The Glade 4.0

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Holy shitsnacks!

Amusingly, Amusing Ourselves to Death inspired a Roger Waters (of Pink Floyd fame) solo album, entitled Amused to Death.

Good album, the best of Waters' solo efforts.

The last panel suggests that what we love may be ruining us, but it seems to me the author (and Huxley?) is making a leap by attributing negative characteristics to that scenario, i.e. living a content but... unaspiring life.

I sound a bit like a hippie there, but I just can't shake that idea! :p

Though ultimately I think this is a whole bunch of Chicken Little nonsense, such as the recent thread we had somewhere that mentioned how the new generation of kids these days are going to ruin society. I think it still makes for an interesting discussion though, even if I don't think anything will actually come of it.

I think it would be foolish to assume that the two ideas are mutually exclusive.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Content and aspiring, or Orwell's and Huxley's?

Orwell's and Huxley's.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Plenty of ruin to go around! I do agree, though. Even if you take the most nefarious scenario where there's one Authority intentionally using both ideas, that still doesn't rule out either idea happening naturally. It would be hard to make an argument that they are mutually exclusive.

I wonder if that was addressed in the book.

Split the difference and go with Ray Bradbury.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Ya know what? Yes. Bradbury and his Fahrenheit 451 are largely underrated in these discusions.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I spent a good minute trying to figure out what the heck you were talking about, and then I realized you said underrated, not unrelated.

/facepalm

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

When she was about 11, I handed my daughter my old copy of Martian Chronicles. She devoured large parts of my seriously unorganized SF collection over the next several years. About three weeks ago she asked me not to E-Bay the books or magazines, she wants them, please, when she can afford the space to keep them.

Little geek thinks I'm going to die someday.

Eh, she's probably right.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Ryner's comment and this.

Happy Birthday Stathhol BTW

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"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one." Charles Mackay

I literally filled my trunk and most of my back seat with boxes of Amdee's books two weeks ago.

I'm being lazy and haven't unloaded them all yet, but I'm considering typing up a "from the library of.." post/thread at some point.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

That would be a great thread.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I really like Postman's book. He has another one called "How to Watch Television News." I try to just not watch it.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn