Ignorance or Innocence?

Ahh, I have yet to purchase Sand in my Bra, because no one has it anymore up here. So I'm not sure what to write about in this thing. I guess I can talk about (what I think is) the general idea of the book, although a lot of it will be conjecture. I think that the two aspects of the book that popularized it are sex and humor. The title alone has sexual implications for non female readers, and the advertisements gracing the covers rely heavily on humor as a medium. I don't have any inherent problem with this matter, it is simply marketing at it's best. It sort of begs the question though, "does the Travel genre need this sprucing up". Does it need this little extra to make it appealing to people who normally wouldn't read in this area. I think the simple answer to that question is yes. Travels is pretty much standard stuff with a romantic lense arching over. It's like when people get up in class to do presentations and they simply talk about some family trip they had. Yeah that's great, but there has to be an (and) there. It has to be, "My trip to Cuba, and...something exciting", "My journey to Africa, and...my discovery of romantic love", etc. There has to be a sequel in that title, something intense. It's just like the titles of philosophy books. The average joe does not want to read a complex philosophical treatise, so it's always "Philosophy and The Matrix", or "Philosophy and Sex".

Also another interesting point that just occurred (sp?) to me is that romantic lense itself, it merits further attention. There was a point brought up recently in my cosmology class that "Fusion should never be mistaken for Integration". Fusion is the back to Eden idyll. It is the idea that when we are born into this edenic state, and all of our lives we are trying to regain that innocence (paradise) lost. The other approach is a more compound one, and it is called integration. These two words sound similar, but they have drastically different implications. Integration suggests that are has been a rupture that must be healed. Integration is also called the dialectical process. It means you start with unity(fusion), there is a duality split (suffering), and then the trinity (integration) of healing, which is really a tri-unity. Now many of these stories we are covering are guilty of the fusion approach, which has no crucible for conscious, no trial for integrity to be born. For a human being, experiencing no stress, can be just as bad as experiencing negative stress. Nature is not an idyllic garden, and man was not innocent at birth (he was ignorant, and there is a difference). Nature is a dialectical process that incorporates suffering, but then experiences a return to unity. It's sort of complex, and I've sort of exhausted the concept I think, adios for now.
nos vemos
Sean