this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2024
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Doing My Part

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When the topic comes up I like to point out Heinlein was writing StrangerInAStrangeLand , a book some called "The Hippie Bible", at the SAME TIME he was writing Starship Troopers. (en.wikipedia.org)
submitted 1 month ago by MathiasTCK to c/doingmypart
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When the topic comes up I like to point out Heinlein was writing StrangerInAStrangeLand , a book some called "The Hippie Bible", at the SAME TIME he was writing Starship Troopers.

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[–] givesomefucks 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What's going on here?

Is this a bot thing that reposts not just the post but all the comments here?

I thought I was going to get to point out again that Starship Troopers was a satire of a military government that while most civilians didn't pick up on, other military officers did.

Stranger had a lot of the same themes, it was just one was written for civilians and one for the military. Heinlein was a military officer and understood how they thing, how they disagreed with a progressive message, and what path to take them down to make them up to the progressive message later.

Note to the mention the always applicable:

If something was progressive 50 years ago and seems conservative now, it's because we achieved progress.

We shot higher than Heinlein predicted, and dude was pretty fucking good at predicting stuff. That's something we should be proud of now, not use to invalidate Heinleins earlier message wholesale.

[–] MathiasTCK 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Original post was supposed to link to the threads.net thread I am quoting. No bots involved, I am using the Sync lemmy client on my Samsung.

[–] MathiasTCK 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

When the topic comes up I like to point out Heinlein was writing StrangerInAStrangeLand , a book some called "The Hippie Bible", at the SAME TIME he was writing Starship Troopers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_in_a_Strange_Land

[–] MathiasTCK 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

In discussions on this topic people frequently want to use one book, or another, as expressing the views of the author at some period of time. That fails here because two books with seemingly opposing views were written by the same author at the same time.

[–] MathiasTCK 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

My take is Heinlein was a professional SciFi author, he wrote what he thought would sell, but given that: he was happy to conduct thought experiments meant to examine positions he may or may not have agreed with, considered, or actively opposed. That said, I think he also often had a self insert character that basically expressed Heinlein's take.

I point people at the Notebook of Lazarus Long if they want Heinlein's take expressed via fiction.

[–] MathiasTCK 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] MathiasTCK 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

https://www.baen.com/chapters/W200408/The_Notebooks_of_Lazarus_Long.htm

"Men are more sentimental than women. It blurs their thinking.

Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent.

Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it. "

[–] MathiasTCK 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

We don't really to have to infer though, Heinlein was an outspoken activist outside of his fiction, ran for office, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein#Views

[–] fjordbasa 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Why did you reply to yourself several times? That’s probably why folks think this is a bot post. That’s not unusual for a bot to do- pulling posts and comments from somewhere else; actual humans tend to reply to people’s comments rather than their own

[–] MathiasTCK 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Context is here:

https://lemmy.world/comment/12118240

I've made the same points in many similar social media discussions. A bunch when people declared the Starship Troopers Movie wasn't satire.

I could have combined the replies to 1, but then they would exceed the character limit if I want to copy paste them elsewhere.

It's handy that the reply char limit in some places is same or smaller than the title of a post limit elsewhere.

[–] MathiasTCK 1 points 3 weeks ago

I did the same thing recently, exported tweets, but sent it to my subreddit instead. Still working out what to send where :)

https://www.reddit.com/r/doingmypart/comments/1fguhdt/i_tried_searching_for_biblical_text_to_support/

[–] Pronell 3 points 1 month ago

The first several pages of Starship Troopers tell us exactly what's going in before we jump into the view of the teenager absorbing propaganda.

Heinlein completely understood what he was writing. His audience didn't really catch the propaganda though until the movie force-fed it to them.

Great post.

[–] MathiasTCK 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

https://www.threads.net/@mattkanninen/post/C_WVDlsz7DJ/?xmt=AQGzFGbAd-mB-7Vl-Opo2e0XkAv8lGg7CDa-lrOTyJqR7A

[–] MathiasTCK 1 points 1 month ago

I meant original post to link to the threads.net post, but I've had this conversation several times.

This community started as a subreddit, dedicated to Starship Troopers Gifs. I never promoted it as such though, and basically used it as a place to bookmark. But I'll still post Starship Troopers and Heinlein stuff here, or any time someone is Doing Their Part.