6 ms·

How to Know Everything About Everything: Laura Riding’s Letters to an 8-Year-Old

81 points by fern12 9y ago

Flozzin 9y ago
While at some times she seems to be rambling or making no sense(she over uses the words doing, everything), her point rings true to me. You need idle time to understand yourself. I have seen other sources say that kids need downtime. To just use their imagination. Constantly having your eyes glued to TV or your phone does not make a healthy person. She also mentions that people make the mistake of 'over-doing'. Which I also agree with. While I feel like she could have made her case clearer and cleaner(although she was writing to a child so maybe this is perfect), I agree with her.
- dang 9y ago
  Riding was a modernist poet with a bunch of radical theories about language so it's not surprising she was using words in an unconventional way, even with an eight-year-old. IIRC she was Robert Graves' partner for many years, and later in life was something like a spiritual teacher seeking truth in language, of all places. Martin Seymour-Smith, who single-handedly wrote a great big encyclopedia of 20th century literature, regarded her as the best 20th century poet in English.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    My knowledge of American poetry is abysmal, but this sounds intriguing. Do you know of any good starting points to read about her work, and her life?
    - thyrsus 9y ago
      I have a 1973 edition of the "Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry", which includes six of her poems. I think the volume serves its purpose well, and includes a nice balance of British and American poets. From the brief biography included: "After 1939, when she returned to the United States, she renounced poetry and wrote no more poems: she came to see poetry as obstructing the dedicated use of words for truth that it invited."
natecavanaugh 9y ago
I dunno, I'll play the crank here and say that writings like this really make me question the kinds of life that could be lived with this ideology. People tend to already focus on themselves as the locus of creation, do we really need more of this? I know there are people who claim to live better lives because of views like this, but I've seen how many of them live, which is often in the moment, selfish and a waste of others time. If the highest intellectual, moral and emotional goal you can achieve is to know yourself, hour can anything be too selfish? Yet, I hear far more often about what these people think of their lives, and far less about the actual benefit to others. Maybe my moral compass is tuned differently, but the whole focus on "self" seems to be the most shallow when it comes to a happy life, but it sure is convenient ;P
- Flozzin 9y ago
  I never interpreted her saying focus only on yourself and maximize your own happy. But rather know yourself. To me there is a big differences in understanding who you are vs only doing what you want at any expense. This is too simple, but knowing I want a piece of cake does not mean I should or will eat one. She is railing against the types of people that are so goal driven to a point where it becomes an obsession. She seems to think that over doing(which is what that is) stems from a poor understanding of who you are, and/or surpassing your own needs. For instance opening a local store. It's successful, makes enough money, but instead of being happy(your needs are met) you open a chain, take over the state, then the country and so on. Or the empty nester that now has no children to focus on has nothing to do, no skills to do anything, and no idea what they actually like to do. Since their entire world was built around someone else. Also, never let the worst of a group define that group. If they are the worst they probably aren't following the actual ideology.(clearly this thinking fails with Nazi's or other extremists)
  - natecavanaugh 9y ago
    Okay, I can accept that. I do have a knee-jerk reaction to posts along this line, but I can see the difference between pleasing yourself and knowing who you are. I guess my only criticism remaining is that I think one doesn't and shouldn't preclude the other, so when I see posts like this in isolation, in the current culture, it runs so aligned to the "please yourself" pop culture that it's hard not to see it as part of that. But I agree, knowing who you are is incredibly important. I personally believe that you can't truly know yourself unless you also invest in others so you know them well enough to contrast who you are and are not.
jpatokal 9y ago
Written in 1939 by an author who died 26 years ago, yet still not in the public domain, so you need to fork over $11 if you want to actually read the damn letters. Thank you, Sonny Bono and Disney.
Kenji 9y ago
The greatest showers-off and busy-bodies are men. And so this world is ruled by men, because it is a world not of doing but over-doing. A world of simple doing would need no ruling. It takes really very little doing to keep comfortably and happily alive. We ought not to pay much more attention to doing than to breathing. Oh, how easy it is to criticize those stupid busy bodies who are actually responsible that our society works at all.
pattisapu 9y ago
I wonder if she would have thought of structured games as the "wrong" sort of play, making "work" out of play.

81 points by fern12 9y ago

While at some times she seems to be rambling or making no sense(she over uses the words doing, everything), her point rings true to me. You need idle time to understand yourself. I have seen other sources say that kids need downtime. To just use their imagination. Constantly having your eyes glued to TV or your phone does not make a healthy person. She also mentions that people make the mistake of 'over-doing'. Which I also agree with. While I feel like she could have made her case clearer and cleaner(although she was writing to a child so maybe this is perfect), I agree with her.

dang 9y ago
Riding was a modernist poet with a bunch of radical theories about language so it's not surprising she was using words in an unconventional way, even with an eight-year-old. IIRC she was Robert Graves' partner for many years, and later in life was something like a spiritual teacher seeking truth in language, of all places. Martin Seymour-Smith, who single-handedly wrote a great big encyclopedia of 20th century literature, regarded her as the best 20th century poet in English.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  My knowledge of American poetry is abysmal, but this sounds intriguing. Do you know of any good starting points to read about her work, and her life?
  - thyrsus 9y ago
    I have a 1973 edition of the "Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry", which includes six of her poems. I think the volume serves its purpose well, and includes a nice balance of British and American poets. From the brief biography included: "After 1939, when she returned to the United States, she renounced poetry and wrote no more poems: she came to see poetry as obstructing the dedicated use of words for truth that it invited."

natecavanaugh 9y ago

I dunno, I'll play the crank here and say that writings like this really make me question the kinds of life that could be lived with this ideology. People tend to already focus on themselves as the locus of creation, do we really need more of this? I know there are people who claim to live better lives because of views like this, but I've seen how many of them live, which is often in the moment, selfish and a waste of others time. If the highest intellectual, moral and emotional goal you can achieve is to know yourself, hour can anything be too selfish? Yet, I hear far more often about what these people think of their lives, and far less about the actual benefit to others. Maybe my moral compass is tuned differently, but the whole focus on "self" seems to be the most shallow when it comes to a happy life, but it sure is convenient ;P

Flozzin 9y ago
I never interpreted her saying focus only on yourself and maximize your own happy. But rather know yourself. To me there is a big differences in understanding who you are vs only doing what you want at any expense. This is too simple, but knowing I want a piece of cake does not mean I should or will eat one. She is railing against the types of people that are so goal driven to a point where it becomes an obsession. She seems to think that over doing(which is what that is) stems from a poor understanding of who you are, and/or surpassing your own needs. For instance opening a local store. It's successful, makes enough money, but instead of being happy(your needs are met) you open a chain, take over the state, then the country and so on. Or the empty nester that now has no children to focus on has nothing to do, no skills to do anything, and no idea what they actually like to do. Since their entire world was built around someone else. Also, never let the worst of a group define that group. If they are the worst they probably aren't following the actual ideology.(clearly this thinking fails with Nazi's or other extremists)
- natecavanaugh 9y ago
  Okay, I can accept that. I do have a knee-jerk reaction to posts along this line, but I can see the difference between pleasing yourself and knowing who you are. I guess my only criticism remaining is that I think one doesn't and shouldn't preclude the other, so when I see posts like this in isolation, in the current culture, it runs so aligned to the "please yourself" pop culture that it's hard not to see it as part of that. But I agree, knowing who you are is incredibly important. I personally believe that you can't truly know yourself unless you also invest in others so you know them well enough to contrast who you are and are not.

jpatokal 9y ago

Written in 1939 by an author who died 26 years ago, yet still not in the public domain, so you need to fork over $11 if you want to actually read the damn letters. Thank you, Sonny Bono and Disney.

Kenji 9y ago

The greatest showers-off and busy-bodies are men. And so this world is ruled by men, because it is a world not of doing but over-doing. A world of simple doing would need no ruling. It takes really very little doing to keep comfortably and happily alive. We ought not to pay much more attention to doing than to breathing. Oh, how easy it is to criticize those stupid busy bodies who are actually responsible that our society works at all.

pattisapu 9y ago

I wonder if she would have thought of structured games as the "wrong" sort of play, making "work" out of play.