillage.com> wrote:
> On Sep 25, 7:27 am, David Johnston <da...@block.net> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > I strongly suspect differently.  There's a gigantic and still growing
> > industry which sells fantasies of Love, Twue Love which triumphs over
> > great obstacles.  Romeo and Juliet resonates with any teenager or
> > ex-teenager who has had their parents tell them that that the one
> > they'd like to be with is bad for them for whatever reason and they
> > aren't to see them again, and it has something to say for the parents
> > in that scenario as well.  
>
> The whole "Twue Love that can never be together" is the basis for the
> plethora of vampire romance out there.  "He's a vampire, she's a
> mortal.  Will there love survive against the odds?"
>
> The short lived TV series Kindred: The Embraced, based on the RPG,
> even had an episode called "Montague and Capulet" where the lovers
> were from different, warring clans of vampres.
>
> >The fact is, Hamlet's far more impenetrable
> > to modern sensibilities since we simply don't realize that there's a
> > Norse taboo against killing the insane which helps makes sense out of
> > Hamlet's silly plan but we still get his depression and suicidal
> > ideation.

Did not the Native Americans have a similar taboo?

> The Norse must have had a taboo against killing lame whiny-arse cry-
> babies as well.  Nothing else could explain Hamlet's survival beyond
> Act 1.

I see Shakespeare is not highly regarded in this newsgroup. A shame.

Romeo and Juliet is not about "One True Love". It is about two young
people who happen to fall so strongly in love that they won't live
without each other. Sure, it's larger than life, but it's not (and
neither are any of WS' other plays) claiming that certain couples are
quite simply destined to be together and that there is only One True
Love for these individuals. True love is not the same as One True
Love. Shakespeare may use plots that remind of something like that,
but it's not meant to be understood in such a literal, "teenager's
infatuation" way. Nor is R&J meant to be for a teenage audience
exclusively. It was meant to be - and indeed has become - the greatest
love story of all time, replacing the claim to that status of Antony
and Cleopatra.

And in any case, there is so much content in Shakespeare that his work
will endure - and be the object of much throwing about of brains - for
a long time to come. The critic mentioned by the OP seems to be rather
more acutely aware of this that the OP himself (no offense intended).

- Tue

Mike Stone

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 3:30:08 AM9/25/09
to

"Wayne Throop" <thr...@sheol.org> wrote in message
news:12538...@sheol.org...


>
> Sure, but the question is, are R&J's flaws empathizable and/or plausible.
> I suspect you'd find a higher percentage empathizing with them in a
> culture with arranged marriages and other formidable impediments to
> marrying whoever you wanted to. Rather than in a culture where the
> "so your families disapprove; they can lump it" option is a "well DUH"
> obvious alternative. That is to say, I'm not sure folks in our culture
> appreciate their form of teen angst. I could of course be wrong.
> And of course R&J never appealed to me much.
>

So it really depends on whether "our culture" in its current form has a long
term future.

I expect there's be lots of people in India and elsewhere who would
understand R&J perfectly - because where they live things haven't changed
that much. If the world of AD2109 bears more resemblance to 2009 India than
to 2009 Europe or North America, then R&J could well regain its popularity.

--

Mike Stone - Peterborough, England

"Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of
Tolstoy's Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day's work
strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby in the
reservoir, he turns to the cupboard only to find the vodka bottle empty".


P G Wodehouse - Jill the Reckless


Stewart Robert Hinsley

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 4:42:23 AM9/25/09
to
In message <KqI72...@kithrup.com>, Dorothy J Heydt
<djh...@kithrup.com> writes

There was also the Japanese invasion of Alaska

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Islands_Campaign

> The US at that
>time was certainly at war, but the lower forty-eight weren't
>in a war zone.
>
>No, I do not include the 9/11 attacks, because they weren't
>the act of a nation against another nation.
>

--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

plausible prose man

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 6:49:08 AM9/25/09
to
On Sep 24, 10:49 am, Ilya2 <il...@rcn.com> wrote:

> According to my 17-year old, most of her peers do not in fact
> empathize with Romeo and Juliet.

I doubt the majority of teens ever identified with Romeo and Juliet,
and doubly so as presented in the average high school classroom.

> The concept of "one true love" is
> alien to them,

Titanic sure raked in a big pile of money not so long ago for that to
be the case. Rather, I think it's a combination of accesibility and
just the general...painting a fence with your friends is fun, being
told to paint a fence is a chore.

> in part because they have so many more options than
> vast majority of people in 2000 BC, 1600 AD, or even in 1950 AD.

I don't know the average teen really has more options than he did in,
anyway, since the automobile became affordable to the vast majority of
American households. Oh, I guess you can be super-besty pen pals with
someone, through email or IM, much more easily than you could in 1970,
but most people would like to be in the physical presence of someone
they date, what with the best form of that involving, you know,
kissing and stuff, which limits their options to someone at most from
the next town or so over.


> Juliet is a Capulet? Bummer. Back to Facebook.

Talk of "transhumanism" reminds me of the now-embarassing talk of
"cyberspace" from about the time Titanic came out.


plausible prose man

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 7:03:16 AM9/25/09
to
On Sep 24, 5:43 pm, thro...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) wrote:
> :: According to my 17-year old, most of her peers do not in fact
> :: empathize with Romeo and Juliet.
>
> : David Johnston <da...@block.net>
> : I suspect that only a minority at any point in history would have
> : regarded Romeo and Juliet as anything except the young idiots they
> : were, particularly at the end.  In a classic tragedy, the protagonists
> : are destroyed by their flaws, not their virtues.  R&J adolescently
> : inane infatuation is a character flaw like MacBeths corruptibility,
> : Lears insanity or Othello's jealousy.
>
> Sure, but the question is, are R&J's flaws empathizable and/or plausible.

Um, sure. I suspect I'd have to put in little effort to find plenty
of fiction revolving around star-crossed lovers.

> I suspect you'd find a higher percentage empathizing with them in a
> culture with arranged marriages and other formidable impediments to
> marrying whoever you wanted to.

I think it's only necessary you come from a culture where people from
groups tht aren't supposed to get together and fuck do so anyway.

> Rather than in a culture where the
> "so your families disapprove; they can lump it" option is a "well DUH"
> obvious alternative.

I don't know that is a "well DUH" for most people. Obviously, people
manage, and some people even seek out lovers their family with
dissapprove of, and certainly it hardly ever comes to an issue of
banishment and fake suicide, but...


> That is to say, I'm not sure folks in our culture
> appreciate their form of teen angst.

Boy, if I said something like that, I'd have you and Billy Christmas
jumping all over me, trying to disprove the general with a very
specific.

"People don't like anchovies"

"I like anchovies"

::blink, blink::

>  I could of course be wrong.
> And of course R&J never appealed to me much.

It's a little hokey. There's a lot of situational irony that wouldn't
take much to make it bathetic, something Shakespeare plays with later
in the play within a play from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" wherein the
craftsmen put on the tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbee.

Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 8:10:57 AM9/25/09
to
Moriarty wrote:
> On Sep 25, 7:27 am, David Johnston <da...@block.net> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>> I strongly suspect differently. There's a gigantic and still growing
>> industry which sells fantasies of Love, Twue Love which triumphs over
>> great obstacles. Romeo and Juliet resonates with any teenager or
>> ex-teenager who has had their parents tell them that that the one
>> they'd like to be with is bad for them for whatever reason and they
>> aren't to see them again, and it has something to say for the parents
>> in that scenario as well.
>
> The whole "Twue Love that can never be together" is the basis for the
> plethora of vampire romance out there. "He's a vampire, she's a
> mortal. Will there love survive against the odds?"
>
> The short lived TV series Kindred: The Embraced, based on the RPG,
> even had an episode called "Montague and Capulet" where the lovers
> were from different, warring clans of vampres.

Personally, I never liked Romeo & Juliet even AFTER I got over my
school-induced loathing of Shakespeare. It's one of the weakest of his
works in some ways, certainly of his well-known works.

>
>> The fact is, Hamlet's far more impenetrable
>> to modern sensibilities since we simply don't realize that there's a
>> Norse taboo against killing the insane which helps makes sense out of
>> Hamlet's silly plan but we still get his depression and suicidal
>> ideation.
>
> The Norse must have had a taboo against killing lame whiny-arse cry-
> babies as well. Nothing else could explain Hamlet's survival beyond
> Act 1.

My god, you've just justified the character of Anakin Skywalker as a
Hamlet analogue.


--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://seawasp.livejournal.com

Ilya2

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 8:18:57 AM9/25/09
to
On Sep 24, 10:29 pm, Mike Ash <m...@mikeash.com> wrote:
> In article <7i2gbjF2vv06...@mid.individual.net>,

>  Robert Bannister <robb...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> > Ilya2 wrote:
>
> > > That is no longer true. Millions of people throughout the world how
> > > identify themselves most strongly not with a nation or a religion, but
> > > with some group, Internet-based or not, which did not even exist when
> > > they were born.
>
> > How strange then, that today we have more violence, wars and genocide
> > then ever. And some of the worst ones (Afghanistan, Congo, Sudan,
> > Rwanda) have been purely about tribe.
>
> Others have thoroughly covered the refutation of this idea. What I would
> like to know is this: what was it that made you think this? (Or if
> somehow the refutations haven't taken hold, what is it that still does?)
>
> Honest question. I see people making this claim, but have never been
> able to figure out how people get to believe it, beyond hand-wavy things
> like blaming it on TV.

The link I posted above ( http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge206.html#pinker
) goes into exactly that:

"To begin with, how could so many people be so wrong about something
so important? Partly, it's because of a cognitive illusion: We
estimate the probability of an event from how easy it is to recall
examples. Scenes of carnage are more likely to be relayed to our
living rooms and burned into our memories than footage of people dying
of old age. Partly, it's an intellectual culture that is loath to
admit that there could be anything good about the institutions of
civilization and Western society. Partly, it's the incentive structure
of the activism and opinion markets: No one ever attracted followers
and donations by announcing that things keep getting better. And part
of the explanation lies in the phenomenon itself. The decline of
violent behavior has been paralleled by a decline in attitudes that
tolerate or glorify violence, and often the attitudes are in the lead.
As deplorable as they are, the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the lethal
injections of a few murderers in Texas are mild by the standards of
atrocities in human history. But, from a contemporary vantage point,
we see them as signs of how low our behavior can sink, not of how high
our standards have risen."

Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 8:24:30 AM9/25/09
to

I think it's pretty obvious. When we go to school, we hear about maybe
10-20 wars that happened in the period of 4,000 years or so, then we
hear about a dozen or more wars in the past 200+ years, and in the last
100 years there's even more, including WWI, WWII in which not only did
hundreds of thousands of people get killed on the battlefield but
millions were killed deliberately by one group involved, and all the
subsequent ones, big and small, we hear about.

So to a naive gut interpretation, it sounds like the Old Days had a
only a few wars and that the modern day has become a crucible of violence.

Quadibloc

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 8:24:46 AM9/25/09
to
On Sep 25, 1:04 am, Tue Sørensen <sorenson...@gmail.com> wrote:

> True love is not the same as One True
> Love.

This raises another point about how Romeo and Juliet could become
alien to transhumans.

It's true our understanding of the play is colored by the fact that we
do not see a family rivalry as in any way legitimate grounds for
interference with two individuals' choice to get married.

We're a long way, however, from another element of the plot becoming
alien to us. As long as concepts of chastity and fidelity are
meaningful to us, then it makes sense that one's true love is the only
appropriate person to marry. If sex were to be trivialized, this would
undermine the story.

Despite some apparent trends in that direction, of course, that isn't
really likely to happen any time soon, even if the absolute rigidity
of the morality of the past has been abandoned by many.

John Savard

Quadibloc

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 8:30:05 AM9/25/09
to
On Sep 24, 8:19 pm, Ilya2 <il...@rcn.com> wrote:

> Zooming in by a further power of ten exposes yet another reduction.
> After the cold war, every part of the world saw a steep drop-off in
> state-based conflicts, and those that do occur are more likely to end
> in negotiated settlements rather than being fought to the bitter end.
> Meanwhile, according to political scientist Barbara Harff, between
> 1989 and 2005 the number of campaigns of mass killing of civilians
> decreased by 90 percent."

After the end of the Cold War, there is, after all, the potential of
the United Stated _doing something_ about a conflict in a Third World
country. Before, they had to totally respect the sovereignty of Uganda
under Idi Amin, or Nigeria under Gowon, because to do otherwise would
give the Soviet Union the excuse to invade and annex some countries it
felt like.

A more thorough reduction in conflicts, then, would result from the
total disarmament of both Russia and China. Canada and Australia could
replace them on the Security Council. This would make for a very
peaceful world.

John Savard

Quadibloc

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 8:33:22 AM9/25/09
to
On Sep 25, 6:18 am, Ilya2 <il...@rcn.com> wrote:
> But, from a contemporary vantage point,
> we see them as signs of how low our behavior can sink, not of how high
> our standards have risen."

But our standards haven't risen far enough.

People - innocent people - are still dying.

As long as we don't have the ability to bring them back, we aren't
entitled to tolerate that.

John Savard

Louann Miller

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 9:16:08 AM9/25/09
to
Tue S�rensen <soren...@gmail.com> wrote in news:376ffb59-da5f-4010-a99d-
b7d6dc...@l34g2000vba.googlegroups.com:

> And in any case, there is so much content in Shakespeare that his work
> will endure - and be the object of much throwing about of brains - for
> a long time to come.

I agree with you there. Shakespeare is one of the rare cultural figures
whose work really IS that good, in spite of all the people going on and on
about how good he is.

But one element of his success as an Artiste is that he was a commercial
writer first. The depths are there, but you can never forget that the
surface is there too -- it's what got him farthings from groundlings and
the occasional purse of gold from courtiers.

cryptoguy

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 10:14:18 AM9/25/09
to
On Sep 25, 3:30 am, "Mike Stone" <mwst...@aol.com> wrote:
> "Wayne Throop" <thro...@sheol.org> wrote in message

>
> news:12538...@sheol.org...
>
>
>
> > Sure, but the question is, are R&J's flaws empathizable and/or plausible.
> > I suspect you'd find a higher percentage empathizing with them in a
> > culture with arranged marriages and other formidable impediments to
> > marrying whoever you wanted to.  Rather than in a culture where the
> > "so your families disapprove; they can lump it" option is a "well DUH"
> > obvious alternative.  That is to say, I'm not sure folks in our culture
> > appreciate their form of teen angst.  I could of course be wrong.
> > And of course R&J never appealed to me much.
>
> So it really depends on whether "our culture" in its current form has a long
> term future.
>
> I expect there's be lots of people in India and elsewhere who would
> understand R&J perfectly - because where they live things haven't changed
> that much. If the world of AD2109 bears more resemblance to 2009 India than
> to 2009 Europe or North America, then R&J could well regain its popularity.

It's worth remembering that R&J scenarios still take place. In Japan
'Shinju' (ritual double suicide of star-cross couples) is hardly an
unknown phenomenon, to the point of being a theatrical trope.

pt

cryptoguy

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 10:21:07 AM9/25/09
to
On Sep 25, 8:24 am, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"

<seaw...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
> Mike Ash wrote:
> > In article <7i2gbjF2vv06...@mid.individual.net>,

> >  Robert Bannister <robb...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> >> Ilya2 wrote:
>
> >>> That is no longer true. Millions of people throughout the world how
> >>> identify themselves most strongly not with a nation or a religion, but
> >>> with some group, Internet-based or not, which did not even exist when
> >>> they were born.
> >> How strange then, that today we have more violence, wars and genocide
> >> then ever. And some of the worst ones (Afghanistan, Congo, Sudan,
> >> Rwanda) have been purely about tribe.
>
> > Others have thoroughly covered the refutation of this idea. What I would
> > like to know is this: what was it that made you think this? (Or if
> > somehow the refutations haven't taken hold, what is it that still does?)
>
> > Honest question. I see people making this claim, but have never been
> > able to figure out how people get to believe it, beyond hand-wavy things
> > like blaming it on TV.
>
>         I think it's pretty obvious. When we go to school, we hear about maybe
> 10-20 wars that happened in the period of 4,000 years or so, then we
> hear about a dozen or more wars in the past 200+ years, and in the last
> 100 years there's even more, including WWI, WWII in which not only did
> hundreds of thousands of people get killed on the battlefield but
> millions were killed deliberately by one group involved, and all the
> subsequent ones, big and small, we hear about.

The total death toll from WW2 is thought to be much higher - about 40
million, including about 13 million Russian civilians.

pt

Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 10:27:14 AM9/25/09
to

Sure, but that just makes the point stronger. It makes it look like we
moderns have more and worse wars more frequently.

Anthony Nance

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 11:11:48 AM9/25/09
to
Tue Sorensen <soren...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 25 Sep., 01:27, Moriarty <blue...@ivillage.com> wrote:

You see what you wish to see, so you can say what you wish to say. A shame.
- Tony

<rest deleted>

Will in New Haven

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 11:21:58 AM9/25/09
to
On Sep 25, 8:18 am, Ilya2 <il...@rcn.com> wrote:
> On Sep 24, 10:29 pm, Mike Ash <m...@mikeash.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > In article <7i2gbjF2vv06...@mid.individual.net>,
> >  Robert Bannister <robb...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> > > Ilya2 wrote:
>
> > > > That is no longer true. Millions of people throughout the world how
> > > > identify themselves most strongly not with a nation or a religion, but
> > > > with some group, Internet-based or not, which did not even exist when
> > > > they were born.
>
> > > How strange then, that today we have more violence, wars and genocide
> > > then ever. And some of the worst ones (Afghanistan, Congo, Sudan,
> > > Rwanda) have been purely about tribe.
>
> > Others have thoroughly covered the refutation of this idea. What I would
> > like to know is this: what was it that made you think this? (Or if
> > somehow the refutations haven't taken hold, what is it that still does?)
>
> > Honest question. I see people making this claim, but have never been
> > able to figure out how people get to believe it, beyond hand-wavy things
> > like blaming it on TV.
>
> The link I posted above (http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge206.html#pinker

> ) goes into exactly that:
>
> "To begin with, how could so many people be so wrong about something
> so important? Partly, it's because of a cognitive illusion: We
> estimate the probability of an event from how easy it is to recall
> examples. Scenes of carnage are more likely to be relayed to our
> living rooms and burned into our memories than footage of people dying
> of old age. Partly, it's an intellectual culture that is loath to
> admit that there could be anything good about the institutions of
> civilization and Western society. Partly, it's the incentive structure
> of the activism and opinion markets: No one ever attracted followers
> and donations by announcing that things keep getting better. And part
> of the explanation lies in the phenomenon itself. The decline of
> violent behavior has been paralleled by a decline in attitudes that
> tolerate or glorify violence, and often the attitudes are in the lead.
> As deplorable as they are, the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the lethal
> injections of a few murderers in Texas are mild by the standards of
> atrocities in human history. But, from a contemporary vantage point,
> we see them as signs of how low our behavior can sink, not of how high
> our standards have risen."

If CNN and its brothers had covererd the battle of Antietam both sides
would have sued for peach the next day.

--
Will in New Haven

Tue Sørensen

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 11:23:24 AM9/25/09
to

There was a substantial free love movement in the '60s and '70s, which
could have continued and intensified if it wasn't for AIDS.
Personally, I don't think free love amounts to a *trivialization* of
sex, but it certainly would give us a different perspective on a
number of things. But when considering how the future will see
Shakespeare's work, we must also consider how aware of history the
future will be. I happen to be quite optimistic, and believe that
people are only going to become more and more knowledgeable, in
general, also about history. So story elements that will seem alien to
their own lives might still be appreciated by future readers.

Another point is interpretation. With Shakespeare it doesn't do to see
the story too literally. He is working with sweeping allegorical
constructs that represent far more than single individuals, and say
far more about all of us than they seem to on the surface, regardless
of our present romantic practices.

- Tue

Will in New Haven

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 11:25:35 AM9/25/09
to
On Sep 25, 9:16 am, Louann Miller <louan...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Tue Sørensen <sorenson...@gmail.com> wrote in news:376ffb59-da5f-4010-a99d-
> b7d6dc378...@l34g2000vba.googlegroups.com:

>
> > And in any case, there is so much content in Shakespeare that his work
> > will endure - and be the object of much throwing about of brains - for
> > a long time to come.
>
> I agree with you there. Shakespeare is one of the rare cultural figures
> whose work really IS that good, in spite of all the people going on and on
> about how good he is.
>
> But one element of his success as an Artiste is that he was a commercial
> writer first. The depths are there, but you can never forget that the
> surface is there too -- it's what got him farthings from groundlings and
> the occasional purse of gold from courtiers.

And I think some of, maybe most of, the groundlings must have thought
that Romeo and Juliet were funny. I have always viewed the play as a
comedy of errors.

Dorothy J Heydt

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 11:43:02 AM9/25/09
to
In article <ec1c228c-5a3d-40ed...@l31g2000vbp.googlegroups.com>,

Will in New Haven <bill....@taylorandfrancis.com> wrote:
>On Sep 25, 9:16�am, Louann Miller <louan...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Tue S�rensen <sorenson...@gmail.com> wrote in

I am old; I don't like R&J much; I think they're a pair of
young idiots. But then, I thought they were a pair of young
idiots when I was their age. No story, not even as redone by
Shakespeare, is going to appeal to everybody.

Dorothy J Heydt

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 11:39:50 AM9/25/09
to
In article <7i39rsF...@mid.individual.net>,

Mike Stone <mws...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>
>"Wayne Throop" <thr...@sheol.org> wrote in message
>news:12538...@sheol.org...
>>
>> Sure, but the question is, are R&J's flaws empathizable and/or plausible.
>> I suspect you'd find a higher percentage empathizing with them in a
>> culture with arranged marriages and other formidable impediments to
>> marrying whoever you wanted to. Rather than in a culture where the
>> "so your families disapprove; they can lump it" option is a "well DUH"
>> obvious alternative. That is to say, I'm not sure folks in our culture
>> appreciate their form of teen angst. I could of course be wrong.
>> And of course R&J never appealed to me much.
>>
>
>
>
>So it really depends on whether "our culture" in its current form has a long
>term future.
>
>I expect there's be lots of people in India and elsewhere who would
>understand R&J perfectly - because where they live things haven't changed
>that much. If the world of AD2109 bears more resemblance to 2009 India than
>to 2009 Europe or North America, then R&J could well regain its popularity.

And, of course, there's the phenomenon that cultural change
doesn't just keep going in the same direction: it oscillates.
Consider popular opinion on the dictum "Woman's place is in
the home": declining in the thirties and during WWII;
resurging in the fifties; declining again in the sixties and
since, but with local pockets of powerful resurgence up to
the present.

Lawrence Watt-Evans

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 11:50:11 AM9/25/09
to

> Sure, but that just makes the point stronger. It makes it look like we
>moderns have more and worse wars more frequently.

I think you're looking at this on the wrong time-scale.

The statement was, "...today we have more violence, wars and genocide
then ever." (sic).

World War II isn't "today." The examples cited were all from the past
twenty years, not sixty-five years ago. I don't think most people
still consider WW2 "modern."

For more than half the population, WW2 was their _grandparents'_ war.
I'd suspect that the original poster wasn't contrasting the first half
of the 20th century with the Middle Ages, but was contrasting the
present day with the Cold War. (And getting it wrong, but that's
another matter.)


--
My webpage is at http://www.watt-evans.com
I'm selling my comic collection -- see http://www.watt-evans.com/comics.html
I'm serializing a novel at http://www.watt-evans.com/realmsoflight0.html

David Johnston

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 11:46:32 AM9/25/09
to
On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 05:33:22 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
<jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:

>On Sep 25, 6:18�am, Ilya2 <il...@rcn.com> wrote:
>> But, from a contemporary vantage point,
>> we see them as signs of how low our behavior can sink, not of how high
>> our standards have risen."
>
>But our standards haven't risen far enough.
>
>People - innocent people - are still dying.

Without our help!

>
>As long as we don't have the ability to bring them back, we aren't
>entitled to tolerate that.

We must start killing to stop the killing!

Lawrence Watt-Evans

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 11:50:40 AM9/25/09
to
On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:21:58 -0700 (PDT), Will in New Haven
<bill....@taylorandfrancis.com> wrote:

>If CNN and its brothers had covererd the battle of Antietam both sides
>would have sued for peach the next day.

Not strawberry?

James Nicoll

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 11:55:34 AM9/25/09
to
In article <3appb59nqvln53fhm...@news.eternal-september.org>,

Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> wrote:
>
>World War II isn't "today." The examples cited were all from the past
>twenty years, not sixty-five years ago. I don't think most people
>still consider WW2 "modern."
>
>For more than half the population, WW2 was their _grandparents'_ war.
>I'd suspect that the original poster wasn't contrasting the first half
>of the 20th century with the Middle Ages, but was contrasting the
>present day with the Cold War. (And getting it wrong, but that's
>another matter.)
>
Here, have some data:

http://www.humansecurityreport.info/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=114

The trends since the collapse of the Cold War removed much
of the funding and provocation of local conflicts have trended down
(I'm skeptical of the UN claim for credit, obviously).

http://www.humansecurityreport.info/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=63

Note that trends canchange: the trends in the 1960s, 1970s, and
1980s would not have been grounds for optimism except for the ZPG types.
--
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)

Dorothy J Heydt

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 11:44:37 AM9/25/09
to
In article <t7NPl6Iv...@meden.invalid>,

Well, some distant islands thereof.


>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Islands_Campaign
>
>> The US at that
>>time was certainly at war, but the lower forty-eight weren't
>>in a war zone.

Notice, I specified "the lower forty-eight" rather than "the
continental US."

Dorothy J Heydt

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 11:48:15 AM9/25/09
to
In article <377d6a3d-49b4-4611...@o35g2000vbi.googlegroups.com>,

Will in New Haven <bill....@taylorandfrancis.com> wrote:
>
>If CNN and its brothers had covererd the battle of Antietam both sides
>would have sued for peach the next day.

I hope that was a typo for "peace".

Though, since I see that battle was in September, peaches
might also have been available.

Christopher Henrich

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 12:01:20 PM9/25/09
to

>
> If CNN and its brothers had covererd the battle of Antietam both sides
> would have sued for peach the next day.
>

And signed the Treaty of Southern Comfort.

--
Christopher J. Henrich
chen...@monmouth.com
http://www.mathinteract.com
"A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver." -- Boon

Tue Sørensen

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Sep 25, 2009, 12:09:23 PM9/25/09
to
On 25 Sep., 17:11, na...@math.ohio-state.edu (Anthony Nance) wrote:

No, I draw conclusions based on evidence. Granted, my evidence was
limited to three or four posters, and if they gave me the wrong
impression, I'm glad to be wrong about this.

> so you can say what you wish to say.

I should hope so; we do have freedom of speech.

> A shame.

Is it?

- Tue

David DeLaney

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Sep 25, 2009, 9:27:47 AM9/25/09
to

"... what's this "We" business, white man?" --Tonto

Er, I mean, what in the world would that have to do with Usenet, even for
those of us whose countries or cities or provinces do tell them they have some
sort of freedom of speechifying?

Dave "location, location, location" DeLaney
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.

Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)

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Sep 25, 2009, 12:38:35 PM9/25/09
to


Yes, but I think it's the same effect. In another generation or two,
WWII will be edging into the ancient, or at least Really Old, history.
And will be taught with less detail. (I seem to remember at least one SF
story taking place some hundreds of years from now in which WWI and WWII
and WWIII (big nuclear exchange) were taught as being really just ONE
war that had three major phases.)

Mike Schilling

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 12:55:02 PM9/25/09
to
Tue S�rensen wrote:
>>> I see Shakespeare is not highly regarded in this newsgroup. A shame.
>>
>> You see what you wish to see,
>
> No, I draw conclusions based on evidence. Granted, my evidence was
> limited to three or four posters, and if they gave me the wrong
> impression, I'm glad to be wrong about this.

People around here in general like to rant. It's best not to take the
ranting too seriously.


Lawrence Watt-Evans

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 1:00:32 PM9/25/09
to
On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:38:35 -0400, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"
<sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:

>Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote:
>>
>> World War II isn't "today." The examples cited were all from the past
>> twenty years, not sixty-five years ago. I don't think most people
>> still consider WW2 "modern."
>>
>> For more than half the population, WW2 was their _grandparents'_ war.
>> I'd suspect that the original poster wasn't contrasting the first half
>> of the 20th century with the Middle Ages, but was contrasting the
>> present day with the Cold War. (And getting it wrong, but that's
>> another matter.)
>
> Yes, but I think it's the same effect. In another generation or two,
>WWII will be edging into the ancient, or at least Really Old, history.

I don't think it'll take another generation. Talk to kids today.
They talk about World War II the way my generation talked about the
Civil War.

>And will be taught with less detail. (I seem to remember at least one SF
>story taking place some hundreds of years from now in which WWI and WWII
>and WWIII (big nuclear exchange) were taught as being really just ONE
>war that had three major phases.)

Oh, sure -- on a per capita basis the U.S. Civil War was astonishingly
bloody, an absolutely miserable thing, but now it mostly seems to be
remembered for the cool uniforms and songs and beards. The details
fade.

It's much easier to think of something as a bloody mess when it's Mrs.
Dawson's brother down the street who lost an arm in Iraq than when it
was your great-grandfather's three brothers who got slaughtered in a
single volley at Antietam; you KNOW Mrs. Dawson, where Great-Grandpa's
brothers are just names on a family tree. And you see reports from
Iraq on TV.

Consider King Philip's War, which gets maybe one paragraph in most
history books if it gets mentioned at all. My eight-times-great
grandmother lost her father, grandfather, two uncles, and a
brother-in-law in that war; it was pretty damned immediate and
important and detailed to HER, but now nobody knows anything about it,
and 17th-century New England is only remembered for the Pilgrims and
the witch trials.

Mike Schilling

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 1:01:08 PM9/25/09
to
Will in New Haven wrote:
> If CNN and its brothers had covererd the battle of Antietam both sides
> would have sued for peach the next day.

If they dared to eat one.


Mike Schilling

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 1:02:41 PM9/25/09
to
Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>
> And, of course, there's the phenomenon that cultural change
> doesn't just keep going in the same direction: it oscillates.
> Consider popular opinion on the dictum "Woman's place is in
> the home": declining in the thirties and during WWII;
> resurging in the fifties; declining again in the sixties and
> since, but with local pockets of powerful resurgence up to
> the present.

Many of the chief spokespeople for "a woman's place is in the home" being
women who by their own lights are rarely in the right place.


Mike Schilling

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 1:17:50 PM9/25/09
to
Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote:
>
> I don't think it'll take another generation. Talk to kids today.
> They talk about World War II the way my generation talked about the
> Civil War.

The only people who remember the Civil War in any detail nowadays are the
Southern Heritage loonies. That's starting to happen with WWII now, so that
Pat Buchanan can combine half-truths with outright lies to conclude that
Hitler wanted peace, and his claque thinks he's found a brilliant insight.


Anthony Nance

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Sep 25, 2009, 1:19:52 PM9/25/09
to
Mike Schilling <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:

<nods> Nor generalize from them - in general.

Anthony Nance

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Sep 25, 2009, 1:31:19 PM9/25/09
to

That depends on the individual. In my case, "A shame" refers to
the much lower chance that an interesting discussion would follow
from the sequence: incorrect generalization --> brief lecture -->
mildly tweaking a poster's nose (no offense intended)

Tony

Tue Sørensen

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Sep 25, 2009, 1:41:59 PM9/25/09
to
On 25 Sep., 18:55, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com>
wrote:

Thanks - you're right, of course, but it's all too easy to be drawn
into it. Naturally, I prefer discussing things amicably, so I'll try
not to walk away angry! :-) I do esteem your rational voice (and very
presence) quite highly, Mike, as I have often enjoyed your posts in
the DC Comics newsgroup! Keep it up.

- Tue

Tue Sørensen

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 1:44:39 PM9/25/09
to
On 25 Sep., 19:19, na...@math.ohio-state.edu (Anthony Nance) wrote:

:-) I love generalizing! It's frequently very useful, as long as you
always keep in mind that with every generalization comes a slew of
exceptions... But it's very true that one shouldn't generalize too
much based on very little information - on the other hand, sometimes
that's the only thing you *can* do.

- Tue

Michael Stemper

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 1:49:18 PM9/25/09
to
In article <h9isl8$pdu$1...@news.eternal-september.org>, "Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> writes:
>Tue S�rensen wrote:

>>>> I see Shakespeare is not highly regarded in this newsgroup. A shame.
>>>
>>> You see what you wish to see,
>>
>> No, I draw conclusions based on evidence. Granted, my evidence was
>> limited to three or four posters, and if they gave me the wrong
>> impression, I'm glad to be wrong about this.
>
>People around here in general like to rant.

What on earth are you talking about? I don't see how you can say
any such thing. It's completely unfounded and wrong-headed. It's
statements like this that are going to lead to the iminent death
of the net.

> It's best not to take the
>ranting too seriously.

Listen, buckaroo, you'd better take the ranting seriously!

--
Michael 'Insert ad hominem here' Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
This message contains at least 95% recycled bytes.

Michael Stemper

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 1:50:45 PM9/25/09
to

Paging Phyllis Schlafly ...

--
Michael F. Stemper

David Johnston

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 1:51:18 PM9/25/09
to
On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:23:24 -0700 (PDT), Tue S�rensen
<soren...@gmail.com> wrote:


>Another point is interpretation. With Shakespeare it doesn't do to see
>the story too literally. He is working with sweeping allegorical
>constructs t

<sigh> English professors.

Michael Stemper

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 1:52:28 PM9/25/09
to
In article <h9irmb$gl4$2...@news.eternal-september.org>, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> writes:

> Yes, but I think it's the same effect. In another generation or two,
>WWII will be edging into the ancient, or at least Really Old, history.
>And will be taught with less detail. (I seem to remember at least one SF
>story taking place some hundreds of years from now in which WWI and WWII
>and WWIII (big nuclear exchange) were taught as being really just ONE
>war that had three major phases.)

I've read a few with that attitude in their backgrounds. I believe
that Piper might have been one author that did this.

Tue Sørensen

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 1:56:59 PM9/25/09
to
On 25 Sep., 19:51, David Johnston <da...@block.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:23:24 -0700 (PDT), Tue Sørensen

>
> <sorenson...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >Another point is interpretation. With Shakespeare it doesn't do to see
> >the story too literally. He is working with sweeping allegorical
> >constructs t
>
> <sigh>  English professors.  

"And, of course, inflection!" LOL!

- Tue

Mike Schilling

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Sep 25, 2009, 4:08:29 PM9/25/09
to

Everyone generalizes from one example. At least, I do.


Mike Schilling

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 4:10:02 PM9/25/09
to
Tue S�rensen wrote:
> On 25 Sep., 18:55, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>> Tue S�rensen wrote:
>>>>> I see Shakespeare is not highly regarded in this newsgroup. A
>>>>> shame.
>>
>>>> You see what you wish to see,
>>
>>> No, I draw conclusions based on evidence. Granted, my evidence was
>>> limited to three or four posters, and if they gave me the wrong
>>> impression, I'm glad to be wrong about this.
>>
>> People around here in general like to rant. It's best not to take the
>> ranting too seriously.
>
> Thanks - you're right, of course, but it's all too easy to be drawn
> into it. Naturally, I prefer discussing things amicably, so I'll try
> not to walk away angry! :-) I do esteem your rational voice (and very
> presence) quite highly, Mike, as I have often enjoyed your posts in
> the DC Comics newsgroup!

Thanks, but you must have me confused with some other Mike (unless things
I've written have ben crossposted to that newsgroup without my being aware
of it.)


Mike Schilling

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 4:10:47 PM9/25/09
to
Michael Stemper wrote:
> In article <h9isl8$pdu$1...@news.eternal-september.org>, "Mike
> Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> writes:
>> Tue S�rensen wrote:
>
>>>>> I see Shakespeare is not highly regarded in this newsgroup. A
>>>>> shame.
>>>>
>>>> You see what you wish to see,
>>>
>>> No, I draw conclusions based on evidence. Granted, my evidence was
>>> limited to three or four posters, and if they gave me the wrong
>>> impression, I'm glad to be wrong about this.
>>
>> People around here in general like to rant.
>
> What on earth are you talking about? I don't see how you can say
> any such thing. It's completely unfounded and wrong-headed. It's
> statements like this that are going to lead to the iminent death
> of the net.

Sorry, said "rant" when I meant "rave".


Mike Schilling

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 4:11:48 PM9/25/09
to
Michael Stemper wrote:
> In article <h9irmb$gl4$2...@news.eternal-september.org>, "Sea Wasp (Ryk
> E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> writes:
>
>> Yes, but I think it's the same effect. In another generation or two,
>> WWII will be edging into the ancient, or at least Really Old,
>> history. And will be taught with less detail. (I seem to remember at
>> least one SF story taking place some hundreds of years from now in
>> which WWI and WWII and WWIII (big nuclear exchange) were taught as
>> being really just ONE war that had three major phases.)
>
> I've read a few with that attitude in their backgrounds.

Lots of them. I think of it as almost a cliche.


trag

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 4:42:40 PM9/25/09
to
On Sep 24, 6:41 pm, djhe...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
> In article <5213b04e-89e1-4bd3-9680-d0448d809...@e34g2000vbm.googlegroups.com>,
>
> trag <t...@io.com> wrote:
> >On Sep 24, 5:04 pm, djhe...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
> >> In article <akmnb518fl73fkph5bnasigs95g6jk3...@4ax.com>,

> >> David Johnston <da...@block.net> wrote:
>
> >> >I strongly suspect differently. There's a gigantic and still growing
> >> >industry which sells fantasies of Love, Twue Love which triumphs over
>
> >> ITYM Wuv Twue Wuv.
>
> >But you must wear the "impressive clergy" hat when you say it.
>
> Don't have one. Will my Spectacles of Unimpressed
> Dowagerhood do?

Only if you wear them at the very very tippy tip of your nose and tilt
your head back at just exactly that angle...

trag

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 4:47:56 PM9/25/09
to
On Sep 24, 9:29 pm, Mike Ash <m...@mikeash.com> wrote:
> In article <7i2gbjF2vv06...@mid.individual.net>,
> Robert Bannister <robb...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> > Ilya2 wrote:
>
> > > That is no longer true. Millions of people throughout the world how
> > > identify themselves most strongly not with a nation or a religion, but
> > > with some group, Internet-based or not, which did not even exist when
> > > they were born.
>
> > How strange then, that today we have more violence, wars and genocide
> > then ever. And some of the worst ones (Afghanistan, Congo, Sudan,
> > Rwanda) have been purely about tribe.
>
> Others have thoroughly covered the refutation of this idea. What I would
> like to know is this: what was it that made you think this? (Or if
> somehow the refutations haven't taken hold, what is it that still does?)
>
> Honest question. I see people making this claim, but have never been
> able to figure out how people get to believe it, beyond hand-wavy things
> like blaming it on TV.

I haven't read down thread yet to see if you get an actual answer from
the poster. My guess, though, would be because it is fashionable to
be all angsty about the world and say that there's so much violence
and we're all destroying the world and the Earth needs saving and it's
all because people are bad. *Bad* I tell you. They can do nothing
good except make themselves poorer in a fit of righteous
environmentalism and then go extinct.


trag

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 4:51:26 PM9/25/09
to
On Sep 25, 7:10 am, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"
<seaw...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:

> Personally, I never liked Romeo & Juliet even AFTER I got over my
> school-induced loathing of Shakespeare. It's one of the weakest of his
> works in some ways, certainly of his well-known works.

Part of its problem is that Mercutio is the best character in the play
and he dies early. I didn't especially care about the rest of the
characters.

I didn't need spoiler space for that, right?

Louann Miller

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 5:40:52 PM9/25/09
to
"Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote in
news:h9iu01$5sh$1...@news.eternal-september.org:

> That's starting to happen with WWII now, so that
> Pat Buchanan can combine half-truths with outright lies to conclude
> that Hitler wanted peace, and his claque thinks he's found a brilliant
> insight.

"A little piece of Poland, a little piece of France..."

Louann Miller

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 5:42:56 PM9/25/09
to
Will in New Haven <bill....@taylorandfrancis.com> wrote in news:377d6a3d-
49b4-4611-ab7...@o35g2000vbi.googlegroups.com:

> If CNN and its brothers had covererd the battle of Antietam both sides
> would have sued for peach the next day.

(wiki)

No, not in Georgia. In Maryland.

Wayne Throop

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 5:51:22 PM9/25/09
to
:: If CNN and its brothers had covererd the battle of Antietam both

:: sides would have sued for peach the next day.

: No, not in Georgia. In Maryland.

So... sued for... cherries? Cranberries maybe?


Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw

trag

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 6:03:38 PM9/25/09
to
On Sep 25, 4:51 pm, thro...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) wrote:
> :: If CNN and its brothers had covererd the battle of Antietam both
> :: sides would have sued for peach the next day.
>
> : No, not in Georgia. In Maryland.
>
> So... sued for... cherries? Cranberries maybe?

Apples grow well there, though I don't know if there are actual
orchards.

I grew up in northern VA just across the river from MerryLand and I
grew a number of producing apple trees from seeds.

Robert Bannister

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 6:35:31 PM9/25/09
to
Ilya2 wrote:
>> How strange then, that today we have more violence, wars and genocide
>> then ever.
>
> Absolutely false:
>
> http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge206.html#pinker
>
> "Global violence has fallen steadily since the middle of the twentieth
> century. According to the Human Security Brief 2006, the number of
> battle deaths in interstate wars has declined from more than 65,000
> per year in the 1950s to less than 2,000 per year in this decade. In
> Western Europe and the Americas, the second half of the century saw a
> steep decline in the number of wars, military coups, and deadly ethnic
> riots.
>
> Zooming in by a further power of ten exposes yet another reduction.
> After the cold war, every part of the world saw a steep drop-off in
> state-based conflicts, and those that do occur are more likely to end
> in negotiated settlements rather than being fought to the bitter end.
> Meanwhile, according to political scientist Barbara Harff, between
> 1989 and 2005 the number of campaigns of mass killing of civilians
> decreased by 90 percent."

Interesting article. I wish the writer had supplied more evidence to
support his claims, but I have no reason to doubt him. As Dorothy said,
we hear about cruelty and murder more these days - even see it on
television.

I suppose it's similar with rape and child abuse where, for a while, it
seemed to be a modern phenomenon, but is more likely to be the result of
more people reporting it unlike in, for example, Victorian times where
the victim was the object of shame rather like in parts of the Middle
East and the Sub-Continent today.

I, at the age of 69, consider myself very lucky to have never been
directly involved in war (discounting the German bomb that destroyed our
roof when I was three).
--

Rob Bannister

Robert Bannister

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 6:57:58 PM9/25/09
to
Mike Ash wrote:
> In article <7i2gbjF...@mid.individual.net>,

> Robert Bannister <rob...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>
>> Ilya2 wrote:
>>
>>> That is no longer true. Millions of people throughout the world how
>>> identify themselves most strongly not with a nation or a religion, but
>>> with some group, Internet-based or not, which did not even exist when
>>> they were born.
>> How strange then, that today we have more violence, wars and genocide
>> then ever. And some of the worst ones (Afghanistan, Congo, Sudan,
>> Rwanda) have been purely about tribe.
>
> Others have thoroughly covered the refutation of this idea. What I would
> like to know is this: what was it that made you think this? (Or if
> somehow the refutations haven't taken hold, what is it that still does?)
>
> Honest question. I see people making this claim, but have never been
> able to figure out how people get to believe it, beyond hand-wavy things
> like blaming it on TV.
>

Fair question. Mainly, I was trying to refute the claim that tribe (in
which one could include skin colour and religion) had no place in the
politics of the modern world.

All the same, after Korea and Vietnam, I had the feeling that surely now
we could settle down to some sort of peace, even it were only a Cold War
kind of peace; instead, all I read about is the millions killed, raped
and mutilated in Africa and Asia.

The problem is so much more in our faces than before. It's not just TV
coverage, but now, instead of dying decently, the victims and sometimes
the perpetrators of the violence are turning up on our shores as
refugees - it's as if there is a new V�lkerwanderung under way.

--

Rob Bannister

Taki Kogoma

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 7:13:34 PM9/25/09
to
On 2009-09-25, Mike Schilling <mscotts...@hotmail.com>
allegedly proclaimed to rec.arts.sf.written:

All sweeping generalizations are wrong.

--
Capt. Gym Z. Quirk (Known to some as Taki Kogoma) quirk @ swcp.com
Just an article detector on the Information Supercollider.

Quadibloc

unread,
Sep 25, 2009, 9:27:01 PM9/25/09
to
On Sep 25, 9:39 am, djhe...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:

> And, of course, there's the phenomenon that cultural change
> doesn't just keep going in the same direction: it oscillates.

It may wiggle around a bit, but we can hope that in some ways it will
indeed move in one direction for the most part over time. Equality for
ethnic minorities and for women has been a valuable achievement. There
are times I feel that of late, equality triumphs over common sense,
but the answer is not to go back to the way things were before the
Second World War.

John Savard

Quadibloc

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Sep 25, 2009, 9:30:19 PM9/25/09
to
On Sep 25, 7:16 am, Louann Miller <louan...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> But one element of his success as an Artiste is that he was a commercial
> writer first. The depths are there, but you can never forget that the
> surface is there too -- it's what got him farthings from groundlings and
> the occasional purse of gold from courtiers.

It would be amusing, but apparently not all that likely, if
Shakespeare only wrote Titus Andronicus - and spent the rest of his
career producing the plays of Edward de Vere, which he received in the
form of the "foul papers" that were edited into the form that they
were actually performed by Shakespeare himself.

John Savard

Quadibloc

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Sep 25, 2009, 9:34:19 PM9/25/09
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On Sep 25, 9:46 am, David Johnston <da...@block.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 05:33:22 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
> <jsav...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:

> >People - innocent people - are still dying.
>
> Without our help!

> >As long as we don't have the ability to bring them back, we aren't
> >entitled to tolerate that.
>
> We must start killing to stop the killing!

Adding to the misery in the world is a bad thing.

However, it is far easier to destroy than to create. Thus, it is more
economical and efficient to use force against aggressors and tyrants
to stop them than simply try to rebuild and clean up after the damage
they cause.

John Savard

Quadibloc

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Sep 25, 2009, 9:42:39 PM9/25/09
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On Sep 25, 11:17 am, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com>
wrote:

> That's starting to happen with WWII now, so that
> Pat Buchanan can combine half-truths with outright lies to conclude that
> Hitler wanted peace, and his claque thinks he's found a brilliant insight.

I noticed in a bookstore a book by him claiming that World War II was
an unnecessary war. I glanced at it, and I wasn't sure if he meant we
should have let him keep Continental Europe and waited for the Nazi
Empire to collapse the way the Soviet one did... or if he was saying
we should have avoided the Treaty of Versailles so that Hitler would
never have risen to power (and presumably the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill
as well).

Perhaps he threw out both of those suggestions, and snuck in a claim
that Hitler wanted peace somewhere else. But after his "last
territorial demand in Europe", Czechoslovakia, was granted, of course,
he invaded Poland... and because of *Poland's vast coal reserves*,
France and Britain knew they had no choice, because what Hitler
annexed gave him the strength needed to conquer the rest of Europe.

At least back then people had more sense than to go around carrying
placards saying "No blood for coal". World War II was about freedom,
not coal - but coal is a war-making resource.

John Savard

Quadibloc

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Sep 25, 2009, 9:48:39 PM9/25/09
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On Sep 25, 4:57 pm, Robert Bannister <robb...@bigpond.com> wrote:

> The problem is so much more in our faces than before. It's not just TV
> coverage, but now, instead of dying decently, the victims and sometimes
> the perpetrators of the violence are turning up on our shores as

> refugees - it's as if there is a new Völkerwanderung under way.

After the shock of the Holocaust, the world's civilized democracies
were profoundly ashamed at making it difficult for Jews to leave
Europe to settle in Canada, the United States, Australia, and so on...
and so, for example, Canada opened its doors to a large number of
Ugandan Asians who were threatened by Idi Amin.

Today, if some country pulled a stunt like that, it would be regime
change time, but while the world is more peaceful, it isn't perfect.

We haven't yet reacted to 9/11, for example, by telling Egypt - don't
even THINK about persecuting Muslims who convert to Christianity, or
denying Coptic Christians the right to build new churches as easily as
Muslims can build new mosques. I'm surprised that we have shown such
forbearance.

John Savard

Mike Schilling

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Sep 25, 2009, 10:01:17 PM9/25/09
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Quadibloc wrote:
> On Sep 25, 11:17 am, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>> That's starting to happen with WWII now, so that
>> Pat Buchanan can combine half-truths with outright lies to conclude
>> that Hitler wanted peace, and his claque thinks he's found a
>> brilliant insight.
>
> I noticed in a bookstore a book by him claiming that World War II was
> an unnecessary war. I glanced at it, and I wasn't sure if he meant we
> should have let him keep Continental Europe and waited for the Nazi
> Empire to collapse the way the Soviet one did... or if he was saying
> we should have avoided the Treaty of Versailles so that Hitler would
> never have risen to power (and presumably the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill
> as well).

Buchanan was saying that if the West had let Hitler alone, he would have
just killed Russians and other Slavs, as God intended.


David Johnston

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Sep 25, 2009, 10:26:36 PM9/25/09
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On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:34:19 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
<jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:

>On Sep 25, 9:46�am, David Johnston <da...@block.net> wrote:
>> On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 05:33:22 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
>> <jsav...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>
>> >People - innocent people - are still dying.
>>
>> Without our help!
>
>> >As long as we don't have the ability to bring them back, we aren't
>> >entitled to tolerate that.
>>
>> We must start killing to stop the killing!
>
>Adding to the misery in the world is a bad thing.
>
>However, it is far easier to destroy than to create. Thus, it is more
>economical and efficient to use force against aggressors and tyrants
>to stop them

So far we have seen no practical demonstrations of this claim.

David Johnston

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Sep 25, 2009, 10:28:16 PM9/25/09
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On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:42:39 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
<jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:

>On Sep 25, 11:17�am, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com>
>wrote:
>> That's starting to happen with WWII now, so that
>> Pat Buchanan can combine half-truths with outright lies to conclude that
>> Hitler wanted peace, and his claque thinks he's found a brilliant insight.
>
>I noticed in a bookstore a book by him claiming that World War II was
>an unnecessary war. I glanced at it, and I wasn't sure if he meant we
>should have let him keep Continental Europe and waited for the Nazi
>Empire to collapse the way the Soviet one did... or if he was saying
>we should have avoided the Treaty of Versailles so that Hitler would
>never have risen to power (and presumably the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill
>as well).

His actual claim, readily locatable online, is that Hitler didn't want
war. He just wanted to be friends until those nasty British and
French forced him into war.

Quadibloc

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Sep 25, 2009, 11:16:20 PM9/25/09
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On Sep 25, 8:28 pm, David Johnston <da...@block.net> wrote:

> His actual claim, readily locatable online, is that Hitler didn't want
> war.  He just wanted to be friends until those nasty British and
> French forced him into war.

Ah. So invading and conquering Poland doesn't count.

John Savard

Quadibloc

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Sep 25, 2009, 11:18:32 PM9/25/09
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On Sep 25, 8:01 pm, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com>
wrote:

> Buchanan was saying that if the West had let Hitler alone, he would have
> just killed Russians and other Slavs, as God intended.

Well, if Hitler could have let Poland alone, and just fought against
his fellow totalitarian Stalin, that would not have been such a
humanitarian catastrophe. What was tragic about how World War II ended
was that it did not end with _both_ of those evil regimes destroyed -
so Poland and Czechoslovakia, among others, did not emerge from Nazi
occupation to permanent liberty and independence.

John Savard

plausible prose man

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Sep 25, 2009, 11:18:41 PM9/25/09
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On Sep 25, 8:24 am, Quadibloc <jsav...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> On Sep 25, 1:04 am, Tue Sørensen <sorenson...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > True love is not the same as One True
> > Love.
>
> This raises another point about how Romeo and Juliet could become
> alien to transhumans.
>
> It's true our understanding of the play is colored by the fact that we
> do not see a family rivalry as in any way legitimate grounds for
> interference with two individuals' choice to get married.

I'm not sure how strongly audiences in Shakespeare's time did,
either.


> We're a long way, however, from another element of the plot becoming
> alien to us. As long as concepts of chastity and fidelity are
> meaningful to us, then it makes sense that one's true love is the only
> appropriate person to marry. If sex were to be trivialized, this would
> undermine the story.

Again, audiences in Shakespeare's time...in the first part of the
play, Romeo's moping over lost love, while his pal Mercutio is telling
him something to the effect there are many fish in the sea, so to
speak.


> Despite some apparent trends in that direction, of course, that isn't
> really likely to happen any time soon,

It takes a little more than Facebook to overcome millions of years of
evolution.

Walter Bushell

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Sep 26, 2009, 12:06:41 AM9/26/09
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In article
<fvspb55e6kl0rbg47...@news.eternal-september.org>,
Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> wrote:

> I don't think it'll take another generation. Talk to kids today.
> They talk about World War II the way my generation talked about the
> Civil War.

In the South the civil war happened way after WWII. At least it was in
Maryland when I was in High School. More kids wanted to play General Lee
or Forrest than Eisenhower or Patton. Lee and Patton were national heros
of the South, which was the important nation.

--
A computer without Microsoft is like a chocolate cake without mustard.

Walter Bushell

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Sep 26, 2009, 12:10:41 AM9/26/09
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In article <h9j00s$h63$3...@news.eternal-september.org>,
mste...@walkabout.empros.com (Michael Stemper) wrote:

> In article <h9irmb$gl4$2...@news.eternal-september.org>, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E.

> Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> writes:
>
> > Yes, but I think it's the same effect. In another generation or two,
> >WWII will be edging into the ancient, or at least Really Old, history.
> >And will be taught with less detail. (I seem to remember at least one SF
> >story taking place some hundreds of years from now in which WWI and WWII
> >and WWIII (big nuclear exchange) were taught as being really just ONE
> >war that had three major phases.)
>

> I've read a few with that attitude in their backgrounds. I believe
> that Piper might have been one author that did this.

Isn't that the track we take with the 100 years war and the 30 years
war? Not to mention all the squabbles of the Roman conquest of the
Meditaranian and so

Lawrence Watt-Evans

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Sep 26, 2009, 12:31:53 AM9/26/09
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On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:03:38 -0700 (PDT), trag <tr...@io.com> wrote:

>On Sep 25, 4:51 pm, thro...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) wrote:
>> :: If CNN and its brothers had covererd the battle of Antietam both
>> :: sides would have sued for peach the next day.
>>
>> : No, not in Georgia. In Maryland.
>>
>> So... sued for... cherries? Cranberries maybe?
>
>Apples grow well there, though I don't know if there are actual
>orchards.

There are orchards. No cherries or cranberries.

I used to live near Quince Orchard Road in Gaithersburg, which at one
time actually ran to a quince orchard, and there are definitely apple
orchards not far from Antietam.

Maryland's traditional cash crops on land are corn and tobacco, but
the state food is crab; we also have oysters and other goodies from
Chesapeake Bay.

(No clams worth mentioning, though; when I want clams I go visit
family in New England.)


--
My webpage is at http://www.watt-evans.com
I'm selling my comic collection -- see http://www.watt-evans.com/comics.html
I'm serializing a novel at http://www.watt-evans.com/realmsoflight0.html

Wayne Throop

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Sep 26, 2009, 12:34:02 AM9/26/09
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: Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net>
: There are orchards. No cherries or cranberries.

Well sure, but cherries or cranberries would be *funnier*.

David Johnston

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Sep 26, 2009, 12:43:32 AM9/26/09
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On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 20:18:32 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
<jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:

>On Sep 25, 8:01�pm, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>> Buchanan was saying that if the West had let Hitler alone, he would have
>> just killed Russians and other Slavs, as God intended.
>
>Well, if Hitler could have let Poland alone, and just fought against
>his fellow totalitarian Stalin, that would not have been such a
>humanitarian catastrophe.

Until he won and moved on to his next target.

David Johnston

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Sep 26, 2009, 12:44:47 AM9/26/09
to

He blames the British for that. Without their support the Poles would
have given Hitler what he wanted and there would have been no war.

Lawrence Watt-Evans

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Sep 26, 2009, 12:49:31 AM9/26/09
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On Sat, 26 Sep 2009 00:06:41 -0400, Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com>
wrote:

>In article
><fvspb55e6kl0rbg47...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> wrote:
>
>> I don't think it'll take another generation. Talk to kids today.
>> They talk about World War II the way my generation talked about the
>> Civil War.
>
>In the South the civil war happened way after WWII. At least it was in
>Maryland when I was in High School. More kids wanted to play General Lee
>or Forrest than Eisenhower or Patton. Lee and Patton were national heros
>of the South, which was the important nation.

I grew up in Massachusetts, where the important war was the
Revolution, and the Civil War was a petty annoyance that happened way
over there, and anyway it was just the Southerners trying to have
their own revolution and botching it.

Lawrence Watt-Evans

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Sep 26, 2009, 12:49:59 AM9/26/09
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On Sat, 26 Sep 2009 04:34:02 GMT, thr...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop)
wrote:

>: Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net>
>: There are orchards. No cherries or cranberries.
>
>Well sure, but cherries or cranberries would be *funnier*.

Crabs are funny enough for me, thanks.

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