>> ^RhesusMonk:
Someday I'm going to write a long treatise here about why this song and this story have very little to do with god's grace and being connected through JC. This is about awe and gratitude. Christians believe there is some force that is doling out goodwill and that we are unwitting and undeserving of this goodwill, unless we respond in a Christian way.

I read a great quote recently: "Christian is a wonderful noun, but a terrible adjective." I have to agree. I think the feeling you're describing, the feeling hinted at by Phipps, is transcendental. As Newton emerged from his cabin that day, and heard the dirge rising up from the hold, something in his brain clicked. No doubt, "Unknown" was sold into bondage exactly on schedule, and so the song did not save him in a meaningful way, but unbeknownst to him, that song did have an effect. Newton began to reconsider his role in things, and left the slave trade. He was a vocal proponent of abolition in England. It would be many, many years before he would put pen to paper and write out Amazing Grace (he experienced his conversion moment in 1748, and composed AG between 1760 and 1770) but nevertheless, the wordless song never truly left him. He chose to share its melody with those who'd never set foot on a slave ship, and found that, somehow, the effect was sustained.

Now everything I've just mentioned can be looked at in a non-Christian context, and it would remain true. It should be said, though, that the presence of Christianity and its memes made it easier for Newton to become aware of just how far he'd strayed in his life. Given the number of unrepentant slave captains who called themselves Christians, it does not necessarily follow that Newton's salvation was due to his turn to Christianity, but it certainly helped. And it also helped all the slaves who would have found passage in the hold of his ship, but did not, thanks to his conversion. Again, Christianity didn't do it, but it was a 'hook' upon which Newton could hang this unsettling feeling in his belly.

Kurt Vonnegut notes much the same in a speech he gave at Clowes Hall in 2007. He starts by pointing out that, while Marx said that 'religion was the opium of the lower classes', he should have been taken literally. Opiates were a wonderful class of drug that numbed the pain, and who knew pain better than the working classes? He continues, "The most spiritually splendid phenomenon of my lifetime is how African-American citizens have maintained their dignity and self-respect, despite their having been treated by white Americans, both in and out of government, and simply because of their skin color, as though they were contemptible and loathsome, and even diseased. Their churches have surely helped them to do that. So there's Karl Marx again. There's Jesus again."

I guess the question is, could John Newton have composed Amazing Grace without believing in the Magic Man Who Lives in the Sky? Maybe. Probably. But it certainly helped.

>> ^quantumushroom

Oh shit, wealth and fame are not enough to make you a happy person! Who would have thought?

I'm currently reading "The Fall of the Roman Empire" by Peter Heather, recommended to me by my brother / fellow sifter Almanildo. It proposes a new solution to the mystery of the death of the Roman Empire, different from the prevailing notion of a decadent elite gone soft. Heather writes very engaging for a historian, and the book is propped full of exciting anecdotes from the time period in question.

There are a lot of books I would like to recommend, but I've noticed that my reading tastes are very similar to a lot of other sifters (Who would have thought?), so they will probably get recommended anyway. So as not to clutter this comment with too much info, I will only recommend two norwegian books, because I think most sifters haven't heard of them. If you are going to read only one book by a norwegian author, read this one:

"Mengele Zoo" by Gert Nygårdshaug. This book takes on heavy subjects like environmentalism, north-south conflict, imperialism and terrorism, but in an extremely page-turning and action-packed way. And you can not help but fall in love with the main protagonist from the moment you meet him. When you are finished reading it, you will be unsure whether you have become a better or worse human being for doing so.

"Out Stealing Horses" by Per Petterson has a radically different mood. It is a mellow story about a father/son-relationship, love and betrayal. It starts out as almost a non-story, but gradually reveals layer upon layer of intrigue. Petterson has often been compared to another great norwegian author, Knut Hamsun, for the way he uses the norwegian landscape to describe the psychology of his characters, in this case the heavy fir forests on the Norway-Sweden border. It also has the best closing sentence I have ever read in a book.

Oh, and anything by Kurt Vonnegut jr.

You remember correctly. Serious Cat in a cradle with a grey fro and cigarette. I tried it but couldn't get it to work. 'Course it doesn't help if you start stealing the good KV posts!

In reply to this comment by peggedbea:
did i dream up drunken conversation about kurt vonnegut serious cats? it seems vague.
http://videosift.com/video/The-infinite-mind-with-Kurt-Vonnegut

did i dream up drunken conversation about kurt vonnegut serious cats? it seems vague.
http://videosift.com/video/The-infinite-mind-with-Kurt-Vonnegut

God Karl Pilkington is a twat, so much of a twat I can't even list the ways this man riles me with his inherited celebrity.

For a fantastic real example of how evolution has actually failed us read Galapogas by the late great Kurt Vonnegut. It's narrated by a ghost

I'm 26. My name is Cari. I'm still pretty new here. Maybe a little presumptuous that you are curious about me, but here it is.

I own 2 businesses. I am a photographer and an office manager.
Why am I on the sift?
Peggedbea has been my best friend for over 10 years. I see her every Tuesday and smoke. She told me I needed to play here. I did.

I live in Fort Worth, Texas. It's hot and mostly miserable here.

I enjoy all sorts of beer.In my free time I like to try to play the guitar, bass, and take pictures of myself. I am a huge music fan and I enjoy finding new and interesting things to listen to. I love documentaries and interesting books. (Kurt Vonnegut, Haruki Murakami, Will Self)

My name is because i enjoy vagina names and things that you can blow.

American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses, took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.

-Kurt Vonnegut jr., Slaughterhouse-Five


*promote

I'll do my best, having skills in neither stone cutting nor engraving. Here's what it might look like:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j24/neptunetitan/RIP_peggedbea.png

In reply to this comment by peggedbea:
"everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."
-kv

please make sure they put that on my tombstone.

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
Hi Ho.

- Kurt Vonnegut, Slapstick

I think William Shakespeare was the wisest human being I ever heard of. To be perfectly frank, though, that's not saying much.

- Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus

What is it, what can it possibly be about blowjobs and golf?

- Martian visitor to Earthling, from Kurt Vonnegut's A Man Without A Country, the great man's last book.

As you might have guessed by now, I have a thing for Vonnegut.

"everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."
-kv

please make sure they put that on my tombstone.

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
Hi Ho.

- Kurt Vonnegut, Slapstick

I think William Shakespeare was the wisest human being I ever heard of. To be perfectly frank, though, that's not saying much.

- Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus

What is it, what can it possibly be about blowjobs and golf?

- Martian visitor to Earthling, from Kurt Vonnegut's A Man Without A Country, the great man's last book.

As you might have guessed by now, I have a thing for Vonnegut.

Hi Ho.

- Kurt Vonnegut, Slapstick

I think William Shakespeare was the wisest human being I ever heard of. To be perfectly frank, though, that's not saying much.

- Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus

What is it, what can it possibly be about blowjobs and golf?

- Martian visitor to Earthling, from Kurt Vonnegut's A Man Without A Country, the great man's last book.

As you might have guessed by now, I have a thing for Vonnegut.

"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way."
-- Kurt Vonnegut jr., "Cat's Cradle"


Just once I would like to persuade the audience not to wear any article of blue denim. If only they could see themselves in a pair of brown corduroys like mine instead of this awful, boring blue denim. I don't enjoy the sky or sea as much as I used to because of this Levi character. If Jesus Christ came back today, He and I would get into our brown corduroys and go to the nearest jean store and overturn the racks of blue denim. Then we'd get crucified in the morning.
-- Ian Anderson, of Jethro Tull

* slapstick - kurt vonnegut
* bridge to terabithia - katherine peterson
* portrait of dorian gray - oscar wilde
* junkie - william s burroughs
* the captured - scott zesch
* mutant message downunder - marlo morgan
* all my friends are going to be strangers - larry mcmurtry
* beasts of no nation - uzodinma eweala
* a day in the life of ivan denisovich - alexander solzhenitsyn
* things fall apart - chinua achebe

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clark
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Foundation - Isaac Asimov
The Stars my Destination - Alfred Bester
The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury
A High Wind in Jamaica - Richard Hughes
Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
The Call of the Wild - Jack London

This list is the product of a few moments of reflection. I read many of these books when I was young but their subject matter combined with where I was in my life left me with indelible memories.

Also, the people above me have good taste.

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Dune - Frank Herbert
Gödel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Galapagos - Kurt Vonnegut
Live from Golgotha - Gore Vidal
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller


Those are 10 off the top of my head, in no particular order. Some I consider favorites, others made a strong enough impression that they always come to mind when someone asks a question like this.