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In a discussion thread about voting on awards and "best of" lists:
"I should like [that book] better than I do" makes sense only if you accept the axiom "I should be a different person than I am." People who do accept that tend to be working on things other than whether they like a specific book or even style of book: it tends to be about personality traits and/or things that are commonly considered virtues, like "I should be more patient" or "I should keep my temper when X happens."
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axelrod posted about Le Guin's introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness and some things they disagree with in it, and why. I commented on one point, Axelrod responded, and I wrote:
I think (I'd have to dig out more stuff, and the book with "Is Gender Necessary? Redux" isn't to hand) that she was using [gender] to mean some combination of social roles and physiological/phenotypic sex, possibly with less awareness of the ambiguities there than some of us now have.
I also think that Gethenians wouldn't have the same sort of gender that most humans do, even when they're in kemmer, because the physiology and what they do sexually during a given kemmer aren't connected to most of their other social roles. That people in kemmer, unless they're celibate by choice, take those few days a month off from the rest of society, either at home with established partners or at the kemmerhouse, means that most decisions, large or small aren't made in that context.
And now I'm wondering whether Gethenians expect different sorts of reasoning from people who are pregnant or nursing. I don't think Le Guin touched on that, either in Left Hand of Darkness or in the short stories either set on Gethen (I think that's only "Winter's King" and "Coming of Age in Karhide") or touching on it (there are Gethenians in "The Shobies' Story").
An old one I overlooked in the last round of these, tofrostfox, who was asking whether to cull her Heinlein books:
Yes, you should. You don't like them and won't reread them.
Our slow culling is going by "is either of us likely to read this again?" modified by keeping things for sentimental value (rare so far, but I haven't gotten to the shelf where I will have to decide about the Greek); by the possibility of monetary value (meaning "see about selling" rather than "add to giveaway pile downstairs"); and by "I can always get it on Project Gutenberg if it turns out I want it" (so we gave away a massive hardcover Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, and some paperback George Eliot). The Gutenberg doesn't mean we don't keep anything public domain: it's a modifier for the uncertainties.
amaebi said that it had occurred to her recently that "on the whole, humans pay remarkably little attention" and asked whether people agreed with her. I wrote:
Compared to what? By which I mean both "how does that compare to other animals?" and "it sounds as though you're using some sort of external-to-humans scale or standard." The human brain is a very good pattern-finding organ. That lets us classify and, yes, in some cases ignore the details. But some of that is necessary: if I focus on the details of what 50 people around me are doing, the shapes of their faces and so on, at best I may miss my stop (which sometimes is trivial but not always) and at worst I trip and fall, because there's finite conscious awareness and some of it has to go to movement. I need to not trip over a small child; that she looks like someone else, or has a unique smile, is less important in that moment.
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nellorat is thinking about whether "the general structure of human friendships is fundamentally not ready to withstand the kind of detail on subjects ripe for disagreement that LJ provides, at least without the almost automatic similarity of attitudes that historically most real-life communities have caused."
My reply:
I wonder how much of that was genuine similarity of attitudes, though certainly there has been some of that, and how much was much greater understanding/expectation that only certain attitudes could be voiced, and only certain activities spoken of.
It might be easier or harder, depending on personality and the specifics, to bite one's tongue and not say certain things, than to say them and have a large argument. It was almost certainly easier for the people with the accepted attitudes to not even know that one or two people they knew were biting their tongues when certain subjects came up. I suspect that to some extent your, and my, self-selected social groups are a way of dealing with the extent that our views on various subjects—not all of them the same subjects—are decidedly in the minority.
In a discussion thread about voting on awards and "best of" lists:
"I should like [that book] better than I do" makes sense only if you accept the axiom "I should be a different person than I am." People who do accept that tend to be working on things other than whether they like a specific book or even style of book: it tends to be about personality traits and/or things that are commonly considered virtues, like "I should be more patient" or "I should keep my temper when X happens."
axelrod posted about Le Guin's introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness and some things they disagree with in it, and why. I commented on one point, Axelrod responded, and I wrote: I think (I'd have to dig out more stuff, and the book with "Is Gender Necessary? Redux" isn't to hand) that she was using [gender] to mean some combination of social roles and physiological/phenotypic sex, possibly with less awareness of the ambiguities there than some of us now have.
I also think that Gethenians wouldn't have the same sort of gender that most humans do, even when they're in kemmer, because the physiology and what they do sexually during a given kemmer aren't connected to most of their other social roles. That people in kemmer, unless they're celibate by choice, take those few days a month off from the rest of society, either at home with established partners or at the kemmerhouse, means that most decisions, large or small aren't made in that context.
And now I'm wondering whether Gethenians expect different sorts of reasoning from people who are pregnant or nursing. I don't think Le Guin touched on that, either in Left Hand of Darkness or in the short stories either set on Gethen (I think that's only "Winter's King" and "Coming of Age in Karhide") or touching on it (there are Gethenians in "The Shobies' Story").
An old one I overlooked in the last round of these, to
frostfox, who was asking whether to cull her Heinlein books:Yes, you should. You don't like them and won't reread them.
Our slow culling is going by "is either of us likely to read this again?" modified by keeping things for sentimental value (rare so far, but I haven't gotten to the shelf where I will have to decide about the Greek); by the possibility of monetary value (meaning "see about selling" rather than "add to giveaway pile downstairs"); and by "I can always get it on Project Gutenberg if it turns out I want it" (so we gave away a massive hardcover Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, and some paperback George Eliot). The Gutenberg doesn't mean we don't keep anything public domain: it's a modifier for the uncertainties.
amaebi said that it had occurred to her recently that "on the whole, humans pay remarkably little attention" and asked whether people agreed with her. I wrote:Compared to what? By which I mean both "how does that compare to other animals?" and "it sounds as though you're using some sort of external-to-humans scale or standard." The human brain is a very good pattern-finding organ. That lets us classify and, yes, in some cases ignore the details. But some of that is necessary: if I focus on the details of what 50 people around me are doing, the shapes of their faces and so on, at best I may miss my stop (which sometimes is trivial but not always) and at worst I trip and fall, because there's finite conscious awareness and some of it has to go to movement. I need to not trip over a small child; that she looks like someone else, or has a unique smile, is less important in that moment.
nellorat is thinking about whether "the general structure of human friendships is fundamentally not ready to withstand the kind of detail on subjects ripe for disagreement that LJ provides, at least without the almost automatic similarity of attitudes that historically most real-life communities have caused."My reply:
I wonder how much of that was genuine similarity of attitudes, though certainly there has been some of that, and how much was much greater understanding/expectation that only certain attitudes could be voiced, and only certain activities spoken of.
It might be easier or harder, depending on personality and the specifics, to bite one's tongue and not say certain things, than to say them and have a large argument. It was almost certainly easier for the people with the accepted attitudes to not even know that one or two people they knew were biting their tongues when certain subjects came up. I suspect that to some extent your, and my, self-selected social groups are a way of dealing with the extent that our views on various subjects—not all of them the same subjects—are decidedly in the minority.