Back in the day, cigar makers would hire a someone to read the newspapers out loud during working hours. Sometimes the staff would choose different books/magazines.
I may be wrong, but I remember a scene in Robert Redford’s movie ‘Havana’ where the cigar makers are listening to Marx, until the owner walks in and the reader switches to a gossip magazine.
St. Augustine (4th c. Roman) notes in his “Confessions” seeing Bp. Ambrose of Milan reading silently to himself and is impressed. They had so much committed to text, it leaves you wondering? Were all their works composed talking it out out loud? I have whole arguments in my head.
That’s an interesting point. I have to imagine that everything on text was written and read aloud. Especially if it was a skill that seemed to be a rare occurrence at that time. It would be interesting to see how life would be if we had continued that tradition.
“But what is a good guy? A passable guy? How low is the bar? I scoff and tell my friend that at this point, he must only keep it in his pants unless asked, say please and thank you, show up on time, be funny and kind, and maybe play guitar. So, he is a neutered Labrador with a rhythm section, basically? If he is able to come to at least half the meetings at academic institutions, or family functions, and not be threatening or an out-and-out rapist he’s good to go. Cooked! Finished! Created! Credits rolling.
Are our standards that low, or are we just tiring of setting them at all?”
I feel like he’s missing the point here. The men who can meet the standards above understand you have to put in effort, and therefore meet the low bar of possibly being someone who can adapt to being with another person.
It’s also incredibly common for young guys to stumble through life day to day, and those guys haven’t necessarily developed or demonstrated the skills of being in a relationship. Possibly even scoff at the idea that it requires skills.
If you’re a man and that O.P. is a woman, her facts are feelings and your feelings are facts, and those forty-seven increasingly lengthy responses you fired off were clearly a rational reaction. If she reacted negatively to them, do not forget to rebuke her for being emotional.
I take issue with this point. It builds on the basis that there are women on the internet, which we know is factually not true. There are only men and, in some communities, squeaky teenagers. (/s)
I’m bookmarking this article. It’ll definitely be useful at several points in the future when I need to rebuke someone’s rebuke.
That is pointed criticism and correct on most counts. I wonder if irony is a productive attitude for that kind of criticism. Personally, I feel that irony is remarkable at reassuring those who already agree with the points being made. I don’t think it is effective at producing change. Not that I think changing people is the goal of the article. I recently published an article of my own that touches on those issues. It was discussed here: beehaw.org/post/11732833.
I identify the most with that bit:
That is, anything not declared in the post is something O.P. does not care about/is complicit with. Every expression of concern is in fact an expression of unconcern about something else; each of them merits a rebuke and you have been appointed (by yourself, but nevermind) to deliver it. Everyone but you is indifferent to the plight of the greater sage grouse and needs to be reminded of it.
i wonder if the best way to think about self-help as a genre is as a sort of placebo genre, where the act of engaging with the genre is a more useful act toward whatever you want to do than actually reading any particular book.
I get what you're saying. Merely being the impetus to make the effort has value.
It's kind of how I feel about pop science stuff like Malcolm Gladwell. Outliers is a little better than nothing, but there's a lot wrong with his core characterization of the research compared to reality. But if less people are going to read stuff like Peak or Range that use some academic rigor, is the partial presentation being popularized better? Or is the misrepresentation more harm than good?
I'm not entirely sure. But I do know to take his work with a heavy dose of skepticism.
(In this example, Ericsson (Peak) was on the initial research Gladwell jumps "10k hours" off of, which only explored the very structured training, with frequent feedback, of classical violin. Epstein (Range) sort of presents his as critiquing the original work, but mostly is really pointing to the flaws of Gladwell's presentation, before providing a different perspective mixing anecdotes with research supporting a broader base and showcasing how bringing ideas from other disciplines can have a lot of value to problem solving.)
With regard to the Homeric epics (The Iliad opens similarly), it should probably be noted that they didn’t originate as written works, nor did Homer compose them; he recorded an existing oral tradition.
Silent reading is actually a shockingly recent invention. Because the letters “make sounds”, the natural way to process a phonetic alphabet is to make the sounds of the letters as you read them and listen to yourself speaking the text. This goes on way later than many people realize. Being able to do silent reading at all was still a pretty remarkable skill in the time of Shakespeare. Being unable to read something without speaking the words was common probably well into the 19th century. Actually, as someone who works in education I can tell you that I will still recommend kids to read things out loud if they find something difficult. It’s what phonetic writing languages were designed for, and it increases accuracy and comprehension.
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