Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe book review

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Dear Robinson Crusoe.

How are your travails so much miraculous, but rather quite boring and drab when compared to the natives on adjacent islands? They come to your island on BOATS, and yet you call yourself a castaway? You seem to think you are stranded. You call yourself king of the island and make a “castle” upon it, yet it be the native people’s land all along.

You are mistaken. You are not found alone on the island, the natives are quite close. You have even made slaves of them, and call their land yours, and confuse the people by making it seem you are in a precarious condition.

You call your triumphs of nature some kind of miracle, however, the natives have done it for the longest.

So now, I say to you, Mr. Crusoe. Your story is a lie.

A ripping tale of colonial programming. Robinson Crusoe.

Some of my highlights:

Delphi Complete Works of Daniel Defoe (Illustrated) by Daniel Defoe

Book last read: 2022-04-05 19:31:31
Percentage read: 5%

Chapter 1: ROBINSON CRUSOE
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Highlight: Now I saw plainly the goodness of his observations about the middle station of life, how easy, how comfortably he had lived all his days, and never had been exposed to tempests at sea or troubles on shore; and I resolved that I would, like a true repenting prodigal, go home to my father.
Notes: Boomers are fat 401k idolaters.

Chapter 1: ROBINSON CRUSOE
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Highlight: I believe it was the first gun that had been fired there since the creation of the world.

Chapter 1: ROBINSON CRUSOE
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Highlight: I had never handled a tool in my life; and yet, in time, by labour, application, and contrivance, I found at last that I wanted nothing but I could have made it, especially if I had had tools.

Chapter 1: ROBINSON CRUSOE
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Highlight: This was a complete enclosure to me; for within I had room enough, and nothing could come at me from without, unless it could first mount my wall.
Notes: Apocalypse cabin

Chapter 1: ROBINSON CRUSOE
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Highlight: Seeing all these things have not brought thee to repentance, now thou shalt die;
Notes: Bill Gates

Chapter 1: ROBINSON CRUSOE
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Highlight: Thus, we never see the true state of our condition till it is illustrated to us by its contraries, nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it.

Chapter 1: ROBINSON CRUSOE
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Highlight: To-day we love what to-morrow we hate; to-day we seek what to-morrow we shun; to-day we desire what to-morrow we fear, nay, even tremble at the apprehensions of.
Notes: Essential workers

Chapter 1: ROBINSON CRUSOE
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Highlight: Oh, what ridiculous resolutions men take when possessed with fear!
Notes: Corporate injections

Chapter 1: ROBINSON CRUSOE
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Highlight: But it is never too late to be wise; and I cannot but advise all considering men, whose lives are attended with such extraordinary incidents as mine, or even though not so extraordinary, not to slight such secret intimations of Providence, let them come from what invisible intelligence they will.
Notes: Holy Spirit

Chapter 1: ROBINSON CRUSOE
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Highlight: However, with a little use, I made all these things familiar to him, and he became an expert sailor, except that of the compass I could make him understand very little.
Notes: Compass too much for the natives.

Chapter 1: ROBINSON CRUSOE
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Highlight: I was filled with horror at the very naming of the white bearded man; and going to the tree, I saw plainly by my glass a white man, who lay upon the beach of the sea with his hands and his feet tied with flags, or things like rushes, and that he was an European, and had clothes on.

Notes: Euros in danger.

Chapter 1: ROBINSON CRUSOE
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Highlight: First of all, the whole country was my own property, so that I had an undoubted right of dominion.
Notes: Euros claiming land not of their own.

Chapter 1: ROBINSON CRUSOE
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Chapter progress: 4.18%
Highlight: I told him with freedom, I feared mostly their treachery and ill-usage of me, if I put my life in their hands; for that gratitude was no inherent virtue in the nature of man, nor did men always square their dealings by the obligations they had received so much as they did by the advantages they expected.
Notes: Note to feds.

Chapter 1: ROBINSON CRUSOE
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Highlight: the children of Israel, though they rejoiced at first for their being delivered out of Egypt, yet rebelled even against God Himself, that delivered them, when they came to want bread in the wilderness.
Notes: Prepare for hardship after exodus.

Chapter 1: ROBINSON CRUSOE
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Highlight: For this purpose I marked out several trees, which I thought fit for our work, and I set Friday and his father to cut them down; and then I caused the Spaniard, to whom I imparted my thoughts on that affair, to oversee and direct their work.
Notes: The nascent “immigrant” work pyramid.

Chapter 1: ROBINSON CRUSOE
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Highlight: He does not leave His creatures so absolutely destitute, but that in the worst circumstances they have always something to be thankful for, and sometimes are nearer deliverance than they imagine; nay, are even brought to their deliverance by the means by which they seem to be brought to their destruction.

 

Chapter 1: ROBINSON CRUSOE
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Chapter progress: 4.63%
Highlight: I told him I looked upon him as a man sent by Heaven to deliver me, and that the whole transaction seemed to be a chain of wonders; that such things as these were the testimonies we had of a secret hand of Providence governing the world, and an evidence that the eye of an infinite Power could search into the remotest corner of the world, and send help to the miserable whenever He pleased.

All Seeing Eye reference by Daniel Defoe = Jelly Jars from not so ancient history.

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