- Go ahead and post your questions and comments about Playground to p.193.
- Have you heard of Easter Ellen Cupp, "the first woman to get a Ph.D. in oceanography from Scripps Institution of Oceanography"? 95 [NOTE: She was from Iowa, not (like Evie) Quebec.]
- COMMENT ?: "The safest way forward was to keep to the group. That's why they called it schooling." 95
- COMMENT ?: "...transfixed by the thought of a world after humans." 96 Is "aimless joy" the best kind? (Compare Emerson's"bare common" experience in Nature ch1.)
- Any thoughts about my conversation with Claude? https://claude.ai/share/eb537cb6-4e4c-4d1f-9174-955ed9497049 Have you looked at or listened to any of the Powers conversations Claude recommends?
- Whose vision of the future are you more comfortable with, Todd’s or Raffi‘s? Whose do you think is more likely to be realized?
- Has Bart made the right choice, to stay married to Evie? Was her marriage proposal merely "practical" and dispassionate? 109
- [I still want to see your questions... but it's 5:20 PM Monday, I can't hold off posing more of my own any longer.] What do you make of John Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment?*
- What currently-derided scientific theories (as Wegener's used to be) will be commonly accepted in a generation, do you think? 97, 105 Could present skepticism about conscious AIs be an example of that?
- Is it a mark of wisdom to say maybe to almost everything? 98 What about "maybe she did love him"? 109
- Why do skates eggs (Mermaid Purses) seem to Evie to summon the future? 99**
- Is it just Bart who's the oddest thing on the beach, or humans in general? Do some of us also "have to reinvent ourselves" frequently? 100
- Have you ever found bliss by simply holding still and looking? 99
- COMMENT? "She loved it all..." 100
- Do you have a life philosophy? How do you like Evie's? 101
- Have you ever had to deal with "powerful men playing a game" who accused you of lying? 101, 106 Have you had to be "docile in the face of mannish explanations"? 111
- Have you read Rachel Carson? 103 COMMENT?: “It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.”
― The Sea Around Us - Why is Evie confident that "the master plan of Life... will never end?" 112, 118
- What is "the horror of life"? How has Evie become "reconciled " to it? 123
- Are you "nuts about Tolkien" et al? Does poetry ever make you cry?126
- Have you ever played Go? 128 f. Why does "no one play it here"? 131
- What do you think of "seasteading"? 133
- "When will my words start to disappear? How soon will I lose my mind?" 137 Would you want to know if you had a genetic predisposition to develop dementia?
- Who is Todd talking to when he references "you and me"? 139
- Is it true that when we succeed in making something bigger than us we become desolate? Why? 140
- If you could move to Makatea (or some other non-populous remote island far from "civilization," like Wen Lai, what would you want to spend your days doing? 146
- "PeopAr4ele who are about to die know everything." 148 What do they know? Where did Madame Beaulieu get her response, Peut-etre? 149
- Do free markets always support freedom generally? 150
- How likely are the seasteaders to respect the outcome of Makatea's referendum> 152
- What does "moving the goalposts" mean? 155
- Are we "condemned to freedom"? Is Sisyphus happy? 156
- Was John Lennon right? 157
- What’s your opinion of The Common Task? 158-161,185, 193 Is that really where evolution is headed?
- Was Fyodorov a "nutjob"? 160
- Is it wrong for Rafi's father to treat him as his "personal retribution machine against racism"? 161, 164
- How is the quest to conquer death "a poem"? 162
- "...creation is all just ___" what ? 166 Do you worry about our future "digital overlords"?
- What do you think of Rafi's decision to go to U of Illinois? 169
- Is it amusing or troubling that Evie only began to take an interest in "land-based creatures" when her children were born? 173
- What year did the land-based world "explode"? 175
- Can women and men really not live stably anywhere? 176
- What do you know about Sylvia Earle? 177-8
- Why would you use the sea to plan for space trips? 179
- Why was Evie afraid of her dream? 183
- What's the significance of Rafi's bookshelf? 185
- Have you ever been "in heaven" in a library? 187
- Have you ever experienced game addiction? 188
- How is death "the mother of beauty"? 189
- Might computers make The Common Task possible? 193
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8. I do not feel like Bart made the right choice to marry her. I do not think you should rush engagement or marriage. I also feel like she guilted herself into suggesting to get married because she did not want Bart to feel like she used him. I am not saying they should not have dated, but marriage is a big decision to just jump into because time is running out with someone you are just starting to have feelings for. At the time of the engagement, I do not believe she loved him.
ReplyDeleteThis was number 7.
DeleteEvie seems mostly asexual when she proposes, and does not reciprocate Bart's affection. I do think she develops affection for him, but her deepest affection is for the sea itself--and for her female colleagues who share that affection. Definitely an impulsive marriage of convenience and whim. But... ask most any parent if they'd undo the marriage that resulted in THOSE kids. No way.
Delete1. I hate that Rafi has been so close to death, not from a distance like at a funeral, but up close and traumatic, life-altering death. First his sister was murdered by his stepfather, then his best friend's father died in a car wreck. The only person who truly knew him is gone. His mother defends his stepfather and his father is not approachable, so Todd and Rafi are all they have for one another outside of computers and books. Do you think Rafi would have gone to the same school as Todd even if his father had not passed?
ReplyDelete18. Evie has seen the vastness of life in the ocean that makes life on land seem like a speck in the universe. Her eyes have been widened in awe by the aquatic life and its "spectacular orgy." How could life not continue when all the colonies in every direction shoot trillions of sperm and eggs into the sea at once? It also shows that life is intentional, not accidental. The ocean is full of purpose. I would say the same for land life as well.
ReplyDeleteRight, the evolutionary imperative is as present on land... if not always so spectacularly colorful. But the problem on land is the land animal that imagines itself the apex of creation, and not just one of its latest experiments. Another way to put that: too many of us are playing a "finite game," trying to "win"... we should be playing the infinite game that aspires to keep the game going.
Delete13. Have you ever found bliss by simply holding still and looking?
ReplyDeleteYes, I have. There’s a music festival I go to every year that takes place near the end of summer. Whenever I go, I like to sit in the main stage area (which is outside) around sunset and admire the scenery. Watching the sky darken and listening to music as hundreds of people come out with glow-in-the-dark flow toys and colorful outfits brings me a lot of joy. Even when there’s no music playing, I like to just sit still and observe everything happening around me. Being around so many happy people and so much positive energy makes me happy, which is why I’ve been going back to this place for years and years.
16. Have you ever had to deal with "powerful men playing a game" who accused you of lying? Have you had to be "docile in the face of mannish explanations"? 111
Not so much powerful men who accused me of lying, but definitely men who dismissed me and refused to acknowledge my talents and expertise. I used to work at a garden center, and the blatant sexism I experienced there was infuriating. I would routinely have customers (mostly men) ask me if I knew anything about plants, even though I had worked there longer and was more knowledgeable than most of my male coworkers. I once had a man come in with a clipping of a plant and ask me to identify it. When I told him what type of plant it was (a crapemyrtle), he didn’t believe me. He had to ask three other men who all gave him the exact same answer before he believed I actually knew what I was talking about. Another time, I was dead-heading flowers (cutting off the spent blooms) with a pair of pruners when an older gentleman saw me and said, “I hope you know what you’re doing with those [pruners].” And of course, as a woman, I couldn’t give the men any sass or else they’d accuse me of being combative or bitchy. In the latter case, I had to smile and say, “Yes sir, I DO know what I’m doing with these!” instead of responding how I wanted: clapping back at him for rudely insulting my intelligence.
Rebecca Solnit has written of this phenomenon: "...about men who wrongly assume they know things and wrongly assume women don’t, about why this arises, and how this aspect of the gender wars works, airing some of her own hilariously awful encounters.
DeleteWhere is that festival?
She ends on a serious note— because the ultimate problem is the silencing of women who have something to say, including those saying things like, “He’s trying to kill me!”"
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/18528190-men-explain-things-to-me
1. [My own question]: On page 132, Powers writes, “[Afa, Rafi’s son] didn’t think it right that his father, with a doctorate in educational psychology from a major American university, should be the assistant of a demi schoolteacher half his father’s ago who did not even know what crabs’ shells were made of.” Is Rafi “wasting his talents” at his current job, even though all the school-age children on the island adore him? Is it better to live up to one’s potential, or to do what makes one happy - even if what makes one happy doesn’t measure up to one’s intellectual or professional potential?
ReplyDeleteGreat question. We should discuss it.
ReplyDelete