Do you agree with Jane Austen?

[Lost]

Took me enough days to decide posting Jane Austen's quote in strictly speaking. The title "strictly speaking" sounds so serious. Shouldnt it be a light hearted discussion. I guess the reason is to avoid having lots of people contributing nonsensical thoughts but then don’t we learn the most from silly remarks?

Quote from Jane Austen's Persuasion: One man’s way is as good as another but we all like our own best. The folly of the means they often employ is only to be equaled by the folly of what they have in view.

BTW, Wind in the Hair, I like to know how relationship without sex is related to the quote.

for some reason i found that statement very funny cos i would have thought it had everything to do with jane austen!

[Wind In My Hair]

Lost, i had to search for the relevant posts and have copied them here so it's all taken in context:

relationship without sex has nothing to do with Jane Austen.

for some reason i found that statement very funny cos i would have thought it had everything to do with jane austen!

i loved reading jane austen as a young girl and my impression back then was that her victorian era society and she personally were very prim and proper. lots of formal courting procedures and sex was never mentioned. in her books anyway unless i remember wrong. and most of her stories were love stories ie about relationships.

hence in my mind relationship without sex has everything to do with jane austen. sorry for confusing you.

[sundaymorningstaple]

Took me enough days to decide posting Jane Austen's quote in strictly speaking. The title "strictly speaking" sounds so serious. Shouldnt it be a light hearted discussion. I guess the reason is to avoid having lots of people contributing nonsensical thoughts but then don’t we learn the most from silly remarks?

Lost,

That is precisely why we started The Strictly Speaking forum. The General Forum is always used for topics that we don't care where they meander (WIMH's word ) or how light-hearted they become. Sometimes though, we want to have a hard discussion without wading through pages of garbage posts that no longer even relate to the topic, hence the Strickly Speaking forum. If the OP (you in this case) desires a serious thread then by all means post it here. If the OP doesn't want it so strictly moderated then they should post in the main part of the General Forum.

If you want me to move it, just say so and I will. As the OP it's your call.

sms

I won't be participating in this one anyway - never read Jane Austen.

[Wind In My Hair]

i haven't yet met any man who reads jane austen. she's a woman's author. SMS, for instance, may find her novels 'meander' too much for his liking.

her genius lies in taking a simple village love story and describing it in delicious, intimate detail. and all the while making acute observations of human nature, with quintessential dry wit. i for one can laugh at a sentence and then spend days pondering over it.

i don't have much to say about the quote Lost posted though. maybe it's been too long since i read austen.

[bushbride]

Hi Lost,

Good choice to move the discussion (good suggestion SMS and WIMH). There are points of discussion, due to the current world climate and the personal nature of particular topics, that make it hard to discuss a lot in the open...I do believe in education, but only when people are willing to be educated

We can pick the negatives (and now it only rarely seems like we pick the benefits) of a way of doing something, we are narrow minded in nature. We only apply what is relevant to our situation or what we understand from our environment around us.

Often the way we go about things, is counter productive. The universality of Austen’s work is that she was a socially insightful novelist and has captured the sameness of human nature. We think that we are unique and doing something different, but society has certain laws of operation that are common all over the world. We continue to make the same mistakes time and time again – the only difference is that we went about it a different way to find the same conclusion.

Although Austen paints a picture of many of her male characters as cold and unfeeling, we instinctively acting on feelings that benefit ourselves and immediate environment – and they tend to be as narrow minded as those who have gone before us. We are creatures who think ourselves superior, yet we all have the same faults (narrow mindedness being one).

Just inital thoughts

BB

[Lost]

Well said, bushbride, I agree with your initial thoughts and it horrifies me to think that our human nature has not evolved despite education, advancement in technology and the availability of information.

Generations past started the common law of operation and now are we doomed to recycle that energy for many generations to come? How can we break the law of commonality?

[bushbride]

Lost,

It does sound like we are doomed, doesn't it. I am not sure if the fight is against 'commonality', but rather would like to think the fight is aginst our own sense of ego.

Whatever the answer is to your question, I think the person who finds the answer will be a very enlightened person indeed.

BB

[Plavt]

Well said, bushbride, I agree with your initial thoughts and it horrifies me to think that our human nature has not evolved despite education, advancement in technology and the availability of information.

Generations past started the common law of operation and now are we doomed to recycle that energy for many generations to come? How can we break the law of commonality?

A book you may care to take a look at is 'Manwatching' by Desmond Morris.Briefly he makes that the point that we are still 'animals' that still have our priimeval instincts. Humans still hunt (in a different sense in urban life), swim, threaten, indulge in sex being amongst some of the activities listed.

Plavt.

[Lost]

I am always amaze at the speed men recognize his "animal instinct" – to me, it is a pathetic excuse. Obviously you have not read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand:


“Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice. He has no automatic knowledge of what is good or evil, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires. An instinct of self preservation is precisely what man does not possess. An ‘instinct’ is an unerring and automatic form of knowledge. A desire is not an instinct. A desire to live does not give you the knowledge required for living. And even man’s desire to live is not automatic; your secret evil today is that that is the desire you do not hold. Your fear of death is not a love of life and will not give you the knowledge needed to keep it. Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform. Man has the power to act as his own destroyer – and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.”

[whatalark]

Lost,

It does sound like we are doomed, doesn't it. I am not sure if the fight is against 'commonality', but rather would like to think the fight is aginst our own sense of ego.

BB

I think that there you begin to encroach upon the fields of philosophy, theology and psychology. Some define this 'commonality' as pride, self-awareness (with all that comes along with self-awareness), ego, and just plain fallen self-centredness which is the essence of the 'fall'.

[sundaymorningstaple]

Atlas Shrugged, a very good book that I should read again. I first read it about 40 years ago when I was in High School. While it has slipped into the subconsious regions of my mind, I do remember that I could not put the book down until it was finished. And that's not a small novel either.

Oh yes. The point. Ayn Rand's form of philosophy is an extreme and not mainstream in thought. Objectivism has never been wholly accepted and due to the extreme nature of it, I doubt it ever will. I leave it with this thought ..... Is Objectivism Merely a Disguised Materialism?

[Wind In My Hair]

this discussion is becoming very interesting. atlas shrugged blew me away. i still think that there is a 'general theory of everything' that will pull together all these separate strands of objectivism, idealism and what-not.

an either / or kind of thinking is limited. why does the world have to be one way or another? someone once said that a superior mind was able to hold opposite thoughts simultaneously. attempts to categorise everything is very aristotelian in its approach and definitely has its uses. but it is not a unifying theory.

jane austen's genius was that in describing life in an obscure english village, she was describing life. just like quantum physics, when scientists say (i think) that to understand the atom is to understand the universe, to decipher the genome is to decipher evolution etc.

i'm making myself feel dumb now. all this mind-boggling stuff... i write what i think and end up wondering if i know what i think!

[Lost]

Sorry for my late reply. I pondered on your question sundaymorningstaple and personally I dont see a connection between objectivism and materialism. I think sundaymorningstaple needs to define objectivism.

[Lost]

Ha! just noticed I am a regular - is this a promotion? - lol - does that mean i am on this forum way too often.. lol

Anyway finally found what I was looking for and thought I share it with SMS why there is no connection between objectivism and materialism:

"Objectivism rejects any form of determinism, the belief that man is a victim of forces beyond his control (such as God, fate, upbringing, genes or economic conditions)."

With that in mind how can one be materialistic and objective all at the same time? [/quote]