Friday, August 19, 2005

Home-Schooling

You know, we joke about the compound here, but our compound is for our post-apocalyptic good. After peak oil and a few flu pandemics, you will find yourself, strolling out of the Ross Richie Memorial Comic Book Preservation Vault, nodding judiciously and saying "Verily, John's obsession with hy-grid energy and canned goods was worthwhile, as we are still playing World of Warcraft* on wind-powered LAN networks, while the howls of the under-people echo off our environmentally sustainable wall-spikes." It's an empowerment compound. We encourage our younglings to go off and form satellite compounds nearby. And, if the tomato crop is thin again this year, may well mandate it.

I'd heard about Dominionists, of course (that Wikipedia article is remarkably fair-minded. I am less so). The whole Patriarch movement I'd seen creeping around also. But I'd never really paid it mind -- and so never really dropped a mental stone into the Patriarch mine-shaft to see how far it fell -- until World O'Crap broke out a big examination of movement bigwig Philip Lancaster's latest essay.

I'm not even going to try ... just read it.

The incredible mix of personal hubris and societal intolerance here is ... it is fucking MAGNIFICENT. I could not imagine talking with someone like this -- even polite elevator conversation -- for more than three seconds before the sheer force of The Crazy physically forced me back, like an overpressure blast. Seriously. Wow.





*(Why are WoW servers still functioning? Because the Chinese took them over completely in 2011.)

12 comments:

Mikhail Capone said...

The american Taliban strikes again!

Anonymous said...

My parents know folks who live like this guy wants his followers to live.

They're called "The Amish."

We mostly think of Amish as low-tech folks, but really they are big-family narrow-horizon rural patriarchies.

* * *


Um, really, I could think of no finer justice than for one of this guys great-grand-kids to go on a spontaneous trip to the Big City and come back with a glowing cybernetic eye, a built-in Wi-Fi connection to the global Noosphere, and a girlfriend who is a genetically engineered uplifted cougar-woman.

nolo said...

Even the Amish give their kids an opportunity to decide for themselves if they want to live the life.

Unknown said...

yeah -- that documentary about rumspringa, the Devil's Playground, was really fantastic. I had no idea about the Amish teen "years off", nor did I know until then ... Amish are hot.

writergurl said...

That Lancaster fella is providing not only a training center but also a recipe for serial killers. Or, at the very least, Lizzie Borden...

Cunningham said...

Going to the dark side for a moment: everything that guy said had the stink of incest on it. He's not speaking as an adult. He's speaking as somone who doesn't want to give up his playthings.

When I went off to the USAF back in 1986, right before I was getting on the bus my Dad pulled me aside, hugged me and said something I'll never forget:

"Remember what we taught you."

It seems to me that this guy's kids, if they do leave, won't be able to forget. (And yes, that scares me a bit too)

Anonymous said...

The Amish year-off thing isn't universal. The upstate-NY families my parents know don't hold with that kind of thing. OTOH, they tend to have big families because some of their kids chuck it all and leave.

OTOOH, nolo is right in that the Amish are into Acceptance. They may not like the fact that some of their kids head for the big city, but they are not psychopathic control freaks.

Stefan

Justin Cognito said...

Why do I have the sinking feeling that this man is going to condition his children so that they'll attempt a coup within four generations?

Anonymous said...

Rogers, you have no one to blame but yourself and your ilk. I speak of us -- the accursed WRITER!

Where did this man get his silly ideas from? A writer!

Who put all those words together to make that Bible? Writers!

Such power we wield...

... and yet you gave us... Catwoman?

Amandarama said...

That man made me very angry. I'd like his home address and a Daisy Cutter please. Stat.

Unknown said...

I gave you precisely one line in Catwoman.

But is was a line of IMMENSE POWER!!

Anonymous said...

Interesting topic of conversation. However, I don't get what you are advocating or what points you are trying to make. Is homeschooling dangerous? The gentleman who wrote the original article (before it was all f...ed up) expressed his views about how life should be and certainly has the right to express his Faith and raise his family accordingly. I think I took more offense at what you had to say. As a parent, I have the right to raise my children in a way that I value, as opposed to sending them off to an government funded institution to be trained to be a good little worker bee. Being homeschooled gives my children the opportunity to learn to be wives if they should choose that path. It is an acceptable and respectable career choice in the and it should not be given such a low status. I am a wife and mother. I have 17+ years of formal education. I've been trained to work for other Institutions outside of my home, but I choose this. It is not a degrading position. I believe more mothers should stay home with their kids, but society puts pressure on us at a very young age to find employment and make money. The choice is virtually taken from us by people who don't understand how I could possibly choose my family over a career. The man's wife had some say in family decisions. She chose to marry him. She chose to follow his lead and she chose not to leave him. The only thing that makes it wrong is that you can't imagine anyone being satisfied in such a position as "wife" and "mother" and servant to God. Just my 2 cents.