On Self-Respect (1961) | Hacker News Reader

On Self-Respect (1961)

vogue.com

42 pointstosh25 comments

The problem is, based on my own experiences and those I know, I don't know what self-respect is anymore in terms of how you operationalize it. Does doing X in a given situation mean a lack of self-respect or an abundance of self-respect? Similarly, is there a point at which persisting in something in the name of self-respect in a given situation paradoxically becomes self-disprespectful? I have some friends who value it very highly and some of the decisions they've made in the name of self-respect have come across to me as instead being facile or purely vindictive at best, or psychologically unsound at worst. Is that self-respect?

It's something that seems important to me and important to reflect on, but like a lot of things in life, turning it into an actionable decision is where it evaporates. I suspect there's some things I've done that seemed like the epitome of self-respect to some people who are close to me, and like the epitome of self-loathing or lack of self-respect to others.

How about the higher the self respect the lower the (big 5) neuroticism?

Hmmm

Neuroticism seems like the real enemy within the real enemy (of self). Defeat neuroticism, you can overcome lack of conscientiousness，narrow-mindedness, disagreeableness, even introversion.

Yeah, insufficient neuroticism is also known as hypocrisy.

I think this essay is about the exact opposite of operationalizing. It's about an internal feeling or life of the mind. One of the examples she points to is how the exact same action (e.g. having an affair) can originate from and result in very different mental attitudes.

> the exact opposite of operationalizing

Or what Kant called "instrumental reason". Doing something not because it's the right thing to do, but because we hope to get something out of it. A means not an end. Paradoxically thinking that way we commmodify (reify) ourselves (see Erich Fromm). Gotta break out of that "what's in it for me?" mindset. Then self respect looks a bit like great art, you'll know it when you feel it.

> some of the decisions they've made in the name of self-respect have come across to me as instead being facile or purely vindictive at best, or psychologically unsound at worst

That's the crux. Self respect means valuing your own judgement and feelings, and holding to them in the face of disapproval. It's valuable even, and especially when, you're wrong.

Making a petty, unstable, vindictive decision and owning it can be better in the long run than caving to social pressure. You learn from your choices, instead of learning how to hide them away inside yourself.

Very well written and very different written than what we usually consume.

I suggest everyone to take those 20 minutes

Thank you. I started reading, then headed for the comments as one does with technology-induced adhd. Your comment made me finish the read and for that I am grateful.

> People with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display character, a quality which sometimes loses ground to more instantly negotiable virtues.

> One tends to think of it only in connection with homely children and with United States senators who have been defeated, preferably in the primary, for re-election.

> Nonetheless, character - the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life - is the source from which self-respect springs.

(Mildly edited)

> Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.

The false anatman.

TIL (en passant, by following links, that) even Vogue runs articles concerning alternatives to capitalism.

Totally makes sense to me. Capitalism is intrinsically unattractive to those who do not wish to sweep broader perspectives on emotion-management under the rug.. (how to extract utility from lossy information channels, basically). With that framing, extreme progressivism horseshoes into haute couture.. PGs cringe-blogging just pales -- an utilitarian reading of Wodehouse requires taking the Edwardian aristocracy seriously as intellectualls,just like, unintentionally/ironically, PG invites the best of us to skewer YCs practical ideology with postvonneumann paradigms

Harvard architecture being an excellent example of a postvonneuman paradigm (it has an analytic advantage in that when one pops the stack to return to a previous control state, what one finds there has conserved what was there when one originally pushed, rather than potentially being new control state to match the new data state)

Ahaha. JvN is the demiurge regnant (not Einstein, btw) so a single implementation of the quantum Harvard architecture could in principle be sufficient to deluge away the globalist-techno-nuclear-feudalism

But maybe postvonneumann is already here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40029014

> This is not always due to severe pathologies

I don't know about severe, but it seems like something about that approach ought to count as pathological...

Given the "nuclear" term of globalist-techno-nuclear-feudalism I'm not rooting for any deluges, more an erosion via steady precipitation, or perhaps just a rising tide? (compare https://www.gallimard.fr/Catalogue/GALLIMARD/Tel/Recoltes-et... as explained by https://people.math.harvard.edu/~knill/teaching/math22b2019/... )

Ah right, Grothendieck, the less violent (albeit less effective) unabomber. He could have been a postJvN contender but alas, too laid back on implementations XD

Kolmogorov option OTOH (as summarized by his life) could be the optimal interpolate https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=3376

AKA the Benjamin option?

When asked whether [Old Benjamin, the donkey] was not happier now that Jones was gone, he would say only "Donkeys live a long time. None of you has ever seen a dead donkey," and the others had to be content with this cryptic answer.

Thinking about this a little more:

As per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40084498 , Kolmogorov operated in an environment where he had to temper courage and only prudently seek justice.

— Children, you are the owners of the camp. You! What is required of you, my friends?

— (ALL IN CHORUS) DISCIPLINE!

How about Galkin option? (as per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40012335 )

It doesn't solve the global problem, but it certainly widens one's local domain.

World of tomorrow/travel (well, "(quantum) tunneling") documents to the future. JJ's framework is after all based on classic Indo-Judeo-Christo-European one of nerds vs jocks/2 estates against the 3rd. Kolmogorov a bit more interesting: when given the choice of projected socio-disciplinary impact, or a concrete chance to indulge in imagination, that is, to live, not, to "live" (in the sense expounded in the Talmud) , he lived. Can't fit this into JJ's dichotomy. Quantum nonlocality, something JvN had not grown up breathing, but K,AN had. Saw to it later, the very postwar counter-counter-revolution.

Any particular bit of Kolmogorov biography I should be paying attention to?

Interesting now that, like Bertrand Russell and his Beacon Hill School, ANK was tempted to realise an ideal school, and even involved himself with Potylikhin school. I read somewhere about a playground design, with a climbing structure that was made so that the paths reachable from each other were age-appropriate; I wonder if it'd be possible to create series of questions, such that the distances in between each question would be just far enough that autodidacts could figure out what they needed to learn to reach the next...

Tunnelling documents to the (2084?) future? that sounds like a Явление Чрезвычайное?

Sounds like we're evolving in the same measure-preserving open:

https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~lekheng/interviews/ANKolmogoro...

> K.: ... it must be possible to return to a more basic and child-like joy in living. Do you know the German writer Hesse?

> M.: Yes.

> K.: In Das Glasperlenspiel, Hesse depicts such a society, and quite brilliantly, I would say.

grātiās tibi agō, vīnny̅vīchī!

Ditto; so my task has to be to re-SIMD The Dispossessed (UKLG), The Possessed (FMD), & HH, paying attention to any superpositions of child-likeliness and ambition.

OK, how about these for a 3rd way?

  Shun rivalrous goods
  Explore
  Be inquisitive
  Examine both old and new
  Be ungovernable
  Be independent
  Yakshave and explore rabbit holes
  Use both nonfiction and fiction for the sake of the game
  Be deep
  Spread non-rivalrous goods
  Cite sources
  Collaborate with colleagues; exclude lusers
  Sit in a comfy chair but have a long attention span
  Be realistic
  Treasure woolgathering

(Commercial Syndrome is a contact game; Guardian Syndrom a collision game; and the new syndrome as a non-contact, thinking, game")

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