Welcome to 5BF: my weekly article where I share the contents
of my learnings from the past week in my life.
1 – what I read
Essays by Emerson and Orwell: I read, as per (CSS) English
Literature syllabus, two essays. First was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay ‘Self-Reliance’
where Emerson argues for listening to oneself rather than conforming with the
crowd. He says, “The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of
his feet.” The second essay I read was from George Orwell ‘The Prevention of Literature’
written in 1946 where Orwell explains how literature is threatened whenever a
totalitarian governance rises. Orwell writes, “Literature has sometimes
flourished under despotic régimes, but, as has often been pointed out, the
despotisms of the past were not totalitarian. Their repressive apparatus was
always inefficient, their ruling classes were usually either corrupt or
apathetic or half-liberal in outlook, and the prevailing religious doctrines
usually worked against perfectionism and the notion of human infallibility.”
2 – this week’s articles
Why beautiful scenes make us melancholy @theschooloflife – a
heartbreaking article about how natural beauty, which we come across very
rarely, moves us to tearful realization of how undesirably we have spent our
lives. The beauty pronounces the ugliness of our lives as we come into contact
with it.
The tragedy of birth @theschooloflife – building its argument
from the Christian painting of Virgin Mary looking melancholy as Jesus the
child lays playfully in her lap, this article explains how the perfect human
baby when born is already on his way to go through some of most painful
experiences that life forces us through.
A more self-accepting life @theschooloflife – an article
that imagines a life where we would be more accepting of ourselves, our
unending flaws, and how well-rounded and sympathetic such a life would be. Real
love, after all, stems from sympathy not from admiration.
Freud’s porcupine @theschooloflife – Freud kept quills on
his desk as a reminder of how imperfect love always is. In order to be around
those who love, we should be ready to bled, just like how porcupines have to
come closer in order not to freeze yet injures each other with their quills.
3 – this week’s podcast
Kant’s Copernican revolution @BBCinourtime – in this podcast,
host and guests consisting of philosophy professors, discuss the revolutionary
role that the philosopher Immanuel Kant and his book ‘Critique of Pure Reason’
played in progressing the Western philosophy into the modern times, by combining
the best from the Rationalist and Empiricist philosophers that preceded him.
4 – what I watched
My Dinner with Andre (1981) – a movie about a dinner-long
conversation between two friends, a playwright and a theatre director, where
they talk about discovery of the self, plays and theatres, life, electric blanket,
Western civilization, and more. For those who crave good dialogues and feel
disappointed by the lack of it in movies, this movie much of it through and
through.
5 – this week’s quote
‘It takes beauty until we realize how far we have drifted
from our better selves.’