h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hey, lookit, if the nets up and running for you today, I'm hoping you're gonna write to me nicely and longly, okay?

I've been on the net (not just the web) for 11 years now and it just gets more and more astounding though nothing like it was imagined by us to be back then. One thing we did not want is for it to turn into a giant shopping mall.

See ya real soon.

No, I meant that's the Dogstar thing, "If you don't like it ignore it." That's what they do, okay? Not you, them, you know?

Okay, now I have to be quick because I think it's going to go down again. I'll see you when you see me probably.

I see you've been doing much better than I at the "Opinions..." thread! You know what's up, you're a big girl.

So, whazzup? If you get a few moments, check the poems I've put up at my space.

Yeah, I'll check them out if this damn network ever quits kicking my tutu every two minutes.

Good one: tribalism, diatribalism!!

And, re: "Mr. ?!!!!" hey, you don't like to hang out with me or what? That hurts more than any other thing you've ever flung at me.

Oh stop it! You're a big boy and a honored warrior too. You don't need a girl to scare away the sheep for you, do you?

I was just getting a little tired of people treating us like we're married something. I'm not ready for that yet, you know?

So if you're really wounded by me or the ferocious Della, I'll make a nice suave and rub it where it hurts okay? Hmmm... I wonder if that would make it hurt more or less?

GOD rafw, you keep getting embroiled in the most fractious debates don't you? You sure do seem one tough cookie. But to win people to the cause it really might be good to be just a tad less the way you've been. As I look back at it, that's what we really disagree on: what is a better - notice I don't say best, because I really think there is not - way to present the case. Certainly your way seems to get more attention and it attracts certain mindsets as is evident from viewing responses over the last many weeks. But are those the ones one really wants? Really many are falling by the way side that would be total allies. I'll admit my short historic essays are either ignored or make people bristle; perhaps deep inside they can feel that this an urge towards empire, the elimination of people who happen to inconveniently be in the way, and that it is a manifestation of the worse urges in the nature of humanity. To negate these feelings they lash out with words that are the opposite of what is deep in them and with accusations of what they have done to the victim being leveled on the victim. Isn't history just peachy!! I have always been fascinated by it, it's awful how much.

Hey R, check out these thoughts, whajya think?

I think the issue is always money, and if not money, then sex (power is a tool or surrogate for sex - read "love" if we like; anger, fear, violence is a reaction to the absence of love - or "sex" so to speak: connection, meaning)

It's frustrating that ethnic divisions are created or enhanced and called "racial divide" and is done to divert attention from the real issue of $.

Although ... Brecht maintains that the REAL issue is food.

Brecht was correct.

However, after the traders and kings, and later the imperialists alienated the people from their land and hence their food supply, it became necessary to earn money in order to survive.

Sex is important too of course. That's why it's used to sell things that people want money for so they can eat or have sex.

Yeah, I kind of suspected we were being made into surrogates, whipping boys quite literally. Once you derive the concept of a personal savior who redeems you from your sins by his suffering, it's easy enough to make others fulfill the role.

When they start talking like that, I pretty much think I've finally bored through the plate armor. Arrows can do that, even when they use sharp rocks for heads.

Maybe I should learn how to coax them out of the armor somehow? Instead of perforating it and making them crazy?

I don't think it's not so bad though when the responses finally end up as mindless drivel. It means the thinking ones are having to rethink things or maybe it's like you say, they're just ignoring me.

I mean, you can see it on the native american thread. The usual crap is dumped and then things start to settle down if I don't get sucked into debating them on the irrelevancies they raise. The thinkers put in their contributions and the simplesayers sort of drivel off having made their points they think and unable to deal with the pertinent stuff.

If they subsequently have an "ah ha" experience, well that would be a good thing I think. Mostly, I figure it's going to be one or two at a time.. It's not a subject that can garner a lot of mob support anyways.

Okay now consider this, please: some would say it is all about food (period). I would ask how do you obtain food, especially if you've lived in cities for millennia. Money, right? Create want for that which is 'sold' using sex, even food products? money then leads to access leads to power leads to the elimination of want, maybe? Not too abstract I hope?!

BTW, I'm so thrilled you're using a familiar construct to the one I presented on a different thread some weeks ago about the utility of poor Jesus for certain people ...!

Oh, a tangential thought, the people of India emphatically did not celebrate the arrival of Vasco da Gama in India unlike the arrival of you know who you know where.

I'm not very acquainted with the Indian experience of the Portuguese. I wonder how it parallels our experience of the Spanish and Anglos?

So, what did you say about Jesus? Where's the thread?

I still need to look at your poems too. I think I'll go do that now.

It was one of those you had your other admirers talking to you. Dang, I don't remember, one of them; I think I unsubscribed from it. If you really want I'll go look.

There are significant differences. Here are a couple: India was extremely well established and the entire sub continent had been under one leadership or at worse under a few regional ones. It was also already very well known to the 'old' world. I wonder if the Americas may have known it too but in it evolved into the stuff of ancient stories - such as Coyote? Just a humm... kinda thought.

okay, it was the "Land Rights Battles of the Western Shoshone Indians" thread and it was post #127. As I recall you liked post #123 there too.

I'm posting this with beleif in us, in you and in me, now ... 'casue there's sure some nastiness further along in that thread.

I'd forgotten how intense it got. Shows you how long I nurse a grudge doesn't it?

I did find something else I wrote I thought was worth preserving anyways by reviewing that discussion, so thanks for putting it back to my attention.

It's funny how we went round and round and maybe finally ended up dancing together a little. Which probably means there IS cause for a little hope after all.

We are intense people aren't we?

You don't nurse grudges you just want to be listened to and you believe you are right ... no matter what. Me, I say hummm....

I wish you'd not spend so much time throwing your intellect at people who will just never give a damn, never understand, or merely fall at your feet. That's really not what you want is it. It would be devastating if so.

I too found items in the thread that were of use.

I am so tired, I seek refreshment once again....

I'm not trying to throw my intellect at anybody. I have no illusions about the people who don't give a damn or whatever. They aren't the people I can reach.

The people I can reach most of the time don't even say anything. If they only ponder some things now and then that they might not have pondered otherwise, then it makes sense I think to present things as I do.

One thing I'm pretty sure of. Letting the usual preachers preach unchallenged isn't a good thing. You've heard them maybe already in the native discussions spouting the same old dredgings and acting like it should be self-evident.

We don't need that crap, especially not now after all this time. If somebody doesn't challenge it it just keeps getting parroted over and over.

When I came to school, I really thought people might be more knowledgable but I'm finding out they're just as ignorant as the rednecks in the cowboy bars. The difference is I don't have to brawl with them everytime they say something stupid.

We can reason with each other, debate, and I think it's a debate ultimately they can't win. That's not because I need to win but because they need to lose once in awhile to understand things a little better. The failed experiments are more educational, or should be, than the successful ones, because they put you on the right track to finally figure stuff out, at least as well as you might figure it out.

When people finally discover that what's self-evident is just a bias like everybody else's then we can get along better, because then it doesn't have to be all one way or no way.

You make me smile. Thanks!

Hey what do you know that you can share about the Don Stewart Association Church? and, about the Southwestern indian Children Fund? Why are they based in OK?

I don't know anything about those organizations, so I guess you're on your own.

Of course I don't really know much about the Oklahoma tribes anyways except they're a lot more assimilated than some of us who live further west.

So you maybe you can see that there's this wide spectrum of people from the Pawnee who have little more than a nationwide family reunion association to people like a few in my family who, if they speak English at all, it's a second or third language, and they still consider white people to be cannibals with guns.

I think a lot of the Muskogee or 'Chalagi culture in Oklahoma is kind of acculturated with Southern Baptists or similar fundamentalist religions, although there's probably a very small native american church presence too, as in peyote, especially among the Comanche.

We don't see them much at our powwows though. We're probably too heathen for them, especially the Latter Day Saints among us.

... looks like your sense of humor is back and doing just fine. Good!!

I guess I'll do my own research since you're too busy! No matter.