I read fiction and nonfiction. Both have their place. Personally, I find a great work of fiction to be the more rewarding experience.

Plenty of great writers have written both fiction and non. Mark Twain, George Orwell, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Tom Wolfe, Charles Bukowski, Philip Roth, Vladimir Nabokov...

The idea that fiction is 'a waste of fucking time' because someone just made it up is patently absurd. It's like saying a great work of art, such as Picasso's Guernica, is a waste of time. After all, he did just "make it up!"

Also, why limit oneself? Do you also only listen to one genre of music, eat one type of cuisine, or sleep with one type of girl?

If you really want to be intellectually honest, you should only watch documentaries, look at photographs instead of paintings, and listen to music based on true stories. Basically, you should only listen to "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" over and over. The rest is just fiction!





Finally, Oasis are terrible. If you want to listen to a real band, listen to The Kinks, or Roxy Music. Or The Stooges! Hell, even Led Zeppelin is better than Oasis... Sorry, cardguy, nothing personal!

(10-21-2013 03:37 PM)OGNorCal707 Wrote:  I'm the same way, now a days I'm into reading books that make me grow as a person, which I think fiction doesn't really do. I'd rather read the Tao Te Ching, Anthony Robbins, or Don Miguel Ruiz, and gain a whole lot, then reading some work of fiction for entertainment.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

(10-21-2013 03:37 PM)OGNorCal707 Wrote:  Biographies are great too, I read Iceberg Slim's "Pimp" this past spring, and two of my all time favorite books are autobiographies of black Americans, "Black Boy" by Richard Wright, and "The Autobiography of Malcolm X", oh shit and I almost forgot Huey Newton's "Revolutionary Suicide". Reading these real life accounts is amazing and helps you learn from their experiences and put things into perspective in your own life.

An excellent subject, worthy of its own thread. I would add Manchild in the Promised Land to the list, as well as Soul on Ice. And Pryor Convictions! Iceberg Slim wrote some excellent fiction as well, and Pimp is just as much fiction as it is non.

I recently discovered a once well-known black intellectual by the name of George S. Schuyler. He had a daughter with a white socialite in the 1930s, who became famous in her own right before being killed in the 1960s in Vietnam(!). Apparently, Schuyler was very critical of both Malcolm X and MLK, which might explain why he has fallen out of favor in academic circles.

Right now I'm reading his book Black No More, which is set in 1930s Harlem. Very enjoyable thus far. However, it is fiction, so I'm a bit worried I may finish it and discover I have learned nothing!

Not reading novels means actively avoiding a pleasurable habit.
Not reading non-fiction means actively avoiding a source of great knowledge.

I consider both to be essential for a balanced life.

The way I read is to alternate between them, one non-fiction book to learn, then a novel for relaxation. I can plough through a fun story in a couple of days, even a short philosophy book might take a week or more, and it demands concentration throughout.

Sometimes I just want to lose myself in a book. Like everything else it's knowing the difference between downtime and wasted time, and the dose makes the poison.

I think stories themselves are integral to the way the human mind understands and relates to the world. So in a sense it doesn't matter if they are true or not. You can still gain insight from either one.

I'll bet most of the true histories you've read that stick in your mind were edited to form a narrative.

(10-22-2013 12:51 AM)presidentcarter Wrote:  I know it sounds cliché at this point but Atlas Shrugged is a work of fiction that left quite an impact on my life.

And yet your handle is presidentcarter?

It's unfortunately rare in America these days to find a Libertarian who identifies with the political left. As far as I'm concerned there should be a roughly equal number on the left/right, but it isn't that way right now.

Is there an interesting story here?

(10-22-2013 07:37 AM)puckman Wrote:  I gave up on novels around the age of 20. Have to admit I have voiced Noel's exact statements at times. Occasionally on vacation I will pick up a classic, but there is just too much knowledge to devote to some random authors mental masturbation. Would much rather watch a movie if I want to delve into a fantasy world, it illicit's a much deeper emotional response as well. At Comic Con I saw protests and boycotts over Enders Game, was pretty sad to this considering the effect OSC had on my youth, he was my favorite author in high school.

But Noel does sound like a dumb ass here. Lets be honest, he writes the most inane four chord Beatles re-hash crap. I realize Wonderwall is the defacto anthem of GB, but lets call a spade a spade.

I'll echo what Prufrock said: Why even watch a movie if you don't like fiction? A movie is as much a directors "mental masturbation" as a novel is an author's.

Obviously a novel takes longer to read than a movie takes to watch, but you really can explore a subject in greater depth with that extra time in a novel. Doesn't mean movies are inferior. Just different.

(10-22-2013 11:13 AM)Bad Hussar Wrote:  

(10-22-2013 12:51 AM)presidentcarter Wrote:  I know it sounds cliché at this point but Atlas Shrugged is a work of fiction that left quite an impact on my life.

And yet your handle is presidentcarter?

It's unfortunately rare in America these days to find a Libertarian who identifies with the political left. As far as I'm concerned there should be a roughly equal number on the left/right, but it isn't that way right now.

Is there an interesting story here?

My handle has no relation to my political views.

(10-22-2013 08:11 AM)crippler Wrote:  Not reading novels means actively avoiding a pleasurable habit.
Not reading non-fiction means actively avoiding a source of great knowledge.

I consider both to be essential for a balanced life.

The way I read is to alternate between them, one non-fiction book to learn, then a novel for relaxation. I can plough through a fun story in a couple of days, even a short philosophy book might take a week or more, and it demands concentration throughout.

Sometimes I just want to lose myself in a book. Like everything else it's knowing the difference between downtime and wasted time, and the dose makes the poison.

For what it is worth - I don't read fiction because I don't enjoy it. Giving me a 300 page novel - would be like giving somebody else a 300 page poem. I just cannot engage with it.

And I really enjoy non-fiction. Maybe I am lucky - I dunno.

Also - paintings were mentioned earlier. I hate paintings as well!

It's all the same.

What matters is that it's good.

(10-22-2013 12:36 PM)cardguy Wrote:  For what it is worth - I don't read fiction because I don't enjoy it. Giving me a 300 page novel - would be like giving somebody else a 300 page poem. I just cannot engage with it.

And I really enjoy non-fiction. Maybe I am lucky - I dunno.

Also - paintings were mentioned earlier. I hate paintings as well!

I don't think anyone would be able to persuade me of the value of watching team sports either, yet millions (billions?) get something out of it.

Read Errol Flynn's autobiography if you want to ease into fiction, he basically decided to make bits up whenever he thought it would be fun.

(10-21-2013 03:35 PM)cardguy Wrote:  Noel Gallagher is a smart guy. As well as being a musician - he is also one of the best football pundits I have heard.

I'm sure he is, but there are many people who will take his advice too heavily when most of the time he is just splurting comments for attention, like his brother does, in my opinion.

I hate fiction too I daydream enough

I have mixed feelings with reading fiction. Somehow I think there has to be some merit in reading this. But I haven´t figured out yet. When I was a kid I learned german through comic books. That motivated me.

Maybe just maybe I just have not the ability to read demanding novels. I mean maybe my visualisation, concentration and memory sucks. Maybe when I get this handled through reading a lot of fiction I have a chance to raise the level.

I loved watching Star Trek. I think I learned a lot from it in matters of Psychology, Philosophy and so on. I imagine when I would have had the potential to read the books of them (very fast) I could have learned them quicker and would be a better reader and writer and maybe a thinker too.

Mostly things become fun when one has the skills in that matter. - But as most as a young guy I was driven and hat not the relaxtness to read a lot of novels. Life and to many girls distracted me.

(10-21-2013 03:35 PM)cardguy Wrote:  Noel Gallagher is a smart guy. As well as being a musician - he is also one of the best football pundits I have heard.

He's also a complete cunt, like his brother. Is there a more over-rated band on the planet? Wonderwall makes my ears bleed.

It's a mistake to filter every aspect of life through the lens of rational motives - i.e., how much direct value do I get out of this as opposed to this, etc.

There's more to life than complete rationality and efficiency, and men who miss that subject themselves to a psychological handicap, in my honest opinion. What about doing something because it's enjoyable? Don't get me wrong, if you don't enjoy fiction you don't enjoy it, but the guys wearing a lack of fiction-reading as a badge of pride, or even looking down on other men and comparing them to women for their taste in fiction, may be inflating their own personal values just a tad.

There's nothing wrong with having free time in life and using that free time to do stuff out of pure enjoyment. Plenty of things we do for enjoyment have less intellectual and emotional benefit than fiction. Watching sports. TV. Having a drink with friends. Eating food because it tastes good rather than just because it is our fuel. Watching a sunrise. Not to mention that each of these has its more subtle rewards; not everything needs a direct and quantifiable benefit.

And what about escape? I try to restrict my fiction reading to just before bedtime. I work in the day and also put my energy into a lot of other rational pursuits that are meant to further my career or improve me in some manner. But I think focusing my energy in these directions every waking moment becomes too much (I sometimes wonder if I overdo it).

You've got to give yourself a break sometimes.

Fiction is relaxing and helps me to wind down. It gives me a chance to escape the demands of my own life for a moment, to get lost in another world. A half hour to an hour before bed-time is usually what I put in; I sleep better and feel like my imagination is the better for it.

It has done wonders for my insomnia.

Even further, I take issue with the idea that fiction serves no place in the field of learning. For one thing, a lot of fiction deals with philisophical issues - the author just uses it as a way to convey their views by tapping into emotion. Fiction allows someone to show how they think a person should apply their morals to real life situations, bringing the lesson alive rather than just explaining it. Making the lesson more emotional and complex.

On a deeper level, some experts believe fiction is an emotional release and that we need it more now than ever due to the high levels of stress in our lives. Read "Million-dollar Outlines" (a non-fiction book lol) for a breakdown of this concept about how stories fit into society.

Like watching movies, the brain follows patterns in fiction much the same way it does in movies. In other words, when you're watching a movie and the character is going through a high-stress situation, your brain doesn't react as if it's observing that situation, it reacts as if it's actually going through that situation. As if you are the character. The same is true with books.

The author of "Million-dollar Outlines" suggest it's possible we use these stories not just as tools to teach each other but as a way to condition and strengthen our brains for dangerous or taxing situations without putting ourselves in actually dangerous situations. You'll notice that many stories are about a character going through a train of challenges that most of us would never in a million years want to go through in life, especially in some of the more stressful forms of fiction, like thrillers or horror. Sometimes we torture our characters.

So why in the world would we subject ourselves to that if our brain doesn't know the difference enough to categorize these as made-up stories? Possibly because it's like strengthening a muscle. You train it in the gym and it then becomes more prepared to cope with the lesser challenges faced in an everyday life. You develop a stronger base to work with and your job and family doesn't make you want to have a nervous breakdown or pick up a gun and blow your brains out.

An emotional rollercoaster ride without risk is like a training program for your mind.

Before you scoff at this notion of "training" with something that is "made up," don't forget about sports and working out your physical body with artificial exercises. What are these "games" we play with these artificial rules but challenges that we make up with the end result being to keep ourselves in shape? Are they not just as silly?

If something must have a direct real-life purpose in order to be worthy, you might as well only work out with real-life activities, like chopping firewood and climbing big rocks. That could make for a great work-out program, to be sure, but throwing out all forms of exercise or sport on this basis would be ludicrous. These other forms of exercise give us a way to make it more fun and interesting, and to keep it in our lives even when there are not many rounds of madrone or climbable rocks lying around in our environment.

What about creativity? Has the manosphere become so love-stricken with rhetoric that it has forgotten the value of the creative brain? As Napoleon Hill would have said, everything great produced by man begins as an idea. Imagining what does not exist is one of the most powerful capabilities your mind possesses.

While reading non-fiction introduces great new ideas, there are perhaps better ways of developing your imaginative faculties. Fiction is one of them.

Along these lines, reading is much more of a creative exercise than watching a movie - the two are hardly comparable. One is passive and one is more active. Because you only get part of the story in the words on a page. You still have to create the image in your brain on your own, and you do so without even being prompted to. It's automatic.

You also fill in a lot of the blanks, as often an author only suggests things and you create the rest - talk to different readers, asking them to describe characters and scenes, and they'll often all describe something different. On another level, fiction promotes creativity because it accustoms your brain to believing in things that do not at the moment exist.

Someone mentioned that movies create a more emotional response for them than books. Only someone who doesn't read much fiction would say this. A book is something you spend hours with - days. In some cases even weeks. It's much more rich and in depth, and you become much more attached to the characters - how can you replicate that with a movie that doesn't even last two hours and does everything for you?

Many books I've read have stuck with me for weeks, leaving me in a state of shock or melancholy or inspiration. With some of them, that feeling returns every time I think back on the story. Sometimes, as melodramatic as it sounds, you feel like you've suffered a personal loss due to it affecting you so deeply or simply because the author had the audacity to end the story.

I'll admit there have been a couple movies that have given me this strong emotional response, but they are few and far between and the feeling is usually far more subtle; it's more likely my emotional response will be how it didn't even come close to adding up to the book, a complaint given by readers so often it's become cliche.

Finally, as others pointed out above, it's horribly dismissive to put reading off as pointless because it's imaginary. Regardless of all the flaws with putting off imaginary exercises as pointless, there are many other things that are imagined, like watching movies or listening to songs, that you guys probably take part in (hell, I'd venture that a great deal of non-fiction includes quite a bit of imaginary stuff lol). Thus this is hypocritical at best.

But the difference with reading fiction is that you're getting lost in something that's not real while at the same time exercising your brain and improving your reading ability. It's a much more engaged form of entertainment than many others - how could that not be a good thing?

I empathize with the perspective of non-readers. I've gone through my non-fiction-only phases, but I think it misses the mark by a long shot, and I've come back. Both have their place and a non-fiction reader is not somehow more balanced for not having a taste in fiction - in fact, I'd suggest that an imbalance existing in their mental strengths is much more likely.

Don't read fiction if it simply doesn't speak to you, but there's no reason to act high and mighty about it. Chance are you might be missing the point; that doesn't mean the point isn't there.

By chance - a few of my favourite writers have written books about the genius of Shakespeare. And those books are near the top of my 'to read' pile.

So - I will be more open minded to the pleasures of ol' Will in a few weeks time.

Here is a fun curiosity.

Voltaire, Tolstoy, George Bernard Shaw, Darwin, Tokien, Dr Samuel Johnson, Samuel Pepys and King George III all hated Shakespeare.

A couple other writers in the list (below) hated Shakespeare as well - but they are not writers I am familiar with.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/22551/qui...hakespeare

(10-25-2013 09:37 PM)Beyond Borders Wrote:  It's a mistake to filter every aspect of life through the lens of rational motives - i.e., how much direct value do I get out of this as opposed to this, etc.

There's more to life than complete rationality and efficiency, and men who miss that subject themselves to a psychological handicap, in my honest opinion. What about doing something because it's enjoyable? Don't get me wrong, if you don't enjoy fiction you don't enjoy it, but the guys wearing a lack of fiction-reading as a badge of pride, or even looking down on other men and comparing them to women for their taste in fiction, may be inflating their own personal values just a tad.

There's nothing wrong with having free time in life and using that free time to do stuff out of pure enjoyment. Plenty of things we do for enjoyment have less intellectual and emotional benefit than fiction. Watching sports. TV. Having a drink with friends. Eating food because it tastes good rather than just because it is our fuel. Watching a sunrise. Not to mention that each of these has its more subtle rewards; not everything needs a direct and quantifiable benefit.

And what about escape? I try to restrict my fiction reading to just before bedtime. I work in the day and also put my energy into a lot of other rational pursuits that are meant to further my career or improve me in some manner. But I think focusing my energy in these directions every waking moment becomes too much (I sometimes wonder if I overdo it).

You've got to give yourself a break sometimes.

Fiction is relaxing and helps me to wind down. It gives me a chance to escape the demands of my own life for a moment, to get lost in another world. A half hour to an hour before bed-time is usually what I put in; I sleep better and feel like my imagination is the better for it.

It has done wonders for my insomnia.

Even further, I take issue with the idea that fiction serves no place in the field of learning. For one thing, a lot of fiction deals with philisophical issues - the author just uses it as a way to convey their views by tapping into emotion. Fiction allows someone to show how they think a person should apply their morals to real life situations, bringing the lesson alive rather than just explaining it. Making the lesson more emotional and complex.

On a deeper level, some experts believe fiction is an emotional release and that we need it more now than ever due to the high levels of stress in our lives. Read "Million-dollar Outlines" (a non-fiction book lol) for a breakdown of this concept about how stories fit into society.

Like watching movies, the brain follows patterns in fiction much the same way it does in movies. In other words, when you're watching a movie and the character is going through a high-stress situation, your brain doesn't react as if it's observing that situation, it reacts as if it's actually going through that situation. As if you are the character. The same is true with books.

The author of "Million-dollar Outlines" suggest it's possible we use these stories not just as tools to teach each other but as a way to condition and strengthen our brains for dangerous or taxing situations without putting ourselves in actually dangerous situations. You'll notice that many stories are about a character going through a train of challenges that most of us would never in a million years want to go through in life, especially in some of the more stressful forms of fiction, like thrillers or horror. Sometimes we torture our characters.

So why in the world would we subject ourselves to that if our brain doesn't know the difference enough to categorize these as made-up stories? Possibly because it's like strengthening a muscle. You train it in the gym and it then becomes more prepared to cope with the lesser challenges faced in an everyday life. You develop a stronger base to work with and your job and family doesn't make you want to have a nervous breakdown or pick up a gun and blow your brains out.

An emotional rollercoaster ride without risk is like a training program for your mind.

Before you scoff at this notion of "training" with something that is "made up," don't forget about sports and working out your physical body with artificial exercises. What are these "games" we play with these artificial rules but challenges that we make up with the end result being to keep ourselves in shape? Are they not just as silly?

If something must have a direct real-life purpose in order to be worthy, you might as well only work out with real-life activities, like chopping firewood and climbing big rocks. That could make for a great work-out program, to be sure, but throwing out all forms of exercise or sport on this basis would be ludicrous. These other forms of exercise give us a way to make it more fun and interesting, and to keep it in our lives even when there are not many rounds of madrone or climbable rocks lying around in our environment.

What about creativity? Has the manosphere become so love-stricken with rhetoric that it has forgotten the value of the creative brain? As Napoleon Hill would have said, everything great produced by man begins as an idea. Imagining what does not exist is one of the most powerful capabilities your mind possesses.

While reading non-fiction introduces great new ideas, there are perhaps better ways of developing your imaginative faculties. Fiction is one of them.

Along these lines, reading is much more of a creative exercise than watching a movie - the two are hardly comparable. One is passive and one is more active. Because you only get part of the story in the words on a page. You still have to create the image in your brain on your own, and you do so without even being prompted to. It's automatic.

You also fill in a lot of the blanks, as often an author only suggests things and you create the rest - talk to different readers, asking them to describe characters and scenes, and they'll often all describe something different. On another level, fiction promotes creativity because it accustoms your brain to believing in things that do not at the moment exist.

Someone mentioned that movies create a more emotional response for them than books. Only someone who doesn't read much fiction would say this. A book is something you spend hours with - days. In some cases even weeks. It's much more rich and in depth, and you become much more attached to the characters - how can you replicate that with a movie that doesn't even last two hours and does everything for you?

Many books I've read have stuck with me for weeks, leaving me in a state of shock or melancholy or inspiration. With some of them, that feeling returns every time I think back on the story. Sometimes, as melodramatic as it sounds, you feel like you've suffered a personal loss due to it affecting you so deeply or simply because the author had the audacity to end the story.

I'll admit there have been a couple movies that have given me this strong emotional response, but they are few and far between and the feeling is usually far more subtle; it's more likely my emotional response will be how it didn't even come close to adding up to the book, a complaint given by readers so often it's become cliche.

Finally, as others pointed out above, it's horribly dismissive to put reading off as pointless because it's imaginary. Regardless of all the flaws with putting off imaginary exercises as pointless, there are many other things that are imagined, like watching movies or listening to songs, that you guys probably take part in (hell, I'd venture that a great deal of non-fiction includes quite a bit of imaginary stuff lol). Thus this is hypocritical at best.

But the difference with reading fiction is that you're getting lost in something that's not real while at the same time exercising your brain and improving your reading ability. It's a much more engaged form of entertainment than many others - how could that not be a good thing?

I empathize with the perspective of non-readers. I've gone through my non-fiction-only phases, but I think it misses the mark by a long shot, and I've come back. Both have their place and a non-fiction reader is not somehow more balanced for not having a taste in fiction - in fact, I'd suggest that an imbalance existing in their mental strengths is much more likely.

Don't read fiction if it simply doesn't speak to you, but there's no reason to act high and mighty about it. Chance are you might be missing the point; that doesn't mean the point isn't there.

_________________________

This short essay is one of the best things I have ever read on the Forum. Absolutely wonderful prose, demanding to be read aloud.

QC

Did Christopher Marlowe fake his own death and continue publishing his plays under the name of William Shakespeare?

The evidence is non-existent. Yet strangely a recent tribute to Marlowe at Westminster Abbey includes a question mark next to his year of death as a record that many believe he faked his own death. Thus providing public support for the anti-Shakespeare conspiracy theorists.

Pretty bizarre.



You can read about it here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1...peare.html

(10-25-2013 09:37 PM)Beyond Borders Wrote:  There's nothing wrong with having free time in life and using that free time to do stuff out of pure enjoyment. Plenty of things we do for enjoyment have less intellectual and emotional benefit than fiction. Watching sports. TV. Having a drink with friends. Eating food because it tastes good rather than just because it is our fuel. Watching a sunrise. Not to mention that each of these has its more subtle rewards; not everything needs a direct and quantifiable benefit.

And what about escape? I try to restrict my fiction reading to just before bedtime. I work in the day and also put my energy into a lot of other rational pursuits that are meant to further my career or improve me in some manner. But I think focusing my energy in these directions every waking moment becomes too much (I sometimes wonder if I overdo it).

You've got to give yourself a break sometimes.

Spot on.

I have a demanding day job, a second creative job, play sport, gym, study, and occasionally act in local theatre. This is why I don't beat myself for spending an hour playing video games now and then, or surfing the net during downtime.

I'm not convinced bold declarations of the utter exclusion of simple pleasures is mastery, but an unrealistic overreaction to poor impulse control that is a setup for failure.

(10-22-2013 08:22 AM)RexImperator Wrote:  I think stories themselves are integral to the way the human mind understands and relates to the world. So in a sense it doesn't matter if they are true or not. You can still gain insight from either one.

I'll bet most of the true histories you've read that stick in your mind were edited to form a narrative.

Exactly, I remember my spiritual mentor mentioning how people would be reading a book and after all they can ask after is "was it real?" Whether it was real or not, the answer did it cause a SHIFT IN YOU?

While I rarely read novels nowadays, I DO watch tons of psychological thrillers . It influences me to live a rather intense and stimulating lifestyle.

P.S...One of the last books I read was "Dirty Combat" which a handful of people state the book was FICTION despite it playing out as if it were non-fiction. FAKE or NOT it was inspirational to me because in my mind all I can think was "This guy did all that in his lifetime!?!? What am I doing with my life!?!?! Lets kick it up a notch"

Just because the characters and story are made up, and perhaps there is magic or sci-fi tech, does not mean that there is nothing to be learned from fiction.

Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series is one of my favorites. Part of the reason I like it is that all the wizard's rules are applicable to real life (or at least raise interesting questions). Another is that at several points the characters have vehement arguments over what is and is not possible, and would should or should not be done, ethically speaking, and about free will versus predestination.

The vast majority of books throughout history are gone. The ones with staying power (fiction or non) are worth reading because their authors managed to key in to some aspect of human nature or Truth, and this theory of human nature is worth studying.

Also, plenty of non-fiction writers publish lies. Just because a book is about history doesn't make it true. This includes acts of omission. I was never taught that Francis Bacon was the last Chancellor to sit and watch a man being tortured on the rack, or that Britain infiltrated Hollywood to woo us into the world wars, or that Hitler was a huge admirer of Henry Ford, or that IBM sold business machines to the Nazis.

That would seem to be pertinent information. The lack of it in the little history that people know makes so-called historical works worse than fiction.

(11-03-2013 10:21 PM)metalheadatheart Wrote:  Just because a book is about history doesn't make it true. This includes acts of omission. I was never taught that Francis Bacon was the last Chancellor to sit and watch a man being tortured on the rack, or that Britain infiltrated Hollywood to woo us into the world wars, or that Hitler was a huge admirer of Henry Ford, or that IBM sold business machines to the Nazis.

One of my hobbies is local history, and I recently came across teaching resources from the 1888. It was interesting to read primary sources without the taint of politically-correct demonization of any knowledge that existed in the time of 'White Male Sexually-Repressed Imperialist Privilege'.

And what did I find? A compassionate defence of Aboriginal Culture, which argued their primitivism came from the harshness of the environment, which left them in constant survival mode, and, since, they lacked the privileged comfort of English Society, they struggled to advance.

Basically, this widely-read 1888 textbook was telling white children to check their privilege out of compassion for their hard lot in life.

The 'enlightened minds' of every era think they know what's best for society and believe they are doing the right thing. The future will similarly demonise the feminists and young thinkers of today.

I'm the same way, anytimes friends recommend a scifi movie or a nonfiction book I give them a look and they immediately stop and say... "i know i know It couldn't happen in real life."

As far as books go I love true crime, biographies, war stories, even cultural commentary type books. For movies I'll watch fake movies obviously though I love based on a true story type stuff. I really like documentaries though.

If your like me check out the doc square grouper, cocain cowboys, the karlton hines story,, etc, etc, etc

Quote:...the privileged comfort of English Society...

Where did this privilege come from? It was hard won and built throughout the centuries.

There was no foreign aid in the beginning. All the "privilege" was dug out of the ground, built, invented, and invested in for centuries, with each generation building upon what the last had left them.

Those of you thinking novels are just fancy need to read deeper.

A good novel isn't just about a nice story. Every word in it has a meaning and every chapter is an argument.

I read the idiot by Dostoyevsky this week and ill be damned if you tell me its a book about an overly nice guy society doesn't stand and nothing more.

Every great passage contributes to a deeper meaning and a lot of insight can be had from novels.