Comments on: WORLD MADE BY HAND http://brothermartin.wordpress.com/2008/04/18/world-made-by-hand/ scripts from The Green Hour radio show on WRFN-LP, Nashville Tennessee Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:52:49 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 By: martin holsinger http://brothermartin.wordpress.com/2008/04/18/world-made-by-hand/#comment-439 martin holsinger Sun, 20 Apr 2008 18:55:20 +0000 http://brothermartin.wordpress.com/?p=330#comment-439 That's an interesting way to look at the way the tale ends...I guess I have generally assumed that materialist rationality is as basic as gravity or E=mc2, etc., and that tales of magic and miracle from long ago were embellished, or misunderstandings of reasonably explicable events...was it Arthur C. Clarke who said something like "technology we don't understand looks miraculous"? Is what we consider rational just a function of our own mindset, something that could change just like the physical climate? If we live long enough, we may find out.....perhaps the earth spirits that people once dealt with as everything from leprechauns to dragons will once again return to the visible realm...that would certainly be an intriguing tradeoff for all the guilty pleasures of Western Civilization! That’s an interesting way to look at the way the tale ends…I guess I have generally assumed that materialist rationality is as basic as gravity or E=mc2, etc., and that tales of magic and miracle from long ago were embellished, or misunderstandings of reasonably explicable events…was it Arthur C. Clarke who said something like “technology we don’t understand looks miraculous”?

Is what we consider rational just a function of our own mindset, something that could change just like the physical climate? If we live long enough, we may find out…..perhaps the earth spirits that people once dealt with as everything from leprechauns to dragons will once again return to the visible realm…that would certainly be an intriguing tradeoff for all the guilty pleasures of Western Civilization!

]]> By: Albert Bates http://brothermartin.wordpress.com/2008/04/18/world-made-by-hand/#comment-438 Albert Bates Sun, 20 Apr 2008 17:58:55 +0000 http://brothermartin.wordpress.com/?p=330#comment-438 I found this particular deus ex machina denoument gave A World Made By Hand something more than your average science fiction post-apocalypse thriller. In a Stephen King novel I would expect a supernatural twist, and I would expect it to be gaudy and dominant. Kunstler has introduced supernaturality as a subtle player, and the protagonist, James Earle, is not really convinced of it, even after he has seen what it has apparently done. There is a rational skepticism that one might expect in an upstate New Yorker with a liberal arts education. And yet, the supernatural intrudes. It pokes its snout cautiously under the tent, because it was only a few centuries back that it was chased out, whisked away by the brooms of scientific empericism, made to hide in the corner, in sci-fi movies, New Age and Wikan occult rituals, or snake-handling churches. Kunstler has made the observation, and I think it a keen one, that when the frame of rationality is broken, and all we hold dear (nation, flag, money, lawn order, consumer culture) is laid to waste, then the supernatural — or more accurately, the unknown realms that fall outside our normal consciousness — will return to influence our lives. There will once more be mystery. I found this particular deus ex machina denoument gave A World Made By Hand something more than your average science fiction post-apocalypse thriller. In a Stephen King novel I would expect a supernatural twist, and I would expect it to be gaudy and dominant. Kunstler has introduced supernaturality as a subtle player, and the protagonist, James Earle, is not really convinced of it, even after he has seen what it has apparently done. There is a rational skepticism that one might expect in an upstate New Yorker with a liberal arts education.

And yet, the supernatural intrudes. It pokes its snout cautiously under the tent, because it was only a few centuries back that it was chased out, whisked away by the brooms of scientific empericism, made to hide in the corner, in sci-fi movies, New Age and Wikan occult rituals, or snake-handling churches. Kunstler has made the observation, and I think it a keen one, that when the frame of rationality is broken, and all we hold dear (nation, flag, money, lawn order, consumer culture) is laid to waste, then the supernatural — or more accurately, the unknown realms that fall outside our normal consciousness — will return to influence our lives. There will once more be mystery.

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