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CubaLibre
the road lawyer
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: Balmer
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 Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 7:12 pm |
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| rf wrote: |
| but anyone who has ever actually seen a child will know that they're speedy, low-attention-span creatures who are not naturally well-fitting to learning anything (and that includes real knowledge, not just conformism lessons) |
This is the biggest problem right here. This is, by and large, utterly false and it's an image of children that is perpetuated by a systemic immaturization of society largely perpetrated by compulsory schooling.
Before around 1900 or so, every genius on the face of the planet was, largely, self-educated. From Plato to John D. Rockefeller, these people learned in a way that was completely alien to a modern school-prison.
I can't stress enough how utterly unlike almost anything in history modern compulsory schooling is. To anyone that has ever tried to teach a child anything, it's flabbergastingly inefficient. The only way to explain the widespread "success" of the modern school model is: a) willful malice (although they wouldn't have thought of it that way) on the part of its creators and b) an extraordinary talent on the part of the system for self-perpetuation. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled, and all that.
You're absolutely right that the modern system is characterized far more by incompetence than by malice. By and large, there's almost no one who could imagine it being any different, even though a short time ago, by the standard of civilization, it was very different. Most teachers and administrators are well-meaning people who really think they are helping kids, when they are little more than cogs in a system designed to produce more cogs. The "good teachers" most consciously or unconsciously defy the system, just as any student who is to do real learning in a school environment must do. Why do you think the "renegade teacher" of the Dead Poet's Society type is such a cliche character? It's almost a tacit admission that significant teaching can only be done in direct violation of the system that purports to teach everybody. How fucked up is that?
| rf wrote: |
| You do need to regiment people to some degree to get things done. |
What things? You mean, be complacent as a laborer in a massive employment pyramid into which you have exactly no input? Well, that's true.
By "get things done" do you mean "grow wiser"? If so, I can't name a single person who ever got insight into their internal lives as a result of high school. Except maybe that the world is arbitrary and cruel.
Why do you think our generation is so totally listless? The Troops is one of the most brilliant videogame writers I've ever interacted with and, by his own account, he sits around on Social Security and does absolutely nothing. Lots of posters here are the same: brilliant people hamstrung by apathy. Why? You don't think an indoctrination of immaturity and powerlessness - the overwhelming notion that you can't change anything - has nothing to do with it?
What is the goal of education? Is it to make a body of people that all know the same list of facts? Even were that the goal, public schools are pretty terrible at meeting it. But isn't that a horrible goal? What are facts for? Can you say with a straight face that high school has enriched anyone's life? Your own?
| rf wrote: |
| because the flaws don't mean any other set of rules would be better. |
Precisely! So why trade one master for another - why not throw out the rules entirely?
You say Gatto ignores the advantages of the current system. I disagree; he lays them out very plainly: it makes a uniformly slavish, pliable proletariat. Surely this is of advantage to somebody, but it isn't the people education purports to help.
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Predator Goose
Joined: 19 Dec 2006
Location: Oversensitive Pedantic Ninny
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| Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 7:20 pm |
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Cuba, you are a myopic conspiracy theorist. Please don't take that too personally, I'm only using it as a quick way to express myself on the issue of your arguments, because I do not have the time to address them directly. Instead I'll only mention two things and not tie them to your arguments at all. First, we live in a densly populated and advanced culture, with children often adequately taken care of and with a variety of stimuli to choose from. Second, we probably live in age where, by percentage, we are more intelligent and more literate than we ever have been before.
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rf
Joined: 14 May 2007
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| Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 7:55 pm |
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(Whoops, double post.)
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Last edited by rf on Mon Aug 06, 2007 11:53 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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rf
Joined: 14 May 2007
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| Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 7:59 pm |
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I think most of your reply comes down not to real disagreements, but to interpreting my meaning wrong--often where I was ambiguous, so yeah, my bad.
| CubaLibre wrote: |
| Before around 1900 or so, every genius on the face of the planet was, largely, self-educated. From Plato to John D. Rockefeller, these people learned in a way that was completely alien to a modern school-prison. |
Uh, but society can't function on geniuses alone. I don't mean "society" as some kind of villainous machine. I just mean that economically, you need a lot of people working to support a lot of people, and many of them will be doing the same stuff. And I don't think the prodigious efforts of history's most famous names is very reliable evidence about what most people are willing or able to learn as children.
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| Why do you think the "renegade teacher" of the Dead Poet's Society type is such a cliche character? It's almost a tacit admission that significant teaching can only be done in direct violation of the system that purports to teach everybody. How fucked up is that? |
I was trying to get across with my last post that it can sometimes be best to A) have a rule system in place and B) point out its inadequacies. I don't think it's fucked up at all. For example, few would say that there nothing at all should be prohibited by law. On the other hand, almost any prohibition will be immoral in some cases. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have that prohibition, just that those in power should make sure no one takes them to heart as moral lessons.
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| What things? You mean, be complacent as a laborer in a massive employment pyramid into which you have exactly no input? Well, that's true. |
No, I just mean accomplish tasks that people aren't motivated to do themselves, through an organized structure of command. In some cases this is desirable. If not then it would never be OK for the government to demand any kind of compulsory service or anything, which I think is a pretty extreme position.
| Quote: |
| What is the goal of education? Is it to make a body of people that all know the same list of facts? Even were that the goal, public schools are pretty terrible at meeting it. But isn't that a horrible goal? What are facts for? Can you say with a straight face that high school has enriched anyone's life? Your own? |
Yeah, it probably has. I mean, a lot of it was worthless, sure, but I learned plenty of skills, and read plenty of interesting books, and yeah learned a lot of facts that (believe it or not) are often relevant for living here today, like history. And also, while I can often teach myself things faster than a teacher can, I also am sometimes less motivated without an external structure. This might sound to you like indoctrinated helpless thinking, but I don't know why you should jump to that conclusion. It might be a universal human feature, and from what else I know about people, it seems likely.
I didn't respond to some of the other parts because that would take more thought. I might later, though.
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Broco
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Headquarters
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| Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 9:00 pm |
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CubaLibre, you remind me of Marxists, or the Unabomber, in that you start by rattling off a lot of to be sure largely legitimate grievances -- fine as far as it goes -- but then take the additional, unreasonable step of concluding that the state of affairs is entirely unacceptable and propose the wholesale destruction of it, damn the possibility that it makes things even worse. This "awfulizing" of situations that are actually of a tolerable mediocrity is what leads to dystopias (and, might I add, dissatisfaction and depression in middle-class people's personal lives).
The public school system is largely effective at teaching people basic literacy and arithmetic, such that most people can read a newspaper and do their income taxes. It also transmits useful information such as how diseases are transmitted, the democratic process, basic reasoning and so on. All this is highly valuable; just look at how African countries without public education are faring. You want "wisdom"? Pschaw. You are eating potatoes and bitterly complaining that they don't have the life-affirming richness of a fine wine. Be happy you ain't starving. |
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CubaLibre
the road lawyer
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: Balmer
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| Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 9:18 pm |
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Teaching a child basic reading and arithmetic takes about 50 contact hours. They are simple tasks and children have enormously voracious minds - far more voracious than adults.
The compulsory school system pre-empts children for six hours a day, for twelve years, with God knows how much homework on top of it. Reading the newspaper and doing your taxes requires not even close to that amount of effort. Where does the rest of it go? Names, dates, tired academic theories? Factoids. Which have only very limited value, even if people did remember them - which they don't. Why should they?
Why don't children prepare and serve the food at the schools they attend? Fix broken chairs and tables, or the plumbing? It would save a lot of money... presumably they're doing something more important, you know, learning. About Portrait of the Artist or something - which they haven't read, they've just looked up the Sparknotes. But if your standard of education is "usefulness," as you profess, then certainly carpentry and cooking are vastly more useful.
Certainly children shouldn't self-determine their own curricula, at least not until high school age. But shouldn't their parents have some input? Or other elders? Community leaders? Somebody, anybody that might actually have a personal interest in seeing a child develop? Why should it be left to the hands of faceless bureaucrats?
Ask any administrator why school isn't run this way or that way, and he will inevitably point his finger toward the ceiling. Up, up, up. "I would, but the memo from head office..." Where does this chain end? The Department of Education, Congress, vaguely defined think tanks? Who are these people and what do they know about educating my child here in rural Alabama or a Chicago suburb or downtown Juno, Alaska?
Children these days - people in general - lack the one and true defining mark of maturity: self-sufficiency. They can't cook for themselves, clean for themselves, think for themselves. They can't read a book without someone telling them how to interpret it. They are terrified of being alone.
"Experience is the greatest teacher." So obvious it's a boring cliche. Then why are schools designed to deprive children of every possible meaningful experience?
I ask again: what is the goal of education?
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Predator Goose
Joined: 19 Dec 2006
Location: Oversensitive Pedantic Ninny
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| Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 9:31 pm |
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| CubaLibre wrote: |
Teaching a child basic reading and arithmetic takes about 50 contact hours. They are simple tasks and children have enormously voracious minds - far more voracious than adults.
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Teaching a child the alphabet alone might, might, take a scant 50 contact hours. Teaching and encouraging a child to read is a far larger task.
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Maztorre
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: Ireland
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| Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 9:31 pm |
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| Broco wrote: |
CubaLibre, you remind me of Marxists, or the Unabomber, in that you start by rattling off a lot of to be sure largely legitimate grievances -- fine as far as it goes -- but then take the additional, unreasonable step of concluding that the state of affairs is entirely unacceptable and propose the wholesale destruction of it, damn the possibility that it makes things even worse. This "awfulizing" of situations that are actually of a tolerable mediocrity is what leads to dystopias (and, might I add, dissatisfaction and depression in middle-class people's personal lives).
The public school system is largely effective at teaching people basic literacy and arithmetic, such that most people can read a newspaper and do their income taxes. It also transmits useful information such as how diseases are transmitted, the democratic process, basic reasoning and so on. All this is highly valuable; just look at how African countries without public education are faring. You want "wisdom"? Pschaw. You are eating potatoes and bitterly complaining that they don't have the life-affirming richness of a fine wine. Be happy you ain't starving. |
I'm sorry but this statement lends itself more to dystopia than complaining about the state of an education system. |
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Broco
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Headquarters
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| Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 9:47 pm |
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I didn't say "basic reading", I said "basic literacy". Temporarily learning all those factoids, reading those simple-minded texts; the content in itself does not stick but the ability to understand and interpret stuff in general does. That's what takes 12 years. Without the inefficiency it might take say 6, but it's hardly as trivial as you make it out to be.
And of course cooking, carpentry and plumbing are not actually useful things to teach in general schools. For cooking, everyone easily learns it on their own, and for the others only a small number of specialists need to have the skill.
| Maztorre wrote: |
| I'm sorry but this statement lends itself more to dystopia than complaining about the state of an education system. |
No, it lends itself to merely mediocrity. Urging radical change on complicated social systems that have been proven to work at a minimum level is what can lead to disaster. |
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Broco
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Headquarters
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| Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 10:10 pm |
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| CubaLibre wrote: |
| They can't [...] think for themselves. They can't read a book without someone telling them how to interpret it. |
Actually, everybody on the street believes in "thinking for themselves", are convinced that they are not among the "sheep", and are proud of their unique personal opinions that go against the mainstream -- such as say, that Bush knew about 9/11, that the moon landings were faked, that global warming isn't really happening, etc. What "independent thinking" seems to mostly lead to in practice is unwarranted disrespect for the consensus of communities of experts.
Here's my suggestion for opinions on things that you don't know much about -- read a book or two by someone who does, and take that as your preliminary belief. If the experts are significantly divided, pick a side (preferably the larger one). This will usually get you a belief that's closer to reality than you would if you just thought something up entirely on your own. In our communication-drenched society all the reasonable opinions have already been stated by somebody and if you make up your own opinion without basing it on theirs, you risk only deviating into kook territory. The only exception is on the few topics that you have been studying in great detail for years. |
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CubaLibre
the road lawyer
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: Balmer
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| Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 10:20 pm |
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| Broco wrote: |
| Urging radical change on complicated social systems that have been proven to work at a minimum level is what can lead to disaster. |
Proven to work for what? By whom?
The compulsory public school system is itself a radical change on a complicated social system that has been proven to work at a minimum level. Have you ever tried to read a James Fenimore Cooper novel? Do you know that in the early days of our republic it was equivalent to a modern New York Times bestseller, when most of our economy was agrarian? That means dumb farmers were reading harder literature than almost anyone is today (Harry Potter eat your heart out).
Think of it this way: using the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as your guide, how can you justify using the police power of the state to force children to learn something? Remember, if you don't want to, you can't just skip it - you go to jail.
| Broco wrote: |
| And of course cooking, carpentry and plumbing are not actually useful things to teach in general schools. For cooking, everyone easily learns it on their own, and for the others only a small number of specialists need to have the skill. |
Blatantly false. How many people in their 20's do you know who can cook? Everyone lives somewhere that is built of wood and has plumbing in it.
More imporantly, you might learn something about yourself crawling around in a duct trying to get this damn pipe to work. You won't learn anything about yourself staring blankly at an error-filled textbook.
| Broco wrote: |
| What "independent thinking" seems to mostly lead to in practice is unwarranted disrespect for the consensus of communities of experts. |
God forbid we shake down the house of the experts.
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boojiboy7
narcissistic irony-laden twat
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: take me on a blatant doom trip.
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| Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 10:23 pm |
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| oh this thread... |
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Monochrome
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: California
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| Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 11:44 pm |
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| CubaLibre wrote: |
| Have you ever tried to read a James Fenimore Cooper novel? Do you know that in the early days of our republic it was equivalent to a modern New York Times bestseller, when most of our economy was agrarian? That means dumb farmers were reading harder literature than almost anyone is today (Harry Potter eat your heart out). |
Are you sure it was common for a sustainance farmer to own copies of recent literature?
| CubaLibre wrote: |
| God forbid we shake down the house of the experts. |
"Who's Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was built in 1914?" |
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rf
Joined: 14 May 2007
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| Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 12:12 am |
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This is moving way too fast for me, so I'll just say a few things.
Re: CubaLibre.
1) Yeah, I've read a Cooper novel. And it was terrible. People tolerated the awkward phrasing and the plodding prose pace because they had more time, or so I've heard, but that doesn't mean it's not bad. Much worse than HP's simplistic, effective style. And it wasn't really "difficult" thematically. It was an action story about a guy named "The Deerslayer" with superhuman archery abilities, who saved damsels-in-distress (or "females," as Cooper incessantly calls them) with his noble Native buddy. It was made into an action movie a few years ago, and I doubt it lost much.
2) There seems to be something a little contradictory about claiming that schools should have less central planning, and then that they should be teaching different things. How do you know the parental community of Wherever, USA will legislate a practical, efficient system that teaches "wisdom" rather than something even more stultifying and ineffective than the current system? It's not that the two beliefs actually contract (a "disagree with what you say, defend your right to say it" sort of thing), but you haven't really differentiated between them, as if one implies the other.
Re: Broco.
I know there are a lot of conspiracy theorist types out there, but in my (limited) experience they're outnumbered by the people who either don't trust themselves intellectually, or just don't care. I don't think it's so much a matter of "I haven't collected the data" (which could be reasonable) so much as they see certain domains as simply not their territory. (A few years ago I felt that way about most things. I still have it about some, like politics--I have my opinions, but the whole thing seems so complicated that I almost feel guilty for having them.) I dunno if this is caused by the education system, but the focus on strictly soluble problems (math, fact memorization, etc.) over looser sorts of thinking might lead people, for better or worse, to think they shouldn't engage in looser thinking.
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CubaLibre
the road lawyer
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: Balmer
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| Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 12:51 am |
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| rf wrote: |
| 1) Yeah, I've read a Cooper novel. And it was terrible. People tolerated the awkward phrasing and the plodding prose pace because they had more time, or so I've heard, but that doesn't mean it's not bad. Much worse than HP's simplistic, effective style. And it wasn't really "difficult" thematically. It was an action story about a guy named "The Deerslayer" with superhuman archery abilities, who saved damsels-in-distress (or "females," as Cooper incessantly calls them) with his noble Native buddy. It was made into an action movie a few years ago, and I doubt it lost much. |
The point isn't that it's good; the point is that it's difficult to read, and yet was widely read.
More important, both in complexity and popularity: the King James Bible. If you can make sense of a KJV verse then you can make sense of the most complicated political rhetoric (and indeed, they often amount to the same thing). Or take any Abraham Lincoln speech. Before the age of radio, he delivered those addresses locally to rural and urban populations alike. Find me twenty random people who could sit through such an address today.
Case in point: some of our most closeted religious sects - the Quakers, the Jesuits, the Amish - are among our most literate.
| rf wrote: |
| 2) There seems to be something a little contradictory about claiming that schools should have less central planning, and then that they should be teaching different things. How do you know the parental community of Wherever, USA will legislate a practical, efficient system that teaches "wisdom" rather than something even more stultifying and ineffective than the current system? It's not that the two beliefs actually contract (a "disagree with what you say, defend your right to say it" sort of thing), but you haven't really differentiated between them, as if one implies the other. |
Well, obviously there's no guarantee, but the promise of decentralized education is the same as the promise of decentralized everything: that if what you have is crappy you can go and get something else. With compulsory schooling, that's not just impractical, it's illegal.
Centralization, of course, is done in the name of efficiency, but I'm not sure education is something which should be "efficient," or what that would even mean, aside from monetarily - and a decentralized educational market would be far cheaper, for everybody. Government services are centralized because efficiency is key where speed is key: police, fire, medical, starvation, abuse. But nothing's going to happen to the world if it takes you two weeks to finish this lesson instead of one. (A situation almost intractable in a normal school... inevitably such extended lessons are marked failures and abandoned, and the student is made to feel an idiot.)
Obviously people have terrible terrible parents and children will fall through the cracks. I'd rather their parents be responsible for those failures, however, than an unaccountable government agency with armed men to back it up. Undoubtedly, fewer children will fall through the cracks when people who have a personal investment in them, rather than paid teachers (whose pay is demanded of you at gunpoint without regard to said teacher's performance), are responsible for their education.
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Broco
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Headquarters
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| Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 1:23 am |
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| CubaLibre wrote: |
Proven to work for what? By whom?
The compulsory public school system is itself a radical change on a complicated social system that has been proven to work at a minimum level. Have you ever tried to read a James Fenimore Cooper novel? Do you know that in the early days of our republic it was equivalent to a modern New York Times bestseller, when most of our economy was agrarian? That means dumb farmers were reading harder literature than almost anyone is today (Harry Potter eat your heart out). |
Proven by history to work as a central institution in prosperous and stable Western societies. It seems unlikely to be a coincidence that all countries as prosperous as the United States have a similar public school system, and that those that don't fail.
As for 19th-century schooling, that worked for the lower minimum standards of that era, but the means of production have changed a great deal since then and regressing to a 19th-century-level economy would be a disaster. According to Wikipedia's article on literacy, "in England in 1841, 33% of men and 44% of women signed marriage certificates with their mark as they were unable to write." If you used a tougher measurement of literacy than this extremely minimal criteria, you'd certainly find that the majority of the population in those days was illiterate.
Also, Uncle Tom's Cabin's (the best-selling novel of the century) first-year US sales were 300,000, reaching little more than 2% of the population. Novel sales are a poor metric that only measures the literacy of the elites.
As for the Bible and Lincoln's speeches -- there was a respect for florid prose in the culture of those days yes, and such speeches were viewed as enriching even if one didn't quite follow, but that doesn't imply much about literacy. As far as I know today's French people are not more literate than Americans even though their writers and politicians like big words for their own sake.
| CubaLibre wrote: |
| God forbid we shake down the house of the experts. |
I don't much care about the "house" in itself, I care about what is true and false. I'm not sure what are you trying to argue with that statement anyway. It's not like I'm not advocating a slavish obedience to credentials, just a default stance of respect for those more knowledgeable when one knows one doesn't know much. (Rumsfeld-esque contortion ITP)
| CubaLibre wrote: |
| Undoubtedly, fewer children will fall through the cracks when people who have a personal investment in them, rather than paid teachers (whose pay is demanded of you at gunpoint without regard to said teacher's performance), are responsible for their education. |
I like that "undoubtedly".
Anyway, it is hard for me to have an opinion on your proposed alternative when you haven't gone in much detail. At a minimum I'm wary of the first-principles, abstract justifications you've stated so far. On this particular topic, within limits I don't much care what the constitution says and I don't share your apparent view that taxes=theft. I care about what has the best results for the economy and society, what is easily transitionable to, and what has been tested not to lead to disaster. |
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Ratoslov
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 3:00 pm |
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| CubaLibre wrote: |
| Well, obviously there's no guarantee, but the promise of decentralized education is the same as the promise of decentralized everything: that if what you have is crappy you can go and get something else. With compulsory schooling, that's not just impractical, it's illegal. |
Yes, all those private schools and homeschooling parents are just hallucinations caused by fluoridated water. |
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psiga
saudade
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2007 5:29 pm |
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WISE FWOM YOUW GWAVE.
I read this thing about Vlad the Impaler:
"Vlad the Utopian: As ruler of Wallachia, Vlad wanted his realm to be a model of order and productivity and tried several innovative tactics to achieve this. He once had all the poor and sick invited to a great banquet. Like a good host, he fed ‘em, got ‘em drunk, then burned the hall with them all inside. The result: no more poor and sick people."
Also, though this is not related to the Utopia theme:
"Vlad the Renaissance Man and Dietary Innovator: Impaling wasn’t Vlad’s only pastime. He also enjoyed having people physically disfigured, skinned, dismembered, boiled, eviscerated, or blinded while he watched, and frequently while he ate. His supposed habit of drinking his victims’ blood and eating their flesh led to Dracula vampire stories we all know so well. If you happened to be a guest at one of his impaling dinners and you got queasy or expressed disgust, guess what - you got impaled."
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internisus
shafer sephiroth
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2007 5:44 pm |
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| Well, Hitler was also aiming to create a perfect world, wasn't he? |
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zak
Joined: 07 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2007 6:02 pm |
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| psiga wrote: |
WISE FWOM YOUW GWAVE.
I read this thing about Vlad the Impaler:
"Vlad the Utopian: As ruler of Wallachia, Vlad wanted his realm to be a model of order and productivity and tried several innovative tactics to achieve this. He once had all the poor and sick invited to a great banquet. Like a good host, he fed ‘em, got ‘em drunk, then burned the hall with them all inside. The result: no more poor and sick people."
Also, though this is not related to the Utopia theme:
"Vlad the Renaissance Man and Dietary Innovator: Impaling wasn’t Vlad’s only pastime. He also enjoyed having people physically disfigured, skinned, dismembered, boiled, eviscerated, or blinded while he watched, and frequently while he ate. His supposed habit of drinking his victims’ blood and eating their flesh led to Dracula vampire stories we all know so well. If you happened to be a guest at one of his impaling dinners and you got queasy or expressed disgust, guess what - you got impaled." |
I think you know this, but I'll just point out that most of the things they say about Vlad Tepes are wildly exaggerated. Some "historians" have overactive imaginations.
Tepes was just your regular medieval lord, maybe a bit prone towards violence and torture, but I seriously doubt he ever drank someone's blood, or delighted himself in mutilating his people. I guess he only did some of these things to set examples for the population, and his enemies.
The only people he regularly impaled were turkish prisoners of war, a common practice at that time. In Romanian tradition he is remembered as a great ruler that defended his country, and stood up for the people not for the nobility. All the Dracula, torture, sadism, bullshit are just later inventions, because he was a pretty unusual figure for his time. |
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slipstream
hates LOTR films
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2007 7:50 pm |
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Is cubalibre going to come back now and stick it to all us unwashed masses?
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psiga
saudade
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Sep 01, 2007 4:26 am |
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| zak wrote: |
| I think you know this, but I'll just point out that most of the things they say about Vlad Tepes are wildly exaggerated. Some "historians" have overactive imaginations. |
Heck, yeah, I don't mind if it's true or not. It had some pleasant shock value and the word 'utopia', so I was all like "Hell yes this should go in that one thread woo yeah."
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psiga
saudade
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 1:45 pm |
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In a complete 180° turn from my previous posts here, I have found a more serious Utopian vision. The prose is heavy on the flowers, but this is fundamentally the way that I see things:
Letter from Utopia
"What other harmonies are there in the air, that you lack the ears to hear?"
"Utopia is the hope that the scattered fragments of good that we come across from time to time in our lives can be put together, one day, to reveal the shape of a new kind of life."
"Do not accept that it is good for you and your friends to get sick and die in a cage."
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psiga
saudade
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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slipstream
hates LOTR films
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 5:12 am |
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Animated one: it's worth watching but just barely.
And La Jetee should be on that list instead of 12 Monkeys
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internisus
shafer sephiroth
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 5:19 am |
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don't call me inty
i'm batman
i wouldn't be surprised if i made another thread long ago just like this
i make the same thread over and over cyclically
there is no relation at all between those metropoli |
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psiga
saudade
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 5:34 am |
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I went to go watch La Jetée several months ago, but the only thing I saw on google video seemed to have no subtitles. So I just kinda lost interest until the Criterion Collection version comes out. Which...it may have since then?
~le shrug~
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