tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23471801.post5524016488663396022..comments2023-10-21T07:44:20.549-04:00Comments on The Existence Machine: When one thinks of deathRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08014014605639738887noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23471801.post-19914031926479836562011-03-22T16:25:48.843-04:002011-03-22T16:25:48.843-04:00Thank you. This is from The Instant of My Death:
...Thank you. This is from The Instant of My Death:<br /><br />Waiting to die, there was:<br /><br />"a feeling of extraordinary lightness, a sort of beatitude (nothing happy, however) – sovereign elation? […] In this place, I will not try to analyse. He was perhaps suddenly in invincible. Dead – immortal. Perhaps ecstasy. Rather the feeling of compassion for suffering humanity, the happiness of not being immortal or eternal. Henceforth, he was bound to death by a surreptitious friendship."<br /><br />The shots didn't come; he was told to run and thereby regained a life where, from then on, he writes, "the instant of my death [was] henceforth always in abeyance".qohelethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02922132575282312142noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23471801.post-42214222636186337422011-03-21T07:27:27.840-04:002011-03-21T07:27:27.840-04:00Lovely, Richard.
AimeeLovely, Richard.<br /><br />AimeeUnknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07288466953142439024noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23471801.post-75852462610519468742011-03-19T16:05:18.317-04:002011-03-19T16:05:18.317-04:00Winnicott is strongly recommended. Strange, sensit...Winnicott is strongly recommended. Strange, sensitive man with a sad life, and maybe the most endearing of the psychoanalysts.<br /><br />I also should mention Vygotsky, who may have been more brilliant than Piaget.David Auerbachhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07066865720450132692noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23471801.post-28478385286634195182011-03-19T09:18:20.012-04:002011-03-19T09:18:20.012-04:00Thanks everybody. And thanks for mentioning Jacobs...Thanks everybody. And thanks for mentioning Jacobs, Ethan. That's a good example.<br /><br />Waggish, you're right to bring up Piaget (and, heh, Freud) (I'm not familiar with Winnicott) as an important exception. I might've written that sentence somewhat differently if I'd thought of him at the time. Thanks.Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08014014605639738887noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23471801.post-16174501907370532272011-03-18T22:39:44.325-04:002011-03-18T22:39:44.325-04:00"po-faced" is such an apt adjective. I c..."po-faced" is such an apt adjective. I can't believe I didn't use it in the review, since it must have occurred to me dozens of times over the last few weeks.<br /><br />To be fair to men though (not that they need it), I think Piaget and Winnicott, among others who don't come as quickly to mind, did pay very close attention to children. They are, needless to say, exceptions, but noteworthy ones. I will <i>not</i> include Freud, who perhaps should have paid less attention to children....David Auerbachhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07066865720450132692noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23471801.post-59709708769916661502011-03-18T11:54:49.344-04:002011-03-18T11:54:49.344-04:00Wonderful post, one I'm saving to reread and t...Wonderful post, one I'm saving to reread and think over at length.<br /><br />A brief response to your last paragraph, particularly this:<br /><br /><i>science would have come around to certain discoveries about childhood development if scientists had bothered to pay the least attention to children, and to the women who raised them. If such men hadn't been off doing Important Work, while life itself went on around and without them.</i><br /><br />Just to mention that this reminded me of Jane Jacobs' argument (I actually haven't read her yet, but I have seen her words on this excerpted in several places) that one reason for the failure of city planning is that city planners were overwhelmingly men, and so didn't know (or, to be less charitable but probably more honest, didn't care) what went on in the neighborhoods they were planning while the men went off to do their Important Work, leaving the women and children to merely live in them.Ethanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07498712279382078624noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23471801.post-4477977140750130562011-03-18T09:27:15.944-04:002011-03-18T09:27:15.944-04:00Great post. I think you have articulated here, via...Great post. I think you have articulated here, via Sontag, something that has been bugging me for a while.<br /><br />The obsession with health in certain segments of this society, which goes way beyond merely eating fruits and vegetables every day and making sure to exercise, seems to have an almost pathological characteristic, as if we were all immortal and anything one does that is self-destructive is what puts an expiration date on life, not life itself.:-phttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13771622539961341991noreply@blogger.com