Posts by Paul Litterick
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Jack, I am do no such thing. I may be wrong but I do not think 1984 and the Handmaid's Tale are Sci-Fi and no I do not assume that discussion on popular culture precludes political engagement; but frankly I am getting pissed off with being misrepresented so I am not saying anything more here.
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Besides, since you brought up the Labour party - which in the days of its mass membership was a Marxist organisation...
Really?
- I'd have to point out that according to that tradition analysis *is* action (although hardly exhaustive of it).
Which is one reason I am not a Marxist.
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I wish I had not got involved with this.
Giovanni: yes, there is lots of good political Science Fiction, most of it in book form, most of it written decades ago, a lot of it written by writers who are not specialists in the genre (although 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale don't really count: they are novels of possible political futures. not Sci-Fi). The stuff that is made for television today is simply banal by comparison. And don't get me started on graphic novels.
Lucy: how many people belong to Labour now and how many belonged a few decades back? What is the average age of party members? Political engagement has largely vanished. I am not saying that Sci-Fi is destroying civilisation, but it is a part of a culture where the very people who should be involved, the educated young, are largely absent from debate.
Russell: these cats think I am some sort of square, daddy-o.
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Sure, allegory is no substitute for action, but perhaps you're confusing this space with a political organising forum, Paul.
Please. I may be crazy but I'm not dumb, as someone else once said.
But why blame spaceships? Why not blame Paris Hilton, or the All Blacks, or U2? They all distract people from Serious Discussion, after all.
Because people seem to think the spaceship stories are terribly important, because discussion of events in fictional stories has replaced discussion of events in real life.
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Yeah, but - why are you assuming that everyone here is not informed or active just because *this particular thread* wandered off-topic?
I did no such thing. I was talking about our culture generally, not PAS (I agreed that PAS is an oasis, remember). We live in an era in which political leaders lie to us, in which our entire economy is collapsing and political discussion is diverted by talk of spaceships. I cannot help but see a connexion.
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Emma,
thank you. I did not interpret your comment to mean 'piss off.' I merely think I should avoid arguments with people who accuse me of racism, sexism or antidisestablishmentarianism when I comment about TV shows about spaceships. In future I will just stick to the topic, and if the topic is derailed I will go somewhere else.
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@Paul: I can't be bothered trawling back through 11 pages of comments, but I don't recall you doing anything except complain that the conversation was not to your liking.
No, the conversation, about the global economy and so on, was fine. Then someone comes along and wants to talk about a sci-fi TV show, which is hardly relevant to the topic. I expressed my frustration at such.
However, your partly appeared to be inferring that those who are passive observers of politics, and yet still expect change initiated externally are bound to be disappointed, and don't have the right to complain.
I neither inferred nor implied any such thing. My argument was that we would perhaps be in a better place economically and politically if we had paid more attention to history rather than indulging ourselves in flights of fantasy. People seem to think that political allegory is a substitute for political action. People need to be informed and active about what is going on here and now, not in a galaxy far, far away.
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An admirable sentiment, Sacha, but I think there is a shortage of mutual good intent.
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Sorry, chaps and chapesses: I got riled by being called a bigot merely because I do not like geek culture. From now on, I will ignore Kracklite.
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I guess you get paid by the word.
And no I was not just saying. Your Geek = Aspergers conflation is not trivial, it is tactical. It is a conclusion that only you are drawing, in a desperate attempt to portray me as the aesthetic equivalent of a racist and you as the victim of my bigotry. I think you try a bit harder and argue a bit more honestly.