> Ah. That's sort of unsettling then. Remind me
>to not read any more Heinlein (not that I really
>intended to).

I've not read a ton of Heinlein myself (Only Starship Troopers and Stranger) but I've heard that his juvinile fiction is much less preachy. That's where he really made his reputation initially, anyway.

>> This particular book hit it so big because it
>>came out in the sixties and espoused the typical
>>hippie values of free love and all that.
>
> Heh heh heh. Yeah, I was wondering if the time
>period had anything to do with that. Of course,
>I don't quite get why it was reccomended to me by
>people that weren't around in the 60s, but oh
>well.

Well, there are a lot of people who are sad they missed the free love generation.

>
>> Of course, the conceit is that Mike uses $ex as
>>a bonding among friends, and since he and
>>everyone he surrounds himself with is incapable
>>of jealousy, it all works out great. Of course,
>>in the real world, if anybody tried to run a
>>"church" like Mike had (and many have tried)
>>it'd fall down around their ears as soon as
>>jealousy and other natural human emotions reared
>>their ugly head. But try telling that to a
>>hippie.
>
> This bothered me to no end. I didn't buy into
>Mike's church, doubted it would work and was
>wondering when it would fail. The fact that it
>didn't really suprised me. I also completely
>disliked how everyone was able to get over all
>inhibitions with no trouble; the only person that
>did was Ben and a good lecture from Henry "I'm
>obviously what Heinlein's imagines himself as"
>Jubal set him straight. And of course once said
>inhibitions were lost, everything was just
>peachy.

I was expecting the church to fail as well. But thinking back on it later, I realized that the whole point Heinlein was trying to get across was that once you "grokked" something, that was it. You can't be jealous of a water brother because you grok him--you truly understand him.

The whole mental powers thing was silly as well. Basically the whole church hinged on these mental powers--if you take those away, there is no way it could have worked. In other words, in the real world, it wouldn't work.

>
> One more little thing I don't get -- what was up
>with the whole cannibialism thing? If Martians
>are practically omnipotent, they certainly
>wouldn't *need* to eat their dead friends would
>they? Which leads me to think that it was just a
>spiritual thing (eat your buddy to grok him)
>which doesn't make sense since the body wasn't
>really you, and once you've left the shell
>there's really no point...

I understood that to be something the Martians did out of necessity, but attached a spiritual significance to as well. If I remember right, the Mars of Heinleins novel is a dry, barely habitable place--not much food. So the Martians have to eat the bodies of their dead to stay alive--I believe they even talk about Martians willingly sacrificing themselves for the good of others--basically, so others could eat when needed. The spiritual side is that it helps in the groking, I guess. I really don't remember the novel well enough at this point to give an "authoratative" answer.