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It's true that the story lionized Bilbo and mostly ignored the other hobbits. We tend to like weirdos and rebels in stories, but really, at a personal level, we often tend to prefer nice, predictable, friendly folks in real life. Those are the reliable people that we depend on.

But I think what people may overlook in the story is that not just any old hobbit would have succeeded at the quest or been fulfilled by the journey of it. If the story is intending to say that we're all Bilbo (which I'm not sure it is), I think it's wrong. Bilbo never would have grown into himself if he hadn't left his comfort zone, true, but the overlooked flipside is that not everyone becomes Bilbo when they leave their comfort zones, especially if you only limit the legitimate activities to be uncomfortable with to a very narrow band of things considered sufficiently "adventuresome." We can't all be Bilbo because we're not all the same. That make sense? That's kind of what I was trying to point out with my analogy.

Personally, I believe that growth requires discomfort, and I'm not fulfilled unless I feel like I'm growing. So while I might be momentarily amused to stay at a comfortable plateau, it drives me batty in the long run. But I'm willing to consider the idea that other people aren't like that and don't need to live the way that I do in order to be fulfilled. After all, I'm an introvert. I tend to push myself by studying and learning about new things or picking up new artistic practices and hobbies. More extroverted people go to crazy parties and live music and huge social events. I sometimes wish I could be more like that because--due to the way our society validates extroverts and pathologizes introverts--I sometimes feel like I'm missing out. But I can't change how I'm built, and that kind of stuff just doesn't fulfill me in the same way. So, I guess I kind of understand a bit of where you're coming from. Are you an introvert, too? Have you ever read a book called Quiet?

You say that like the defense industry isn't worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually, or that Arundhati Roy isn't an award-winning author who's book has sold millions of copies and has been translated into 40 languages.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/sofex-the-business-of-war-full-length

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arundhati_Roy#Advocacy

By all means, please link to your published works so we can know that you're in a position to judge Ms. Roy. I'm sure you're busy winning literary prizes and not wanking and playing video games. Certainly you're not a nameless, faceless internet nobody who's highlight every day is the small dopamine rush you get from upvoted comments on Reddit?

Could you post your collection of published essays or articles so we can know you're older than 14 yourself, Spencer? Or is it Chad?


https://www.amazon.com/Algebra-Infinite-Justice-Arundhati-Roy/dp/014302907X

>"Learning about nature is a lifelong quest with an almost limitless subject matter. People are part of nature, and, of course, I love people. The good ones make me feel as though we were made for one another. Even the bad ones intrigue me - how do they reconcile their actions with the web of relationships in which we're all embedded? I'm not talking here about the love I feel for my family and friends, which is so ingrained as a sense of faith that I don't question it. I'm talking about a love amenable to investigation. We are only beginning to understand the nature of human contact, good and bad, and the motivations behind human actions. My love of people helps satisfy my curiosity as naturalist. If there is no destiny, there is no design. There's only life and death. My goal is to learn about life by living it, not by trying to figure out a cryptic plan that the Creator had in store for me." - Greg Graffin, Anarchy Evolution.

Greg Graffin is the lead singer for Bad Religion, but also a proffesor in Biology. I bought Anarchy Evolution about a year ago and this quote has stick with me ever since. It's also my first post to Quotesporn.

If anyone's interested in the book, here's a link to amazon (KingsRoadMerch has it out of stock):

http://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-Evolution-Science-Religion-Without/dp/0061828505

Here's the blurb:

> Behind our democracy lurks a powerful but unaccountable network of people who wield massive power and reap huge profits in the process. In exposing this shadowy and complex system that dominates our lives, Owen Jones sets out on a journey into the heart of our Establishment, from the lobbies of Westminster to the newsrooms, boardrooms and trading rooms of Fleet Street and the City. Exposing the revolving doors that link these worlds, and the vested interests that bind them together, Jones shows how, in claiming to work on our behalf, the people at the top are doing precisely the opposite. In fact, they represent the biggest threat to our democracy today - and it is time they were challenged.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Establishment-how-they-get-away-x/dp/0141974990

you won't be dissappointed I promise.

If you do buy it, and are disappointed and can tell me exactly why, I will buy you a month of reddit gold.

if you buy it and are not disappointed I will upvote as many of your post and comments I possibly can.

Either way you win, buy it and love it!

I absolutely agree that skepticism, when it's based on empirical evidence, is a healthy and fundamental part of the scientific method. But the problem I have in this regard as it relates to climate change, is that much of the "skepticism" I have seen is almost completely devoid of empirical evidence.

As an aside, have you read Seeing Further? It sounds like you would enjoy it.

Friggen love Petit Prince by him. If you haven't read it... go pick it up. Even if you don't know French, it's been translated in a brazillion languages. They have a movie coming out next Fall too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9L1zRAlYYQ

Her book, Yes Please, is great. I listened to the audiobook, which added a lot to the experience for me

We need to be careful whenever we engage in "rights" talk, though (see [Mary Ann Glendon's book on the subject] (http://www.amazon.com/Rights-Talk-Impoverishment-Political-Discourse/dp/0029118239/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1372372374&sr=8-3&keywords=Mary+Ann+Glendon)). We are still feeling our way down a dark corridor on what "expectation of privacy" means in cyberspace, for instance. And it simply won't do to assert an unlimited expectation of privacy...

Whoops. Good catch, thank you for the gentle correction.

It seems the issue of attribution in regard to this particular piece isn't entirely a new confusion.

The quote is from the prologue of Niel Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.

the funny thing is, the dude the quote is from wrote a book on that too

http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0231151578

I am not handing it off, I am telling you very specifically what you can do to help. I quote you three separate studies that show interaction is the key to changing racists attitudes. I gave you a way to get in touch with people who want to work on these issues. What more do you want from me? I can't say anything here to change your mind, social psychologists have shown this in studies time and again, if you want to explore that topic see part III of this book by Dr. Jonathon Haidt.

It's nearly identical, I found it by searching the book on amazon here. It goes:

"We're all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find somone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutally satisfying weirdness-and call it love-true love."

There are two possible realities here.

The first is one where Dr. Seuss wrote a paragraph outside of his normal rhymey, child-targeted style, then never published the book it was meant to go in and left no evidence in the world that he ever did this. Subsequently, Robert Fulgham wrote a book with a near identical paragraph and only after that had happened people somehow knew Dr. Seuss had written a similar quote and began quoting him on it.

The second is one where a paragraph by one guy was misattributed to another and misquoted, which happens a lot. I'll leave it to you to figure out which is the most parsimonious and likely.

If you really want to understand the concepts behind this quote, read this book.

It will blow your mind.

It's from: "The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" by Alan Watts

It is in this book and was also in this NY times article.

From his book "The Book: On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are"

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Taboo-Against-Knowing-Who/dp/0679723005

As an adult, you can do what you want.

Any of them will do, I think

Here's a link to the mass market paperback version

The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley

This book explains a lot.

Losing the Race: The Self Sabotage of Black America by John McWhorter