Tex> The Ishmael trilogy.

You seem to have a rather strange perception of my motives.

I wonder where you got it.

I wonder if the following looks like a reasonable reaction to you, and what you think about the Guru-groupie phenomenon:

Okay, cool. Just wondering. I'm surprised you could get through all three since they are apparently very similar.



Just trying to lighten this thing up a bit. You know, moderatin' and everything.

You find him boring before reading him ?

Have a good time moderating n'stuff.

And let us know what you think of his work and his followers once you read some of that. I would definitely enjoy hearing your informed opinion. It's bound to be highly balanced and insightful.

And I'd enjoy hearing your opinion about guruship and its social and ethical implications. If and when you feel ready to comment on that, maybe in another thread.

I'll prepare a full report on the book. I'm pretty excited about reading it now.

I predict I will like it more than you but less than Ludi.

btu2012 if I read a book and I like it I become a follower ? I have read many books, I can very well think for myself. I agree with Daniel Quinn, I would not do whatever he says

No , we cannot become tribes again and save the world. The same way we cannot become communists and share, and live happily ever after.
People cannot do it, you can't arrange them in a shape you think will work and expect them do stay in that shape like a stack of wood.

Now my choice for saving this world is what Cuba did after 1990 + no money, everything local, and never take more than you need from nature with the purpose of "selling" it.

I do not know if it will work, even if everybody would do all they can for it.
I have no better idea, humans are not only asleep because they do not know about peak oil ,they are asleep even when they find out, and try to maintain the "consumer society" after that

This way of thinking would need to be taught as a community,family value and reinforced in the schools and the media. An alliance of these forces would require a lot of energy and time to forge.

Then I am happy. My problem is with those who idealize both the man and his theories (like Novus above, whose anger and attachment to Quinn do not seem to be rational). Clearly you are not one of those.

Regarding Cuba, they do live in a "communist" dictatorship which might explain why some of the things they do look like they are working a bit better than they actually are. We don't have unbiased information about Cuba, so I would be careful using them as a model. Unless you are happy with a despotic form of government implementing a post peak oil program.

Many aspects of what goes on in Cuba seems to be quite similar with what happened in your country during the Ceausescu era.

Let me know if you find any indication that he steals girlfriends and vandalizes cars.

I'd also recommend the Story of B in case you happen to find him boring. I especially enjoyed his ideas about the Savior myth. He also makes quite interesting suggestions there about how we might deal with overpopulation. That aspect of his thinking seems to have got lost in The Great Forgetting, but I certainly didn't find it boring. I personally found it frightening, but that's just me. We all know that people like me deserve to die when Gaia comes to collect.

No, before 1990 it was indeed like any other communist country, with big farms owned by the state, and no private owning of land.

After they lost 80% of oil imports, their government gave them land with the condition they grow food, and no taxes
Watch this movie :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkgqH3Vd ... re=related

About the dictatorship : I am sure Cuba is not as bad as Romania used to be, and even here it was not bad at all. You could ignore it, nobody was going to imprison you for nothing. And everybody had work, no stress about that, and 1 month free time every year.
But in the last years 1987-1989, there was almost no food in the shops, people were queuing up for everything. The centralized economic system was not working

I believe you in the USA were told that communism means gray concentration camps where people are forced to work, by tyrants who can't wait to launch some nukes
It was not like that at all, life was going on more slowly than now, and it was good. Of course you could not criticize the government, but you think now you can ?
Dictatorship - shut up or it's jail for you !
Democracy - keep talking, who cares, just don't try to cross the police line !

Cuba I see was smarter than that, and now people are allowed to grow food and sell it
Look at Haiti - people it dirt and riot.

Well the Cuban immigrants in Florida strongly disagree with you.



Many people were imprisoned in Romania during the Ceausescu era, in particular sent to mental hospitals without
sufficient cause. There were strikes brutally repressed, dissidents in house confinement etc. Am I wrong about this ?

I know nobody, and nobody ever told me anything about that

Yes that regime was a dictatorship and they killed and imprisoned opponents, most of this stuff happened in 1950 when people were forced to give up their lands to form collective farms
And ever after that, if you write or say anything against the regime you could lose your job, go to prison, get killed

I am talking about Ceausescu, i.e. after 1965.

There was pervasive spying on the population run by the Securitate. A very large number of informers, phones being listened to etc.

How old are you paimei ? Do you have any direct experience of that ?



Securitate

Brasov Rebelion

Ceausima

Hunger circus

Jiu valley strikes

July Theses

SLOMR

Systematization

http://www.presidency.ro/static/ordine/ ... CPADCR.pdf

Romanian dissidents

Ceausescu family

So you'll be less than neutral about it, I guess. Or, to put it in another way, you'll like it less than not being very excited about it.

People in the USA are not as dumb as you think. Many Americans are immigrants from the East, and they bring their own stories about what happened in their countries.

But keep fantasizing about the grand good old days of Ceausescu, may God forgive him and his kind.

We were talking about Cuba , did you see the movie I posted ? You cannot compare Cuba with Romania, to say that there is a dictatorship there as bad as it was here

I did say it was a dictatorship, and people were jailed, and killed what more do you want ? Why do you say I fantasize about those days ?
I was born in 1980, when the revolution came I was 10 years old. Yes those pictures look nice, I tell you that nothing happened on my street, what you see there was in the city center. Gunfire could be heard but nothing else, and we got a 3 month school break in the middle of the school year
1000 died in the entire country during that revolution

About Cuban immigrants : do they still cross to Florida ? How many ? I thought that happened in 1990 -94 when they had oil problems

I am sure the dictatorship in Cuba is not the same as it was here. Give me a piece of land to farm in a village and I need nothing else. Of course I cannot do that here, they want me to pay taxes, so I have to sell stuff or be part of the system and work.
Look we have a democracy now. Can I stop paying taxes ? And still be free and not in jail after that ? if you think now we are free
Yes I can talk about it. Who cares