Wrote Christopher Morley, an American journalist, novelist, essayist, and poet who lived from 1890 to 1957.
I encountered that as I was looking for quotes about journalism (for reasons described in an earlier post). The Morley quote is from an AdWeek article by Meranda Adams, "15 Quotes to Inspire Journalists."
The article is from 2011, so it's interesting to encounter this from the now-disgraced Garrison Keillor: "Bad things don’t happen to writers; it’s all material." If he's true to his own adage, we'll have a fantastic book.
There's also this quote from David Sedaris, which feels, today, like an warning to Keillor: "Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it’s just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it."
And this is sweet, from Eric Hoffer: "In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists."
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Mist County was created from an overlap (or underlap) of two independently run cadastral surveys that, when plotted on maps of the day, proved that such real estate could exist, needed to be named, and eventually populated by predominantly Norwegian bachelor farmers. It was an illusion of horizontal control.
Andrew Breitbart's adage should be included in the greatest ever journalist quotes: Run toward the fire. Don't worry what people call you." this is from memory so please correct it if you will.
(Before someone else posts it)
“Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.” - Iowahawk
I like that Hoffer quote. Succinct and wise.
The Atlantic - Buy Experiences, Not Things:
Over the past decade, an abundance of psychology research has shown that experiences bring people more happiness than do possessions. The idea that experiential purchases are more satisfying than material purchases has long been the domain of Cornell psychology professor Thomas Gilovich.
Since 2003, he has been trying to figure out exactly how and why experiential purchases are so much better than material purchases. In the journal Psychological Science last month, Gilovich and Killingsworth, along with Cornell doctoral candidate Amit Kumar, expanded on the current understanding that spending money on experiences "provide[s] more enduring happiness."
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/buy-experiences/381132/
It's about time to reread "The Closing of the American Mind."
Maybe too late.
It's a good sentiment, but it's too reactive.
"Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity."
Your personal decisions shouldn't merely be to read, think and do, based on the opposite of what the crowd is doing. Sometimes the crowd gets it right.
I would say read, think and do, what interests you, and be skeptical of both the crowd and your own latent biases.
Okay. All of you get out of here so I can read.
I would say read, think and do, what interests you, and be skeptical of both the crowd and your own latent biases.
Exactly. I believe that one of the greatest failings of most people as the age is that they stop questioning themselves and the group or tribe that they're aligned with. Most people are insufficiently skeptical.
These days it seems like "the comfortable" are poor white trash & "the afflicted" are gay tech billionaires.
Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.
It's what all the cool kids are doing.
Now "A Prairie Home Companion" is called "Live From Here" because public radio listeners are understandably disgusted at the thought of Garrison Keillor having sex.
The Hoffer quote hits home with me. I was one of the learned, going to college when a simple liberal arts degree was the key to a better life than our Depression Era parents had. That changed very fast.
"Read, every day, something no one else is reading."
What are they reading? You'd need Facebook to tell you that.
And why not twice a day, or every two days?
"Think, every day, something no one else is thinking."
I'd need one of those fancy mind-reading robots to do that, and, since thoughts are pretty fleeting, why not think those somethings two hundred and thirteen times a day?
"Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do."
Etc.
"It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity."
So now he's saying not to follow his free advice if lots of other people follow it? That's too subtle for me.
Pure fluff, $.02 per ton.
Not a big fan of Garrison Keillor, though I used to be until I realized, back in the 90s, what he was doing. Kinda like Hillary but with a joke and a smile.
But he is right on that. It's all grist for the writer's mill. I wrote about 60 pieces for Packaging Digest as KC Boxbottom, Packaging Detective that were all about bad experiences, mistakes, foulups and such. Some of them by me over the years. Lots of good material in stupidity.
See an example here: http://www.packagingdigest.com/automation/the-case-of-the-slippery-suckers-2016-02-11
I also did a couple of KC Boxbottom videos on spec. You can see one here on high speed cameras: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhNPSJvtZn4&t=9s
I write a lot. At the moment I have to come up with 4 written pieces plus 2 short videos each month. Plus the odd additional piece or two. As a writer, the hardest part of the job is coming up with ideas. The actual writing is pretty easy. I can bash out 1500 words in an hour or so. Once I come up with the idea.
I would expect that Keillor has similar problems.
John Henry
Read like nobody’s watching.
I would say read, think and do, what interests you, and be skeptical of both the crowd and your own latent biases.
I agree and reading is gradually being replaced by short attention span stuff like TV and the internet.
I understand the Sedaris quote in a different way. Writers assume they are in control, but they're not — the story is.
I wrote a short animated film and one of the questions everyone asks after reading it is "Was the Ringmaster Pretzelina's father?"
My answer is always "I don't know. The story never told me."
"Beware the compulsive contortions of the self-pleasuring contrarian."
-Snark, Quotes I Made Up Just Now
Forgot to add, that now all around me are the unlearned, the kind of people who used to work in service stations and the like, who wouldn't read a book if you pressed a gun-muzzle to their temples, but whose financial net worth is way, way beyond mine: a confirmation of Albert Jay Nock's observation about the Educated vs. the Sagacious. ("Sagacious" meaning, to Nock, knowing the things mainstream society values and therefore rewards.) Nock wrote that, all things being equal, the Educated will always end up chopping wood and hauling water for the Sagacious. That's pretty depressing, except when I remind myself that Nock was one of the Educated--one of the Most Educated, in fact--and had a pretty good life neither hauling water nor chopping wood.
"I would say read, think and do, what interests you, and be skeptical of both the crowd and your own latent biases."
I would agree and add: to truly think at all you must regularly carve out quiet time away from worldly distractions.
Every single day? Didn't people have jobs and families in his world?
".....Read, every day...." This quote is similar to " Shoot for the moon! Even if you miss... you'll land among the stars.."
The meaning is - if you’re aiming for something, even if you don’t achieve it, you’ll still be somewhere better than where you started.
Could be! But my friends, once you miss the Moon - Space with all its distances between heavenly bodies, is vast. Mathematically, random hits are hard to achieve in Space.
As I got older, I made it a point to read stuff that profoundly disagreed with every instinct and value I had -- like The Nation, cover to cover.
It was unpleasant at first, but I now I kinda enjoy it.
To really feel good and confident about some opinion or value you hold dearly, ya gotta read the best of the critics, to see where they're coming from. You might be missing something.
I flat out missed the many demoralized, under-employed, 50-year old, blue collar, white guys, who supported Trump in the primaries.
Back in the mid-1960's at UW Madison there was a big protest against Hoffer's The True Believer having been assigned for some course. That was enough to sell me a copy, long before Althouse's Amazon Portal even existed.
WK said...
Read like nobody’s watching.
I tried that, but my boss came by and made me put my pants back on.
I really need to get my own office...
I used to be a fan of the SF Bay Guardian, the San Francisco left-wing free alternative paper. It was usually wacky but entertaining, and forthright where its side was usually terminally mealy-mouthed.
Blogger tim maguire said...
Every single day? Didn't people have jobs and families in his world?
Every. Single. Day.
It is not that hard. I'll put my job/hours and family life up against anyone's. And I've found time to read 2 books a week for the past 60 years or so. Many times not new books, I reread a lot of books too. A good book takes me 2-3 times to get all the juice out of it. There are a few books (fiction) I've read 15-20 times and still find new stuff every time.
Let's start with TV. How many hours a year do you lose to that? Are you learning anything useful? You could be reading in front of the TV while wife and kids are watching. What do you do while you are eating? (Not with other people but alone at lunch and the like) There's another 30 minutes you could be reading.
What do you do while standing in line at the Post Office (Bank, DMV etc) or waiting in a doctor's office? There's probably another hour you could be reading something interesting instead of staring into space.
And so on. You have a book in your pocket at all times. You can, literally, have hundreds of books in your pocket at all times. Many of them available free. Otheres via Ann's portal.
Kindle is a good place to start but Gutenberg, Archive.org and several other places will provide you with free classics as well as newer books. Your public library may have a program where you can borrow ebooks. Next time you are standing in line, whip it out and read a few pages.
I call bullshit on anyone who says they don't have time. Most people waste much of their time. Don't waste it, work it to death.
John Henry
"In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists."
Where are we going as a society? I frankly don’t know. I can guess where we are going scientifically, and maybe even geopolitically. But our society? Much less so. There are a bunch of institutions ready to self-destruct, starting off with probably education. Interesting article over at Volokh about a Bryan Caplin book on public education (The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money). Public schools in particular are horrible at what their primary goal should be, which most would think was imparting the necessary skills needed to survive in our technologically advancing society. Instead, it has mostly been captured by the teachers’ unions, and their SJW allies. Instead of teaching real history, they teach progressive history. Instead of English, progressive English, if not Eubonics. And when they should have been teaching our Constitution, they were out protesting them last week. And here, in AZ, the teachers ditched their classes to demand more money from the legislature. To do a job they aren’t doing very well. Instead of teaching actual necessary life schools, public schools more and more look like indoctrination camps for turning the next generation into good little progressives. Instead of having the C college students teaching the next generation, we can have the A and B students competing to do so.
Yet, the world is changing under them. Online education is probably going to overtake classroom education in the next decade or two, simply because it does a much better job. Plus it allows students to move at their own pace, which I would have loved when I was in public school 50 years ago, and which has gotten progressively harder since then as tracking has disappeared, considered to cause inequality, etc.
Also, there is the problem of what to do with the kids who don’t really want to learn. Now we warehouse them until 18 in the public schools. Without a high school education, there isnt much that they can do productively in our technological society.
Which kinda gets me to my next thought, which is that financially we can afford more and more of society not working, but if they aren’t, then how are they connected to society? Should we have people on the public dole allowed to vote to increase it? Sure, we have that now, but they are, so far, a minority. What happens when they aren’t? And what do those who don’t have to work, do instead? I am just thankful that my kid, who should get their STEM PhD this summer, has found a place for themselves so they are likely to remain employed, creating the wealth for that support the idle unemployed majority, when that happens.
I think that time is coming before many realize it - automation has created immense wealth. When our Constitution was written, it probably took someone weeks and weeks of work to make a shirt, from the picking, to the spinning, to the weaving, to the sewing. Now, I can buy one at Sam’s Club for 5 minutes of my time as a patent attorney. Maybe an hour at minimum wage. Houses are bigger to house all those clothes. But then you need to clean them... The technology to make things you need or want using plans from the Internet, akin to Startrek replicators, is right around the corner. Making things worse, I expect energy prices to crater first with new nuclear technology, then as space industries reach break even.
Yes, the learned suddenly become Rodney Dangerfield Minis. It helps to laugh.
It would be wonderful if we could rediscover Eric Hoffer, "The Longshoreman Philosopher." A VERY smart person and quite good writer, to boot.
I read Morley's long introduction to the complete Shakespeare a few years ago, but until I looked him up just now, I thought it was by Robert Morley, the snooty English actor.
It is time to re-read the wit and wisdom of a young printer who wrote under "Silence Dogood."
He was a keen observer of his times that were a changing fast.
“Let's start with TV. How many hours a year do you lose to that? Are you learning anything useful? You could be reading in front of the TV while wife and kids are watching. What do you do while you are eating? (Not with other people but alone at lunch and the like) There's another 30 minutes you could be reading. ”
Unfortunately, we eat in front of the TV, which is our “family time”. 7-9 every night. And with her, my reading a book or iPad at that time is unacceptable.
“What do you do while standing in line at the Post Office (Bank, DMV etc) or waiting in a doctor's office? There's probably another hour you could be reading something interesting instead of staring into space. “
That is where I make up reading time. I discovered that trick decades ago. Best stress reducer I know. Now, I tend to have both a book and an iPad with me whenever I am out of the house. I have 3 of them, 2 WiFi only, which stay in the house, and one that works like a smart phone. At least one is charging at all times. Now days, I tend towards primarily using iPads to do things like this, or read books on either Kindle or Nook. But it is nice security to have a paperback book in my pocket, JIC. My big project in January was to finally sort, organize, and shelve my paperback fiction collection in my garage - probably > 1500 titles. Which means that I am rereading a lot of stuff, some that I haven’t seen in decades.
Don't newspaper advertisements exist so you can read what others are reading & think what others are thinking? Don't the advertisements in newspapers try to get you to do what everyone else is doing?
Bruce Hayden said...
Yet, the world is changing under them. Online education is probably going to overtake classroom education in the next decade or two, simply because it does a much better job. Plus it allows students to move at their own pace, which I would have loved when I was in public school 50 years ago, and which has gotten progressively harder since then as tracking has disappeared, considered to cause inequality, etc.
Also, there is the problem of what to do with the kids who don’t really want to learn. Now we warehouse them until 18 in the public schools.
I agree that there will be an education revolution due to online education. For that to happen, a couple things need to take place. We need to think about what roles we expect schools to play. Right now, they do what I would call core educational tasks ( presenting information/teaching skills, assessing/grading student progress, and providing credentials that the student has met some standard). The really good teachers also provide inspiration/motivation. In addition, the schools do a lot of other tasks: they provide supervision to limit the amount of trouble the kids get up to. They provide meals, for some kids the only consistent meals they get. They provide some medical/social services. They organize activities ( sports, band, clubs ).
Those other activities won't be supplanted by online education, so schools will still be spending a lot of time/energy/money on them.
As I got older, I made it a point to read stuff that profoundly disagreed with every instinct and value I had -- like The Nation, cover to cover.
I used to read HuffPo and some leftist blogs but they got too crazy in 2015.
Now, I tend to have both a book and an iPad with me whenever I am out of the house.
I do, too but also have audio books in the car. Since I have a two hour commute, I listen to quite a few books. Some twice.
Are you compelling people to read Hillary's book that they bought to signal their virtue. And there it sits, unread, on their bookshelves?
I was a huge fan of Garrison Keillor in the 1980s. As he put politics more and more explicitly into his routines, my respect for him waned.
Still, I think it's too bad he's thought of as "disgraced." He didn't do anything wrong, as far as is yet known. He wrote some ill-considered emails, but the woman he sent them to responded in kind. She led him on--she was in her 50s, BTW, not a young starry-eyed intern. He already released as many of the emails as were recoverable. Eventually she asked him to stop, and he did.
No sex was involved, it was all fantasy. Goofy, but I'd say mostly harmless.
GK retires, a new guy takes over, but some of the staff stays. After a year, one of the writers, a dude, is fired, as he doesn't click with the new host. He does not take the firing well, his severance is inadequate, he warns of "consequences." By this time, he also may be involved with the woman, they've been seen together in restaurants. *He* is the one who brings the old email chain to the attention of Minnesota Public Radio, not the woman. But she confirms it to MPR when they ask, and now she's been persuaded there might be some real money in it for her. It's all been covered in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Next thing we know, he's persona non grata, "disgraced," and the explanation dribbles out over the months.
I love seeing a liberal hoist by his own petard as much as the next guy, but GK's treatment and new reputation seems unjust. However, if anyone can make a book out of this material, he can.
Also, there is the problem of what to do with the kids who don’t really want to learn. Now we warehouse them until 18 in the public schools. Without a high school education, there isnt much that they can do productively in our technological society.
As a high school teacher I can tell you that this is true. It wouldn't be so bad if tracking was still allowed and these unwilling students were only harming each other. Unpleasant demographics strike again.
Which kinda gets me to my next thought, which is that financially we can afford more and more of society not working, but if they aren’t, then how are they connected to society? Should we have people on the public dole allowed to vote to increase it? Sure, we have that now, but they are, so far, a minority. What happens when they aren’t?
Sooner, rather than later, we're going to end up with a guaranteed basic income. (GBI) It will save money by cutting bureaucracy and waste, but will result in a more or less permanent underclass. Hopefully a condition of the GBI will be the surrender of voting rights...but the demographics will probably prevent this. I have no idea what the circuses will look like..perhaps The Long Walk or The Hunger Games?
And what do those who don’t have to work, do instead?
This will be the biggest challenge we face. Perhaps cheap easily available virtual reality to play in?
In their place was British Royalty books to read before the upcoming fantastic wedding of Diana's love child with the Italian race car driver and the mulatto actress from Hollywood.
It doesn't hurt to dilute the blood of those bughouse interbred European royals.
Since the laws of physics are immutable, what of them you've learned as an anti-longshoreman will always apply. As to improvement on Morley, I say, "Every time you have an implicit offer asking you to participate in some superstitious (astrology, climate-change, recycling) religious (prayer, fasting, Easter), patriotic (voting, pledge of allegiance, national anthem) or silly (high-five) ritual, take the mind-freeing, non-unanimity course of opting out.
William Chadwick - "Forgot to add, that now all around me are the unlearned, the kind of people who used to work in service stations and the like, who wouldn't read a book if you pressed a gun-muzzle to their temples".
Thinking, reading blue-collar workers handed us the President we have today. They may not be happy with the choice they had, but I believe it was an informed choice. The "learned" does not equal the wise. I would argue further that there's more wisdom to be found in a well-rounded choice of information sources (including books) than in much of what passes for formal higher education.
"It doesn't hurt to dilute the blood of those bughouse interbred European royals."
Many European aristocrats are part-African -
Abram Petrovich Gannibal
Ancestor of, among others, a bunch of Mountbattens.
"In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists."
Thus the distinction between intelligence and knowledge.
Abram Petrovich Gannibal
The Russian alphabet is so weird. 33 letters, and none of them are "H" equivalents.
Hoffer's observation is right on the mark, and we see it all the time in IT. In the late 1970s I worked for a time share service which sealed its fate by analyzing the threat to their business model posed by personal computers and made the learned decision that they would never be important. Very learned -- they had charts and graphs and lots of footnotes.
No argument with you there, Deanna. My intellectual heroes (Nock and Mencken, to name two) have been both wise and learned. But I question how thoughtful and well-read the average Trump voter is; at least based on the sampling I have seen on the generally pro-freedom blogosphere. The "Right" (an a-historical misnomer, I realize) used to be a sort of soiree of well-read and educated people with, say, Bach or Mozart chamber music in the background. Then the Dumb Trumpkins--the Cousin Eddies of the Right--crashed the party; and suddenly "there goes the neighborhood."
Then the Dumb Trumpkins--the Cousin Eddies of the Right
Isn't it easier just to say "deplorables" or "bitter clingers"?
"the problem of what to do with the kids who don’t really want to learn." Many who don't want to can't: the IQ bell curve is a beast. And low IQ is a bummer, more so now. As Charles Murray and to some extent Ian Deary and now Jordan Peterson have been trying to tell people.
Then the Dumb Trumpkins--the Cousin Eddies of the Right
“Scratch an intellectual, and you find a would-be aristocrat who loathes the sight, the sound and the smell of common folk.”
― Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
Jim thanks for the update about GK. I am not sure who determines the learned ( another learned person, or the march of time?) but I try to read across the spectrum: I just finished reading the blog Gateway Pundit for the comments, and I am in the middle of White Trash by Nancy Isenberg and just finished reading Madame Bovary and Ecce Homo for a course in modern philosophy course I am taking on-line.
I ask myself sometimes what history applies to the time I'm in. And let my mind roam free over that question. By this means I've concluded that Kaye's History of the Indian Mutiny and Hume's History of England - the section from Elizabeth to the Restoration are the histories most applicable to this moment. The Trump voters are most like the sepoy's and the hysterical leftists are most like the Puritans - in their motivations, that is. The resulting sequence of actions won't be the same. Especially, I don't expect to see the left making any sacrifices for freedom such as those made by the Pilgrims - unless they find someone on the right to sacrifice. But I do expect continuous noise about remnants of "impure" traditions holding back heaven from earth. I do expect a lot of faith (wokiness) and a lot of conversion (turn left and acknowlege white privilege) and a lot of pride and arrogance without any talk about works (how's about them Venezuelans? Haitian earthquake victims? Congolese children?). Also I do expect the right to succeed in preventing Eurotrash aliens from imposing their own alien traditions about the right way to treat uppity peasants or childish natives on us. But the how of this great event is in a mist. Who could have predicted Trump? Yet look at all he has achieved. Somehow his election was predictable or he could not be so effective
"Scratch an intellectual, and you find a would-be aristocrat who loathes the sight, the sound and the smell of common folk.”
Hey. that's me! (Or might be if I considered myself an intellectual. I prefer the term "scholar;" especially if Hoffer's definition of an intellectual as someone who wants to rule other people is accepted. I pretty much don't want to rule anyone except my noisy neighbors, and then only until they quiet down.
In response to my description of the Dumb Trumpkins as "the Cousin Eddies of the Right," Gahrie asks. "Wouldn't it be simpler to call them 'deplorables' or 'bitter clingers?"
No; although many of them whose online comments I have read do strike me as pretty deplorable (which as the proud-to-be-uneducated truculence and some not-thinly-veiled Jew hating of the classic Dumb Guy). But I too supported Trump, reluctatntly and holding my nose, mainly to keep Queen Cacklepants out of the White House and to preserve what's left of the Second Amendment. If you don't fall into that category, no need to take offense. But I grew up among the Dumb Guys, and know the type when I see them.
Also, I am always conscious of what the late Jean Shepherd* once said about "the Great American Slob" (his version of Mencken's Boobus Americanus, and sometimes personified as "Ockie Dildock"). Shep cautioned against dismissing the Slob out-of-hand, saying that the intellectuals' track record wasn't much better. The example he used was the rise of Hitler. He claimed (and I don't know if this is true) that Hitler was supported by a majority of German intellectuals, including Joseph Goebbels, a Ph. D. "Shep" (as we who were fans liked to call him) said that if you went back in time to an early Hitler rally, you would probably see all the intellectuals applauding and cheering; while in the background there'd be some Germanic Ockie Dildock laughing at Hitler and his funny mustache.
buwaya,
"Mountbattens"
Please do not mention that name in my hearing! (Abominate what he did/let happen to the subcontinent.)
Lewis W.,
Oh, you mean like щ ?
John "KC Boxbottom" Henry,
Nice, brief column! I miss the days when I had some manufacturing (and thus packaging) clients!
--Kirk (custom software developer and consultant for business and industry)
I've heard that there are some fields in which an advanced degree is denied if it can be demonstrated that the candidate knows how a refrigerator works.
Do every day something no one else would be silly enough to do. AKA: Hold my beer and watch this.
Tweet every day something that nobody else has tweeted.
If Stormy Daniels and Anderson Cooper were exchanging text messages would that be a twat tweeting to a twit?
This adage has lead, via Academia overreach and lack of wisdom, into Post Modernism, which is a cultural cancer.
Our traditions, our morality, which is across cultures and religions pretty similar, is so every single person does not need to relearn the horrible tragic and destructive lessons that less thoughtful people had to suffer. An attempt to actually IMPROVE our children in a non-monatary way.
But the Academy uses this idiotic idea to destroy all tradition and our children suffer as a result.
So screw this idea. Your bias for academic novelty has reached the limit of society and now we are highly skeptical of what the Academy has on offer, particularly when they keep offering that failure which is socialism.
Hear, hear, FIDO! New & different ain't necessarily am improvement.
John Henry, you respond to me as though the admonition was to read every day, to think every day. But it isn't, is it?
The saying is ridiculous on it's face.
If I read something 'no one else' thought, nothing would be written about it.
So this is a solo journey into becoming a crank.
But would the society applaud questioning socialism? Liberalism? Global warming? Feminism?
There one is going down trails few have trod, but we have seen their reaction: some ideas are NOT to be thought.
I became familiar with Morley in junior high school. He was the author of the complete edition of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories and novels.
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