nerd teacher [books] reviewed Dr. STONE, Vol. 6 by Riichiro Inagaki (Dr. STONE, #6)
Always Fun, but Always Frustrating
3 stars
I genuinely enjoy the kind of story that is presented in Dr STONE, where people are having to struggle together and build solidarity with others in order to survive. I like that they place the science in it as a core narrative component, which makes it kind of fun.
But I hate the direction that it takes starting from around this volume, and it's largely because it's playing into these weird structures of: a) science is inherently good and scientific progress is a straight line from point A to point B to point C and so on; b) the people who didn't like that progressivist structure are inherently violent types who seek to destroy knowledge; c) people against hierarchies inherently want to instill another hierarchy, which also continues to use the propaganda conflation about the idea of 'anarchy' as being 'nothing but chaos' (even when it's not being explicitly stated). …
I genuinely enjoy the kind of story that is presented in Dr STONE, where people are having to struggle together and build solidarity with others in order to survive. I like that they place the science in it as a core narrative component, which makes it kind of fun.
But I hate the direction that it takes starting from around this volume, and it's largely because it's playing into these weird structures of: a) science is inherently good and scientific progress is a straight line from point A to point B to point C and so on; b) the people who didn't like that progressivist structure are inherently violent types who seek to destroy knowledge; c) people against hierarchies inherently want to instill another hierarchy, which also continues to use the propaganda conflation about the idea of 'anarchy' as being 'nothing but chaos' (even when it's not being explicitly stated).
I'm also not a fan of the fact that the anti-intellectual side is also the only side engaging in Malthusian beliefs ("the world can't support 7 billion of us now, so the herd must be culled" is literally a line within this volume), but we know from our own experiences that the intellectuals have also engaged in this belief (even in Japan)... So the values that are being associated with varying people are very... Well, it feels very propagandistic? And it's hard not to notice.