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Off Topic » in reply to A definition from Heinlein's "Notebooks"

Heinlein and me, and stuff
Mary Anne — (archived)

Stuff first:

Thank you for responding to my questions. Your frustration is palpable. Have you had an effect? Yes, I think so. I've become a better arguer. ;)

Although I know you offered your suggestion that the world already has its examples of left-driven societies in the failed Communist states in earnest, it reaches too far. I could make a similar analogy with right-driven societies and Franco's Spain. The right undermines its cause when it tries to connect the dots between Social Security and the Comintern. Some of those dots are not dots, but freckles. They're organic, and there is no connection to be made.

If you want to make a genuine case, I suggest you look at a nation like Sweden, which has some very good things going for it, but some not-so-great things as well. Also, though it's a democracy, it has traditionally been ethnically uniform, in the same way that Japan has been. It doesn't face the challenges of multiple ethnicities that the US has always faced.

When one makes an extreme comparison with many unlikely factors, the entire argument is gone, because the person on the other end of it looks at the extreme position and says, if only inside, "How dumb."

As an example of this effect, take a deep breath, relax, and read the following:

BUSH = HITLER

What is your reaction to that?? :)

You do see what I mean.

On to Heinlein:

I know Heinlein is one of the deans of SF.

I like his juveniles.

But I don't like his adult novels. I find his idolatry of the female anatomy to be inversely proportional to his ability to write a realistic female character. I find his concepts of harmonious communal sex downright comical. Suffice to say, a man with such unrealistic ideas about half of the human race is hardly someone I would turn to for advice about the structure of society.

Heinlein can write aphorisms with the best of them. But for a realistic take on the world, Ben Franklin's got it all over him.

Franklin was one of those idealists who wanted the greatest good for the greatest number. He was neither curmudgeonly nor lacking in altruism, though as a politician and diplomat he would have had to be suspicious. I suspect he made a better neighbor that the Man on the Mountain, the Heinleinian ideal. And if he wanted to be controlled, the world has never noticed.

Please note that the good done in the world, as well as a good portion of the evil, has been done by people who organize things that involve other people. Anyone who says that someone who is any kind of leader in the world, be it governmental, religious, social, or business, does what he does without exerting some kind of control over others is fooling himself. The curmudgeon who just wants to be left alone usually is.

Regards--
Mary Anne

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