Oota's Tale by JwBennett

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kailhofer
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Re: Oota's Tale by JwBennett

Post by kailhofer »

It's always nice when a story so touches a reader. I'm sure the author will be very happy with your reaction.

However, not everyone is going to be as moved by one story, no matter what story. Myself, I have a real weakness in stories for when a hero sacrifices himself or herself to save others. Makes me misty-eyed every time, particularly if the character was really heroic and endearing.

So, in that regard, I felt a little bad for the whale sacrificing itself.

However, I wasn't overly impressed by this tale. The storyline was more of a warning than a deliberate plot where the characters could grow and change to adapt to problems, so that was a big strike against it for me. I like stories much more than legends.

Frankly, I'm tired of seeing stories where Man is bad, or a poison to Mother Earth. Despite what the media tells us, water conditions have improved steadily since the 60s. Go ahead. Swim in the New York's Hudson River. You'll be fine. Lake Erie now has clear enough water to allow sunlight through to the weeds at the bottom, just as it is supposed to. Oh, an oil spill makes the top story, but birds moving back into a marshland after being nearly destroyed by DDT is rarely mentioned. No matter what Al Gore says, greenhouse emissions have been declining for years, a fact just discussed in a recent 20/20 piece by John Stossel (sp?), that tells us that in reality we live in the safest time in history but make ourselves afraid of the wrong things.

Even if man is somehow still poisoning the world, I'm fed up with the notion that Man is separate from nature. Man is an animal, too, and acts like one. Arrogance says we think, so we're different. Balderdash. Fluffy little critters in nature do not automatically find a natural balance and live in harmony with their neighbors. Those critters fight tooth and nail for their portion of the earth's resources, and if there are no higher predators, they consume everything until there isn't enough for them to eat. They either move to a new location or die. Man does the same. Eventually, our consumption of the earth's resources may bite us in the butt--we may not have food or heat and begin to die off. If we do, it's natural.

This is even more off topic, but we're not even remotely the only species that acts socially. Bacteria does it. (It's called Quorum Sensing.) Man is a primate. Studies have shown that women unconsciously wear lower-cut clothing when they are in the most fertile periods of their cycle, displaying their potential fertility to potential mates (whether or not she's going to have a headache when you're ready is another topic). Anyone who has ever seen the interactions of a large family of chimpanzees will see those same behaviors in any large gathering of teenagers. If you've ever seen two neighbors squabble over where a lot line is or, think how similar that is to defending an animal's territory.

We're animals in nature, too. We just don't like to admit it.


Nothing against this story. I'm glad it touched you, Lee, but a story like this one pushes all my buttons in the opposite direction.

Nate
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Robert_Moriyama
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Re: Oota's Tale by JwBennett

Post by Robert_Moriyama »

Man is the animal that craps in his own den, then takes the den of the critter over the hill.

But wait -- Man is not unique in this -- herd animals strip the vegetation from an area and convert forest to grassland to desert; predators may wipe out prey species if both are somehow confined in a limited space. However, in both cases, the ecology-killers have the good grace to suffer precipitous population crashes. Humans have a disturbing tendency to survive, and move to greener pastures (which shortly turn brown).

Okay, then -- Man is the only animal who craps in his own den, then takes the den of the critter over the hill, and makes speeches about how it it only right and fitting that he does so, due to Manifest Destiny, or God's Will (that whole 'dominion over the earth and its creatures', or words to that effect, thing), or Because It's There.

'Scuse me, gotta go put gas in the car. Idling in those drive-through queues sure is murder on the mileage.

Robert "What, me worry?" M.
Last edited by Robert_Moriyama on March 06, 2007, 02:26:56 AM, edited 1 time in total.
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

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Robert_Moriyama
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Re: Oota's Tale by JwBennett

Post by Robert_Moriyama »

... Maybe humans will finally follow the pattern of the other ecology-killers and suffer a mass die-off. We are due for a pandemic, aren't we? The concentration of people in urban centers with populations in the millions, mixing and mingling in close quarters (transit systems, etc.), plus high volume long distance air travel, suggest that any emergent disease with a relatively high mortality rate may knock a few million off the population base. And with xenophobia (those people brought this plague here!) and cocooning a likely result, we could end up with a world like the one in 'Neuropol', where face-to-face contact is a rarity (and not 'from the Hollow'!!).

Robert "I love humanity -- it's people I can't stand" M.
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Jack London (1876-1916)
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