How to start a revolution

 

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Audiobook of the week

 

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there is a film based on the book, but it is disappointing. The cinematography is bland, but the main problem is that the characters are miscast.

Kristin, a luminous beauty who is loved by half a dozen of the men in the saga, is shown in the film as a plain looking neurotic girl. And worse, her love interest and later husband, Erland, is portrayed as a plain looking nerd, not the charismatic and brave knight of the saga. Kristin's original finace, a country bumpkin but loyal in the book, is portrayed by a good looking sympathetic character that makes one wonder why Kristin left him for Erland.

One does wish the book could be made into a miniseries. 

A more realistic survival story

 one comment called this the "anti Lord of the Flies".

Most survivalist stories are about the need for guns to survive and people just attacking each other. But in reality, if you want to survive the collapse of civilization, you need a community, and if there is not one, you need to build it yourself. 

Yes, it's Heinlein.

a lot of modernity is about freedom of the individual, but there is a moral blindness about the human need for a social ecology.

Most of the arguments about gender are about this blindness: Because if you remove the biological/evolutionary/theological plans behind sex, mating, love, and family, you get anarchy: divorce, broken families, women and men growing old and lonely, drug use to make life bearable, partly because the stress on individual freedom means you feel entitled to be happy, and so you self medicate when you are miserable. This is not a new problem, as anyone familiar with Buddha's teaching know.

and the presence of feral street children, child survivors after wars, etc. is an example of what happens when wars or economic problems or a society that tolerates social pathology destroys the family.

The immigration problem, like the need for millions of Filipinos, Indians, Nepalese, Chinese, etc. to leave the children behind so parents can migrate to cities or overseas to support themselves and their families is one of the major problems of the modern economic system.

Cardinal Sarah remarked that maybe investing in these countries so that there would be no need to migrate elsewhere to find jobs would be the best solution. Ah but that means preaching the ten commandments and reforming lives: Ironically, the Catholic officialdom in the USA loves to help immigrants, and God bless them for this, but you know, in Latin America and in the Philippines, it is the Evangelical sects that preach solutions on reforming lives so that the family can stay intact and people can refuse to cooperate with corruption that is one of the major reasons behind the unwillingness to invest in many countries.

But as even the hedonist libertarian like Heinlein knows: the social ties are needed if people are to survive.

And often it is the grandmothers who were brought up in the age of self sacrifice and family love who are caring for the children whose parents are absent, due to divorce, due to migration because of the economic need to work, or due to drugs, or due to war.

Audiobook of the week

Unlike many audiobible versions, which shout at you harshly or add sound effects to manipulate your emotions, this one is a soft spoken reading of Luke, by an actor most famous for playing the detective Hercule Poirot, whose voice can easily put you to sleep when he reads audiobooks etc.

About the gospel:

Luke states he read and heard early versions of the story going around, but decided to recheck them for accuracy... he was a Greek trained physician. Tradition says the early parts were written after interviewing Mama Mary. And as a trained physician he obviously had a lot of experience with the less important folks in the world, so there is sympathy for the poor and for women.

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David Suchet interview: