I must agree that people in the West indeed don't understand many things, the majority of them.
Why should they then? The majority of people know very little about somebody far far away or understand them. There is universal stuff, but not everything is universal.
Learning and understanding takes wanting to learn, reading, a lot of reading, exposure as they call it, travel if possible, immersing even. And even then -one needs time. It's close to twenty years that I'm in the US on and off -and yet I don't dare to say I fully understand. I just understand that I don't fit somehow, of that, I'm sure. I'm sure that I love some X and can't get Y and some Z drives me crazy.
the other thing, I'm responsible enough, or so I hope, to not behave like I possess more knowledge than I do.
very interesting even though I feel that saying "interesting" to somebody who's directly affected by X is somehow...in short, the word is yet to be found
I think that people might want(or think they want) what they don;t have. I've a very dramatic life and it makes me want a dull one
I'd need to re-read Grossman. I truly don't remember that passage, and many others. Yet when people go to war and are in war -they don't constantly think about some ideals or sacrifices or "Гренада, Гренада, Гренада моя" as much as I love this song and know it by heart.
It's a lot of extremely unpleasant hard and scary minutia and you're lucky if you stay human and not broken for a long period of time or maybe forever, after a year or so.
It's much more realistic that your thoughts go anywhere and are not particularly concentrated when you know you'll die. You already chose or most likely was chosen for you that you'll die or your friends will die -and that you'd kill. Which normal people usually don't take easy -well, depends on times and how much society gives them feedback, how normalized it is.
I'm dying as we speak(let's say) -if I'd be thinking about it all the time and "whys" of it I'd go bonkers. I'm already bonkers enough. Yes mind goes anywhere or else it'd be constantly writing my own epitaph. What's more important, and took me some time to decide it-is to behave like I am not dying, and to be as useful and function the best I can. For the sake of others, as my own.
I wish you to never, ever check for yourself whether I am right or not. Or if yes-then at a very very very old age. Till 120, as we say.
Hyun Woo, I used to be a Communist and a maximalist, when I was a young woman. But I've gradually changed, as I slowly (and painfully) started to understand things more deeply and widely too. In the end, I couldn't believe anymore in the Machiavellian saying that "the end justifies the means". If the means are violent and dehumanizing, then the end is bound to be the same, and I had to reject it.
To quote Ivan Karamazov again in just a few days, I hasten to give the ticket back. I don't want either Utopia, or Heaven on Earth.
You're a very bright and sensitive young man, you might find out that maximalism can't be applied to real life, or the life that we live on this planet. At least, this is my experience.
This is such an interesting read, Hyun Woo, thanks! I'm glad that clown has been impeached, and you don't have to ask for asylum anywhere, even in your beloved (and mine) St Petersburg. Congratulations to your fellow South Koreans.
I'm not sure, though, what to make of these sentences: "I wish my novel won't be misunderstood as a satire to totalitarianism (not really a fan of the term, but couldn't think of a better umbrella term). I would rather accept, to some extent, that my novel is glamorizing it."
I guess I'll have to read it before starting a conversation with you about it. Go and write!
Thank you, Portia! Simply put, my novel's main theme is the relationship between power and image. For the novel's background, I chose a country with an established dictatorship where you will see portraits of the dictator everywhere so as to express the theme more easily. I am not particularly interested in whether the country is democratic or not, or ethical or not, simply because that's not what I want to talk about. Thus, if someone criticizes my work for (somehow indirectly) accepting totalitarianism as it is, I consider it to be a possible way of reading it. However, if someone thinks it's a satire… well, that's a very unfortunate misunderstanding.
I must agree that people in the West indeed don't understand many things, the majority of them.
Why should they then? The majority of people know very little about somebody far far away or understand them. There is universal stuff, but not everything is universal.
Learning and understanding takes wanting to learn, reading, a lot of reading, exposure as they call it, travel if possible, immersing even. And even then -one needs time. It's close to twenty years that I'm in the US on and off -and yet I don't dare to say I fully understand. I just understand that I don't fit somehow, of that, I'm sure. I'm sure that I love some X and can't get Y and some Z drives me crazy.
the other thing, I'm responsible enough, or so I hope, to not behave like I possess more knowledge than I do.
very interesting even though I feel that saying "interesting" to somebody who's directly affected by X is somehow...in short, the word is yet to be found
I think that people might want(or think they want) what they don;t have. I've a very dramatic life and it makes me want a dull one
I'd need to re-read Grossman. I truly don't remember that passage, and many others. Yet when people go to war and are in war -they don't constantly think about some ideals or sacrifices or "Гренада, Гренада, Гренада моя" as much as I love this song and know it by heart.
It's a lot of extremely unpleasant hard and scary minutia and you're lucky if you stay human and not broken for a long period of time or maybe forever, after a year or so.
It's much more realistic that your thoughts go anywhere and are not particularly concentrated when you know you'll die. You already chose or most likely was chosen for you that you'll die or your friends will die -and that you'd kill. Which normal people usually don't take easy -well, depends on times and how much society gives them feedback, how normalized it is.
I'm dying as we speak(let's say) -if I'd be thinking about it all the time and "whys" of it I'd go bonkers. I'm already bonkers enough. Yes mind goes anywhere or else it'd be constantly writing my own epitaph. What's more important, and took me some time to decide it-is to behave like I am not dying, and to be as useful and function the best I can. For the sake of others, as my own.
I wish you to never, ever check for yourself whether I am right or not. Or if yes-then at a very very very old age. Till 120, as we say.
I completely agree, Chen.
Hyun Woo, I used to be a Communist and a maximalist, when I was a young woman. But I've gradually changed, as I slowly (and painfully) started to understand things more deeply and widely too. In the end, I couldn't believe anymore in the Machiavellian saying that "the end justifies the means". If the means are violent and dehumanizing, then the end is bound to be the same, and I had to reject it.
To quote Ivan Karamazov again in just a few days, I hasten to give the ticket back. I don't want either Utopia, or Heaven on Earth.
You're a very bright and sensitive young man, you might find out that maximalism can't be applied to real life, or the life that we live on this planet. At least, this is my experience.
This is such an interesting read, Hyun Woo, thanks! I'm glad that clown has been impeached, and you don't have to ask for asylum anywhere, even in your beloved (and mine) St Petersburg. Congratulations to your fellow South Koreans.
I'm not sure, though, what to make of these sentences: "I wish my novel won't be misunderstood as a satire to totalitarianism (not really a fan of the term, but couldn't think of a better umbrella term). I would rather accept, to some extent, that my novel is glamorizing it."
I guess I'll have to read it before starting a conversation with you about it. Go and write!
Thank you, Portia! Simply put, my novel's main theme is the relationship between power and image. For the novel's background, I chose a country with an established dictatorship where you will see portraits of the dictator everywhere so as to express the theme more easily. I am not particularly interested in whether the country is democratic or not, or ethical or not, simply because that's not what I want to talk about. Thus, if someone criticizes my work for (somehow indirectly) accepting totalitarianism as it is, I consider it to be a possible way of reading it. However, if someone thinks it's a satire… well, that's a very unfortunate misunderstanding.
Well, the proof is in the pudding, or in the novel, in this case. I look forward to reading it.
Just one question: is the pudding reference common idiom? I have seen it only in a passage from Engels other than you.
I haven't read Engels, but I found this idiom somewhere, 40 years ago. The Merriam-Webster website has an interesting explanation: https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/origin-of-the-proof-is-in-the-pudding-meaning
Thanks!
You're welcome, Hyun Woo!