W: LP: GRP: AR: We The Living 02

[Quote]

"Why, Kira," asked Irina, "aren't you interested in the subject of this discussion?"

"I am," Kira answered calmly, "but I think the discussion is superfluous. I am going to the Technological Institute."

"Kira!"

There were seven startled voices and they all uttered one name. Then Galina Petrovna said: "Well, with a daughter like this even her own mother isn't let in on her secrets!"

"When did you decide that?" Lydia gasped.

"About eight years ago," said Kira.

"But Kira! What will you do?" Maria Petrovna gasped.

"I'll be an engineer."

"Frankly," said Victor, annoyed, "I do not believe that engineering is a profession for women."

"Kira," Alexander Dimitrievitch said timidly, "you've never liked the Communists and here you select such a favorite profession of theirs--a woman engineer!"

"Are you going to build for the Red State?" asked Victor.

"I'm going to build because I want to build."

"But Kira!" Lydia stared at her, bewildered. "That will mean dirt, and iron, and rust, and blow-torches, and filthy, sweaty men and no feminine company to help you."

"That's why I like it."

"It is not at all a cultured profession for a woman," said Galina Petrovna.

"It's the only profession," said Kira, "for which I don't have to learn lies. Steel is steel. Most of the other sciences are someone's guess, and someone's wish, and many people's lies."

[Unquote, emphasis mine.]

W: LP: GRP: AR: We The Living 01

We the Living: 60th Anniversary Edition by Ayn Rand

Excellent so far (just started it again); I'll be posting some quotes right here.

[Quote:]
"I'll tell you, Galina," Maria Petrovna hurried and coughed, choked, and went on, "I'll tell you the best thing to do: Alexander must take a job."

Galina Petrovna sat up straight, as if she had been slapped in the face. "A Soviet job?"

"Well...all jobs are Soviet jobs."

"Not as long as I live," Alexander Dimitrievitch stated with unexpected strength.

Vassili Ivanovitch dropped his spoon and it clattered into his plate; silently, solemnly, he stretched his big fist across the table and shook Alexander Dimittrievitch's hand and threw a dark glance at Maria Petrovna. She cringed, swallowed a spoonful of millet, coughed.

"I'm not saying anything about you, Vasili," she protested timidly. "I know you don't approve and...well, never will...But I was thinking they get bread cards, and lard, and sugar, the Soviet employees do--sometimes."

"When I have to take Soviet employment," said Vasili Ivanovitch, "you'll be a widow, Marussia."

"I'm not saying anything, Vasili, only..."

[Unquote.]

We here in America are extremely pragmatic, (and maybe used to being slaves) so we don't even think twice--gotta keep the income coming in--we work for the few corporations or government agencies that have the last few good paying jobs or we earn wages not worth the paper its printed on in the private sector.

Is it a sin to work for the system until you have enough capital to have more choices?

W: LP: GRP: PL: Solomon Among the Postmoderns: 01

Solomon among the Postmoderns by Peter J. Leithart




Vapor



The neat boundaries of knowledge, and the easy certainties of modern language, seem to be diffusing to nothing. All is liquid, vapor, mist. It wouldn't have surprised Solomon. He would have seen our sense of disorientation and our frustrated lack of control not as the "end of reality" but as our awakening to reality as it is and always has been.

--{Leithart, Peter J. Solomon Among the Postmoderns. Michigan: Brazos Press (Baker), 2008. Print. p.66}



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W: LP: GRP: PKD: VALIS

VALIS and Later Novels by Philip K. Dick

I'm about two thirds through the novel, "VALIS", (second of four* in this collection) and I find elements of the polyphonic voice reminiscent of Dostoevsky, but with an almost schizophrenic exploration of madness, philosophy, and religion in a proto-New Age mien. This is not so much a novel as a out-spilling of the mental overload that was Philip K. Dick the author.





*I would have made it a five novel collection and added "Radio Free Albemuth".

W: LP: GRP: PKD resumed

In August of 2009, I blogged about the third volume in Library of America's edition of the major novels of Philip K. Dick. I had to leave off for awhile, but now that I have a copy of the audible edition of VALIS, I have started in again on this second of the four novels in this volume. As I got into the beginning of this story, I came across this quote which exemplifies the origins of the drug war:

[Quote:]
As a matter of fact, Fat had lost his own wife, the year before, to mental illness. It was like a plague. No one could discern how much was due to drugs. This time in America--1960 to 1970--and this place, the Bay Area of Northern California, was totally f*<#ed. I'm sorry to tell you this, but that's the truth. Fancy terms and ornate theories cannot cover this fact up. The authorities became as psychotic as those they hunted. They wanted to put all persons who were not clones of the establishment away. The authorities were filled with hate. Fat had seen police glower at him with the ferocity of dogs. The day they moved Angela Davis, the black Marxist, out of the Marin County jail, the authorities dismantled the whole civic center. This was to baffle radicals who might intend trouble. The elevators got unwired; doors got relabled with spurious information; the district attorney hid. Fat saw all this. He had gone to the civic center that day to return a library book. At the electronic hoop at the civic center entrance, two cops had ripped open the book and papers that Fat carried. He was perplexed. The whole day perplexed him. In the cafeteria, an armed cop watched everyone eat. Fat returned home by cab, afraid of his own car and wondering if he was nuts. He was, but so was everyone else.
[Unquote, obscuration mine.]

Fiction & Social Philosophy: "Anthem" by Ayn Rand: more quotes

Reminding me of Rush's song cycle from their album "2112", when Equality 7-2521 presents his rediscovery of electricity and electric light to the Council of Scholars, he gets this reaction after cold silence:

[Quote:]
But they looked upon us, and suddenly we were afraid. For their eyes were still, and small, and evil.

"Our brothers!" we cried. "Have you nothing to say to us?"

Then Collective 0-0009 moved forward. They moved to the table and the others followed.

"Yes," spoke Collective 0-0009, "we have much to say to you."

The sound of their voice brought silence to the hall and to the beat of our heart.

"Yes," said Collective 0-0009, "we have much to say to a wretch who have broken all the laws and who boast of their infamy! How dared you think that your mind held greater wisdom than the minds of your brothers? And if the Councils had decreed that you should be a Street Sweeper, how dared you think that you could be of greater use to men than in sweeping the streets?"

"How dared you, gutter cleaner," spoke Fraternity 9-3452, "to hold yourself as one alone and with the thoughts of the one and not of the many?"

"You shall be burned at the stake," said Democracy 4-6998.

"No, they shall be lashed," said Unanimity 7-3304, "till there is nothing left under the lashes."

"No," said Collective 0-0009, "we cannot decide upon this, our brothers. No such crime has ever been committed, and it is not for us to judge. Nor for any small Council. We shall deliver this creature to the World Council itself and let their will be done."

We looked upon them and we pleaded:

"Our brothers! You are right. Let the will of the Council be done upon our body. We do not care. But the light? What will you do with the light?"

Collective 0-0009 looked upon us, and they smiled.

"So you think that you have found a new power," said Collective 0-0009. "Do all your brothers think that?"

"No, we answered.

"What is not thought by all men cannot be true," said Collective 0-0009.

"You have worked on this alone?" asked International 1-5537.

"Yes," we answered.

"What is not done collectively cannot be good," said International 1-5537.

"Many men in the Homes of the Scholars have had strange new ideas in the past,"
said Solidarity 8-1164, "but when the majority of their brother Scholars voted against them, they abandoned their ideas, as all men must."

"This box is useless," said Alliance 6-7349.

"Should it be what they claim of it," said Harmony 9-2642, "then it would bring ruin to the Department of Candles. The Candle is a great boon to mankind, as approved by all men. Therefore it cannot be destroyed by the whim of one."

"This would wreck the Plans of the World Council," said Unanimity 2-9913, "and without the Plans of the World Council the sun cannot rise. It took fifty years to secure the approval of all the Councils for the Candle, and to decide upon the number needed, and to re-fit the Plans so as to make candles instead of torches. This touched upon thousands and thousands of men working in scores of States. We cannot alter the Plans again so soon."

"And if this should lighten the toil of men," said Similarity 5-0306, "then it is a great evil, for men have no cause to exist save in toiling for other men."

Then Collective 0-0009 rose and pointed at our box.

"This thing," they said, "must be destroyed."

And all the others cried as one:

"It must be destroyed!"

[Unquote, emphasis mine.]

W: LP: GRP: StPk: Story from Steampunk II

I've been reading two volumes of short stories from the Steampunk genre, entitled Steampunk and Steampunk II, ed. by Ann & Jeff Vandermeer. Though the stories are of varying quality, I found that I enjoyed them all, because each has something unique that I liked. I'm about half-way through the second volume now, and I came across a story entitled "As Recorded on Brass Cylinders: Adagio for Two Dancers" which had a small paragraph worth quoting related to my social philosophy. Here it is:

The Company's damned motto echoed in the silence that spiraled out between them as the voices of the past faded. Commune bonum. The Common Good. They used such words in their speeches, on their posters, in the printed material distributed in schools in conjunction with words like 'valor' and 'honor' and 'for the glory of the Empire!'...words war-tattered about the edges and stained with tears. Vomit. Blood.
Such words lured children onto the battlefield and wrapped their battered, broken bodies in a winding-sheet for transport home to weeping families. Such words were thin consolation, rough with all the things left unsaid. Such words were diamonds dangled before starry-eyed girls, to whom honor and glory were jewels beyond compare, brighter than circlets of gold slipped upon a willing finger.

Fiction & Social Philosophy: "Anthem" by Ayn Rand

Let me start with what I wrote over at Goodreads:
Anthem by Ayn Rand




I first read this book in the seventh grade and found the concepts to be a good mind trip. I am re-reading it again via listening to an audible version of this story.


I recommend ignoring most of the Monkey Collective members' reviews. To be fair, it is not the most literary in style; read it for the concepts. Just as collectivism can be a false god, so can an obsession with individualism become a false god. Again look at the concepts, especially now that the USA is continuing down the path of overweening Statism. This story is essentially an "argumentum ad absurdum" (sp?), if we extrapolate current trends we might devolve to the society depicted in this story. Oligarchic corporate fascism is not much different from Statist Collectivism in its effects, so this story is still relevant because the individual is demeaned for the sake of some oligarch or committee.
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There are some great passages in this book which I will append to this post, so stay tuned. But I will leave my 0.085 readers to consider the following from the beginning section of this novella:

Quote:

We were born with a curse. It has always driven us to thoughts which are forbidden. It has given us wishes which men may not wish. We know that we are evil, but there is no will in us and no power to resist it. This is our wonder and our secret fear, that we know and do not resist.

We strive to be like all our brother men, for all men must be alike. Over the portals of the Palace of the World Council, there are words cut in the marble, which we repeat to ourselves whenever we are tempted:

"We are one in all and all in one.
There are no men but only the great WE,
One, indivisible and forever."

We repeat this to ourselves, but it helps us not.

Unquote.


Here is another small passage:

We, Equality 7-2521, were not happy in those years in the House of the Students. It was not that the learning was too hard for us. It was that the learning was too easy. This is a great sin, to be born with a head which is too quick. It is not good to be different from our brothers, but it is evil to be superior to them. The Teachers told us so, and they frowned when they looked upon us.

And here is another:

The Teachers had said to us all:
"Dare not choose in your minds the work you would like to do when you leave the Home of the Students. You shall do that which the Council of Vocations shall prescribe for you. For the Council of Vocations knows in its great wisdom where you are needed by your brother men, better than you can know it in your unworthy little minds. And if you are not needed by your brother men, there is no reason for you to burden the earth with your bodies."

Personal Update: After Bread Winning, etc.

Once again I have received grace in the form of having made it through the week to arrive here on the Lord's Day. After selling our time (pieces of our day or week) to receive wages or compensation that we might support the work of the gospel, our families, and ourselves, and we all must do this unless one is a "trust-baby", we come to the use of our free time.

As of the beginning of this year, 2011 A.D., I have been busy with some Bible Study Fellowship, our covenant group, and other social commitments. And after all this I had the opportunity to get working on my reading projects and commitment for this new year; to this end, I have been grateful for Goodreads (TM) as a useful tool. You can monitor my activities here.

Towards the end of 2010 I finished editing and adding miscellaneous additions to the Traveller RPG blog (q.v.). I have found this activity useful to objectify and visualize exactly how a character might interact based on background motivations etc. for use in fiction writing. The whole mental process for me is still mostly experimental and I am just starting to attempt some stories and I hope in the development of each story to start incorporating some of the things I have been learning from literature and from various other mental techniques.

W: LP: GRP: SciFi: Perry Rhodan

So, I had always heard about this science fiction series, first from my dad, and then while I was stationed in Germany. The series? Perry Rhodan: (I don't know what to make of the series yet as I have not yet read it, but when I finally choose to brush up on my German, I may try to get some German copies of some of the stories. Topic for another day as to which story arc in this long running series is the most critically acclaimed.)

Wikipedia had this to say: "Having sold over one billion copies (in pulp booklet format) worldwide, it is the most successful science fiction book series ever written."



I would love to sell a billion copies of my stories.

Personal/Materialism: The Ural Motorcycle

This little gem of mobility just caught my eye and is now on my "midlife crisis wish list":