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> Some deep truths about human nature require instead the reflection provoked by the classics. Yes, read Dostoevsky and the classics. There is so much to learn
by dotsam 4y ago
> Some deep truths about human nature require instead the reflection provoked by the classics.
Yes, read Dostoevsky and the classics. There is so much to learn and to enjoy.
But remember that great authors didn't discover deep truths of human nature from books alone, but from their attention to the experiences of real life.
“When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. In learning to write, the pupil goes over with his pen what the teacher has outlined in pencil: so in reading; the greater part of the work of thought is already done for us. This is why it relieves us to take up a book after being occupied with our own thoughts. And in reading, the mind is, in fact, only the playground of another’s thoughts. So it comes about that if anyone spends almost the whole day in reading, and by way of relaxation devotes the intervals to some thoughtless pastime, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking; just as the man who always rides, at last forgets how to walk. This is the case with many learned persons: they have read themselves stupid.” - Arthur Schopenhauer
- Forgeties79 4y agoI feel like there’s a lot to be gleaned here, but all I can focus on is how this - especially the last line - could be easily misrepresented to spread an anti-education message.
- newaccount2021 4y ago
- jorvi 4y agoTo me it reads like anti-consumerism. If you only consume and don’t create, your mind gradually loses its capacity for creativity [and you will eventually have to reacquire it, the same way a comatose patient needs to relearn walking].
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- psychomugs 4y agoYou could say similar of any technology, as they all extend and amputate ourselves in some way. I read the Schopenhauer line as a sentiment against technosolutionism; technology like books are fine in moderation, but they are not replacements for the reality of lived experience. See Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman for better arguments.
- oldsklgdfth 4y agoCame here to mention those two. It’s a subtle message. Technology giveth and technology taketh. Use of any technology is a trade off.
- Forgeties79 4y agoI definitely see that interpretation and it’s how I would take it personally, I’m just kind of musing.
- cowuser666 4y agoThis treats arguments like opaque tokens where we know in advance which are good and bad, and need to make sure we have lots of good and few bad. But actually arguments have content and to know whether they are good or bad, we have to engage with them.
- Forgeties79 4y agoI’m going to be perfectly honest, I have no idea what you mean in this context/what you’re saying to me once I get past the first comma.
- cowuser666 4y agoI'm saying you're not engaging with the substance of his point. If I were to say, "America had a negative impact in geopolitics when it invaded Iraq," it's like you responded with "I'm sorry, but that just seems anti-American."
- Forgeties79 4y agoI don’t think that’s a particularly fair or accurate assessment of what I said.
- 9dev 4y agoJust wanted to say that this was an excellent example to illustrate your case.
- mmmpop 4y ago> an anti-education message But since when is all reading "education"? I see a lot of people reading a lot of trash and could be spending their time reading Dostoevsky, or better yet plotting their own murder + burglaries !
- Forgeties79 4y agoThat’s not really what I said nor do I disagree.
- Silverback_VII 4y agoWhat if the deep truths about the human nature are in fact very shallow? I can imagine that all human deepness is, not unlike the very sofisticated feathers of the peacock, just a tool to increase status & SMV.
- cowuser666 4y agoAnd language is just a tool to hunt better and coordinate distribution of berries. And human consciousness is just a tool to model other minds to negotiate better. Nothing to see here.
- Kevcmk 4y agoCynicism is both cheap and lazy. You two sound miserable
- cowuser666 4y agoWorldviews don't win points for being expensive and industrious. But my point, had you seen past your mood affiliation, was that explaining the origin of a phenomenon doesn't tell you its value.
- molly0 4y agoGood point.
- polio 4y agoThere are plenty of people who still lead complex lives after they are effectively out of said market.
- Silverback_VII 4y agoSome people certainly think that they are out of the market but their organism may have a different opinion. People who are truly out of the market like postmenopausal women often feel a lack of motivation and their physical activity measurably decreases.
- svat 4y agoSimilar thought from Albert Einstein (1930): > ”Much reading after a certain age diverts the mind from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theaters is apt to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.”
- Silverback_VII 4y agoWhenever I read something about Einstein the following comes to my mind: "The people told me, however, that the big ear was not only a man, but a great man, a genius. But I never believed in the people when they spake of great men - and I hold to my belief that it was a reversed cripple, who had too little of everything, and too much of one thing."
- fluoridation 4y ago"What a fool I am", said the fox. "Here I am wearing myself out to get a bunch of sour grapes that are not worth gaping for."
- tehchromic 4y agoI love this. I always wonder why I have almost no interest in novels now although I spent my entire youth buried in them. Occasionally I feel guilty. But I think life became the novel?
- enviclash 4y ago"life became the novel"... Sounds beautiful but idealistic. Surely risk perception plays a role in the difference.
- tehchromic 4y agoRisk perception. Clarify?
- tehchromic 4y ago
- its_bbq 4y agoA quote that's impossible to read without some irony
- montefischer 4y agoMy favorite passage from that essay: > From all this it may be concluded that thoughts put down on paper are nothing more than footprints in the sand: one sees the road the man has taken, but in order to know what he saw on the way, one requires his eyes.
- starkd 4y agoNeil Postman came to much the same conclusion about modern entertainment. https://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Business/dp/014303653X https://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Bus...
- diffxx 4y agoThat's not what I took away from the book. He mentions his own personal enjoyment of trashy television multiple times. His concern was that he believed that democracy is fundamentally incompatible with a media landscape dominated by television (s/televison/social media in 2022).
- montefischer 4y agoIn fact, Postman went to great lengths to detail the ways in which "print culture" (including books, newspapers, and even public oration) with its great commitment to complex argumentation shaped society in ways consonant with the sustaining of a democratic republic, while warning that the modern replacement of this older culture was perhaps not so well suited to maintaining a self-governing people. (edit) Social media / the internet more generally enables 2-way communication in a way that was not possible in either print nor TV culture. Conceptually it lowers barriers to entry to near-zero for communicating one's ideas & learning from others. Earlier forms depended much more heavily on gatekeepers. Is a more nominally democratic form of media culture than this even possible?
- ardkor 4y ago
- grog454 4y ago> "When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process." Doesn't this depend a lot on what and how we're reading? I put a lot more thought into some passages from a book than a Stack Overflow code snippet. HN posts fall somewhere in between, and sometimes even those can permanently reshape how I think about something.