Here are the fruits of yesterday’s labors (in an impressionistic picture from the toy camera). A finished and much-improved T-shirt, and a much-enlarged prayer shawl.
Ishmael has moved on to the next step of his argument. People, you will remember, believe that they are the pinnacle of creation, and are supposed to conquer the world. They do this by creating civilizations. Ishmael — the gorilla — likens this to early attempts at flying. Not understanding the laws of aerodynamics, he says, folks just jumped off cliffs and flapped their arms. Right up until they hit the ground, they thought they were flying. We, he says, are falling dangerously in our civilization, as so many have before us — the Maya, etc. — and still think we are flying. We see that other civilizations failed and disappeared, but we think that we can avoid the errors that caused that and go on happily forever — but in fact, since we don’t know the laws of how to live right, we are really just falling, not flying.
Again, it is an intriguing metaphor and an interesting point, but the gorilla continues to be irritating and the man continues to be stupid. The gorilla, while admonishing the man to try to think better and patronizingly assuring him that he doesn’t have to remember everything or understand everything at once, is taking the man step by tedious step through the very simple idea he is trying to convey. The teaching process would be suitable, perhaps, for a class of children working through the discovery process for the principles of aerodynamics — a set of knowledge which Ishamael refers to briskly as something everyone knows. But applied to this book’s body of ideas, it causes the reader to think, “Oh, just say what you want to say, for heaven’s sake!” Obviously, I am not achieving suspension of disbelief. But it is still an interesting book. I am eager to find out what the gorilla has in mind as the law of “how to live right.”
One thing that struck me as I was talking with #1 daughter about the book yesterday was that both of us had assumed it was written a long time ago. “When Grandma graduated from High School,” #1 daughter thought, and I would have said the 1950s, which is about the same time frame. In fact, this book appears to have been written about ten years ago. I think it is the language that gave us that impression. It sounds like something written in the 1950s.
The grandma in question did not like the book at all, and in fact did not make it through the first chapter. This really surprised me. She has a lot more tolerance for mysticism and romanticism than #1 daughter and I, and some of her own novels are dystopian and even include the Wise Teacher from Another Species motif (though hers are usually extraterrestrial).
If I can make guesses about what is coming next, it does seem to me that civilization itself — the subduing of nature and building up of culture — is to be the villain in the piece.
#2 daughter and I did not make it all the way through Coupling. We did, however, get to the used bookstore and buy every single novel there which we thought we might be able to read with enjoyment. I had a lot of credit for exchanged books, but it still cost more than we expected. We are stocked up for the summer, though, with light reading. We will alternate this with serious books others have suggested to us, including the Daniel Quinn books and Dr. Drew’s Process Theology, which we are for some reason holding hostage here. I want it on record that I would have mailed it to him. We also have Candyfreak, a couple of things on physics and chemistry, and some biographies. We also made it to the quilt shop, where the eucalyptus-colored fabric had arrived. I have washed and dried it, and #2 daughter is going to help me today with the cutting, which requires a level of accuracy I do not naturally possess. We cleaned up enough for me to tolerate the mess. And the Schwann’s man arrived, replenishing the sweetitude with ice cream and sorbet. So, what with one thing and another, I think we are prepared for the summer.
I’m just on the second or third chapter so the gorrilla hasn’t gotten to me yet! LOL I knew it was a later written book because the first chapter eluded to the hippies of the 60’s and 70’s. Maybe it feels like a book written from the 50’s because the guy who wrote it was studying writing in school waaayyy back then! 🙂
You can get a web tracker thing for the bottom of your screen by going to your ‘look and feel’ and then going down to the bottom of that page and hit the little question mark next to the ‘website stats’ and xanga will take you to a whole bunch of free tracker places. Mine is from http://www.sitemeter.com/ But then maybe it would be better for you to think the people coming to your blog are your commenters. Getting 294 visits (although 20 of those hits are probably me just checking in everyday) and only 15 comments just seems a little off. I think a lot of the hits are coming in now that I’m on the knitting blogring though. Just people getting a knit-fix by surfing around. 🙂
ryc: In the NZ system, it’s not exactly the teaching that is pitched to the less able students, it’s the syllabus itself. Every ‘subject’ is broken down into tasks, subtasks, subsubtasks ad infinitum – and the students get ‘achieved’ or ‘not achieved’ depending on whether they complete the tasks or not (at least I think it’s something like that). There seems to be little, if any, attempt to integrate the information. Sort of like analysis taken to ridiculous extremes. Able students to whom I’ve spoken resent that any extra effort that they put into their work goes unrewarded so I guess many of them stop putting in that effort. A habit of not putting in any effort becomes a problem once you hit university.