Laserlight: Who would you pick?

Monday, November 3, 2008

If you could have a conversation with one person, living or dead, who would you pick?

Lux Mentis said...: Jeez... that's a big field.

Probably Robert Anson Heinlein. I'd ask him to talk about how much of the personalities in his books were written for the market and how much was him expressing himself. And get him to talk about when he worked with Asimov and others back in secret projects in WWII.

My second choice might by J.R.R. Tolkien. I'd ask him to talk about language, about which he was passionate, and about its impacts on culture and which comes first - cultural concepts or the language to describe them - and which shapes which.

A third choice might be any of the men who've walked on the Moon. That might be an ineffable experience, but if they could communicate even the vaguest shadow of it, I'm sure it would come across as a message of hope.

And for a bonus, maybe Thomas Aquinas or Cicero to see how they think the Doctrine of Just War would apply in today's world of asymetric combat and terrorists/freedom-fighters.; November 5, 2008 at 6:00 PM
Laserlight said...: "The living one."; September 30, 2009 at 11:26 PM

Laserlight