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When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)

theguardian.com

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Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)

#11

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

I think one of the things in the boys' favor is that they had true community. It sounds they they grew up on the same island. Were part of the same community. All went to the same Catholic school. From the mention of "Their days began and ended with song and prayer" along with the Catholic school, it also seems they were all religious.

As much as we on HN like to think that logic and the rational mind is what makes people behave good, many times it is the subconscious ties of shared family, friendship, and faith that that help people pull together in times of crisis.

Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)

#12

Post by bombcar »

chriskanan wrote: post #5
Zamicol wrote: post #2

My high school's district required students to read The of Lord of the Flies. My freshmen English teacher hated the book so much he broke district requirements and told my class he was giving everyone A's on that assignment. He asked the class to read any substitute book in its place. To this day I still consider him to be a wise teacher.

I used to be a voracious consumer of fiction, but somehow critical reading of Lord of the Flies knocked that out of me in sophomore high school English. I think it was all the deeper meaning analysis I was forced to do moreso than the book. It just seemed like we were going far beyond the author's intention in a joyless analysis exercise.

This is the fate of much good literature - forcing recalcitrant high schoolers to dissect something that doesn’t talk to them which can result in a life-long hatred.

Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)

#13

Post by [deleted] »

beachy wrote: post #3

That's a wonderful story and and an uplifting rebuttal to Lord of the Flies. But to be fair, six Tongan boys were probably far hardier and well equipped than the typical British schoolboy of that time would have been. It seems they thought nothing of stealing a fishing boat and heading to sea, and they most likely had abundant life skills already - they basically relocated from life on one pacific island to another.…

[deleted]

Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)

#14

Post by Syonyk »

chriskanan wrote: post #5
Zamicol wrote: post #2

My high school's district required students to read The of Lord of the Flies. My freshmen English teacher hated the book so much he broke district requirements and told my class he was giving everyone A's on that assignment. He asked the class to read any substitute book in its place. To this day I still consider him to be a wise teacher.

I used to be a voracious consumer of fiction, but somehow critical reading of Lord of the Flies knocked that out of me in sophomore high school English. I think it was all the deeper meaning analysis I was forced to do moreso than the book. It just seemed like we were going far beyond the author's intention in a joyless analysis exercise.

> I think it was all the deeper meaning analysis I was forced to do moreso than the book. It just seemed like we were going far beyond the author's intention in a joyless analysis exercise.

That was literally my entire high school honors English program. You must interpret everything, to the satisfaction of the English teacher, or else.

It quite reliably took people who absolutely loved reading and made them hate books. I'm not quite sure the point of it, really. It took me a decade after high school to read a fiction book again, and this is far from uncommon among those who suffered through it alongside me.

I don't remember a thing about Red Badge of Courage except I had to extract meaning from why the grass in this particular scene was green - to symbolize new life, hope, rebirth, etc.

Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)

#16

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

bombcar wrote: post #12
chriskanan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be a voracious consumer of fiction, but somehow critical reading of Lord of the Flies knocked that out of me in sophomore high school English. I think it was all the deeper meaning analysis I was forced to do moreso than the book. It just seemed like we were going far beyond the author's intention in a joyless analysis exercise.

This is the fate of much good literature - forcing recalcitrant high schoolers to dissect something that doesn’t talk to them which can result in a life-long hatred.

I wonder if it would make it better if teachers would explain to you that this bit is not very useful in and of itself, but we do it to practice writing and because other people think we should. It might dissuade some people from pursuing English literature degrees in college, but that's probably not a bad thing. Would the honesty help at all?

I didn't hate literature class in highschool but I think I might have liked it better if I wasn't so confused about why the various arguments and analysis seemed so tenuous to me. Fundamentally, the analysis of literature is the least productive skill we teach kids in high school, although writing is still very important.

Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)

#17

Post by strken »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #7
beachy wrote: post #3

That's a wonderful story and and an uplifting rebuttal to Lord of the Flies. But to be fair, six Tongan boys were probably far hardier and well equipped than the typical British schoolboy of that time would have been. It seems they thought nothing of stealing a fishing boat and heading to sea, and they most likely had abundant life skills already - they basically relocated from life on one pacific island to another.…

> So a great story but I don't know how much can be extrapolated from it about human behaviour in general. Given that this really happened, a lot. Lord of the Flies came out of the fantasy of an English superintendent. Yet, it has permeated our culture as a cautionary tale about human behavior. It is 100% fiction. I’d like to recommend Humankind by Rutger Bregman - a wonderful book dismantling the toxic narratives we…

I haven't read Humankind yet, but a recent review I have read[0] gives a mix of positives and negatives to it. A lot of the cited studies are controversial in their own right: S.L.A. Marshall's claim that only 15% of soldiers in WW2 fired their weapons is based on subjective evidence, omits mention of whether they had any opportunity to fire, and has many other flaws that have since been picked apart, for example.

This is not to say that our negativity is justified! Only that Bregman seems to have as persistent a bias to positivity as other writers have to negativity.

[0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-human...

Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)

#18

Post by MeinBlutIstBlau »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #7
beachy wrote: post #3

That's a wonderful story and and an uplifting rebuttal to Lord of the Flies. But to be fair, six Tongan boys were probably far hardier and well equipped than the typical British schoolboy of that time would have been. It seems they thought nothing of stealing a fishing boat and heading to sea, and they most likely had abundant life skills already - they basically relocated from life on one pacific island to another.…

> So a great story but I don't know how much can be extrapolated from it about human behaviour in general. Given that this really happened, a lot. Lord of the Flies came out of the fantasy of an English superintendent. Yet, it has permeated our culture as a cautionary tale about human behavior. It is 100% fiction. I’d like to recommend Humankind by Rutger Bregman - a wonderful book dismantling the toxic narratives we…

Cultural experience matters a lot here though. If 6 boys who dealt with hard grueling hunter gatherer labor, they'd have no issue pulling themselves up by their makeshift sandals so to speak, in the jungle. Western boys who may have had at worst, had a few days of hard labor, the rest school and sports, not so much.

Your forgetting about culture shock. White boys who know nothing of hunting and gathering aren't going to fare well compared to Tongan boys who studied the school or hard knocks first hand. It's like dropping a black bear in the Arctic and guffawing that it can't adapt like the polar bear! They're not equipped for the situation appropriately.

People are trusting. We know this. People want to work together. People want to survive. The simple fact that we are here today is evidence of that. Hunter gatherers, trusting an outsider showing them dropping seeds in the group produces crops. And now we have iPhones. All because baseline humans are "selfishly selfless." We learned that delaying gratification of the Id can provide greater rewards. That's why we aren't still animals fighting over berries with grizzley bears...

Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)

#19

Post by anotherman554 »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #7
beachy wrote: post #3

That's a wonderful story and and an uplifting rebuttal to Lord of the Flies. But to be fair, six Tongan boys were probably far hardier and well equipped than the typical British schoolboy of that time would have been. It seems they thought nothing of stealing a fishing boat and heading to sea, and they most likely had abundant life skills already - they basically relocated from life on one pacific island to another.…

> So a great story but I don't know how much can be extrapolated from it about human behaviour in general. Given that this really happened, a lot. Lord of the Flies came out of the fantasy of an English superintendent. Yet, it has permeated our culture as a cautionary tale about human behavior. It is 100% fiction. I’d like to recommend Humankind by Rutger Bregman - a wonderful book dismantling the toxic narratives we…

Lord of the flies was written shortly after world war 2, which also really happened... I don't take it seriously as a story of what would really happen if boys ended up on an island, but humans killing each other for dumb reasons is not the stuff of fantasy.

Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)

#20

Post by anigbrowl »

keithnz wrote: post #6

I think the state of nature as imagined by the likes of Thomas Hobbes is more just an assumption that is more based on observations of conflicting social groups, as such it is an emergent nature. But, I think humans evolved on the basis of mutual cooperation is a better survival strategy. So I think we have this ingrained base nature that wants to work together with other humans.

The fact that he wrote the book during the English Civil War really ought to get more play than it does; amid such dire circumstances a desire for order at any price is understandable, but Hobbes' situation and personal biases are rarely taken into account.

A thoughtful counterpoint (albeit a somewhat idealistic and romantic one) to Hobbes' is found in the writings of Peter Kropotkin.

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