22 Comments

Sometimes direct action is the only way. im all for impaling. plastic bottles can be molded into huge pointy stakes easily. its a lot quicker than the world slowly disintegrating into lawless carnage as the seas rise and the supermarkets stand empty.

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😱 'im all for impaling.' 😱 That's a strong statement. Before you know it, you'll be invited to join Vlad's secret army!

All jokes aside, I found it very hard to make a statement about the climate terrorism proposed in The Ministry for the Future. With the stakes being so high, it's a 'damned if you do, damned if don't' situation. I still think that if we all reduce our consumption especially in the rich countries we could make it. We should of course also force the very rich to reduce their footprint. How? We're going back to impaling... just kidding but not really. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

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I was very frustrated by this book. obviously i am not an advocate for violence but climate inaction and wilful distortions of climate truth for short term gain is just violence of another type and will only lead to a martial society protecting dwindling land and resource from the tens of millions of displaced and starving. and we seem to be accelerating towards this not slowing the trend with our technological ability and political will that could be brought to bear (and could have been brought to bear for decades) if it wasnt for the self interested corporates that never care.

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The author also said in an interview that he’s against violence. But you make a good point: What is violence? And I guess he wanted to raise these points with his book.

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Highly amusing and well written! Humorous satire (which always have a targeted – or impaled?😛 – victim) is an underused technique for nudging behavioural change. And I just knew every detail had been considered when Herr Impaler "pulled out his Huawei phone". Thank you for starting my day with a chuckle.

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Thanks, Johnathan, really appreciate it! I was very nervous about publishing this piece but it was that or the stake! So, not much choice! 😜

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😂 With so much at stake it certainly wood have been a serious mistake to do anything else! 🙄

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😂 It wood have indeed...

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I laughed out loud when Dracula pulled out his Huawei phone, thank you for that. 😂 Very entertaining.

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🤣 Thanks for reading, happy to offer a little entertainment with my writing. I’m working on the second part.

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I'm very late to this, sorry. Clever and well written, Claudia, and with of course a very serious message and things to think on.

Hope you're not getting *too* cold over in the ice dungeon.

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My hands are frozen, that's why I couldn't type the second part yet 😜.

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😅

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Just the right amount of satire and scorn for what is not likely to be a more practical solution than the ones in the novel. If only we could be just as brutal as we need to be in narrative, and then much less so in real life. Problem is, so many of the most dangerous--including Vlad?--can't distinguish satire from reality.

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Looking at his reign of terror I am convinced that he didn't. I'm going to refer some of the most gory episodes in the next part.

He is hailed a hero though in Romania. Under his rule, land was returned to their rightful owners, the farmers. He also tried very hard to fight against the Ottoman hegemony and the expensive tributes that were sucking the country dry. Those were tough times.

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Claudia, I enjoyed reading this piece far more than the book itself, which I’m slogging through on schedule, but only because there’s a forum here to reflect on the various “solutions.” With the recent shooting of the United Health executive in New York, with the shooter now referred to as a “folk hero” by some because of his ostensible political views, we have a real-world act of terrorism to consider. While I understand the raw emotional hit of striking against a corrupt and unfair system, I say shooting a CEO in public will do nothing to change the system itself. It’s just made people more afraid, which is not a position of strength for collective organizing for national healthcare in the U.S. or anything else.

So, I understand Vlad’s desire to stake anyone who doesn’t live within the 2000-Watt limits - and at least that stake is directed at changing collective behavior. BUT how are the punishments to be administered, assuming we don’t have a global supernatural force of the Undead to police everyone? Part of your satirical point, no doubt 😉

And that’s why it’s so hard to write essays about whether violence is ever justified, because the form of opinion essays pushes for rational debate: point-counterpoint. I like that you leapt into the messy emotional side, and I could easily see this becoming a satirical novel with far more momentum and “teeth” than The Ministry of the Future.

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Thanks, Martha. It's very silly and I was afraid that it might offend those of you reading along. But I write fiction and I didn't know of a better way to express the helplessness we probably all feel when it comes to the climate issues and natural devastation we're facing.

The book is not an easy read, but it gives us food for thought, it encourages discussions and debate. When a writer can trigger so many emotions and discussions with their book, I think that they did their job.

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I enjoyed this one, even if I don't necessarily agree that the so2 stop gap solution is stupid. I know we need to reduce emissions and extract CO2, but it's also important to keep temps in check in the time it takes for all that to take effect.

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If you follow the link of that one it’s actually the words of some scientists. I just added it to the satire. Happy that you enjoyed the piece. It’s the most random thing I wrote so far. 🤣

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Yeah I read their piece too. Yours is super random and fun!

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Yay, thanks! I wanted to write some essays as we read along the book. But what can you write that wasn’t written before? Also, how do you take a stand for or against violence in the current social and environmental climate? It’s impossible. I chewed on this for a month. This is what came out.

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I like it! Creativity wins in the end 😄

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