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tsuwm: his characters are approximately one-dimentional and his stories lack any spark. Yeah, tsuwm, I checked out the book MARTIAN KNIGHTLIFE from the library partly because of the scantily clad female on the cover and partly because I was curious to see what James P. Hogan's science fiction was like. Now due to jheem and your pans I can't bring myself to read it. Thanks.  But I feel a kinship with this man, particularly with the thoughts behind this quote... " Every human society possesses its own cultural myths that help hold it together. Darwinian fixations on competitions notwithstanding, humans are at heart a cooperative animal, and a commonly shared structure of beliefs in fundamental truths provides the social glue that binds a culture. The beliefs don't have to be true to be effective. Every culture believes itself to be unique in that its own beliefs are true, of course, and it appears that ours is little different. Well, yes, we do claim to be different in that we attempt to check out what we believe against reality. But as we have seen, [In his book] it turns out to be all-too-easy to proclaim the verdict as being what we "know" it ought to be, or would have it be, rather than what reality actually says, laying the idealized scientific paradigm open to the charge that some cynics have made of Christianity and socialism: A good idea: somebody should try it sometime." ______________________ JAMES P HOGAN Now Faldage, tsuwm, jheem, Fallable, of troy, etaoin, WW, AnnaStrop, Jackie, and anyone else interested in the subject; if you have any disagreement with Hogan's statement above , please let us try to resolve it now so that we can then proceed in concert with this important discussion. 
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Carpal Tunnel
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>I can't bring myself to read it.
well, if you actually want to read some SF by JPH, try Inherit the Stars (1977), written before he got all cranky.
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Now due to jheem and your pans I can't bring myself to read it.
I seriously doubt that my opinion could sway anybody so easily. So, please don't blame me.
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Carpal Tunnel
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any disagreement with Hogan's statement above
Not so sure I would disagree with anything he said in the quoted
statement. Was it supposed to be a declaration of the irrelevancy
of evolution?
As for tsuwm or jheem turning you off from reading Hogan sci-fi, I
should think you'd relish the opportunity to prove them wrong, at
least to your own satisfaction.
It'd also be nice if whoever widened out this thread would figure
it out and do whatever is necessary to narrow it back down.
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Carpal Tunnel
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" Every human society possesses its own cultural myths that help hold it together. This assumes that *culture is something that one can or even should measure or define. It also seems to imply that myth is stronger than reality... I'm not sure I agree... but let us continue... Darwinian fixations on competitions notwithstanding, humans are at heart a cooperative animal, and a commonly shared structure of beliefs in fundamental truths provides the social glue that binds a culture. It gives rise to a definition of "a culture", it doesn't necessarilly "bind" people together. Those "notwithstanding competitions" are said to have the same effect. It's quite self serving, in this case, to leave them standing outside... all alone.  The beliefs don't have to be true to be effective. Yeah, guns don't kill people, people kill people. Every culture believes itself to be unique in that its own beliefs are true, of course, and it appears that ours is little different. Different? Yes. But not unique and certainly not bound by beliefs. Well, yes, we do claim to be different in that we attempt to check out what we believe against reality. Even if this were true, it certainly wouldn't make us different. But as we have seen, [In his book] it turns out to be all-too-easy to proclaim the verdict as being what we "know" it ought to be, or would have it be, rather than what reality actually says, laying the idealized scientific paradigm open to the charge that some cynics have made of Christianity and socialism: A good idea: somebody should try it sometime." I'd thought Gandhi said that about "civilization", not those specific forms.
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Anonymous
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For an author list of poets and writers of an alternative kind: Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Kerouac, Richard Brautigan, Ken Kesey, Jerzy Kosinski, Ishmail Kadare, George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, Aldous Huxley, Rebecca West (travel author), Kahlil Gilbran, Hunter S. Thompson, J D Saliger, Carl Sandburg, Basho, Saki, Mark Twain. These authors are not necessarily writing today, but their ideas are still relevant to our lives as history repeats itself. Choosing an author from another culture is usually a breath of fresh air as well - quite far away from the mainstream/globalized culture one is exposed to daily in countries like the United States. Hope this helps.
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Drat, Faldage, it was I that made the screen go wwwwwwwwwwwiiiiiiiiiddddddddddddeeeeeeeeeI think. I never could get those ]pre[ tags to work right. Once I wrote a sentence seventeen yards long on a single line trying to get recognized in the Guiness Book of World Records. They laughed. Some computer geek had programed his computer to write a sentence that could reach to the moon. But no, James P. Hogan didn't write that paragraph with regard to evolution, rather, it was more or less his overview of the state of things. And oh yeah, if you see tsuwm tell him I took his advice and will borrow "Inherit the Stars" from the Library whether it has a scantily-clad human female on the cover or not. I certainly don't want to read anything written by anyone who is "cranky", except those occasional posts sometimes written by you Faldage and they are usually short. Now I go to fix the wideness of my posts so to fit even the most narrow of minds.
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Welcome, Anonymous, I must say that's quite an array of authors that you offer this morn; and let it be known that any friend of Nicholas Nickleby is a friend of mine. But I must admit to some concern...no...some fear that you are either an astute hacker or a ghost. Personally I think you are Mark Twain. He is just the sort who would shamelessly promote his own books after his own death. Welcome!
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Uh, Musick I'm having a strange computer problem -
my internet connection to Awad is somehow chopping up my posts. (?)
I will respond to your well made points after I get this little technicality cleared up.
- Milum.
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To hell with logic and reasoning, Musick, let's me and you play a mind game. Fine, I suspected that you would cooperate if I put my words into your mouth, so let's begin... Indian tribes are neat little units of culture. Most American indian tribes are kinda like the Jews in that their name for themselves is "the chosen ones" or, simply, "the people". As we would expect, each tribe of "chosen ones" has evolved distinctive traits, skills, and customs that serve to re-enforce the idea of their own uniqueness among mankind, sometimes to extent of denying manhood to all other tribes and considering them as we consider dangerous animals - sometimes killing them for sport and food. Now here is the thought experiment: consider the individual indians in a tribe as individuals cells in a human body, each a part of a organized whole working towards the continuation of the larger unit, i.e., the tribal body. The social machineries in place either allow or disallow the tribe to continue to exist through time by virtue of the aptness of their particular construction. A single indian, like a single cell, can not continue through time. So why not consider each tribe an entity within itself, after all that is what we do when we consider the "I" in a collection of cells that is ourselves. After intergrating this collection of thoughts and after some practice at referring to indian tribes as, for example, Mister Cherokee and Mister Choctaw, you will then find the answer to your own questions.
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