>That one phrase… “but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate.” Somehow that encapsulates the entire flattening process. You can just imagine a functionary doing just that. Taking everything I had just read, all the years of Okonkwo’s life, with its struggles, setbacks, and triumphs and reducing it to a “reasonable paragraph”.
Yeah, I agree this is a good line, that subtlety takes down the imperialist mindset a peg.
I wonder if it was inspiration or convergent evolution when a writer in an entirely different genre reiterated it in farce as "Earth: Mostly Harmless"
By the way, I recalled your earlier post about standing out from AI when I read the first version of my reply, which was "You're right to call out this as a particularly powerful line" and it just screamed LLM so loud I had to re do it.
The "Mostly Harmless" line occurred to me as well, and I'm glad you brought it up. I considered including it, but it felt too... casual? Perhaps I should have used it in the sign-off...
> If we imagine culture having a topography, all the peaks were bulldozed, and all the chasms were filled by dump trucks.
> It feels more like the Igbo were given a storage unit by the Europeans, but it was only 5’ x 5’. They didn’t have to throw everything out. They could put some boxes in there, but you couldn’t store anything big.
>That one phrase… “but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate.” Somehow that encapsulates the entire flattening process. You can just imagine a functionary doing just that. Taking everything I had just read, all the years of Okonkwo’s life, with its struggles, setbacks, and triumphs and reducing it to a “reasonable paragraph”.
Yeah, I agree this is a good line, that subtlety takes down the imperialist mindset a peg.
I wonder if it was inspiration or convergent evolution when a writer in an entirely different genre reiterated it in farce as "Earth: Mostly Harmless"
By the way, I recalled your earlier post about standing out from AI when I read the first version of my reply, which was "You're right to call out this as a particularly powerful line" and it just screamed LLM so loud I had to re do it.
I hope that's not what the future looks like... Constant second guessing on whether something sounds AI-generated.
The "Mostly Harmless" line occurred to me as well, and I'm glad you brought it up. I considered including it, but it felt too... casual? Perhaps I should have used it in the sign-off...
> If we imagine culture having a topography, all the peaks were bulldozed, and all the chasms were filled by dump trucks.
> It feels more like the Igbo were given a storage unit by the Europeans, but it was only 5’ x 5’. They didn’t have to throw everything out. They could put some boxes in there, but you couldn’t store anything big.
I really like these analogies.