A situation with great comic potential

On the TV front my latest addiction is HBO’s Rome. Well done stuff (for the most part). Just saw the whole thing on DVD, season 1. Looking forward to season 2, which starts this month. Rome tells the familiar story of the end of the republic & the rise of the empire (Julius Ceasar period, Season 1 ends with Ceasar’s assasination in the Senate), but two of the main characters are ordinary legionaires/soldiers (one very nobel - the centurion Veronus who becomes a senator at the end of Season 1 - & one fun but mercinary like - legionaire Pullo) - with ordinary problems & aspirations - it’s like Roman historical tales for the common man or something , but intertwined with the decadence & glamor & troubles (violence, dangerous relationships, etc.) of the ruling class - very interesting approach. Also, the show pays greater attention to social & religious nuances of ancient Romans, unlike all other flicks about Romans that I’ve seen.

On the movies front, I like Amelie, & pretty much anything by Jim Jarmusch. Most of you guys will probably like Jarmusch’s flick Dead Man, it is anti-western civilization also (well, maybe just the westward expansion part of US history only). My favorite Jarmusch flick is Mystery Train, about 3 groups of people (a young Japanese couple, an Italian widow, and 3 factoy workers) in Memphis on one night. The ghost of Elvis in that flick.

- Sujewa

I’m bad… I like my Sci Fi — although, truth be told, I watch a grand total of maybe two or three hours of tv a week… less if you take into account the tivo’ed-out commercials

Janene

Now, see, I really don’t care much for cable TV. If I could just get the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, and Animal Planet (and pay an appropriate price for it) I prolly would, but as cable TV is now, we just don’t bother with it.

Ok, I’d definately call this a failure to communicate…

Wrong. In all (or most) human societies there have been violent aggressors. The world you imagine is not real, as in, you ignore the inherent warlike & distructive nature of humans - something we need ed in order to survive, btw, in an often hostile natural world. Of course our violent tendencies needs to be kept in check. Ancient civilizations (Mayans, Greeks, Indians) killed thousands of people using very simple weapons. Many of those civilizations were farming & hunting civilizations.

First a note: I am NOT suggesting that humans are not violent, however, without the concetration of coercive forces (ie hierarchy), violence is limited to the scale of interpersonal conflict. I hit you with a stick — you hit me back. Sucks for you and me, but not at all the same as war, and totally incapable of creating the force necessary to create something like the holocaust.

This is a big lie. Americans are not wealthy because of Third World exploitation. If there is so much wealth to be made from the Third World, why isn’t the Third World itself incredibly wealthy?

Americans are wealthy because third world resources (especially labor resources) can be leveraged for our benefit. Tell me how ‘wealthy’ you would be if you had to purchase all of your goods from people making twenty or thirty USD an hour. Instead, you buy stuff produced at labor rates of 5USd a day — or worse (sometimes better) — but always at rates far lower than American workers would be willing or able to do.

Really? I’d love to see an American that can ‘to a big degree stay out of [the economy]’. Food, water, clothing, shelter… what exactly can we americans provide for ourselves without participating in the economy? Never mind ‘luxury’ goods.

Re: the slaves issue: not calling things by their proper name is intellectual dishonesty.

I dunno, ‘wage slave’, IMO has been a well established term for a while… and then, of course, there is true slavery in the world (see Northen Marianas Scandel) and there is Indentured Servitude in much of the third world, and there are all of the issues with ‘blood diamonds’ and the way they are mined. I don;t think that slavery is too far off the mark, when an individual has only the choice ‘do THIS, or starve to death.’

I don’t want to live like wildlife. Thanks. I like cable TV, my Mac & checking out new bands.

I like those things, too. I (personally) don’t really plan on becoming a H-G living in a brush shelter… but I DO recognize that they may have a whole lote to teach me (us) about living in harmony with our very own life support system.

The Sengalese did not survive because they are primitive — they survived because they understand the world around them. Seems like a useful trait to me.

Natural disasters are often not the result of civilization (that’s why they are clled NATURAL disasters).

Oh, sure. But just like New Orleans and Katrina, the damage caused was HUGELY exacerbated by our unwillingness to be aware of natural systems. How might things have been different if we lived with the world rather than trying to remake it in ways that simply don’t work. (I’m refering, of course, to the decimation of the wetlands south of New Orleans.) Not saying that there would not have been a hurricane, but rather that the hurricane might have been no big deal if we weren’t so damned arrogant as to think that we can do anything we want without consequence.

But I think my chosen way of life is far different than that most who have commented here would prefer, so I guess we go our separate ways.

Perhaps… however, I think the one thing everyone here has in common is that we all wish to have a ‘better’, interpersonal, relationship based life, rather than an impersonal, work and economics based life.

Janene

Fair enough. I do hope you at least give the ‘The Thirty These’ a fair chance. There’s quite a bit there and it might take a while to absorb it, so I ask you not to rush to judge it; let it sit for a while.

Having said that, take care!