Kierkegaard on Our Greatest Source of Unhappiness by Maria Popova Hope, memory, and how our chronic compulsion to flee from our own lives robs us of living. “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” Annie Dillard memorably wrote in reflecting on why presence matters more than productivity. “On how one orients himself to the moment depends the failure or fruitfulness of it,” Henry Miller asserted in his beautiful meditation on the art of living. In a chapter of the altogether indispensable 1843 treatise Either/Or: A Fragment of Life (public library), the influential Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard (May 5, 1813–November 11, 1855), considered the first true existentialist philosopher, explores precisely that — how our constant escapism from our own lives is our greatest source of unhappiness. Kierkegaard, who was only thirty at the time, begins with an observation all the timelier today, amidst our culture of busy-as-a-badge-of-honor: The unhappy one is absent. Consider first the hoping individual. Donating = Loving
Haters and Critics: How to Deal with People Judging You and Your Work It doesn’t matter how you choose to live your life — whether you build a business or work a corporate job; have children or choose not to have children; travel the world or live in the same town all of your life; go to the gym 5 times a week or sit on the couch every night — whatever you do, someone will judge you for it. For one reason or another, someone will find a reason to project their insecurities, their negativity, and their fears onto you and your life, and you’ll have to deal with it. With that in mind, let’s talk about being judged and criticized. And just for fun, I’ll share some of the most hateful comments I’ve received on my articles. And more importantly, the strategies I use to deal with them. Here’s what I’ve learned about dealing with the people who judge you, your work, and your goals. The Biggest Critic in Your Life It’s easier to complain about the outside critics, but the biggest critic in your life usually lives between your own two ears. The Truth About Criticism
Find Your Beach by Zadie Smith Across the way from our apartment—on Houston, I guess—there’s a new wall ad. The site is forty feet high, twenty feet wide. It changes once or twice a year. Before that came an ad so high-end I couldn’t tell what it was for. The tower I live in is university accommodation; so is the tower opposite. But that was all some time ago. In those cases photographic images are used, and the beach is real and seen in full. Collectively we, the people of Soho, consider ourselves pretty sophisticated consumers of media. Find your beach. Here the focus is narrow, almost obsessive. In an exercise class recently the instructor shouted at me, at all of us: “Don’t let your mind set limits that aren’t really there.” The beach is always there: you just have to conceive of it. There is a kind of individualism so stark that it seems to dovetail with an existentialist creed: Manhattan is right at that crossroads. When I land at JFK, everything changes. It is such a good town in which to work and work.
The Benjamin Franklin Effect: The Surprising Psychology of How to Handle Haters “We are what we pretend to be,” Kurt Vonnegut famously wrote, “so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” But given how much our minds mislead us, what if we don’t realize when we’re pretending — who are we then? That’s precisely what David McRaney explores in You Are Now Less Dumb: How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself (public library) — a “book about self-delusion, but also a celebration of it,” a fascinating and pleasantly uncomfortable-making look at why “self-delusion is as much a part of the human condition as fingers and toes,” and the follow-up to McRaney’s You Are Not So Smart, one of the best psychology books of 2011. McRaney, with his signature fusion of intelligent irreverence and irreverent intelligence, writes in the introduction: The human mind is obviously vaster and more powerful than any other animal mind, and that’s something people throughout all human history couldn’t help but notice.
Admit it: Living In New York Sucks I spent most of my twenties being brainwashed and lied to. Everybody told me that living in New York was the best–nothing could touch its food, its culture, its opportunities–and I believed them. I believed them every day for the first three years I lived there. I fell in love with the city the way any young person does. Let’s face it, there’s no better place to be young than New York. Whenever someone tells me they spent their twenties somewhere like LA, I wanna cry and be like, “Babe, you should really ask for a refund. Going into my fourth year, I saw my feelings of love and admiration for the city slowly morph into resentment. The last two years I lived in New York were not so good. I tried to leave. Sometimes the prospect of moving in New York is enough for you to move altogether. It took awhile for the last option to occur to me, which goes to show just how fucking cult-ish living in New York is. Of course, there are things I miss about New York.
Why Haters Hate: Kierkegaard Explains the Psychology of Bullying and Online Trolling in 1847 Celebrated as the first true existentialist philosopher, Danish writer and thinker Søren Kierkegaard (May 5, 1813–November 11, 1855) may have only lived a short life, but it was a deep one and its impact radiated widely outward, far across the centuries and disciplines and schools of thought. He was also among the multitude of famous writers who benefited from keeping a diary and nowhere does his paradoxical blend of melancholy and idealism, of despair about the human condition and optimism about the purpose of life, shine more brilliantly than in The Diary of Søren Kierkegaard (public library) — a compendium of Kierkegaard’s frequently intense, always astoundingly thoughtful reflections on everything from happiness and melancholy to writing and literature to self-doubt and public opinion. Kierkegaard writes: There is a form of envy of which I frequently have seen examples, in which an individual tries to obtain something by bullying.
Here To Be Interesting: Don DeLillo’s The Angel Esmeralda | Idiom The Angel Esmeralda by Don DeLilloScribner, 2011 Don DeLillo has two modes of operation: there are the major works, novels like Underworld and Libra and Falling Man, books that portend to deal with massive subjects like the last half of the American Century, the Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK assassinations, and the attacks on 9/11 (in these novels readers encounter J. Edgar Hoover, Oswald himself, and a 9/11 hijacker, for instance). DeLillo’s prose is often infectious, perhaps a product of the years he spent working for an ad agency, and his words often get caught in one’s head in the same manner effective TV jingles do. This internal scab-picking manifests itself in a deeply scrutinizing self-awareness, and the pickers themselves are often people with a lot of time on their hands, time to worry, time to provoke themselves, time to meditate on their actions and thoughts. The idea of the mask resurfaces throughout The Angel Esmeralda.
5 Alternatives to Gossip Gossip (n.): Casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details that are not confirmed as being true. I would add a few extra elements to this definition: It usually involves a violation of someone else’s boundaries: information told in confidence, information shared against someone else’s wishes, etc.It’s rarely positiveIt usually affords a sense of moral superiority at another person’s expense. I don’t like gossip. I used to gossip. Gossip is the antithesis of empathy and compassion, and it’s a very small step from gossip to shaming. Despite knowing this, gossip is something I’ve found hard to tame in my own life. Here are five practices that I’ve found helpful on my journey towards a gossip-free zone: 1. Journaling is a great way of expressing our frustration or judgements about someone or something without doing any damage. 2. I have a pretty rocky relationship with meditation. 3. 4. 5. Gossip is a barrier to intimacy. Thanks for reading.
The 10 Best Psychology and Philosophy Books of 2012 by Maria Popova From Buddhism to the relationship between creativity and dishonesty, by way of storytelling and habit. After the best science books, art books, and design books of 2012, the season’s subjective selection of best-of reading lists continue with the most stimulating philosophy, psychology, and creativity books published this year. (Catch up on last year’s roundup here.) Every year for more than a decade, intellectual impresario and Edge editor John Brockman has been asking the era’s greatest thinkers a single annual question, designed to illuminate some important aspect of how we understand the world. Brockman prefaces the essays with an important definition that captures the dimensionality of “science”: Here, the term ‘scientific’ is to be understood in a broad sense — as the most reliable way of gaining knowledge about anything, whether it be human behavior, corporate behavior, the fate of the planet, or the future of the universe. Marketers exploit the focusing illusion.
Challenging Gossip: Creating a Cohesive Workplace - Gossip is all around us– from magazine covers, tabloids, friendship circles and the workplace. This social engagement is often very hard to avoid, as it has been said: “up to two thirds of a conversation make references to an absent third party” – (Grosser et al., 2012). Gossip is defined as any casual form of communication, or ‘empty talk’ usually about an absent third party, and is usually considered to be negative (Altunas et al. 2014, Grosser et al., 2010). Gossiping in the workplace usually comes about when formal communication between employers, employees is lacking or dysfunctional (Altunas et al., 2014). 7 ways that gossip impacts the social functioning of a group Collecting and disseminating information about individuals. Gossip can have its benefits, creating strong social bonds between individuals and group solidarity (Altunas et al., 2014). However, this is usually at someone else’s expense and the ramifications of gossip within a workplace can be very damaging. Role Allocation
Camus's "The Stranger": First-Line Translation For the modern American reader, few lines in French literature are as famous as the opening of Albert Camus’s “L’Étranger”: “Aujourd’hui, maman est morte.” Nitty-gritty tense issues aside, the first sentence of “The Stranger” is so elementary that even a schoolboy with a base knowledge of French could adequately translate it. So why do the pros keep getting it wrong? Within the novel’s first sentence, two subtle and seemingly minor translation decisions have the power to change the way we read everything that follows. What makes these particular choices prickly is that they poke at a long-standing debate among the literary community: whether it is necessary for a translator to have some sort of special affinity with a work’s author in order to produce the best possible text. Arthur Goldhammer, translator of a volume of Camus’s Combat editorials, calls it “nonsense” to believe that “good translation requires some sort of mystical sympathy between author and translator.”
25 Banned Books That You Should Read Today Almost since the dawn of publishing, books have been banned for one reason or another. Many notable banned books are also compelling reads from classic or contemporary literature. This list summarizes 25 of the most controversial banned books from throughout history. #1 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Harper Lee's only novel is considered by many to be among the greatest works of fiction in American literature. #2 American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis Ellis is a frequent target for protests due to the nature of his writing, but none has faced the level of opposition of American Psycho. #3 And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson This picture book tells the true story of Roy and Silo, two male penguins in New York City's Central Park Zoo. #4 The Awakening by Kate Chopin Chopin's story of Edna Pontellier asserting her independence was a pioneering work of feminism when it was published in 1899. #5 The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. #6 Candide by Voltaire D.
The 10 Most Disturbing Books Of All Time In my younger days if I heard a book or movie was disturbing or hard to handle I generally took that as a challenge. Most books generally turned out to not be too bad, but occasionally I’d come across something that would leave me with a sick feeling in my stomach for weeks. I’ve largely outgrown this “genre” of late, but here are my picks for the ten most disturbing books of all time. Any one of these books is capable of leaving you feeling a little depressed at the least, and permanently scarred at the worst. I’d say enjoy, but that doesn’t really seem appropriate … 10. Blindness is a book with a truly horrifying scenario at it’s heart: what if everyone in the world were to lose their sight to disease in a short period of time? 9. Anti drug crusaders should stop airing goofy commercials that nobody takes seriously and start pushing to have Requiem For A Dream made required reading for every high schooler in the country. 8. Naked Lunc is another ode to drug addiction. 7. 6. Bleak. 5.