Switching Off: Joseph Brodsky and the moral responsibility to be useless

https://thepointmag.com/2018/examined-life/switching-off

by lermontov • 8 years ago

119 27 8 years ago

“Your so-called ‘memes’”

Depending on your assessment of society, being merely useless isn't good enough. If you estimate society to be generally harmful (whether through wars, environmental destruction, causing mass-exinction, ect), then its morally desirable to be parasitic and drain some of the "power" of society from engaging in harm-producing activities.

obelix_• 8 years ago

Wow that's some pretty imaginative thinking. Have you tried that on your family?

StanislavPetrov4• 8 years ago

I'm not supported by my family (or anyone else). If, however, I was supported by my family, and they were a bunch of serial killers who used their money and power to murder people, then it would be morally desirable to drain them of their resources and deprive them of their ability to kill and slaughter.

kuroguro• 8 years ago

Hahaha, I'm framing that and putting it on my wall!

truculation2• 8 years ago

No doubt, but consider that some people will then become cynical about society in order to become freeloaders.

(Rather as in Upton Sinclair's famous quote: 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!')

StanislavPetrov4• 8 years ago

If history has taught us anything, its that nobody needs a philosophical rationale to become a freeloader.

js2• 8 years ago

The Dude abides.

StanislavPetrov4• 8 years ago

https://ibb.co/gFOG1J

trophycase• 8 years ago

This is true, but there is even debate about what can be considered harm producing. Boudrillard, for example, considers terrorism as not contributing to this cause, as terrorism only seeks to strengthen the systems of control (think: Patriot Act after 9/11, TSA, DHS). He argues that theoretical terrorism, that is, ideas that dismantle our abstract cultural structures, to be our only option.

severine2• 8 years ago

posted by Lermontov :)

lermontov• 8 years ago

Who better? Unless, that is, there is an HN user named Oblomov ;)

severine2• 8 years ago

Not very active, but... https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=oblomov

forapurpose2• 8 years ago

Brodsky was a Soviet dissident and a very original, innovative, creative thinker.

One of several things I remember is him writing about the torture and imprisonment he suffered. All he said was that he didn't talk about it, because it only served his abusers to do so. They tortured him to terrify others - as an act of terror. By torturing one dissident, they intended to subdue all who spoke to him and read him. If he repeated it, then the act and its power were magnified, repeated over and over. If he said nothing, they were powerless; it was just one act at one moment and in small room.

nbabitskiy• 8 years ago

Brodsky was by no means a dissident, at least in the Russian sense of the word. He was vocally and arrogantly apolitical. He didn't know politburo members' faces, and disliked both Soviet and anti-Soviet activists.

Also, no sane Russian of his generation would consider writing self pitiful account of inprisonment and torture, consisting of about a month in prison and 3 weeks in a psycho asylum. He personally knew dozens of people that have served 10-20 years without even a legal trial.

forapurpose2• 8 years ago

The parent brings to mind Steve Jobs responding to the email of a critic: And what have you done? What have you created?

wollw2• 8 years ago

I mentioned it in the comments of a post the other day, but the English Speaking World can at least trace this kind of thinking back to Thomas Cranmer and the Articles of Religion of the Church of England--in particular, Article XIV. Of Works of Supererogation.[1] Given the Non-Conformist origins of the Colonies (people who immigrated to get away from the Church of England in part) I have to wonder if the whole "American Dream" and its fetishization of work for work's sake (or even, as an Artist myself, Art for Art's sake) is a reaction against this. The accusations of "Amotivational Syndrome" so often levied against Cannabis use seems related too; there is nothing wrong with being content with less and, at least in my mind, it sets a good example to be satisfied with less. Less is more.

[1] http://anglicansonline.org/basics/thirty-nine_articles.html

Voluntary Works besides, over and above, God's Commandments, which they call Works of Supererogation, cannot be taught without arrogancy and impiety: for by them men do declare, that they do not only render unto God as much as they are bound to do, but that they do more for his sake, than of bounden duty is required: whereas Christ saith plainly When ye have done all that are commanded to you, say, We are unprofitable servants.

paganel• 8 years ago

I’m not an English native speaker, and as such it always seemed interesting to me that the money a person owns is expressed as “X is worth $amount” (ex: “Bezos is worth $131 billion”). It’s like it doesn’t matter if that person is good or bad, if he/she is actually interested in being more on the “good” side of things instead of the “bad” one, all it matters when judging a person is his/her bank account.

skj• 8 years ago

Well, he doesn't actually have however many billion dollars. He had the equivalent value, mostly in Amazon stock.

AnIdiotOnTheNet• 8 years ago

It's a reflection of the mindset we hold about wealth, part of how we justify why one person deserves more than another.

For instance, why does some billionaire have significantly better health care than I do? Because they're worth more. Literally, they are more valuable to society than I am.

If you phrase it the other way: "because they have more money than I do", the justification isn't there and you'll have to question your societal model.

kristjankalm• 8 years ago

the full transcript of the trial of Joseph Brodsky:

http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1954-2/whats-a-woman-to-think/w...

so absurd and surreal at times it's hard to believe it's not fiction

---

Grudinina: The difference between a parasite and a starting-out poet is that the parasite eats but does not work, while the poet works but may not always eat.

Judge: The court does not appreciate that remark. In our country, a man earns according to his work.

andyidsinga• 8 years ago

this:

"I had been raised in the multicultural, bubblegum Nineties. Like many other children of the upper-middle class, I watched Captain Planet, went to cross-cultural friendship camps and joined social-justice youth groups. Our generation was told that difference was only skin deep, that in America you could accomplish anything with enough hard work, that we could be the change we wanted to see. Like good campers, we marched to protest the invasion of Iraq, wrote letters against NAFTA and for human rights, voted for Obama, went vegetarian. At a certain point it occurred to us there was no evidence any of this was working. The market crashed; the gap between rich and poor yawned into an abyss. Congress was paralyzed, and racism, far from diminishing in Obama’s presidency, seemed to become more visible and virulent. What is to be done? we wondered. All the progressive values we had been taught, when knocked, sounded hollow. So our protests got smaller, cheekier and more digital. We made nihilistic jokes, followed meme accounts, started therapy. We talked about TV.

All of this is to say that Brodsky’s strategy of switching off made a perverse kind of sense to me, even as it brushed up against my inculcated optimism. And yet, I thought: Shouldn’t I fight that impulse?"

Switching Off: Joseph Brodsky and the moral responsibility to be useless

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