Thought of the Day.
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
Robert Heinlein
I guess I’m an insect, I doubt I could write a sonnet.
I guess we know that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the other incompetents are also insects – they can’t plan an invasion worth sh#t.
UI, it didn’t say it had to be a good sonnet. 😉
I’m hung up on butchering a hog and program a computer. Although I could probably program a hog and butcher a computer program!
Robert Heinlein, along with Ayn Rand, is one of the pillars of the dork-libertarian world view. Most overrated SF author ever. As a thinker, he made a very good SF author.
If I break a bone please find me a doctor and not a libertarian.
Thanks!
My favorite Heinlein novel is Job. Granted, it’s the only one I’ve read, but it was good.
Geezer, I’d agree with all of your sentiments about Heinlein. Additionally, he was a proponent of making people solving an algebraic formula before being allowed to vote.
Although Heinlein was a prolific author, I would only consider one of his books a “classic”
pandora,
They didn’t say you had to butcher a hog well! As for programming a computer, you ipod is probably a more sophisticated computer than anything around in Heinlein’s time.
Ya may not agree with Heinlein’s list but I think he has something on the specialization thingy. I am always amazed by how multi-talented this group and the Progressive Dems crowd is. Ya’ll always come at something as rank amateurs but totally exceed all expectations. There’s no fear of trying. Nobody ever says “it’s not part of my job description.” Think of all we’ve learned to do in the past five years. No insects here!
and yes, human beings can do all those things.
Actually (re: Geezer’s comment): Virtually all of Heinlein’s writing pre-1944 is world-state, psychiatric rehabilitation, statist economic control, central-planning friendly. It was what made him famous in SF during the “golden years.”
The switch to libertarian themes did not come until the later 1940s when he married his third wife. His second wife was a wiccan, and a progressive. Heinlein was a moderately big wheel in progressive Democratic politics in the 1930s and campaigned hard for Upton Sinclair.
Oops, sorry, there went poor Geezer’s stereotype.