That false idea that might makes right

I finished the book Pennterra by Judith Moffett, published in 1987. I don’t remember what I read to prompt me to put it on my book wish list. It was likely on that list for many years. It looks like I bought it at a used book store (there is a penciled price on the first page) and then it sat on my to read shelf for a couple more years. So by the time I decided it would be my next read I had completely forgotten what it is about (and I don’t cheat by reading the description on the back). George is a member of a Quaker community that has started a colony on another world. They’ve been there six years. The most intelligent native species, the hrossa are empathic – the humans and hrossa can sense each other’s moods. George is the one most attuned to what the hrossa are feeling and saying. And the hrossa say plenty – this Quaker community is confined to one river valley. They must keep the population of the community small. They must not use machinery in their farming. Violating these commands and the community would be destroyed, though the hrossa couldn’t say how the destruction would happen. It would be done by a world force, similar to our concept of Gaia. In the Quaker way they chose to live in harmony with this world. A second, much larger colony ship has arrived. These people are not Quaker. They declare the first colony had abandoned their mission, that the hrossa empathy was actually hypnotism, and they were going to proceed with the original colonizing plan. Thankfully, they did it on the other side of the continent. George, his son Danny (not quite 13), and three colleagues head to the lake where a village of hrossa live. Their purpose is to study the village and try to understand what might happen to the second colony and to hopefully explain why the restriction against machines should be followed. That month at the lake happened to be mating season and one emotion that broadcasts most strongly is lust. And Danny finds his equipment is working just fine and as urgently as that of the adults, much to his father’s consternation. That gives Danny a freeing view of sex. The second half of the book is what happens to the second colony. The book opens with a two-page essay by Isaac Asimov about how people confuse violence with rightness, that false idea that might makes right. So one gets a premonition of how the second colony might be destroyed. I quite enjoyed the book. Over the last week I went through an old book wish list, combining books that still looked interesting with my modern wish list. I think there are 180 books in the list. In my current rate of reading I could get through the list in about nine years. For my entertainment this Sunday I attempted at a supplement to last week’s movie. I wanted to listen to the radio play That Dinner of ‘67. It is about making the movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner with actors portraying the main characters – Poitier, Hepburn, Tracy, Houghton – and the director recounting what making the movie was like. The 45 minute radio play is put out by the BBC and, alas, is not available here. So I went with a video, the documentary Ballet Boys, a 75 minute film from 2014. At the start 14 year old Lukas, Syvert, and Torgier are three of the few boys in their ballet class in Norway. They’ve been together since they started taking lessons at a young age. I think it ends at age 16 (though it doesn’t actually say). Along the way there are various auditions to mark their progress, such as one in France and one in Sweden. There are discussions of the sacrifices – no time to date or hang out. Just school and dance. To do it you must want it. Towards the end they audition for the Ballet School in the Oslo Academy of Arts and Lukas is invited to audition for the Royal Ballet School in London. The movie talks a bit about there being so few boys in ballet class. But there is nothing of parental disapproval or even societal disapproval. There is no talk that because they like to dance they must be sissy or gay. Lukas’ parents are not pushing him, instead they are supporting their son’s choices. It took the movie a while to identify the location. And Norwegian is not a language I can identify by listening. Timothy Lee of Full Stack Economics wrote a post with 18 charts describing the American economy. I’ve seen a version of the first one that shows the trajectory of the employment recoveries from the 1990, 2001, 2007, and current recessions. The lines for the first three are carried out five years, and they still show employment below the start of their recessions. The current one has been with us for only two years (so far). It shows that this recession was much more severe and the rebound is also much more rapid, though we haven’t yet returned to the number of people employed when it started. Another chart that was interesting was to compare the prices of several things in relation to the overall inflation. Food and housing have stayed close to the inflation rate. Prices for televisions and toys have grown much more slowly, and the cost of college tuition has risen the most. The price of vehicles has been below the rate of inflation, though had a significant bump up in the last two years.