The notion that we have limited access to the workings of our minds is difficult to accept because, naturally it is alien to our experience, but it is true: you know far less about yourself than you feel you do…. [1]
the confidence that people have in their intuitions is not a reliable guide to their validity. In other words, do not trust anyone—including yourself—to tell you how much you should trust their judgment….[2]
Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it.[3]
Currently I’m working on the first of a series of essays that deal with the idea of tolerating the intolerant. For the first one, I’ll be using some old family stories. I’ve also picked out some recent headlines and current events for it. I plan to weave them in and make it all freshly relevant. Some literary comparisons from Camus and Cervantes will also be used.
And even though Kafka’s The
Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung) (1915) can be read in ways quite relevant to
the topic of tolerating the intolerant, I don’t want to use it for this
project, and I have refrained from rereading it.
Yes, Kafka’s story is in most
English language short story anthologies. It’s often the first story by Kafka
that students in the United States are exposed to. Yes, as the story progresses
Gregor Samsa’s family grows less and less tolerant as their son changes into an
insect. They grow so intolerant that, by the end, they celebrate Gregor’s
demise by having a picnic. Yes, Kafka had a tremendous influence on Camus,[1]
and Kafka took Cervantes very seriously, yes, yes, yes….
So Kafka’s tale might seem relevant
to use.
But I don’t want to. In this
particular story–or at least my multiple memories of reading it–Kafka
exhausts me in a way Camus and Cervantes do not.
Maybe it’s that drab Prague
apartment … and that dry humor … dry like the crust and crunch of salt
crystals. Abrasive….
Restoration versus reservation:
Perhaps if one leaves Kafka’s story in mental reserve for a while, its
relevance will one day be restored and written about. Or perhaps the tale is musty–like an old rug
that’s been in the family for generations. Perhaps Kafka’s story needs to be taken
to the yard and beaten with a broomstick until it is properly aired out.
Yet I don’t feel like the one to do the butler’s duties.
[1]Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus) (1942), trans. Justin
O’Brien, (New York: Vintage Books, 1959) pp. 127, 130, 138; L’Étranger
(The Stranger) (1942), trans. Stuart Gilbert, (New York: Vintage, 1954)
pp. 11, 21, 99–100.
I’m still recovering/glowing/musing/recollecting from a trip to Europe, where I had Germany for a main course and London for dessert.
It was great to undergo a pilgrimage toward creativity, to Goethe’s house and Schiller’s house in Weimar, Bach’s churches in Leipzig, as well as Samuel Johnson’s and Charles Dickens’s houses in London.
–––––. Aus Meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth from My Own Life) (1811–1830)
–––––. Novella
(1828)
–––––. Zur Farbenlehre (Theory of Colors), “Preface to the First Edition of 1810.â€
–––––. Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship) (1795)
–––––. Faust Part I (1808)
–––––. Faust Part II (1832)
Rudolf Steiner, Goethe’s Weltanschauung (1897)
–––––. Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung (A Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe’s World Conception) (1886)
–––––. Nietzsche, ein Kämpfer gegen seine Zeit (Friedrich Nietzsche: Fighter for Freedom) (1895)
–––––. Education as a Social Problem (1919)
–––––. The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (1922)
–––––. Mysticism and Modern Thought (1928)
George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, “Preface to Phenomenology†(1807)
Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms [taken from Parerga and Paralipomena] (1851)
Nietzsche, Writings from the Early Notebooks, (1870-1873)
––––-. The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit ofMusic (1872) (1886)
–––––. On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873)
8 Thoughts on the New York Times Article about the Demise of The Weekly Standard.
So Jim Rutenberg wrote this article in the New York Times. In that article you will not find out that:
1. I think most casual readers of The Weekly Standard [TWS] would agree it has been going downhill since, at least, Bush 43’s second term.
2. For a time TWS was a strong voice of neoconservatism–which itself emerged in the 1970s as a theory, but only matured into an applied political praxis during a post-Clinton presidency–and even then–only after September 10, 2001.
3. When Clinton lost to Trump, TWS lost a lot of its original enemies, hence its original purpose.
4. For most non-Jewish observers, Commentary is the nation’s premier conservative, political Jewish magazine–something TWS might’ve been at one point (that’s neither here nor there)–and it appears this country has room for only one commercially viable publication for such a niche market.
5. Sometime during the Obama administration, TWS put up a great paywall to keep out invaders. This was Chinese-esque in its ambitions: TWS’s RSS feed was minimized, while giant pop-ups to “subscribe now” began to bombard any would-be reader on any subject–carnival-barker style. Basically TWS’s online presence became as technically unreader-friendly as a MySpace page.
6. With regard to topics TWS covered and the writers it chose to publish, all of the above adds up to it being an insular institution that seemed less than interested in outsiders’ opinions, submissions (I never did), and subscriptions (ditto).
7. When was the last time TWS had an article at the top of Memeorandum?
8. None of Much to none of the above is mentioned or considered in the New York Times‘ article by Jim Rutenberg.
Conclusion: Even a casual reader of TWS would know it is much more plausible to use the trope that Trump’s election was a “final nail in the coffin” for TWS than to say the Donald is the reason for TWS’s demise, as the NYT’s headline implies.Â
Scribblings and Droppings no. 03: the Writer as Victim and Victor
Have you ever been involved in a creative project over a
long period of time?
Did you reach a point where you felt the project was kicking
your ass? Maybe you had to put it aside, like Goethe did with Faust Part IIand Coleridge with Christabel?
This kind of thing happened to me when I was trying to prune
an essay from 10,000+ words to under 4,000.
Was there a moment after having endured strife when you finally started to feel like you were kicking the project’s ass? Was there a moment when you realize you’d reached the apex and had overcome the obstacle?
It’s like Stephen King says: writers have to kill their darlings.
(In a sick sense, you’ve got to be like Frau Goebbels.) You
gotta figure out how to detox your own text, purge it of its poisons.
Now that the essay is done, I feel older, exhausted, and sore. But there’s no time for self-sympathy. Gotta get up and do all again, like the Chairman says:
No, the movie hasn’t aged well. Nonetheless, that’s what editing and proofreading the works of others is: getting, imagining a new perspective on things.
All editing (and self-editing) requires empathy. Editing is empathy.
But self-editing doesn’t mean empathizing with yourself. It means the level of quality you reach in editing your own words is measured in your capacity to empathize with your potential readership.
In other words, how well can you the writer put yourself in the shoes of a would-be reader you have never met?
This discussion of empathy reminds me of its importance in a different context: Errol Morris’s The Fog of War (2003), a documentary about Robert McNamara (1916–2009), who was Secretary of Defense for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.
In discussing the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, McNamara says (I can’t find a clip of it):
In [former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Llewellyn E.] Thompson’s mind was this thought: Khrushchev’s gotten himself in a hell of a fix. He would then think to himself, “My God, if I can get out of this with a deal that I can say to the Russian people: ‘Kennedy was going to destroy Castro and I prevented it.'” Thompson, knowing Khrushchev as he did, thought Khrushchev will accept that. And Thompson was right. That’s what I call empathy. We must try to put ourselves inside their skin and look at us through their eyes, just to understand the thoughts that lie behind their decisions and their actions.
This clip follows up on the above quotation:
Empathy can prevent nuclear war. (If only editing could be so powerful!)