Saturday 6 August 2016

"Collective Suicide Inside Of A Few Generations"

JEFF SEILER:
Sequentially reprinting Dave Sim's letters and faxed correspondence to me, with occasional annotation from me.

...And now we’re back to one of the exchanges in which Dave faxed my fax back to me with notes in the margins. I’m going to try to piece it together to make a coherent narrative, without reprinting all of my fax, as doing the latter has met with great resistance here. This fax regarded publicity for the release of Judenhass, dated 6/13/2008, followed by an exchange dated 6/17/2008:

6/13/2008

[I had informed Dave that after multiple delays, the newspaper for which I worked at the time -- The Tulsa World -- was going to print the preview that I had written much earlier for Judenhass.]

Much appreciated. You will be living proof to future generations that publicizing my work was just a matter of initiative, follow-through, and using the available resources.

[And then I told him that I was soon to start a summer job that would bridge the gap between the spring and fall semesters of my teaching jobs. The job was to supervise a bunch of teenage workers at a water park.]

Don’t go drinking with anybody your first week... "Those who refuse to learn from the past..."

[And then I made reference to the infamous faxes between Jeff T. and Dave and told Dave that I was going to defer to Rick S. to post them, but that I would pick up the task again later in the summer.]

No rush... if the names start deserting off the petition, there's a 100+ cushion of names.

[And then, I made reference to the letters page for glamourpuss #2, a proof of which Dave had sent to me earlier, because it was I who named the letters column.]

Glamourpuss #3 is done. Sandeep is printing out #2 and #3 today or tomorrow and I’ll fax you the letters page when I have it.

[I closed my letter with my standard  "As always, yours beyond all three books."]

Jeff -- No problem. Matthew and/or Sandeep should be posting the cover of glamourpuss #4 and an ad for a variant edition of #1 on Monday. Or, Tuesday.

====================================

6/17/2008

[I have only the second page of this day’s fax, but it seems that I was referring to an online exchange about the nature of the differences between men and women (males and females) with someone at the old Cerebus Yahoo chat group. Dave’s response:]

I don’t buy the argument about men being over-represented at the high and low end. I think that’s a misguided sop to women’s understandably wounded vanity at the nature of reality. I share your view that men were created one way and women were created another way like carefully balanced magnetic poles centering on the home that women desire to make by virtue of their intrinsic reality and the resourcefulness of men in making that possible. It isn’t 100 percent perfect, but it’s a lot closer to perfect than women running around loose doing everything on the basis of what their hearts tell them they should do or men trading in their old wives for younger models. I’ve just finished Maureen Donaldson’s book about her four-year affair with Cary Grant when he was in his seventies and she was 28. All very romantic in the telling but, at essence, a Grand Farce when compared to the working model we had for thousands of years.

I do believe that the onset of feminism was just the starter’s gun on the mass suicide of atheistic liberals as a culture. Sequential monogamy with a below-zero birth rate means that each new generation of progeny are further and further from the idea of what a home is: so far from it that they sneer at it and call it LEAVE IT TO BEAVER or THE STEPFORD WIVES. Just as the womb is our first home, so the home is the larger essence of what a womb is. No womb, no gestation; no gestation, no womb sense. That only exists where there is belief in God as a core reality. Without belief in God as core reality, really weird realities take its place: materialism, fornication, obsessive interest in marginalia (like comic books), belief that movies and television are instructional. And all of those lead to collective suicide inside of a few generations.

And, like most of of God’s abiding laws -- as you’ve seen -- you can’t even warn people about it. It just makes them more determined to eradicate themselves, their own philosophy, and [to] persuade their children to do so, as well. Very impressive. Praise be to Him.

8 comments:

A Moment Of Cerebus said...

"reprinting all of my fax... has met with great resistance here."

I think Jeff is referring to my suggestion to just post Dave's correspondence rather than Jeff's complete letters as well. My "great resistance" is only geared toward readability... and, you know, the fact this is a "Cerebus Fan-Site" not a "Jeff Seiler Fan-Site". Happy to reconsider if there's an overwhelming demand...

Damian T. Lloyd, Esq. said...

I don't recall "great resistance" myself, but Jeff is a bit thin-skinned so he might have taken to heart comments that were more equivocal. I'd be interested in seeing his letters to and from Dave, and I think those fall within the mantle of "Cerebus fan-site" whereas Jeff's letters to his Auntie Min don't, even if he mentions Dave (and I can't imagine Jeff not mentioning Dave). On the InterWeb there's no page-count, and one tap of the space-bar lets me skip a whole screen of text I'm not interested in. So I cast me vote for more liberal postings in this area -- especially with these "comments scrawled on the original fax" missives.

-- Damian

A Moment Of Cerebus said...

Let me just emphasis "overwhelming" demand. As in a deluge of Jeff Seiler fans camping outside my front door "overwhelming". Dave's 'Collected Letters' volumes don't include the original letters to him, and he tends to write his replies so that you don't need to see them. I rest my case.
Tim

Craig Lemon said...

Personally I'd rather see the full Seiler fax rather than a precis - not least because it gives me more to read, but also because I don't think that Dave is necessarily correct 100% of the time, and only presenting his side of the argument/discussion/whatever makes the piece feel incomplete.

Jeff Seiler said...

Well, I was using "great resistance" somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but also on the old premise that a few people actually complaining can be extrapolated to represent the views of many, many more who just stay silent.

Damian and Craig, I appreciate your feedback because I think that it would have been much more clear to show the full letter from me with Dave's marginal notes inserted in the proper places where they were originally written. But I don't think there are too many more of that type, if any.

Unknown said...

It's also worth pointing out that, while Tim is correct that you can USUALLY infer what was written to me from what I wrote, that's more true of the 2004 letters forward because I was, at least partly, writing them for future publication. I certainly didn't picture that happening before 2004 so most of my pre-2004 letters are just...letters. Answer people who write you because it's polite but GET IT DONE and get back to writing and drawing the book.

If Jeff is willing, he could scan his own letters at Kinko's or someplace and offer digital copies to people who want both sides of the correspondence. Reltively small "market", though, so the "cost per unit" is apt to be prohibitive. :)

Jeff Seiler said...

Don't think I haven't considered it...but only a few people (Hi, Lenny!) have encouraged me to do so. But, yeah, mostly cause it would be cost- and, perhaps, time-prohibitive. I mean, we're talking about ten years' worth of back-and-forth letters...

Unknown said...

The only possibility I can see is just taking cellphone pictures of the pages and then e-mailing them that way. Pretend you're a 1960s superspy using your miniature camera to...uh...or...

Yeah, you could just skip it.