Ask HN: What are your favorite essays?
Hey team, what essays have you gotten back to over and over again? Would love to add to my reading list.
The two for me was PG’s what you’ll wish you’d known, and Age of the Essay
The two for me was PG’s what you’ll wish you’d known, and Age of the Essay
> Alienation is the precise and correctly applied word for describing the major social problem in Britain today. People feel alienated by society. In some intellectual circles it is treated almost as a new phenomenon. It has, however, been with us for years. What I believe is true is that today it is more widespread, more pervasive than ever before. Let me right at the outset define what I mean by alienation. It is the cry of men who feel themselves the victims of blind economic forces beyond their control. It's the frustration of ordinary people excluded from the processes of decision-making. The feeling of despair and hopelessness that pervades people who feel with justification that they have no real say in shaping or determining their own destinies.
[...]
> Reject these attitudes. Reject the values and false morality that underlie these attitudes. A rat race is for rats. We're not rats. We're human beings. Reject the insidious pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties to all that is happening around you, that would caution silence in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise your chances of promotion and self-advancement. This is how it starts, and before you know where you are, you're a fully paid-up member of the rat-pack. The price is too high. It entails the loss of your dignity and human spirit. Or as Christ put it, "What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?"
I always felt like this would apply to a good code review.
[1]: https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-...
Discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19294564
- Blaise Pascal's "Pensées" (Thoughts)
- René Descartes' "Discours de la méthode" (Discourse on the method)
- Henri Poincaré's "L'avenir des mathématiques" (The future of mathematics)
The way they wielded words pleased me. Their hopes and doubts moved me. Their intellect shattered my brain.
"A Voice from the Attic", "The Merry Heart", "Happy Alchemy", and "One Half of Robertson Davies" are collections that we frequently dip into in my house. They make an excellent, soothing respite when I need to take a break from thinking about technological things.
"On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant" by David Graeber
"Industrial Society and its .." just kidding
Orwell's All art is propaganda.
"Many who have ''plied their book diligently," and know all about some one branch or another of accepted lore, come out of the study with an ancient and owl-like demeanour, and prove dry, stockish, and dyspeptic in all the better and brighter parts of life. Many make a large fortune, who remain underbred and pathetically stupid to the last."