Remember when I wrote that post about books that didn't change my life?
Turns out not only is the novel Ishmael CRAPPY, it is also apparently DANGEROUS in the wrong hands.
Weird, guys. So weird. I have to admit, my first reaction was to burst out laughing. NOT FUNNY the hostage-taking bit, I know, but still, ok, maybe the inspiration, a little funny.
- h/t to my high school ex-boyfriend, who texted me about this immediately. God bless that boy, I love him so.
This may seem slightly offtopic, but this story is a perfect example of why people campaigning against films and games are wrong. Books apparently can also be blamed for this kind of thing!
ReplyDeletePersonally I'm just surprised that the book in this case wasn't a holy text (though from the sounds of it it's written about as well as one...oh burn!)
I'm glad no hostages were physically hurt. I heard they shot the guy though. Sounded like he needed help :S
Oh Geeze. I was following that from work today. Really? WOW. Just... Wow. =|
ReplyDeleteOh god, the thing of how "the world must learn how to live without giving birth to more filthy human babies" in the list of James Lee's demands shows the problem with that kind of anti-population growth philosophy (how it ends up being disproportionately aimed at poor people, people of colour and people with disabilities.)
ReplyDeleteI sometimes think people decide they want to commit a terrorist act and then they go out an find a book that provides a rationale. I bet he had an entire bookshelf and had to eeny meeny miney mo between that and Atlas Shrugged!
ReplyDeleteI'm not laughing at this because it's horrible, except that I am laughing at this and that makes me a horrible person.
Iany, it does not make you a horrible person. I actually DO think it's funny that someone can be motivated by Daniel Quinn books because they are SO! FUCKING! BAD! I do not think the ACT this dude took is funny - but the fact ANYONE could be so motivated by Ishmael is so absurd as to veer into the hilarious.
ReplyDeleteAnd Melusin, YES. Those people who are all against the overpopulation worry me that they are just going to blame women for the destruction and the earth, or worse, are two steps away from eugenics.
It makes me a bit horrible, the guy took hostages!
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I am worried about overpopulation and I blame white people for it. Although really, it would have happened either way. The whole thing is inevitable, we're successful generalists. Tragedy of the commons on a really, really grand scale.
Tragedy of the Commons has been debunked as a theory over and again, and I blame levels of consumption, not color of skin, on what's destroying the earth. Ways of life ruin the planet, not races. Is there a giant correlation between skin color and negative affect on the planet? Fuck yeah. Absolutely. But in using our way of life as the standard to attain, everyone on this globe is going to contribute. Also, it makes me uncomfortable with how much it whitewashes developed countries, as if there are no people of color here.
ReplyDeleteAnd I think we are laughing that Ishmael motivated ANYONE to do ANYTHING, and it becomes that more absurd that it was so drastic an act. Ishmael is the punchline, not the hostage-taking. Or maybe the idiocy of the dude is the punchline. Either way.
Oh, Melusin and Iany - definitely a racist. He wasn't REALLY worried about overpopulation, just "anchor babies" and immigrants:
ReplyDeletehttp://thinkprogress.org/2010/09/01/discovery-terrorist-immigration/
UGH.
Never said he wasn't racist, I'm not surprised, frankly. I'm sick of hearing people complain about immigrants.
ReplyDeleteI'd also argue that the Tragedy of the Commons hasn't been entirely debunked. It's alive and well in the fishing industry, which is why fishing in Australia is heavily regulated. Before they started regulating aspects of fisheries, several of them were at significant risk, including scallops and fish with low fecundity and long lifespans. If you blame levels of consumption, that's only because there's demand and that's difficult to hamper.
The regulation itself is not well implemented, as it damaged the livelihoods of the fishermen involved and the regulatory practices didn't provide any alternate ways for people in the industry to make money. But, it's still true that there are huge problems here and there and all over with resource management. There are similar issues with responses to salination in rural areas, which is a huge problem over here, and many other industries that relate to limited resources.
I'm not trying to whitewash developed nations, when I refer to white people that's a reflection on the balance of power. I don't want to just say "people" because that distributes blame evenly and it shouldn't be. I know it's a slippery slope.
Yeah, no, but the fishing industry isn't Tragedy of the Commons.
ReplyDeleteThe original concept was used by anthropologists to justify taking land from indigenous people with nomadic herds in colonized nations. But the model never included using the commons for COMMERCIAL gain. It was only for everyone's personal needs. The idea was that if no one "owned" the land and managed it, everyone's cattle herds would over-graze the pasture. The anthropologists thought this proved that these indigenous tribes were stupid, and their land should be taken from them so it could be put to more "efficient" use.
The anthropologists were wrong because, oh hey, they were NOMADIC, these tribes, and they actually kept the land healthy, and also they were wrong because they were colonial racists attempting to justify colonization, and decided that a model that had existed for hundreds of thousand of years just fine, thank you, was quite wrong now that they had showed up on the scene. There was never a capitalist model, surplus, or supply and demand involved in the theory.
I've heard the term applied to other things before, but as an anthro major in undergrad, I must object :)