tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post6015582648185539067..comments2024-03-28T08:37:58.136+01:00Comments on Limited, Inc.: world class felix culpaRoger Gathmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-84723229194880810522009-02-23T11:36:00.000+01:002009-02-23T11:36:00.000+01:00Consider the aprons of fig leaves Adam and Eve had...Consider the aprons of fig leaves Adam and Eve had already managed to achieve by their own devices. Compare and contrast these with the fur garments they were given to start them off. The former would not have sufficed for protection against winter and foul weather, and they would have been hard put to it to have cobbled anything more substantial together before they perished from exposure ("first catch your hare", and that). So the starter stock they were given was no mere act of supererogation but a very necessary thing.<BR/><BR/>By the bye, had you ever heard the first palindrome? "Madam, I'm Adam". The second was the reply, "Eve".Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-87205357624208031182009-02-22T17:23:00.000+01:002009-02-22T17:23:00.000+01:00Mr. Lawrence, I don't understand. Technically, I ...Mr. Lawrence, I don't understand. Technically, I guess, everything God told them would be incomprehensible - how would a woman understand pregnancy if it had never happened in the world before? But clothes would seem to be a simpler matter - plucking leaves and such.<BR/>So where does the problem come in?Roger Gathmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-19082214376130187912009-02-22T08:48:00.000+01:002009-02-22T08:48:00.000+01:00"The intimacy in this act is in its superfluity: a..."The intimacy in this act is in its superfluity: after all, having condemned humans to labor - and the sexes to division of labor - there's no reason that Adam and Eve could not have made their own clothes".<BR/><BR/>Not so; there's an issue of Robinson Crusoe economics here. They needed sufficient of the basics to survive and keep themselves going while they produced more of the same ("When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?" - a seditious verse from the time of the Peasant's Revolt). Aprons of fig leaves wouldn't have sufficed.<BR/><BR/>This is connected to an old superstition, related by Robert Graves in his <I>The Isles Of Unwisdom</I>, that God provided the first smith, Tubal Cain, with the first tongs. This was to account for a chicken and egg technological bootstrapping problem, that while people knew how to improvise well enough to make other tools using simpler things, they knew no way to make tongs without the use of yet earlier tongs.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com