Re: virus: BNW

Eric Boyd (6ceb3@qlink.queensu.ca)
Sat, 13 Mar 1999 12:51:28 -0500

Hi,

From: Reed Konsler <konsler@ascat.harvard.edu> <<
I might suggest you reconsider your reticence. The world needs more voices.
>>

This conversation has been going on so long, I can't even remember what I'm being reticent about? Is this a reference to faith? To giving up philosophy? To entering level 3?

<<
> which is to say, I fit in well enough around people
> when I choose to, it's just that I rarely do.

Is that on purpose...by choice? Or do they make you uncomfortable becaue they are so simple minded?
>>

Well, it's more my own boredom. If you can't maintain my interest, I'm not likely to hang around long.

<<
My reply? "I guess it isn't the basketball as much as the pool, which is important to me." You should have seen the flood of people, some from other groups, eager to play...many of them, like me, non-sports people.
>>

That's a good attitude. I am also a non-sports person, and ("inconceivably", I have been told), I am also a non-music person, which is to say I don't collect music, or listen to it at every opportunity, as everyone else does. I prefer silence to almost all forms of music, although I do enjoy reading the lyrics of well written songs.

<<
Opposite. You require low levels of stimulaton. That's what I deduce from what you just said. Close friends know you well, tend not to challenge and when they do you trust them...that's low stress. Big social groups and media circuses are just the opposite.
>>

Interesting. I guess I'm interested in different types of stimulation, then, rather than the "level". I get bored almost immediatly on a dance floor, or in a room with music to loud to talk over. On the other hand, I can spend hours talking to friends over a beer.

<<
>The one thing I would like is a girl friend,
>although I'm not ready just yet...

???????
>>

That's a really long story. Suffice it to say that my emotional trepidation arises out of my past. (I spent many years simply suppressing my emotions, although surprisingly, there isn't anyone to blame for that. As a very young child, I was hyper-sensitive, to the point of crying if people raised their voice at me, and by grade 7 or so, I'd learned to kill those emotions when I needed to.) To use your metaphor, I only emerged from that cave a few years ago, and my eyes are still not adapted to the glaring sun out here.

<<
INTP...but these things are supposed to free us by letting us see ourselves. It isn't supposed to be a shackle, or to define your role in all circumstances. Personality types should be like horoscopes...you should be able to see some truth about yourself in every one.
>>

In a sense, when I first read it, it did set me free. It spelled out, in detail, parts of myself that I had been unable to face. Once they were thrust upon me, I could begin to change rather than deny them. The profile still describes me, but I can step outside it if I need to.

Another vastly benefitical effect was the final section in that profile -- where it names famous people of the type. I am quite happy to be lumped in with Thomas Jefferson, Professor Moriarty, and Ensign Ro; and I think it gave me a sense of hope that I lacked then. The profile was one of the important catalysts in my move to open up a little (emotionally and socially).

As to seeing a little of myself in every profile, no. I haven't read them all, of course, but certainly the "Extroverted" profiles are alien to me (even the supposedly closest, ENTJ) I am, however, quite close to INTP.

<<
>Do you seriously think that one can reduce[1] humans to (current)
>computers simply by raising them in chemical/psychological tyranny?

Tyranny? Tyranny? Tyranny?
What do you mean by <tyranny>?
>>

Well, not tyranny in the worst sense, of course; what I meant was "a condition or state of being dominated or controlled", and I was thinking of (a) the predestination and (b) the infant "shackling", both by chemical means (in the bottles) and by the educational program, with all the jingles. Essentially, the BNW people are controlled into being happy. That is just as much a tryanny is people being controlled into slavery... even if it does have a nicer paint job.

<<
But BNW isn't about the scientists of the culture, or it's visionaries. It is about the misanthrope in utopia. The book is almost reticent on knowledge except to say, in essence "in much learning there is much sorrow". But, Mustapha Mond was a physicist, remember?
>>

No. I do remember that last scene, where Mond shows (Benard? The Savage?) his library of forbidden books. I don't remember anything about Mond being a physicist. Does Mond say anything about what he is doing besides being a World Controller? I so wish we had more detail about that island.

I gotta get me a copy of this book...

ERiC