Posts by Rob Stowell
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if we want morally responsible behaviour from companies then we have to moderate the free market.
Yeah, and we do. Labour laws, health and safety regulations, minimum wages, environmental protections, consumer protections, commercial law, contracts/torts, by-laws, fair-trading- etc etc. You get the picture.
The debate is about whether, and where, and for whose benefit, we weaken regulation in one area, or strengthen it in another.
[eta: AMI- always felt it was the best insurance option. Oh dear.] -
just an unhelpful ‘bollocks’
I have to disagree. It helped me, for one.
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troglodyte?
[eta: if that's too long, 'trog'. ... tiptoes away, whispering apologies for leaving a pebble near the tracks, which was used to achieve this magnificent de-railing. Ballocks indeed.] -
What seems to happen is that our current method of choosing people to manage companies selects for that small percentage of the population that can abandon morals for money.
It's almost worse than that. Who said "a corporation cannot blush"? Companies exist to make money for their shareholders. They don't exist to make moral decisions. Expecting them to is like expecting shampoo to do your homework :)
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:(
Hope the new ventures work out. Like many here, I'm ambivalent about the listener, for sure. But if I could just read the columnists I like, in full, rss-ed and on time? That would be a win! -
Too much work this morning to make any sensible comment, but thanks everyone for this conversation, which is making me unusually thoughtful. While Gopnik's piece is good, I keep going back to Twilight of the books (which I keep linking to, sorry) because for me it casts a longer shadow. (And because I make video, yet my first love is books, and because, despite pinning a photocopy next to my door in a tertiary institution, noone has ever picked up the invitation to talk about it:)
Data seems to show the decline in reading novels pre-dates the internet, and co-relates to rises in visual forms of communication and story-telling.
Interesting to me because it takes the long view, andTaking the long view, it’s not the neglect of reading that has to be explained but the fact that we read at all. “The act of reading is not natural,” Maryanne Wolf writes in “Proust and the Squid"
Airdrop Borges will want to co-opt Proust and the Squid. (Which reminds me of a terrific Firesign Theatre skit where the last stronghold of unhip resistance was squashed under bombings of 'the naked lunch'.)
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...able to find a deeper kind of immersion, or empathetic extension, or loss of self, in reading long fiction
Me too. And I'm aware of that slipping away, and it's uncomfortable, even as other things- a short but intense love-affair with the movies; a busy family life; a job I enjoy- have filled some of the empty space.
For me, I think it's largely the horrible, joyous process of getting older. But both contemporary readers and writing are getting kicked about here: there seems to be a general disconnection. Easy to take a cheap shot, and blame a host of self-consciously post-modern writers for undervaluing and undercutting emotional responses to fiction.
But I can't even convince myself. I'm just not as hungry to be immersed. Hmm. Sobering realisation (and I haven't been drinking.) -
One of my jobs is to tell familial ghostie stories
Hope you have recorded- in some way or t'other- some of these. If only for whanau in future years :)
Great thread for a novel, too: a series of intertwined family ghost stories, connecting land and people, with extending family lives unwinding around them, shaped and shaping the stories. -
we’re losing the ability to read deeply, especially as required by long form fiction. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like the evidence is all around me…
Do you feel you’re losing this ability yourself? That would be interesting. Love to hear more.
Hinting we are, when you do not know a lot about us individually, isn’t so interesting :)
(And have fairy-tales ever ceased flourishing? Genuine question.)
[eta- and what Gio said. Is there a parallel going on here: novels lately just ain't what they were; gosh, readers lately, they simply lack stamina.] -
Nice pic of David in there too. Does he still have a place at Okarito? Good to get away from Chch...