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Oh, it's only about job interviews. Sigh. Maybe that should have been obvious to me from the title or URL? I'm fascinated by interviews, but job interviews, not
by yesenadam 9y ago
Oh, it's only about job interviews. Sigh. Maybe that should have been obvious to me from the title or URL? I'm fascinated by interviews, but job interviews, not so much. Except this, from my favourite book by a mile about philosophy of art:
"Two men meet; one is the applicant for a position, while the other has the disposition of the matter in his hands. The interview may be mechanical, consisting of set questions, the replies to which perfunctorily settle the matter. There is no experience in which the two men meet, nothing that is not a repetition, by way of acceptance or dismissal, of something which has happened a score of times. The situation is disposed of as if it were an exercise in bookkeeping. But an interplay may take place in which a new experience develops. Where should we look for an account of such an experience? Not to ledger-entries nor yet to a treatise on economics or sociology or personnel-psychology, but to drama or fiction. Its nature and import can be expressed only by art, because there is a unity of experience that can be expressed only as an experience. The experience is of material fraught with suspense and moving toward its own consummation through a connected series of varied incidents. The primary emotions on the part of the applicant may be at the beginning hope or despair, and elation or disappointment at the close. These emotions qualify the experience as a unity. But as the interview proceeds, secondary emotions are evolved as variations of the primary underlying one. It is even possible for each attitude and gesture, each sentence, almost every word, to produce more than a fluctuation in the intensity of the basic emotion; to produce, that is, a change of shade and tint in its quality. The employer sees by means of his own emotional reactions the character of the one applying. He projects him imaginatively into the work to be done and judges his fitness by the way in which the elements of the scene assemble and either clash or fit together. The presence and behavior of the applicant either harmonize with his own attitudes and desires or they conflict and jar. Such factors as these, inherently aesthetic in quality, are the forces that carry the varied elements of the interview to a decisive issue. They enter into the settlement of every situation, whatever its dominant nature, in which there are uncertainty and suspense." - John Dewey, Art as Experience
- make3 9y agothis is hackernews, not cooljournalistnews
- yesenadam 9y ago"Don't be snarky."
- perl4ever 9y agoI'm not sure I've ever gone through an interview process where it was just me and one interviewer. Well, there was one time, but that was an exceptionally weird one. Frequently I meet with the department head and someone from HR. Or the whole team. Or a bunch of department heads. Also, the last way I would ever describe an interview is as a "unity of experience". Every person has a different perspective (Rashomon comes to mind - maybe someone should make a movie like that about an interview) and while the interviewers may reconcile theirs among each other to some extent, the interviewee frequently does not see things their way at all.
- colorint 9y agoHe probably means "unity of experience" in the sense that, one's experience is a unity. Look at the whole sentence: >Its nature and import can be expressed only by art, because there is a unity of experience that can be expressed only as an experience. This sounds like more of a phenomenological point, that there's a richness and a completeness to experience that isn't captured in data or theory, and that only something with comparable richness can begin to approach it.
- perl4ever 9y agoNo, I don't see it as a unity - rather as I leave an interview, there is a superposition of possibilities. Edit: And if I don't get called when I expected to, my experience resolves into something different, perhaps, opposed to how I felt coming out of the interview.
- yesenadam 9y agoAh sorry, it was a bit random of me pasting that quote. His prose is fairly repellent. To explain a little, he uses "an experience" in a particular way in that book, not in the usual sense. The book was a revelation to me, having read a lot of books about analytic philosophy of music and art, each analysing their own little corner of art/music, me feeling like I understood less after I finished each one. Then suddenly came this book, relating everything to life - he talks about poking a fire, firefighters, a job interview etc and how all the stuff going on in these are the building blocks of art. A section of the book is "The Live Creature" - it's remarkable how many aesthetics books neglect the human/life/planet context of art. "An experience" means something like an aesthetic whole, like the experience of reading a story, watching a movie, hearing a piece of music etc. The chapter's called I believe "Having an Experience". Anyway..after that I stopped feeling the need to read books of philosophy of art/music, as all my questions had been answered. (I'm a musician + artist)
- _jomo 9y agoInteresting how many (myself included) assume "job interview" when they read "interview". Especially because German is my native language where the word interview exists but is not used for job interviews. Now this is hacker news and chances are " interviews" probably refer to "job interviews" but it's not necessarily the case. The title doesn't indicate it, so why did I assume job interview?