I suppose I should start off by answering my bloq (and thanking everyone who did already).
What book(s) are you currently reading?
I just started John Holt's Teach Your Own. Tomorrow, if we wake up before I have to go to work, we'll take a jaunt down to the library. I plan on checking out Mosquito Coast for a reread, and possibly some other stuff that catches my fancy.
Before Teach Your Own, I read Daniel Quinn's Beyond Civilization (excellent book) and before that it was Stephen King's From a Buick 8 (meh) and before that was Daniel Quinn's The Story of B (awesome. Simply awesome.)
What's it about?
Teach Your Own is about homeschooling.
Beyond Civilization is about how tribal life is better for humans than any other type of lifestyle that we've attempted so far. (as are all of his books) It also gives some suggestions on how to walk away from civilization. (More on all of this later)
From a Buick 8 was about some sort of transdimensional "car" that some small town police found and kept secret. Certainly not one of King's best. Or maybe it was just hard to concentrate on it after reading Daniel Quinn. My whole perception of the world has pretty much been shaken up.
"Who wants that honey?"
Damn it. Everyone already took the answer I was going to give (Pooh Bear). I'll instead say that !Xabbu does. Heh.
("Cherub Rock" by the Smashing Pumpkins)
If you're reading a book, and it's not enjoyable, do you finish it anyway?
I have. I don't know why, but there's some part of me that just has to know how things end. (Actually, that's touched upon in The Story of B Needing to know the future is what makes us human.[/nutshell])
What's the worst book you've ever read?
The Phone Book.
har har.
I'd say The Devil's Advocate. The movie wound up being pretty decent, but the book is just horribly written.
What book would you most like to see turned into a movie (but probably never will)?
Otherland. For them to make all four volumes into a film, it would have to be like 36 hours long. !!!
and finally...
Book 'em, Dano!
Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis?
Two days back, Saren had her first (attempted) sleepover. It ended up not working, unfortunately. I think she's still too young. But she so wants to be ready for it. In many ways Saren is very advanced for her age, this just isn't one of them. And it may be selfish of me (may be?!?!), but I'm relieved that she's not ready. She's growing up so fast as it is. It is truly difficult for me to believe that in just 7 weeks Saren will be six years old. Six years ago, she was just a tiny little infant, completely dependant upon me and her mother for life. Now, in what is really the blink of an eye, she's become a little girl who expresses her own thoughts and feelings. She makes her own jokes (weird as they are) and has her own personality. She oftentimes (very often) wants to do things without help. (And each day she's able to accomplish more that way)
It's an odd feeling. I'm excited to see her growing up, and proud of her for all that she's accomplished/accomlishing.
And yet.
And yet...
God, I feel like I'm just typing trite cliches, and maybe I am. I guess my point was that my little girl is growing up, and it hurts.
If you haven't already, you can read a more detailed account of the sleepover at my wife's blog.
Work. Sucks. Ass.
If any of you are really interested in hearing my woes of the working world (heh. "w"), let me know, and i'll indulge (read: bore the crap out of) you.
OH! The caterpillars!! One of them has emerged from it's cocoon!! Saren has named it "Climber". The other four are still attatched to the wall. ALthough one of them shook for about five minutes around 2:30, it hasn't done anything sense.
Steph put some orange slices into the butterfly cage, since she read that they eat those (she also discovered that some butteflies eat urine. And eye-juice. We've opted to not put those things in the cage.)
It's a little disheartening to think that in a few more days, all of the caterpillars will be butterflies, and then they'll all be let go, and never be in our lives again. [sigh]
The past couple of days, after reading the Daniel Quinn works, I've been wanting to tell everyone about them. To wake people up to this way of thinking. To make them realize that our society is sick. (They know this part, of course. Nobody doubts that there is something very truly wrong with the way we're living now. But most people don't think beyond that.)
The funny (not funny ha-ha) thing is people will defend our sickness. The one phrase that comes to mind when discussing any number of aspects of our culture is "It's flawed, but it's the best we've got." (or some variation along those lines)
You hear this said of our judicial system, our schools, our hospitals, our political system. Anytime anyone criticizes any of those programs (or anything else in our society), that is one of the arguments that gets brought back up. And really, how are you going to argue with that line of reasoning?
Something that Daniel Quinn says in Beyond Civilization that stuck with me was:
Old minds say "This didn't work last year, so let's do MORE of it this year"
New minds say "This didn't work last year, let's try something DIFFERENT this year."
Every year, we build more prisons. We pass more laws. We "fight" more drugs (and terror). We build more schools. And every year, nothing changes. We still have prisoners. We still have criminals. We still have drug users and sellers. We still have terrorist organizations. We still have students "failing" the school systems.
Well, to fix this, we need to build more prisons, pass more laws, fight terror harder, make the schools tougher.
Mm-hmm.
Quinn never says it, but it's been said that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Which is exactly what our culture is doing.
The thing is, our culture's way of doing things is not the only way that people live. There are "primitive" cultures (granted, extremely few of them remain) who live tribally, who do not have their people doing things like flying airplanes into skyscrapers, or spend their time sitting in front of television sets, or escaping with drugs. (Yes, I know that they don't have airplanes and tv and all the "wonderful" things that our culture has. That's kinda the point.)
The Americas had plenty of tribes living in them before they were "discovered". And not a single one of them ever took over the entire continent. Was this because they didn't have the technology to do so? I admit, I'm not an expert on the field so I can't answer that question as thoroughly as I'd like to, but I would wager a guess that if some tribe of Native Americans had really wanted to conquer the rest of the continent, they most likely could have.
But that's the thing. Tribe-life doesn't breed that mentality. This is not to say that there weren't tribes who fought with other tribes, and that all of them are peaceful and noble, because I know that's not the case.The difference between our culture and tribal life is that we conquer and assimilate.
I've gone on for much longer than I intended to, and of course, haven't even scratched the surface. I hope to spark some discussion with what I'm talking about, and if there's an interest out there I will be happy to blog about more of this later. [smile]
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