Hippiness galore!

[sabotabby]

Oh weird; they're making a movie of The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk. I can't quite explain this book's place in my life. I read it at a wayyy too impressionable age, and at some level, it shaped a lot of my ideas about politics and ecology and urban planning. When I read it later, it had aged badly—to say the least—and I found the resolution wholly upsetting in a way that exemplified why I reject pacifism as an ideology even while I agree with a lot of the author's ideas.

...but damn I do kinda want to see it as a movie, if they do a good job. And if they do a bad job, I think it's fodder for the most epic screenshot review since Atlas Shrugged.

Comments

[fengi.livejournal.com]

When was that impressionable age? Because I'd like to compare what was warping my worldview at the time.

[franklanguage.livejournal.com]

I don't think I had a worldview in my 20s.

[sabotabby]

Well, the book's been out 18 years, which would have made me 15 at the youngest. And I do remember being quite young, so I probably read it around the time of its publication. A family friend gave it to us to read.

I don't think I had a worldview at the time; a lot of things were influencing me, from Marx to Ayn Rand, and I lacked the discernment to judge between them.

[lienne.livejournal.com]

That is the age at which I was reading and failing to understand the full meaning of Terry Goodkind! (I got better.)

[fengi.livejournal.com]

I only think I had a Worldview was because my parents watched the news at dinner almost every night. I realize that by 15 my direction was heavily influenced by stuff I found amusing without fully understanding: Pogo collections from the McCarthy years, the communist manifesto, Kurt Vonnegut's Cats Cradle, Erma Bombeck and Judith Viorst. One very weird influential item was The Fall And Rise of Reginald Perrin, which is very odd considering it was about the existential crisis of a middle aged British guy in a corporate environment which was even then evaporating and I was a 15 year old in Orlando Florida. I can't quite explain what I got from them, beyond avoiding a career until my mid 30s. I haven't been able to return to those books, not because I think they haven't aged well, but because I suspect they'd now be unbearably sad rather than funny.

[sabotabby]

Yeah, I was exposed to all sorts of weird shit at that age. I think I had more confidence than coherence. I mean, I was vaguely lefty but I'd hit on weird things like libertarianism that sounded good. I think at around 15 I was largely interested in Dick Lit.