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Nice Planet 13: This Planet Sucks

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Re: Nice Planet 13: This Planet Sucks

Kepler said:
Now it's serious. It's happening to white people.
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Same thing with AIDS. Few people really cared until that sociopathic dentist in Florida in the late 80s found a way to deliberately infect a handful of his white, female patients. THEN, it was suddenly a national epidemic.

No one actually does anything about a tragedy until it affects middle class white people. 'Twas ever thus.
 
Re: Nice Planet 13: This Planet Sucks

FadeToBlack&Gold said:
Same thing with AIDS. Few people really cared until that sociopathic dentist in Florida in the late 80s found a way to deliberately infect a handful of his white, female patients. THEN, it was suddenly a national epidemic.

No one actually does anything about a tragedy until it affects middle class white people. 'Twas ever thus.
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As a middle class white person I'd say that's mighty white of 'em.
 
Re: Nice Planet 13: This Planet Sucks

Slap Shot said:
I guess it was only a matter of time. I imagine we'll eventually have real life Rollerball and The Running Man too.
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I'm actually interested in this. Human behavior/sociology fascinates me. I'm not for the rapey/killing shock factor stuff, but am interested to see how people would react in this situation. They are willing participants, crimes will be prosecuted, so I guess let's roll the dice.

If it was straight up Hunger Games stuff, no thank you, similar to what Kepler said about the end game.
 
Re: Nice Planet 13: This Planet Sucks

FadeToBlack&Gold said:
Same thing with AIDS. Few people really cared until that sociopathic dentist in Florida in the late 80s found a way to deliberately infect a handful of his white, female patients. THEN, it was suddenly a national epidemic.

No one actually does anything about a tragedy until it affects middle class white people. 'Twas ever thus.
Click to expand...

A good point, Fade, but the scope of ambivalence toward suffering is wider than that. I should hypertext this poem by W.H. Auden, but I don't know how do do that:

Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
 
Re: Nice Planet 13: This Planet Sucks

I think that poem is about something else. Not indifference, but the fact that even the most significant things are not universal. To me it's a hopeful message -- Big wheel keep on turnin'. Emerson has a poem about the day his child died. I won't quote it, it's awful and long like all Emerson's poems. It was a perfect, sun-drenched summer day, and all about was peace and life. The world -- even the human, non-natural world -- is not ambivalent towards suffering, it just has a lot of other stuff going on.

BTW, thank you for quoting the poem. It's beautiful and interesting and I'm sure it can carry far more than just my interpretation.
 
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Re: Nice Planet 13: This Planet Sucks

Brenthoven said:
I'm actually interested in this. Human behavior/sociology fascinates me. I'm not for the rapey/killing shock factor stuff, but am interested to see how people would react in this situation. They are willing participants, crimes will be prosecuted, so I guess let's roll the dice.

If it was straight up Hunger Games stuff, no thank you, similar to what Kepler said about the end game.
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That's where I was going with my post - I think we'll eventually get there and sadly no one will blink.
 
Re: Nice Planet 13: This Planet Sucks

Kepler said:
I think that poem is about something else. Not indifference, but the fact that even the most significant things are not universal. To me it's a hopeful message -- Big wheel keep on turnin'. Emerson has a poem about the day his child died. I won't quote it, it's awful and long like all Emerson's poems. It was a perfect, sun-drenched summer day, and all about was peace and life. The world -- even the human, non-natural world -- is not ambivalent towards suffering, it just has a lot of other stuff going on.

BTW, thank you for quoting the poem. It's beautiful and interesting and I'm sure it can carry far more than just my interpretation.
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This response illustrates the value of the exchange of ideas. I'd never read the poem that way, perhaps distracted by its beauty, but I see your point. It certainly does not describe a cold, hard indifference--the language is too beautiful and peaceful, including the last phrase. Of all the metaphors in the poem, the expensive delicate ship sailing calmly on really fits your reading of it.
 
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Re: Nice Planet 13: This Planet Sucks

Kepler said:
If that's what you take from this story I pity you.
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It's called looking at a second source, especially a local one. Not to mention, European countries impose fines for calling out a person's "difference" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHVTM4Knwao ), so of course they're not going to tell you everything.

Does this blanket a race? No. What it does do, however is show the double standard of reporting, how if this were white-on-black it'd be all over the place, whereas with the way it is, it's "panned", and only brought to attention by random folk.
 
Re: Nice Planet 13: This Planet Sucks

FlagDUDE08 said:
It's called looking at a second source, especially a local one. Not to mention, European countries impose fines for calling out a person's "difference" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHVTM4Knwao ), so of course they're not going to tell you everything.

Does this blanket a race? No. What it does do, however is show the double standard of reporting, how if this were white-on-black it'd be all over the place, whereas with the way it is, it's "panned", and only brought to attention by random folk.
Click to expand...

"Boy, have you found a home."
 
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