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What a hypocrite. He wishes so dearly that everyone have the same opinion he does so as to willingly work more to pay for other people's shelter and food. He ca

What a hypocrite. He wishes so dearly that everyone have the same opinion he does so as to willingly work more to pay for other people's shelter and food. He can be the change he wants to see - all he has to do is take care that the poor people around him have shelter and food. Aren't we seeing something similar in India, with neighborhoods getting together without help from any organization and fixing their death traps and beautifying their pissing corners and walls? DFW could have done that, but instead he was an armchair idealist who one day wished some centralized power would take a lot more money from a lot more willing people so that they alone could solve the problems of the world. How convenient. That quote that stood out to you is the myopic and uneducated opinion of a depressed person. At least with my depression I don't go around like a lunatic defending there must be a power giant to steal more of people's money and give it to the poor, as if that ever worked. A true Utopia that this planet has never seen. I have seen pictures and videos of those citizen movements in India and that is not Utopia but real life. Alas, not good enough for DFW. It seems every depressed person hates this world and wishes for a better one, but with all his reading and writing, his opinion never matured beyond that of current high-schoolers.

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stephencanon 12y ago
Accusing someone of hypocrisy is not a refutation of their idea. It's base rhetoric, used when one can't address the actual argument being put forward. The fact that someone does not devote their life to a goal they put forward in no way makes the goal wrong. If a smoker tells you to not to smoke, is he a hypocrite? Sure. Does that mean that he's wrong and you should smoke? No. I'd like to think that HN can do better and actually examine ideas, and not dismiss them because of hypocrisy. Your second paragraph is much, much better in this regard.
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21echoes 12y ago
It's amazing to me that you would accuse DFW of myopia and hypocrisy when your argument here is, well, hypocritically myopic (not to mention one might say that DFW's overarching thesis in all of his work was encouraging his readers to be less myopic e.g. [1][2]) To tackle a problem like world hunger and homelessness takes an incredible amount of effort across a huge number of domains by an enormous amount of people. DFW was obviously not someone best suited to go e.g. repair "pissing corners and walls", and we should not expect him to be. Instead, he did many things to inspire many people to lead more altruistic and less self-centered lives. This was his talent, and it's probably done more good for the world than any amount manual labor he could have done in his lifetime. Ignoring this aspect of helping the afflicted is the same strain of myopia that thinks charities should give 100% of their fundraising to researchers/etc, as if raising awareness and paying competitive salaries were not the lifeblood of said charities[3]. I'll leave your rant about how "power giants stealing money have never helped the poor" alone, as your rhetoric and ignorance of evidence to the contrary clearly imply you're not about to have a rational discussion about it. [1] http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWKenyonAddress2005.pdf http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWKenyonAddress2005.pdf [2] http://observer.com/1997/10/john-updike-champion-literary-phallocrat-drops-one-is-this-finally-the-end-for-magnificent-narcissists/ http://observer.com/1997/10/john-updike-champion-literary-ph... [3] http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about...

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stephencanon 12y ago

Accusing someone of hypocrisy is not a refutation of their idea. It's base rhetoric, used when one can't address the actual argument being put forward. The fact that someone does not devote their life to a goal they put forward in no way makes the goal wrong. If a smoker tells you to not to smoke, is he a hypocrite? Sure. Does that mean that he's wrong and you should smoke? No. I'd like to think that HN can do better and actually examine ideas, and not dismiss them because of hypocrisy. Your second paragraph is much, much better in this regard.

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21echoes 12y ago

It's amazing to me that you would accuse DFW of myopia and hypocrisy when your argument here is, well, hypocritically myopic (not to mention one might say that DFW's overarching thesis in all of his work was encouraging his readers to be less myopic e.g. [1][2]) To tackle a problem like world hunger and homelessness takes an incredible amount of effort across a huge number of domains by an enormous amount of people. DFW was obviously not someone best suited to go e.g. repair "pissing corners and walls", and we should not expect him to be. Instead, he did many things to inspire many people to lead more altruistic and less self-centered lives. This was his talent, and it's probably done more good for the world than any amount manual labor he could have done in his lifetime. Ignoring this aspect of helping the afflicted is the same strain of myopia that thinks charities should give 100% of their fundraising to researchers/etc, as if raising awareness and paying competitive salaries were not the lifeblood of said charities[3]. I'll leave your rant about how "power giants stealing money have never helped the poor" alone, as your rhetoric and ignorance of evidence to the contrary clearly imply you're not about to have a rational discussion about it. [1] http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWKenyonAddress2005.pdf http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWKenyonAddress2005.pdf [2] http://observer.com/1997/10/john-updike-champion-literary-phallocrat-drops-one-is-this-finally-the-end-for-magnificent-narcissists/ http://observer.com/1997/10/john-updike-champion-literary-ph... [3] http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about...