>Date: Sat, 13 Mar 1999 12:51:28 -0500
>From: "Eric Boyd" <6ceb3@qlink.queensu.ca>
>Subject: Re: virus: BNW
>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?
No, I mean chatting with people. Try being innocent on purpose. You can say the strangest most outrageous things...and if you do it with an empathic smile and an endearing laugh people will find meaning in them. Oh, and it helps if you listen to them for a while, too...and try and find meaning in what they say.
>> 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.
Patience. If the people you meet aren't very articulate then help them tell you what they are thinking. Some of the best conversations I've had have been talking with other people about what they think, teasing out the nuances, and offering it back to them with my own knack for aphorism. "Wow, I've never heard it put that way".
>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.
Just watch the people. Look at the guys hitting on the women, some
smooth, other's with the nuance of a jackhammer...and the women standing in small clusters and checking them out. The overmadeup faces and the ponytails pulled through a baseball caps. If you look at themlong enough, you'll find someone looking at you. Just smile and nod.
>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.
Take it from me: you aren't ever ready. But women aren't that scary. Don't try and unload your shit onto people, but don't be afraid if it happens. But the longer you wait, the less prepared you are.
>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.
Really? I don't think they are "forced" to be happy...you might say they are raised to happy from birth, or programmed to be happy or even designed to be happy...conditioned to be happy? But there is no war in BNW, and no fear of death. It's all just endless games of electromagnetic golf...and work. But science and art mean different things in a world unaccustomed to pain.
>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.
Jeez, isn't world controller enough?
Reed
Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------