AR - Dangerous or Subversive?


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Posted by Jock on December 09, 2005 at 02:10:20 from 84.64.131.122 user Jock.

In Reply to: Re: Risks of Ransome was Re: Industrial Heritage (was Lydia Eva - was Re: Silting of the Yare)-the whole question of Ransome posted by Peter H on December 08, 2005 at 18:03:59:

I'm reminded of the time when as a young man I approached the editor of one of Britain's railway magazines to ask his advice about the railway society that I was in the process of forming. "You must be aware", he warned, "that such projects attract more than there fair share of imbeciles and lunatics." (This was before the age of political correctness.) What my mentor failed to point out is that by "such projects" he did not have railways specifically in mind, but any endeavour which relied heavily on the work of volunteers.

A volunteer assisted project offers its participants two important rewards:

    a) the satisfaction inherent in working for 'the cause',
    b) an opportunity to be 'a more important person' while working for the organisation than in the rest of one's life.

When all is going well, the satisfaction to be obtained from (a) and (b) can be therapeutic. When either reward is threatened, all hell can break loose. Those for whom (b) is more important than (a) become the most obnoxious.

In this respect, there is nothing unique about TARS. I have seen many different societies effected by the sort of behavior that Peter H describes:

So, if I'm saying that this nasty behaviour business is a function of volunteer assisted organisations, does that mean there nothing in Peter's arguement, that reading Ransome as an adult can be bad for you?

Well, I think that Peter has latched onto to something very important, but come up with the wrong analysis of what it is. There is something delicously subversive about Ransome, but only as adults do we become aware of what a heady mixture his writings can be.

One contributor to this strand commented how reading AR as a child has influenced their approach to sailing and astronomy in adult life. I would argue that there's a lot more that AR has put into these books that will affect our adult life:

It's getting late, but I could go on. It's these things that seep into our souls during childhood and niggle away at us as we accept the compromises of adulthood.

AR's Swallows and Amazons are no pushovers, but at the same time they are courteous in their dealings with the outside world. Tarboard whilst it has witnessed many fierce debates is a model of courtesy and decorum. Our Master's tweaks are few and far between. Nuff sed.


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