FWIS3

"Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity."

Robert Heinlein

I mean who else could come up with something like that?

If that were true I'd be dead a few hundred times over. Probably likewise for everyone else.

(I figure Heinlein considered himself an exception, but we know better, don't we?)

Well, he's dead and I'm not. Eat it, Bob.

I think that was one of those statements that Bob was fond of making that would make you think or object to his rationale. But, in nature true stupidity is usually rewarded with the appropriate consequence. I don't mean run of the mill childhood "I bet if I wear this towel as a cape I can fly" type of ignorance. I mean truly stupid.

Yeah, thanks for reminding me that I really never did like Heinlein much. I read through one or two of his books cause I felt obliged, but really didn't interest me overall.

Btw I was watching an old Hungarian movie a few days ago (yay Youtube!) and I rather liked a line in it, where the little kid doesn't think of something and asks the grown-up "am I stupid?" The adult replies "no, you just don't know much yet."

Rough translation, but I liked it.

Oddly enough I never read Heinlein, not even Starship Troopers. Apparently, most of his quotes are spoken by his favorite character Lazarus Long (the original "rugged individualist")

Here's the thing about Heinlein... The good quotes, said by Lazarus Long can (and should) be taken with a grain of salt. The kind of stupidity that Heinlein refers to in the opening quote of this thread could realistically refer to the stupidity that is found in the extremist versions of both ends of the political spectrum. The real difference between the Right and the Left, however, is the we on the Left tend to hide our whack jobs better...

brite wrote: The real difference between the Right and the Left, however, is the we on the Left tend to hide our whack jobs better...

These days anyways, in the late 70s and 80s, the Left did a lousy job at it. And, if you ask me, it's the main reason that Jose Perez in the US started leaning to the right in those days, and what gave rise to the right wing nutjobs the US has these days. Hopefully, in the next decade, both sides will have learned their lesson and it will last for.... say..... 50 years more, by then I'll be long and comfortably dead and won't have to see the cycle starting again.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is one of my favorite stories. A couple of other Heinlein books are OK. His last couple of ones were horrible. For the most part I can't stand his politics and it got much worse (as did his writing) as he got older.

I actually found his politics intolerable in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. How much worse does it get?

The Supreme Canuck wrote:I actually found his politics intolerable in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. How much worse does it get?

I don't think his political views (or his views about sex and gender) change very much, but they become dominate when not surrounded by a decent story. His later books like The Number of the Beast and Methuselah's Children were just horrible.

In addition to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, I really enjoyed his early short stories, like The Green Hills of Earth. They have not held up well technically, but they were good stories.

I'm not trying to defend Heinlein, I'm fine if people hate him or his stuff; I'm just giving my take on things.

Let's just say my father took Heinlein's views way too seriously.

I rarely take it as 100% gospel when I read quotes in books intended to be fiction. And I realize that some writers express their real thoughts on politics, religion, money, and sex through their fictional characters. When I do read those things I just chalk it up to the writer having a "If I were ruler of the known universe" moment. And in a way the writer is just that. He is the ruler of the universe he is writing about. So, if he wants to have his characters solve all of the societies problems with a blaster and a pithy saying then so be it. I sometimes wish it were that easy. I can still like a story even if I don't care for the views of the character.

But, if I were going to adopt a saying by Heinlein and use it as a great pithy saying I really like this one:

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.”

"Specialization is for insects."

That used to be one of my favorite quotes, before I realized there was no way in hell that I could live up to it.

See, I don't even agree with Father Bob on that one. Specialization is how civilization works. Has done since at least the Industrial Revolution. I have no need to be able to plan an invasion, butcher a hog, or write a sonnet. That's what society is for. Everybody contributes, and everybody benefits. I benefit from having, say, a specialized bunch of military people. And they benefit from whatever I do. They also benefit from me not bumbling into their warzone, fucking things up.

Big Daddy Bob didn't like society or any existence where people relied on each other. His statements about how humans ought to be reflected that.

Seriously. If specialization wasn't a good thing, no way we would, say, fund people for advanced studies in a specific subject, and consider autistic people who really focus on one area the scum of the Earth (but as we know, such people with passion for a specific area really blossom it to further humanity as a whole). I myself like to be well-rounded, but that doesn't mean everyone has to or that we don't benefit when someone doesn't.

Also I confess in all this I'm trying to remember what else Heinlein thought as all I remember from Stranger in a Strange Land was how it was similar in many ways to Brave New World except they acted more like hippies.

@TSC: That's kind of what I was getting at. It was one of my favorite quotes when I was a teenager, even though I never liked Heinlein - because (at that time of my life) I was a judggmental ass with a grossly inflated view of my own potential. Having now seen how incredibly fucking hard life is, and barely scratching the surface of that difficulty in my case, I'm rather less inclined to judge people for not all being Da Vincis.

(Likewise for being dependent on society. Everyone is dependent on others in at least a psychological sense, humans being social animals; people in total isolation have an alarming tendency to go nuts.)

OTOH, I'm not sure Heinlein disliked society so much as didn't understand how it worked. This is a common condition for Libertarians, and usually comorbid with a serious case of Dunning-Kruger effect.

Actually I want to extend a bit what I said about being dependent.

I know some of you on this forum are into wilderness survival stuff. There's nothing wrong with that. Hell, it'd probably be good if more people knew something about that. But please realize that for most people, learning such things is a luxury; it's much less likely to help them in a bad situation than other things they could study, and they only have so much time.

Long story short, being less (physically) dependent on human civilization is itself very specialized knowledge, that most people have no reason to learn.

There is nothing wrong with specialization. I am the product of that trend to specialize. My two main career fields are the result of specialization. What I think Lazarus Long was trying to say in his own fictional character way was that we shouldn't become so specialized that we stoppeed doing all those things as individuals that meant we were still human beings. While most of us might be challenged to actually perform every task on that list competently we could learn them quickly if we needed to. Babies would be changed and project management would occur if we were dropped into a situation that called for us to do those things.

Yer a right wing nutjob libertarian

That's a very different take on things, and raises a good point: if this was a Lazarus Long quote, what was the context?

Sigma_Orionis wrote:Yer a right wing nutjob libertarian

You forgot left leaning, right wing nut job libertarian.

The Supreme Canuck wrote:I actually found his politics intolerable in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. How much worse does it get?

i have 2 words for you - farnham's freehold.

SciFiFisher wrote:

Sigma_Orionis wrote:Yer a right wing nutjob libertarian

You forgot left leaning, right wing nut job libertarian.

Your Purity leaves a lot to be desired. I'm going to tattle on you to Ted Cruz........ or was it Rand Paul, or Paul Ryan?..............