But there’s something deeper going on. Even before we actually tell any stories, the language we use teems with them in embryo form. There are words that simply denote things in nature: a pebble, a tree. There are words that describe objects we make: to know the word chair is to understand about moving from standing to sitting and appreciate the match of the human body with certain shapes and materials. But there are also words that come complete with entire narratives, or rather that can’t come without them. The only way we can understand words like God, angel, devil, ghost is through stories, since these entities do not allow themselves to be known in other ways, or not to the likes of me. Here not only is the word invented—all words are—but the referent is invented too, and a story to suit. God is a one-word creation story.Tim Parks
I do read a lot. It is getting harder and harder to hold my attention with the difficult and the boring, but I still try to plow through these things. The act of reading allows me to better understand the world, to try and place myself in another's place and understand the complexities of another's life.
I think that I tend toward the fiction end of things because, when they teach me something, they do it on the sly, leading me toward a solution space. Non-fiction is the work of people like my Professors, outlining a region of the solution space and bludgeoning it until it submits to their worldview.
Lately, my reading has been two remarkably different non-fiction books:
- Limits to growth : the 30-year update / Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows.
- Where I'm reading from : the changing world of books / by Tim Parks.
Bouncing back and forth between these two has been very enlightening, By interleaving my reading back and forth, I can definitely get the real sense of the difference outlined above. A search for the truth versus an explanation of what the truth consists of.
Limits to Growth was a seminal book in my early education. It is now thoroughly vilified by anyone who measures with money and power. The newer update I am reading now is from the turn of the millennium with much of the same as the 1972 version, albeit with more "I told you so's" and the requisite babble about how, if the greater bulk of humanity would just change their ways, the world can achieve the true millennium and live in a peaceful and stable world of ..... well...good things.
In a way, they are close relatives to the Christer's out there selling their brand of millennium. A small sect, telling everyone to just set up a system where evil is constrained by good and all will be well.
But Qui Bono lives on, and people every, I repeat, people everywhere have wants which are simple. They want what they want. And they want it now, and fuck anything that gets in their way. So, the simple idea that just laws can tamp the urgency of peoples wants and needs and reproductive capacity are, while an excellent idea, just not going to work.
Nope, folks will drive their SUV's until they are empty. They will stripmine heaven and earth for their toys and vittles, and they will look surprised when the pumps no longer work down at the gas station and they are looking at another plate of beans.
Now, you may think that the above rant was a digression from the original intent of this article. No buckaroos, it was just a setup for the main point. Reading is the real story of the article. Jorgen and Donella and Dennis didn't write a story that was new. They wrote a story that was old, as old as the lead in to the golden calf and to Ragnarok and to Kurukshetra. Hubris and Nemesis have always been excellent story lines. And no one ever listened to Cassandra.
So what story are we starting to write now? The story line of population reduction by passivity and marginal malnutrition seems to never have been used before. And this is with a good reason. Because it is a lousy story. What I am interested in is what old story are they going to recycle for this next go around?
Limits to Growth was a seminal book in my early education. It is now thoroughly vilified by anyone who measures with money and power. The newer update I am reading now is from the turn of the millennium with much of the same as the 1972 version, albeit with more "I told you so's" and the requisite babble about how, if the greater bulk of humanity would just change their ways, the world can achieve the true millennium and live in a peaceful and stable world of ..... well...good things.
In a way, they are close relatives to the Christer's out there selling their brand of millennium. A small sect, telling everyone to just set up a system where evil is constrained by good and all will be well.
But Qui Bono lives on, and people every, I repeat, people everywhere have wants which are simple. They want what they want. And they want it now, and fuck anything that gets in their way. So, the simple idea that just laws can tamp the urgency of peoples wants and needs and reproductive capacity are, while an excellent idea, just not going to work.
Nope, folks will drive their SUV's until they are empty. They will stripmine heaven and earth for their toys and vittles, and they will look surprised when the pumps no longer work down at the gas station and they are looking at another plate of beans.
Now, you may think that the above rant was a digression from the original intent of this article. No buckaroos, it was just a setup for the main point. Reading is the real story of the article. Jorgen and Donella and Dennis didn't write a story that was new. They wrote a story that was old, as old as the lead in to the golden calf and to Ragnarok and to Kurukshetra. Hubris and Nemesis have always been excellent story lines. And no one ever listened to Cassandra.
So what story are we starting to write now? The story line of population reduction by passivity and marginal malnutrition seems to never have been used before. And this is with a good reason. Because it is a lousy story. What I am interested in is what old story are they going to recycle for this next go around?
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