They seem to sneak past the alarms that my bluntness usually sets off. Mike Dunford has a nice quote from that subversive radical, Terry Pratchett:
“Look at it this way, then,” she said, and took a deep mental breath. “Wherever people are obtuse and absurd . . . and wherever they have, by even the most generous standards, the attention span of a small chicken in a hurricane and the investigative ability of a one-legged cockroach . . . and wherever people are inanely credulous, pathetically attached to the certainties of the nursery and, in general, have as much grasp of the realities of the physical universe as an oyster has of mountaineering . . . yes, Twyla: there is a Hogfather.”
(For those not familiar with the backstory, the Hogfather is the Santa Claus equivalent in his fantasy stories.)
To be fair, let’s balance this beside the words of Susan’s dear old grandfather, Death. (the guy who TALKS LIKE THIS) Later, in the same book, talking about believing in the Hogfather:
—–
YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
“So we can believe the big ones?”
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
“They’re not the same at all!”
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET – Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME … SOME RIGHTNESS TO THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
…snip…
STARS EXPLODE, WORLDS COLLIDE, THERE’S HARDLY ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE WHERE HUMANS CAN LIVE WITHOUT BEING FROZEN OR FRIED, AND YET YOU BELIEVE THAT A … A BED IS A NORMAL THING. IT IS THE MOST AMAZING TALENT.
“Talent?”
OH YES. A VERY SPECIAL KIND OF STUPIDITY. YOU THINK THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IS INSIDE YOUR HEADS
“You make us sound mad,” […]
NO. YOU NEED TO BELIEVE THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME.
I always liked (from the same book, Hogfather):
This is very similar to the suggestion put forward by the Quirmian philosopher Ventre, who said, “Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it’s all true you’ll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn’t then you’ve lost nothing, right?” When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, “We’re going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts…”
and 136 pages after that:
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.
But speaking of parables, you’ve hit the nail on the head. Stories are ways to convey information and maybe even wisdom.
I imagine that’s what impressed everybody so much about that guy from Nazareth.
But then, some people took the wrong bits too literally, and others added supernatural mumbo-jumbo to his story to make it sound more impressive, and yet others took the mumbo-jumbo to be literal truth, and here we are.
…
…
I have a large collection of Pratchett’s books, and I dog-ear pages in his fiction more than in some non-fiction works. His descriptive imagery is usually good, often delightful:
“[Mrs. Cake] loomed tremendously. This was largely because of her hat, which … she wore with the dedication of a wizard. It was huge and black and had things on it, like bird wings and wax cherries and hat-pins; Carmen Miranda could have worn that hat to the funeral of a continent.” – Reaper Man
… and his observations are sometimes brilliantly thought-provoking:
“Genuan cooking, like the best cooking everywhere in the multiverse, had been evolved by people who had to make desperate use of ingredients their masters didn’t want. No one would even TRY a bird’s nest unless they had to. Only hunger would make a man taste his first alligator. No one would eat a shark’s fin if they were allowed to eat the rest of the shark.” – Witches Abroad
…
…
I think excess testosterone could also accomplish that.
The Hogfather made for tv film (by Sky One, in the UK) is now my favorite Christmas film. I thought it did really well in representing the book.
Here’s an answer to Pascal’s Wager; this is what happens to you when you send your children to bible camp:
http://www.ksby.com/home/headlines/5013947.html
I truly feel for these people (unlike, say, the way Ed Brayton feels about someone who lights himself on fire).
Only hunger would make a man taste his first alligator.
A better example is chitlin’s and collard greens.
And of course, from Small Gods:
“When the Omnian Church found out about Koomi, they displayed him in every town within the Church’s empire to demonstrate the essential flaws in his argument.
There were a lot of towns, so they had to cut him up quite small.”
“The merest accident of microgeography had meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.”
NPR had some seeming quackery on today, leading with “…and scientists are looking to the bible for cures..” or somesuch.
i didn’t listen to the report, but still…who cares? the upshot i gathered was they were looking for stuff in the natural world mentioned in the bible. why is this important? isn’t that what people do all the time anyways, look for cures in nature?
sheesh
The Hebrews did both goats *and* sheep. Might explain some of the confused bits in the Old Testamant.
But then, some people took the wrong bits too literally, and others added supernatural mumbo-jumbo to his story to make it sound more impressive, and yet others took the mumbo-jumbo to be literal truth, and here we are.
Yup. JC makes a weak pun about a guy named “Rock” being a great foundation for a church, and a few hundred years later you have a guy in a ludicrous hat sitting in Rome proclaiming himself God’s representative on Earth.
I watched it yesterday – brilliant! Not only that, but Sky are also wishing everybody “Happy Hogswatch” before and after every programme.
Oh, yes, they’re saying that *now*, but what about January, eh?
Countdown to the “War on Hogswatch” in 5 … 4 … 3…
Yes, Terry Pratchett is wise.
Yes, Terry Pratchett is wise.
And a fun guy to party with if you get the chance;)
My favorite is still “Small Gods” as a wonderful satire on organized (and militant) religion. With many of his novels, I keep finding them more and more relevant as time passes and current events are reported. (see Jingo==Iraq war for another example, though he has a happy, satisfying end that I don’t believe that we are likely to see…)
(I must admit to finding a small comfort in the passage near the end of “Small Gods”, when Brutha meets Death. When Death tells him that what he seeks is at the end of the desert before him, Brutha responds… “Which end?”)
The Hogfather TV series contains a surprising amount of Pratchett philosophy. Especially the one about the importance of belief in the fantastic being a necessary first step toward belief in the other, more necessary lies, such as Mercy and Justice.
What a great show, where the personification of Death is the most sympathetic character. It will make many god-botherers’ heads explode.
(OT remark: I think the food that took the most courage to try for the first time has to be the [bird] egg. I mean, I like egg drop soup and scrambled eggs/omlettes, but … those raw eggs … man, thinking too much about them can be a bit unsettling. :))