Liking books that go against your politics

[Ursa major]

In real life, consenting adults get up to some far more experimental behaviour and a lot of other writers go into far more unnessecerry detail, and far more often.

Correct: consenting adults do do all sorts of things. However, when everyone joins in with everything, as seems to be the case in the latter stages of SinSL, the book loses any sense of tension or narrative drive. That the "conversion" of the mildy doubting is so simplisticly done, driven by straw men easily vanquished, simply meant that I lost interest in the story.

(None of this has anything to do with the views expressed, or any particular view of women. Frankly, if those in the sect had agreed with every single view I happen to hold, it would still not have made the latter stages of the book a better read.)

 

[kaelcarp]

there is something else that RAH states (in TEFL, I think) and, paraphrasing, that is;
sin is anything which causes harm to someone else if there is an alternative that causes harm to no-one.

that is a truely profound definition of sin in a general sense, and if everyone lived by that, we'd all be living in a Utopia with no laws.

I think that definition of sin sounds nice on paper, but in practice it's a lot murkier. How do you define "harm" and how direct does it have to be? Just about everything you can do has some potential for harming someone or does harm someone, directly or indirectly, and you always have alternatives. Depending on your definitions, you can call almost anything or almost nothing a sin.

 

[Connavar]

Its a great qoute that doesnt work in this world simply cause people cant stop harming eacother.

Doesnt mean its pointless or just works in teory.

 

[kaelcarp]

Its a great qoute that doesnt work in this world simply cause people cant stop harming eacother.

Doesnt mean its pointless or just works in teory.

My point is that it doesn't really mean anything. Or, rather, it means whatever you want it to mean. It sounds nice, though. Kind of like "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," which also sounds good but doesn't quite work in the world.

 

[Urlik]

that only doesn't work when someone decides that they should be above that and run things

 

[Kissmequick]

Also i wonder why you think only RAH had the views of women he had that was product of his time ? I have read women written by other SFF of his time and they werent any better in that aspect. Why does only RAH get diss for that ?

Oh I know he wasn't the only one. I could cope with the way the women were portrayed in general in SiaSL, although I strongly disagree with it ( it was a common enough view of women at the time. Well, among men anyway). But that line was just offensive.

 

[Urlik]

if I'm thinking about the same line (9 times out of 10, rape is the woman's fault) I think it was meant to be offensive, and not just to his female readers.
from passages in his other books it is obvious that he felt rape was one of the worst crimes.
in Glory Road, where Star explains about Succubi and Incubi and the punishments delt out to them, I got the impression that he personally felt even that was too good for them.

 

[Kissmequick]

I suppose that's possible -- it did seem extremely unlikely coming from Jill though ( I can imagine a different character saying it, one or two of the men, and I'd have thought it was their opinion, not RAH's, but it was worse that he had a woman say it, made it feel as though she was just a mouthpiece for his opinion), and I wonder why he thought to include it at all?

 

[kaelcarp]

that only doesn't work when someone decides that they should be above that and run things

Not really. It all depends on what your definition of "harm" is. Most of what you do harms someone in some way or other. And there are degrees of harm that often must be chosen between and different people have different harm values they would assign to things. It's entirely subjective.

I don't think morality or ethics are simple enough to be summed up in a single line. They're incredibly murky and dirty and have all kinds of nooks and crannies. One man's sinner is another man's saint.