[LMB] [SPAM?] Legacy: "Assume it's true ...

[Paula Lieberman]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "PAT MATHEWS" <mathews55 at msn.com>

> "...and try to imagine what it could possibly be true OF." Miller's Law.
>
> Well, we've done that - Lois has shown us that whether or not Farmers have
> any groundsense at all, the Lakewalkers totally believe they don't, and
> totally believe the only way to preserve groundsense is for Lakewalker to
> marry Lakewalker, and that the fate of the world depends on this.
>
> Given those beliefs, which must have some basis or they'd have been
> falsified long ago,

Why should they have been proven to be false long before? Look at all things 
that people believed for millennia on this planet which turned out to be 
false!

> what has Dag done?

> He has followed the most anarchistic organ he has into - note this well! -
> telling his duty to go jump in the lake, and if they didn't like it, then
> nuts to them! And that, good friends, under the ongoing battle they're
> facing, is called "desertion." A case could be made out for desertion in 
> the

Is it?  They were willing for him to stop being a patroller decades before, 
and trying to get him to engender.   He served his time as a patroller, more 
than served his time.  Failing to contribute children is a different issue, 
and one that he failed to do for -decades-.  One might argue that he 
"deserted" long ago in failing to engage in sexual liaisons generating 
Lakewalker offspring to replace himself and increase the number of 
Lakewalkers...

> heat of battle, and all in the service of Mister Willy.
>
> You and I know that he's the hero and therefore this isn't true, but can
> they see anything else?

They didn't all see it that way.  His mother and his brother with their 
long-standing grudges contributed to votes against Dag, but the patrollers 
he was a compatriot of had a very different perspective and opinions.

Hmm, I'm reminded of Man of La Mancha and the song, "We're only thinking of 
him, we're only thinking of him, no matter what we say or do, we're only 
thinking of him, In my body it's well-known, there is not one selfish bone, 
I'm only thinking and worrying about him!  ...Oh I dearly love my uncle, but 
for what he's done to me, I would like to take and lock him up and throw 
away the key..." -- the point there is that each of his relatives and such, 
are upset at Don Quixote and aren't interested in his happiness, they're 
interested in not being shunned by people who think that Don Quixote's gone 
insane, or one of them had been wanting him to court her, etc.

Dag didn't produce children grown to adulthood to take a place in Lakewalker 
society, but he had destroyed a significant number of malices and spent more 
time on patrol than the vast majority of Lakewalkers... and most by his age 
would have either have retired from patrolling or been dead quite a while.

Dag's trying something different, and the social conservatives are upset not 
only by that, but by his -continued- failure to comply with their 
prescriptions for proper Lakewalker lifestyle.   Dag's previous response to 
the explicit and implicit criticism of him by the enclave he was born into, 
was absent himself for months and months, come back for a brief visit, and 
absent himself again for months more.  Taking off with Fawn the difference 
is that he's got a female lifemate now who's traveling with him, rather than 
him going off on solo patrol, and the community's in effect officially 
censured him and his clan possessions got impounded.   But, it;s not as if 
Dag never showed up back at the enclave after an absence of months, and took 
off again a few days later, not to return again for months, if ever.

> Freeze his assets? He's lucky not to be facing a firing squad!

Why?  He provided a valued service as a patroller, and wasn't around when he 
was off patrolling.  Out of sight, out of mind, and all that. The only 
differences to his culture, are that he officially took himself out of the 
marriage eligible pool for Lakewalkers--which pool he had made it rather 
clear he wasn't in ANYWAY for decades prior, ducking out and going on patrol 
and making it very clear he was NOT going to remarry and engender children 
and -that- was -that-. When other people brought the subject up, he -left- 
and went back on patrol, end of discussion, and if he came back again it 
wouldn't be for many months, and he'd stay only until the subject came up 
again, and he'd be gone again.

Marrying a farmer, to me looks like something that's a lessly undesirable 
situation that the previous one.  Before,there weren't going to be -any= 
children.  Now, while there might be half-farmer children, there's an 
opportunity for bridge building between Farmer and Lakewalker--Fawn's 
family's accepted Dag as son-in-law, Fawn's happy with him as a mate (and 
given what the situation had been with Fawn, that's a lot more desirable 
outcome for her family that Fawn dead, or Fawn disappeared off Elsewhere 
having run away and made a life for herself that locked out her relatives 
and left them unknowing of her fate, or Fawn pregnant with a dratsab or an 
ugly forced marriage to Sunny and community ill-will with Sunny having had a 
betrothed fiancee... Fawn's reunited with her family and her husband's 
accepted, Fawn gets a husband with an outlook on life that's congruent with 
Fawn's--something that wasn't possible with eligibles of the area Fawn was 
from, Fawn gets to travel and her unconventional mindset is a feature, not a 
bug, for Dag and for their marriage.

For that matter, would Dag have been happy in a second Lakewalker marriage? 
He declined to remarry with a Lakewalker, despite all the pressure and 
opportunities. He didn't want it, he was averse to it... he'd complied with 
covention and societal demand/expectation with his first wife. Her death had 
traumatized him, and he refused to all attempts thereafter to get him 
married again to another Lakewalker, over the course of time that was longer 
than a Farmer's lifetime.

Dag and Fawn are each anachronistic for their birth societies, Dag because 
of trauma and perhaps that first marriage was with someone who was far from 
a typical Lakewalker, and Fawn because someone of her nature didn't fit in 
well. So, the two misfits found one another.
>
> Pat, giving you this to munch on/
>
> http://idiotgrrl.livejournal.com/
>
> ______________________________
> "Dark and difficult times lie ahead. Soon we must all face the choice
> between what is Right and what is Easy."- Albus Dumbledore (Harry Potter 
> and
> the Goblet of Fire)
>
>
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