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Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”
- siberianbear 10y agoI am an American living in Russia. When I was studying Russian I read a number of Chekhov's short stories and got a feel for who he was. I later came across one of his quotes: "В человеке должно быть все прекрасно: и лицо, и одежда, и душа, и мысли" (Everything in a person should be excellent: his face, his clothes, his soul and his ideas). I sometimes discussed this phrase with Russians, eventually coming to be believe that "face" in this context meant that you should do all you can to appear clean and groomed, not necessarily that you need to be beautiful. I liked this quote and it can be a starting point of interesting discussion when I talk to Russians about Chekhov. There's a funny story about when Chekhov went to Tomsk (now a town of about 500,000 people in Siberia.) In a letter, he wrote "Tomsk is a very dull town. To judge from the drunkards whose acquaintance I have made, and from the intellectual people who have come to the hotel to pay their respects to me, the inhabitants are very dull, too." In recent history, the inhabitants of Tomsk erected a bronze caricature statute [1] of Chekhov which makes him look funny. The local residents consider that touching his nose is good luck, so the statue has a really shiny bronze nose. I personally saw it and even touched his nose. [1] https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g665310-d3595947-Reviews-Chekhov_Monument-Tomsk_Tomsk_Oblast_Siberian_District.html https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g665310-d35959...
- geoka9 10y ago> Everything in a person should be excellent Probably nitpicking, but I'd translate "прекрасно" as "beautiful" here.
- bushin 10y agoI think "exellent" is an excellent choice of the word (beautiful ≈ красиво).
- Frondo 10y agoAgreed, the English "beautiful" often doesn't seem to capture прекрасно. I always took them to have some overlapping meaning, rather than being a direct translation.
- geoka9 10y ago> the English "beautiful" often doesn't seem to capture прекрасно I agree, but I'd say "excellent" is even further away in meaning. Translating between such distant languages is always an exercise in compromise, unless you're willing to take great liberties at interpretation (when translating poetry, for example).
- kartem 10y agoBeing Russian I suggest "прекрасно" means "perfect" or "excellent" in this context.
- vmarovic 10y agoI don't know russian, but in croatian which is somewhat similar adding pre to infront of the word makes it stronger, does not change meaning. Like too beautiful or as beautiful as it could get. Though in russian it could be different. (edit or even more beautiful than it is allowed/expected/needed)
- uzoodoo 10y agoWell, if you remove "pre" from "прекрасно", you get "red-colored", so it doesn't quite work here. (Actually, it would make the first part of the sentence a bit too literal.)
- c-smile 10y ago"прекрасно" consists of two parts : "пре" ("very" here) and "краса" ("beauty") in Russian so it is pretty close etymologically to English beautiful. Slightly different connotation in this particular case but still close enough.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- baursak 10y agoI'd translate it as "wonderful".
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- sssilver 10y agoI second this translation.
- xerxes777 10y agoRussian here. "Excellent" is better. "Прекрасно" is "good in every way", "perfect", it is something that cause wonder and delight or feeling of exaltation. So it's not about beauty. It's about what beauty of something do to you.
- hossbeast 10y agoI thought excellent was a strange choice as well
- aisofteng 10y agoIdyllic.
- rimliu 10y agoAt least in Soviet times this quote was taught and discussed in schools and I'd dare to argue that for some it is the only quote by Chekhov's they remember.
- eternalban 10y ago> I personally saw it and even touched his nose. Did it work?
- siberianbear 10y agoWell, there's no possiblity of doing A/B testing. I can't go back and live an alternate life where I didn't touch his nose. So there's no way to know. But I'm enjoying my life, and I'm happy with the life in which I did touch his nose.
- igravious 10y agoYour alternative life's imago invented a multiverse wormhole machine and freakily landed up in my backyard and told me that their life had gone pretty badly wormhole machine notwithstanding. So now you know.
- wruza 10y agoThere definitely is a way, that's how all research is done. You send three groups there, one that doesn't touch anything, one that touches his nose, and another one that touches nose of the fake statue, without knowing that it is fake. If second group appears to have more luck than the other two over time, then it works.
- mden 10y agoThis unfortunately does not account for different groups having different starting luck. I suppose you can in part handle that by having very large groups but since luck is luck simply the process of selection, even if random, is biased which gives you another problem.
- pougetj 10y agoWhich is why units should be randomly selected into each groups to avoid confounding factors like the one you mention.
- danielhooper 10y agoOut of curiosity, how long did you have to study Russian before you could enjoy Chekhov's stories?
- siberianbear 10y agoI read a bunch of them (in English) when I was a university student: that's where my first exposure came from. When I started to study Russian, I read one or two of his stories in this book [1], which was great because it has English and Russian versions on opposite pages. I got to enjoy reading in Russian because I didn't constantly have to look up every tenth word in a dictionary. Russian is a hard language but there are some still harder. To understand magazine articles and carry on simple conversations on arbitrary topics is a time investment of about 600 hours. To read Chekhov and speak really well on advanced topics is about double that, or 1200 hours. Chekhov's style is close to modern Russian and his style of writing is more straightforward than earlier writers. To read Dostoyevsky... well, hell if I know, I can barely make it through the first page of Crime and Punishment even with a dictionary even after all this time investment and living in Russia for a few years! It's like a different language. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Stories-Dual-Language-Book-English/dp/0486262448/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1489506833&sr=8-1&keywords=russian+stories https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Stories-Dual-Language-Book-En...
- samat 10y agoThanks for sharing, never realised that Dostoyevskiy is so hard, being kind-of-native-speaker.
- aisofteng 10y agoHe's not, it's just that the average reading comprehension level is low.
- avenoir 10y agoChekhov was very popular in Russian schools up until early 90s because of his writing style. You're absolutely spot on that he writes in very plain Russian. Dostoevsky has some mindfuck-inducing way or getting across to the reader. His writing is difficult even for a lot of native Russian speakers. L.N. Tolstoy also has some easy reading ( Детство. Отрочество. Юность / Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth is my favorite)
- sandworm101 10y agoWhat's the thing about russians and noses? The naval academy also has a statute with a lucky nose. In other cultures people want to touch the hands or feet of statues, but in russia it seems to be the nose.
- sevensor 10y agoI don't think it's a uniquely Russian thing. I think it has more to do with the scale of bronze statuary. Busts have accessible noses, but feet are easier to reach on full figures. My university in the United States had a bust of Abraham Lincoln with a lucky nose.
- sandworm101 10y agoThere may also be a bias tied to medicine. Noses are paticular indicators of some diseases (smallpox and syphalis) that may have created an association with luck.
- cableshaft 10y agoI think you'd be hard pressed to find any bronze statues of Abraham Lincoln without a shiny lucky nose, at least in Illinois. The state capitol of Springfield has several. It probably doesn't help that he's on the penny as well, which is considered lucky if you find one and pick it up.
- dang 10y ago> What's the thing about russians and noses? Well. https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/g/gogol/nikolai/g61n/ https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/g/gogol/nikolai/g61n/
- makmanalp 10y agoI'd always had an impression of classical Russian writing as being impenetrable, but this was delightful. Thank you!
- 10y ago
- whack 10y agoCharacterizing a town's inhabitants as being "drunkards" and "dull" doesn't really sound much in keeping with his own first rule...
- gluggymug 10y agoIn Russia, that's not considered as an insult.
- vatotemking 10y agoNo man is perfect, even Checkhov. From the article: "These eight conditions are not a checklist, but a guideline—a “true north” of sorts that reveals to us the direction we must go…"
- frankzinger 10y agoAlso: What is needed is constant work, day and night, constant reading, study, will ... Every hour is precious for it …
- c-smile 10y agoModern Russian [street] variation of "Everything in a person ..." sounds as : "В человеке всё должно быть прекрасно - и душа и джинсы" - "Everything in a human should be perfect, as his soul as his jeans". That's why Russians are paying so much attention to their education/reading and what they wear :) This stuff is taught in school.
- hamilyon2 10y agoThe statue's proportions are somewhat like what you would see if you look at a person from below. As actual drunkard lying on the floor could see Chechov. Source: indigenous Tomsker. We like to joke about Checkov's words about Tomsk.
- westoncb 10y agoThat's a beautiful idea—like you must view Chekhov from the perspective of a drunk person (a near substitution for 'you are a drunk person') even when you're sober and standing up rather than lying down, because of his strange proportioning, therefore he is the 'cause of seeing his peers as like drunkards.
- omginternets 10y ago>I personally saw it and even touched his nose. And? Any luck?
- solipsism 10y agoyou should do all you can to appear clean and groomed Ah yes, unlike that Einstein. That disheveled example of a someone who could have been so much more, had he just reached for a comb. /s
- kerbalspacepro 10y agoWas Einstein actually considered and describes by his peers/comrades as disheveled? Or is that just a cultural archetype we tell ourselves?
- solipsism 10y agoYou're joking right? Are you asking if everyone looked like that back then?
- dang 10y agoHere's a lovely little article about Chekhov that has been languishing on my "post this someday when HN is slow" list. http://lithub.com/anton-chekhov-a-post-modernist-way-ahead-of-his-time/ http://lithub.com/anton-chekhov-a-post-modernist-way-ahead-o...
- sevensor 10y agoOne needn't click on affiliate links to buy Chekhov's works. Project Gutenberg has them: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=chekhov http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=chekhov
- dang 10y agoHappy to change the URL above if someone finds the text itself.
- acabal 10y agoShameless plug, Chekhov's complete short fiction for free, at Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/anton-chekhov/short-fiction/constance-garnett/ https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/anton-chekhov/short-fictio... We took the Gutenberg transcriptions, compiled them into one ebook, ordered by publication date, lightly modernized, edited, corrected, and completely proofread them. Check out the Github repo to see the changes (which are a lot, since it's a huge amount of writing): https://github.com/standardebooks/anton-chekhov_short-fiction_constance-garnett https://github.com/standardebooks/anton-chekhov_short-fictio... While I don't speak Russian, I've found Garnett's translations to be extremely readable. A lot of her contemporaries seem to have agreed.
- e15ctr0n 10y agoStandard Ebooks looks to be a very interesting project. Is there a story behind the project that details how you got started and who are the main contributors? A 'Show HN' [0] or a write-up on indiehackers.com [1] would be awesome and could you more contributors. I subscribed to your RSS feed [2] that announces your new publications but it lacks a URL for me to download the Ebook right away. Also, is there a way for omnivoracious readers like me to download all your Ebooks in a mega .zip file at one go? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/show https://news.ycombinator.com/show [1] https://www.indiehackers.com/ https://www.indiehackers.com/ [2] https://standardebooks.org/opds/all https://standardebooks.org/opds/all
- acabal 10y ago
- anonymfus 10y agoThis translation is great but I think it's still interesting to read into the connotations of Chekhov's original words: http://www.anton-chehov.info/754-n-p-chexovu.html http://www.anton-chehov.info/754-n-p-chexovu.html >you are drawn away from it, and you vacillate between cultured people and the lodgers vis-a-vis >тебя тянет от нее, и тебе приходится балансировать между культурной публикой и жильцами vis-а-vis. Here "cultured people" are originally "культурная публика", literally "cultured public". >Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions: >Воспитанные люди, по моему мнению, должны удовлетворять след<ующим> условиям: Here "Cultured people" are originally "Воспитанные люди". More like well-brought-up.
- dang 10y agoIn English people used to say 'well-bred' but I can't quite squeeze that into the title above.
- smsm42 10y agoIMHO well-bred has a meaning of specific ancestry, of aristocracy of one sort or another, of which the Russian "воспитанный" has none - it's rather well brought-up, well-behaved, conforming to the norms and customs of the polite society.
- Boothroid 10y agoAnd all this striving towards Chekhov's idea of cultured allows one to achieve what? I'd venture that for most it would amount to smugly patting themselves on the back for having achieved such a fine state of serenity. If this version of cultured means just another way to feel superior to others, I'm happy to be uncultured.
- kordless 10y agoIt allows one to achieve a view where they don't judge others in an attempt to speak for them as you have done here. While you can imagine someone patting themselves on the back for being aesthetic, the reality is that is only occurring vividly in your own mind, and not out here. If someone was indeed patting themselves on the back out here for these things, that is a separate problem created of their own judgement. Speaking for other's actions leading to judgement is itself viral irrationality, as doing so only spreads the behavior and irrationality further into the aggregate. For the nerds here, I present this as a recursive pattern which spreads by being computationally inefficient. Software bloat, maybe? As an aside, when I talk about a "dissonance" button for social media sites, your comment would be a perfect example of when to push it. That's not to say your leading question and comment on others future irrational actions shouldn't be allowed, but I think that it's important to call out content that is potentially "messy" in nature due to it's own innate ability to spread to others without your intervention (after saying it, of course). Maybe limiting replies to such "comments" would be one way to increase the overall aesthetic.
- andrewmcwatters 10y agoYour comment is barely comprehensible to me. Can you condense this to simple English? What are you even saying in half of your post? > It allows one to achieve a view where they don't judge others So you're telling me that being cultured allows one to not judge others, but while clearly having the effect of outwardly being smug to others? That's basically what I got out of your comment and the parent post. Your aside also implies that his comment basically shouldn't be allowed despite your explicit comment that it's "not to say." This seems all rather smug and rude.
- Nekorosu 10y agoDunno. I'm reading Chekhov's letters and it doesn't look to me he was up to his own standards.
- dandelion_lover 10y agoDo you have any examples?
- Nekorosu 10y agoCan't give you any quotes but for example he was quite derogatory towards "khokhly" (Ukrainians). Not sure if this word was derogatory by itself at his time (as it is now with rare exceptions). He went well beyond just using this word and expressed his negative view of these people using rather rude vocabulary. Actually this view was stereotypical at that time in Russia and it was a norm to be derogatory to "brother nations". My point is he was a normal case of a person of his social status in that era with all the fallacies you would expect. Of course this conflicts a lot with his idealistic view on cultured people. It should be taken with a grain of salt. If you'd like to know more I consider you read the letters. It's well worth reading. A great insight into the life of Russian intelligentsia class and into the Russian mentality.
- hackuser 10y ago> it doesn't look to me he was up to his own standards Would anyone pass your test?
- Nekorosu 10y agoI haven't made any test. What do you mean by it?
- johan_larson 10y agoI suspect a subtle mistranslation here. Chekhov seems to be talking about decent people, or maybe good people, not cultured ones. In English, it is quite possible to be cultured but bad. You know all kinds of stuff about literature, music, art, history and science (and therefore you are cultured) but you cheat on your wife and your taxes (and are therefore bad).
- treve 10y agoI think it depends on your definition of cultured as well. Depending on the dictionary it also means enlightened and good mannered. I consider cheating pretty bad mannered.
- nybblet 10y agoAgreed with treve, what does culture really mean? If you read ALL the literature, listen to ALL the music, view ALL the art, can recite ALL the history and do ALL the science... and still conclude it's OK to cheat on your wife and taxes, the argument can be made that none of this culture was internalized, and hence you are not cultured. Of course things are rarely so black-and-white, but that's the gist of it.
- ameister14 10y agoYou can understand something and possess the qualities of it and still choose to ignore them
- 15charlimit 10y agoOr that "culture" approves (or at least does not disapprove) of such activity.
- pavel_lishin 10y agoI think I agree. To be некультурным implies more than just not having refined tastes, or an education, or manners.
- maldusiecle 10y ago> no great writer has not been touched in some way by his stories. Don't trust people who say things like this, btw.
- gmarx 10y agoThis letter appears to be a drawn out detailed set of insults to his older brother. Maybe cultured isn't the best translation. Is this what we in the US would have called "classy" back then?
- jerf 10y agoClassiness does not preclude being insulting. It simply calls for a higher degree of skill in the insulting. History is full of classy insults. Diplomacy is nearly made of them. http://allowe.com/laughs/book/When%20Insults%20Had%20Class.htm http://allowe.com/laughs/book/When%20Insults%20Had%20Class.h... - just a quick hit on "classy insults" that seems to fit what I'm saying here.
- spdionis 10y ago"well bred" is indeed a more correct translation
- sillypog 10y agoI agree. I got a few items into the list and got the sense that a joke was being played. I wonder if the original poster had that sense too and was in on the joke?
- burkaman 10y agoI might say "gentle criticism" rather than insults, but the beginning and end of the letter do make it clear that he is specifically advising his brother: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6408/6408-h/6408-h.htm#link2H_4_0016 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6408/6408-h/6408-h.htm#link2H... > You have only one failing, and the falseness of your position, and your unhappiness and your catarrh of the bowels are all due to it. That is your utter lack of culture. >You must drop your vanity, you are not a child ... you will soon be thirty. It is time! I expect you.... We all expect you.
- ghostly_s 10y agoOh, how I laughed, to finish this ode to humility and there at the bottom, this little blurb which seems to be working overtime in demonstrating as many of the just-disparaged traits as possible. >Want more? Join over 15,000 readers getting The Open Circle, a weekly dose of my best ideas. I’ll also send you 200+ pages from my private notebooks and 24 of my favorite books. Get it here.
- dang 10y agoYes, but please don't post snarky dismissals anyhow. How often do we get to discuss Chekhov?
- kerbalspacepro 10y agoI've never heard of him and probably won't hear of him again, so I guess somewhere less than once a decade.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- kleiba 10y agoThey do not use their smart phones in the presence of others.
- stevecalifornia 10y agoOn the timeline of humanity, our pocket computers are brand-new. It will likely be a couple of decades before we sort out the social norms of using them. However, I think that we will fall towards using these devices constantly in all social settings because the young people growing up won't have the nostalgia of time before smartphones-- there was never a time where you and your friends sat at a table and talked completely free of digital interruption. Go to a coffee shop or restaurant near a high school around the lunch hour...
- kbenson 10y agoIt's also possible the current physical manifestations of these devices will change quite a bit in the near future. I imagine in 20 years of less we'll mostly be using some eye based (glasses, lenses, whatever) display with AR and gesture control.(likely with a gesture "shorthand" for AR control with limited movement for when you don't want to wave your hand in front of you). At that point, it will be both much more and much less invasive, as it will likely be fully integrated. You can use it to enhance your conversation by adding context, distract from your conversation by utilizing it for something unrelated, or ignore it entirely. Sort of like your memory and imagination now (because that's what it will be at that point, a slower but much fuller extension to your current mind).
- stevecalifornia 10y agoThats an intriguing prediction of the future.
- kbenson 10y agoWell, I think all the essential features are already present, so I think it's a fairly safe bet. - We already have AR - We already have gesture control - We already have glasses displays - I already use my phone in this manner in conversations (I'll do a quick lookup on something we are discussing but are unsure about while trying to still listen). You could essentially live most of this scenario right now if you were willing to put up with the heavy equipment and short battery life.
- CaptainSwing 10y ago> They do not ask for the cleverness which shows itself in continual lying. They want especially, if they are artists, freshness, elegance, humanity, the capacity for motherhood ugh. Cut the misogynistic crap please Chekhov
- CaptainSwing 10y agoTFW you're voted down immediately for calling out sexism which, though very explicit, has so far gone uncommented upon [edit] - could someone please explain why they're voting me down?
- Coincoin 10y agoI didn't down vote you but my guess is: The guy has been dead for over a hundred years now. Everybody knows society was more patriarchal back then, pointing it out just sounds like virtue signaling.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- CaptainSwing 10y agoI really dislike this term 'virtue signaling'. Although I do not deny the phenomenon, I think that it often functions to shut down debate (kind of like an anti-PC device) To add more substance to my original comment, however (I admit, I should have done so at the start) I was surprised and disapointed to find dozens of comments discussing the virtues (and the odd minor criticism/update) of Chekhov's 'conditions' without any mention (however historically situated) of the clear prejudice, with it which excludes over half of humanity from a 'cultured' existence.
- sudosteph 10y agoI didn't downvote, but the downvotes are probably a result of the brevity and slightly vulgar nature ("cut the crap") of your response. I do actually agree with you though. I was hoping others would bring it up too, but as with all "problematic" historical icons, we're supposed to accept that even though he was extremely wrong about women, it was just a byproduct of his society and not worth discussing about the person as a whole. I think that's a huge cop-out though. I don't think we should write him off or stop reading his works, but sexism is a real flaw in a person's character. It's worth wondering why he was so eager to tell his brother that intelligent women are liars not worthy of relationships. Was he emotionally hurt by someone in particular and lashing out against all women? Does he just like feeling superiority over women as a class of people, and therefore accepted certain norms of patriarchy without questioning because it benefitted him? The former reason is sad, but understandable, while the latter would make me wonder if those norms are reinforced in his works as well.
- legohead 10y agoI have a set of rules I give my children. I started with them as kind of a joke because they would always flip out about stuff, so naturally, rule #1 is: 1) Be calm 2) Be kind 3) Don't steal 4) Always attempt your best I've always liked the thought that "don't steal" is the ultimate morality lesson. Killing someone is stealing their life away. Adultering is stealing someone else's love or relationship. And of course, stealing in its basic meaning.
- komali2 10y agoI like these rules, but for myself, I always struggle with #4. For a while, "my best" was a half-hearted effort. "Oh well," I'd think, "this is the best I can do." Around college I had a resurgence of willpower, and "my best" became unhealthy obsession - dangerously low calories, dangerously frequent lifting, etc. Finding a balance there is a question I think about often. Technically, "my best" can easily kill me. It's not just about effort, it's about a high amount of thought and consideration into whatever it is - finding a weight target and just choosing a date for it to avoid over-dieting. Taking only so many classes that I can still have a social life. Etc.
- pitt1980 10y agoI've noticed that younger kids seems to take events extremely seriously One thing that helped me keep this in perspective, is that every event makes up a significantly larger fraction of their existence than that event makes up of my existence I'm 36, my oldest daughter is 6 occasionally she'll get really upset when seemingly minor setbacks happen (a craft she's working on doesn't turn out the way she wants it too seems typical), while we do try to work on her handling her frustration better its helpful for us, to remember that 1 messed up craft out of 6 years of life experience, is 6 times a bigger deal than 1 messed up craft out of 36 years
- matt4077 10y agoThere's much more to morality than "don't steal". Firstly, it elevates property rights to a position they don't deserve – making life or dignity second-class rights. "Don't steal" isn't even universal: there's nothing wrong with a starving child stealing bread. If you want something memorable, the golden rule ("Do unto others as you would have them [...] do unto you") is much better, even if it requires more thinking.
- nybblet 10y agoI'm struck by how much this echoes Confucius and the Analects and how they define the so-called gentleman or noble man (not to be confused with nobleman, and translation is hard). Given how unlikely it is that Chekhov had exposure to either, it's incredible to observe the universality of these qualities considered admirable. If people haven't, do recommend checking out The Analects! Caveat: there are quite a few excerpts that need to be taken in historical perspective, or can be easily misinterpreted (e.g. advice to be slow to embrace new that was in context of centuries of chaos and warring, or statements on women that interpreted naïvely clearly contradict other statements on mothers).
- vlunkr 10y agoAs well as Christianity. (and maybe 90% of religions?)
- nybblet 10y agoAt a certain point, sure. There is, I suspect, an execution difference (which does not at all create mutual exclusivity) though. Have you read The Analects, out of curiosity? If so, you know what I mean. If not, by all means please check it out! It's a short read, unlike any of the Bible, Torah, or Quran ;)
- bryondowd 10y agoIs it unlikely that he had exposure to Confucius? Russia and China were bumping into each other before Chekhov's time, and a bit of Googling is turning up cases of Russian missionaries translating Chinese works to Russian in the early 1800s.
- nybblet 10y agoWas just a guess on a uniform prior :) If you have specific evidence of Chekhov referencing Confucius (the similarities are so striking that either he came up with them independently, which was my original point, or he was inspired by Confucius, which should then leave traces) please do tell! That would be really cool.
- komali2 10y agoI notice this theme again and again in every "change yourself" book, show, class, lecture. Be it weight loss, improving mental health, curing addiction, becoming a better writer/photographer/programmer, the theme all comes down to a battle against yourself. Fighting the desire to snack, fighting the desire to lay on the couch instead of going to the gym, fighting the desire to veg and watch netflix instead of watching another lecture in the MOOC you're taking. You'd think it'd be easier to control ourselves. I have trouble understanding how we can want something, but some other part of us can seem to not want that thing, or just be extremely short sighted to the point of being an obstacle to our "long-sighted self."
- nybblet 10y ago"The Master said, 'The prosecution of learning may be compared to what may happen in raising a mound. If there want but one basket of earth to complete the work and I stop, the stopping is my own work. It may be compared to throwing down the earth on the level ground. Though but one basketful is thrown at a time, the advancing with it is my own going forward.'" (The Analects, translated by Legge)
- techbio 10y agoI agree, and similarly long to simply think myself to where (I think) I'd like to be. Learning though, by it's very nature, means fixing what's wrong or implanting knowledge in place where one is "not even wrong". If it were easier it would be of less value. The supply is more limited than the demand.
- simonh 10y agoThe more I think about it and learn about the functioning of the brain, the less I believe in the unitary 'self'. I once read the suggestion that what we think of as the 'self' is really just the brain's public relations department.
- SamBoogieNYC 10y agoYou might enjoy a book called Quantum Psychology (Robert Anton Wilson). He lays out some interesting concepts about the way we think and one thought experiment in particular, observing all the 'thinkers' within and how they can multiply at will i.e consider the following innocuous statement: "I observe that I am happy" Who is happy and who is the observer?
- wersplectior 10y agoSeems more like a description of middle-class virtues.
- thrwy109 10y agoThe bit about lying really struck a chord with me. I have been a compulsive liar for most of my life (25 now). Just this past Friday I lied to my skip level manager about the progress of a project. I've lied about the most mundane things to even lying to my family and friends about graduating college. At this point I feel as if I've been struck by a disease. Worst of all is that I lie to myself the most with respect to how much it is affecting my life, and how dangerous it is for me to continue on this path. I've personally ran out of ideas for how to internally fix this.
- hackuser 10y agoFirst, sorry it took so long to respond. The way HN works (if you don't know) is that messages from new accounts sometimes are automatically killed and therefore nobody can respond (or even let you know there's a problem). I actually asked support to unkill this one, and they were all for it. ... That must be very hard to carry around with you, 24/7/365. Obviously you don't want to be a liar, but behavior is not so easy as people seem to imagine. They think, 'if you don't want to do it, just choose not to do it'; but they aren't looking at reality, or even in the mirror. If you look around, human beings don't work like that - or we'd all be happily married, well-adjusted millionaires, in happy workplaces, with no drugs, no hate, no crime, no politics, etc. You are not alone in carrying this human burden. Get some professional help; you are hardly the only person with this problem and many problems like it. A good therapist has heard it all before (and much worse) and can help you; get some recommendations if you can, and try a few to find one you feel personally comfortable with (from what I understand, rapport with the therapist is the most important factor) and otherwise meets your needs. You wouldn't trust your business to an amateur, and this is far more important - find a professional and hire the best person for the job. Maybe you've reached the point with your problems that I think most people encounter as they mature (if they are honest with themselves). I once heard a songwriter put it his way (paraphrased): 'When I wrote songs at 20 years old, I was the hero in all the stories; I was learning and growing so rapidly that I never considered that I wouldn't outgrow all my problems. But now I'm older and some of these problems haven't gone away; the easy ones are all solved but some others have been very hard to move past. And I find that, in real life, sometimes I'm the villain.' I know I reached that point, too. I wrote the following in response to someone else and at least a few people found it encouraging; maybe it will be encouraging to you too, but I'm not a professional. Find one! Take care of yourself! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13870928 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13870928
- shmerl 10y agoMy favorite, is his point about "squeezing out the slave". He foresaw well how society can be highly tolerable of being subservient to dictatorship.
- bch 10y agoReminds me a lot of Desiderata. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderata
- bottled_poe 10y agoYawn, in addition to becoming cultured, I fear this advice will also make you incredibly boring.
- jackskell 10y agoI used to be cultured, at home, at work, and in public. But, as I hit my late 20s (circa 1998),I became the opposite at work, and that approach has gotten me much farther ever since. Play the game.