June 6, 2010: Book Club Parable of the Sower

Check-ins
What caused you to overcome inertia to join the book club?
David: Curiosity about what thoughts people had about the book in general and you guys trying to do something inspiring about it
I read it just a month or two ago ... someone was handing it out at OryCon
Ben: Yeah, that would have been Brandon
What inspires you, David?
Progress, change, and stuff like that ... probably why the whole Earthseed/SolSeed thing interests me ... difficulty and overcoming obstacles ... recovering from mistakes with the next generation, next try
What questions do you have for us?
Curious about what people think about the book
Website answered questions I had about SolSeed at the moment
What does it take for people to coalesce when there isn't a catastrophe?
That's a challenging thing because it takes maturity ... otherwise we are waiting until we are forced to do it
Who is mature in this book?
Lauren probably, and her father is holding the community together that they came from
Holding onto the way things were
Without a catastrophe ... the people who hold together a community are the most mature in that early section ... but not seeing what was going to happen
At same time within that community, some of them were more or less active participants in the community while others like Wardell Parish were described as aloof ... inherited a house and was robbed, went back to live where he was before
Part of how things started disintegrating ... people weren't ready yet
What character in the book do you identify with most strongly?
Ben: Hard not to identify with Lauren, especially since I was almost a stereotypical smart kid growing up with other kids not liking me ... and some other people not treating me as if I were as smart as I thought I was
Brandon: It seems like Lauren is the most identifiable with character with most of the people who are reading that character
Two different sides of Lauren has to hide her vulnerable part and think deeply that she doesn't think people can handle it ... yet she's really involved with people, through hyperempathy and just by studying human nature
Probably Shelley identifies with the friend she left behind (Joanne) ... I don't want to pack a bag and go to space, I want to marry my high-school sweetheart ... I would never be Lauren ... If I do have a leadership role I'm more of the person who makes the services than the person who says what the values are (more enact than create)
David: Seems like a lot of the characters like Joanne match Holland personality types, Convential, Creative, Realistic, Investigative etc ... Society structured around the Convential ... seems like we need a balance of all of them ...
David: Seems like what this story somewhat touches on ... or a career book I'm checking out lately, Careers for Unconventional People ... tends to be more holding on to what we are familiar with ... but we need that and trying new things ... we hold on to things that don't work
Like the whole thing of the characters in the book assuming that they'll get back to the good old days before the United States became a third-world country
Things are going to change no matter what ... and we need new thinking to cope with the new order
Yes, but not to throw out the baby with the bath-water
Do you see yourself as an unconventional person? Geared toward anything arts related ... anything that tends to go that way tend to be people on the other side of the Holland hexagon
Pretty much of the premise is that everybody has several of these they focus on ... the idea is that certain jobs or careers or paths also have certain aspects they emphasize, so you may want to find one that matches up with your personality type
What do you think about the plausibility of, or usefulness in the narrative of the company town dynamic ... finding safety in towns guarded by corporations?
Plausible
Founding Fathers: Those who give up freedom for safety deserve neither and will get neither
In the time period the book describes, it's a very rare person who has the freedom to do what they really want
But not as bad as the book/movie The Road ... survive or nothing
Book describes the "paints" and claim that they are bringing down the rich for the benefit of the poor, though some of them came from the upper classes themselves ... does that make any sense?
I got the impression it was mainly a story other people where telling about the folks addicted to Pyro
Brandon: Many radicals/revolutionaries have come from upper-class youth who don't have to work, and may be attracted to danger and bringing down the status quo ... ex. the counterculture of the 60's
A lot of them were college students, not working in the traditional sense but still had schoolwork
Ben: I find it hard to see the activist college students I've met as real revolutionaries
A lot of protest marches ... but difficult to see them doing anything more action oriented than just free speech
Just depends on the kind of action you're talking about ... the Pyro guys don't build anything ... or revolutionary that doesn't just destroy, builds something new (possibly in place of that which is destroyed)
The beginning of the 2026 section ... there was this long quote about revolution ... very cynical view of how civilizations transition from one state to another ... in Lauren's view in this situation there isn't any plan to create something new ... it's just chaos and destruction until someone comes along and makes something up
David: Seems like it doesn't allow for the sort of mixed thing going on like we have now ... she talks about things disintegrating ... theme of holding on to the past way of doing things even if it doesn't work anymore ... but it may not have to be a disintegration as long as we don't blindly hold on to the way things were ... As long as we're sort of okay with all this change, accept that we need to change rather than denying it, maybe we'll be okay
for some change is all bad, some all good
Is there a word for that type of philosophy ... it reminds me of what pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcyle maintenance describes
David: For me the word "maturity" kind of sums it up ... Somewhere somebody was mentioning the maturation of humanity
One thing that was coming to mind ... back to The Road ... similar but taken to further extremes ... like this quote you are talking about ... people remember old hates ... and kill kill kill ... horrifying, suspensful ... immediate visceral reality ... in terms of applying it to the real world ... trying to express the full mix of how we revolutionize and change we need to have ... having trouble expressing it
Related to the whole idea of things disentegrating ... getting better and better and worse and worse at the same time ... building at the same time that we are getting worse ... That's my view on it anyway
Seems like it's humanity's purpose to balancing out toward more of the building up
Ben: That quote, "things are getting better and better and worse and worse all faster and faster" is by Paul H. Ray, who talks about the Cultural Creatives that are going to create something better
The potential for a golden age or a dark age ... even though when there has been a dark age in Europe for example ... humanity has moved forward in fits and starts ... if we don't find out how to do it all together ... no longer have to have cycles of dipping into the ignorance and darkness of the middle ages ... can balance things out if we choose to ... that's part of where the maturity comes
"Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to invdividuals" ... "Civilization is to groups what becoming aware and awake when you meditate is to individuals?"
David: I've been taking some dance classes lately ... one of the instructors brought up
Unconscious Incompetence (just doing whatever on the dance floor)
Conscious Incompetence (taking classes and learning how bad you are as well as how to get better ... might not be as much fun)
Conscious Competence (you can do it well, but you have to think about it all the time)
Unconscious Competence (you no longer have to think about it)
You're able to do what you weren't able to do before
Next call: 7:30pm in two weeks