As Xenophon saw it • Hacker News Board

Re: As Xenophon saw it

#31

Post by motohagiography » Sun, Jan 13, 2019, 1:00 AM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #30

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were they? I really didn't get that

I'm not joking at all, in fact if you mention in a Google interview that you went to horse camp they skip the rest of the process and make you a staff engineer on the spot. Many companies, especially the high-power consulting firms, are sending their most troubled young executives to horse camp as a remedial effort. It's impossible to overstate the importance of self-actualization.

Thought it was a funny snark joke, but funny in more ways than perhaps intended.

I have seriously thought of operating a horse camp for executives. Most of what's out there is touchy feely healing lodge crap, where historically, cavalry was where leaders were minted, and their core training was sometimes as short as a few weeks.

People in offices spend most of their time around unstable neurotic personalities, and it means they have no gravitas to bring to their teams. That instability breaks creative flow and prevents people from committing, and that dissonance is what creates stress and suffering that staff take home.

It's no accident that one the most famous charisma trainers, Olivia Fox-Cabane, was/is also a horsewoman as well.

It's funny to say remedial horse camp for crap execs, but if you have ever been on one of those infantalizing management retreats, treating people like adults would be orders of magnitude better.

Re: As Xenophon saw it

#32

Post by pesmhey » Sun, Jan 13, 2019, 1:23 AM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #30

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were they? I really didn't get that

I'm not joking at all, in fact if you mention in a Google interview that you went to horse camp they skip the rest of the process and make you a staff engineer on the spot. Many companies, especially the high-power consulting firms, are sending their most troubled young executives to horse camp as a remedial effort. It's impossible to overstate the importance of self-actualization.

To be fair, people in these positions do get sent to ridiculous bullshit.

Re: As Xenophon saw it

#33

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Sun, Jan 13, 2019, 10:32 AM UTC

dbcooper wrote: post #23

No mentions of The Warriors yet?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Warriors_(film)

The Warriors is a 1979 American crime film directed by Walter Hill and based on Sol Yurick's 1965 novel of the same name. This novel was, in turn, based on Xenophon's Anabasis. The story centers on a New York City gang who must make an urban journey of 30 miles (48 km), from the north end of The Bronx to their home turf in Coney Island in southern Brooklyn, after they are framed for the murder of a respected gang leader. It was released in the United States on February 9, 1979.

A cult classic. The central theme is, indeed, similar- the guy who has summoned the Warriors is killed and they must make their way back home through hostile territory. It never occurred to me.

Re: As Xenophon saw it

#34

Post by pasabagi » Mon, Jan 14, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

solonagathon wrote: post #17

solonagathon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did not invent the word. In the funeral oration for example Thucydides has Pericles refer to the Athenians as a philosophizing people: Philokaloumen te gar met ' euteleias kai philosophoumen aneu malakias. Plato was probably the first to use the term in a technical sense, to refer to someone who spends his life as a 'professional' philosopher.

And of course Herodotus refers to Solon as a lover of wisdom in his Histories. Considering my user name I guess I should have led with that reference.

Hmm - I had no idea. I came across the distinction (philosophy/sophism) in Plato's work. I had the feeling that Sophism continued to be the normal term, without its modern pejorative sound, until the advent of christianity as the dominant ideology of the roman empire- certainly, I think the idea of philosophy as the love of (divine) wisdom is a sort of curtailment of the whole project, really only favourable to Platonists, Christians, or I guess Parimedeans- so I thought it's the kind of thing that Plato (and his school) would have put about.