You know after reading the comments on here I was expecting something really horrific. It was pretty short and not all that ludicrous when the time period is taken into account.
Einstein's list of conditions for staying together with his wife
91–100 of 194 posts
Re: Einstein's list of conditions for staying together with his wife
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you automatically assume he is a jerk? Do you know more about his personal life than what was mentioned here? How do we know she wasn't a horrible person and this is actually a gracious response? I really have no idea, but I think it's pretty unfair to make character judgements from a single note out of context. Human relationships are complex.
The OP is making a judgement based on the evidence he has, not on the evidence he doesn't. You on the other hand are attempting to counter his argument with no evidence at all. If you want to counter the argument, present contrary evidence.
What a horrible way to argue. So the thought "the evidence might not be sufficient" never comes to your mind? Uncritical thinking like this ("knee jerk reactions") are one of the banes of humanity.
Re: Einstein's list of conditions for staying together with his wife
#93Lots of judgments in this thread. Don't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes. And keep in mind that we're looking at all this from almost a century later and that society has moved on quite a bit. Things that my grandparents would have considered perfectly a-ok would look ridiculous to you and me. Context is everything. In plenty of places in the world this would be an 'amicable arrangement' even today…
Agree with you. Otherwise, it was totally puzzling to me a simplistic, judgmental view calling him a jerk as a top comment.
Don't know how many people have been married a long time here (i.e. > 10 years). Looking at the responses, it seems to me not that many.
Thankfully, my marriage is several orders better than his was. But still I can perhaps see where the conditions are coming from.
Just to take an example - C(3) - you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.
I can see that for whatever reasons any fights between a husband (who works from home) and wife start when the husband is nicely all set to begin the day's work. It may be over a trivia discussion (perhaps because the husband has some work related frustration) or it could be the result of something building up. Now as a husband who is working from home, does not even have the choice to go to work elsewhere, in such a situation. And the argument/discussion/fight won't end until one person leaves the place. And countless hours can get lost, for a trivia thing.
Re: Einstein's list of conditions for staying together with his wife
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you automatically assume he is a jerk? Do you know more about his personal life than what was mentioned here? How do we know she wasn't a horrible person and this is actually a gracious response? I really have no idea, but I think it's pretty unfair to make character judgements from a single note out of context. Human relationships are complex.
The OP is making a judgement based on the evidence he has, not on the evidence he doesn't. You on the other hand are attempting to counter his argument with no evidence at all. If you want to counter the argument, present contrary evidence.
stickfigure is arguing that TFA isn't necessarily evidence that supports the judgment in question.
Re: Einstein's list of conditions for staying together with his wife
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keep in mind that this was in 1919, when the accepted roles of men and women in marriages were very different. It's important, when reading historical documents, not to judge those discussed within by modern standards.
Cultivared men were not jerks then as a general rule.
The position of women in society in 1914 is in no way comparable to today. We have come a long long way since then, and we still have a long long way to go.
Cultivated men are still jerks today, as a general rule. It's just that we are too blind to see (just like Einstein was in his day) that. Give it until 2110 to tell you just how much.
In 1914 it was totally normal for women not to have the vote, not to have a say in the family finances and to be given consideration only after the sons in the family (but before the daughters). They were not considered capable of higher education (exceptions allowed, sometimes these dressed as men to get around the limitations) and so on.
Cultivated men made those rules and whole pile of others, and decades of erosion by activists and others have restored the balance. Partially. Einstein was - as far as I can see here - not much different than what I know about how life was back then in general. Plenty of his peers would have done much worse than this, and only an extremely small (vanishingly small maybe) portion of society would have done much better.
The fact that we have Einstein on a pedestal today does not mean that (a) he wasn't human and hence bound to make mistakes and (b) that he wasn't a product of his time.
Re: Einstein's list of conditions for staying together with his wife
#96I see lots of people commenting how Einstein was a jerk, etc. But somehow, I think that list (if it's real) just shows that he wanted order (and control?) in everything he did, which doesn't resonate as bad to me. We have no idea what kind of relationship he had with his wife, so I think it is unfair to judge him like that solely based on that list, more so, because his wife accepted it!
Oh yeah there are a lot of children accepting labour conditions in the East of Asia with which we get scandalized and the. this is ok: she accepted! come on....
It must have been really hard to clean up the room and prepare three meals a day. I wonder how the women of the time did manage at all? Clearly the asian child laborers should let themselves be inspired by their example.
I don't really understand the fuss. At the time it was a normal arrangement in marriage for women to take care of the house. That arrangement in itself is not belittling to women, it is simply division of labor. Household chores are not less worthy than other labor (if you believe they are, see what feminism did, apparently it belittles women even more). The letter says nothing about his wife not being allowed to pursue other options. Even today some people voluntarily choose such arrangements. And it is merely his conditions, she is free to not accept them.
Re: Einstein's list of conditions for staying together with his wife
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like to think of it backwards; If I knew that I had a contribution to make to humanity as great as Einstein's, would I willingly sacrifice my relationship with my family to make it?
That's an extremely difficult moral problem. It's akin to asking yourself if you would rather rescue the child on the left or the 3 people on the right when given the choice. And then with various permutations for the child being yours or a stranger and/or the people on the right being your parents and / or strangers. We are not well equipped to make such decisions.
It is a tough moral problem, but one that societies of old have recognized and formalized. For example, most all religions have some formal structure where a person with a "higher calling" can take up a monkhood of some sort. Formal induction into monkhood made their severance from family ties public and contractual, much as the formal wedding ceremony publicizes a man-woman relationship.
We just don't have a socially accepted notion of "scientific monkhood" yet I suppose.
Re: Einstein's list of conditions for staying together with his wife
#98The entire site is, unfortunately for productivity, a treasure trove of interesting historical lists. For instance: http://www.listsofnote.com/2012/04/simple-rules-for-life-in-...
My favorite: F × S = k. The product of Freedom and Security is a constant. To gain more freedom of thought and/or action, you must give up some security, and vice versa. These remarks apply to individuals, nations, and civilizations. Notice that the constant k is different for every civilization and different for every individual. --Larry Niven
The k = 0 case is an interesting one.
Re: Einstein's list of conditions for staying together with his wife
#99Lots of judgments in this thread. Don't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes. And keep in mind that we're looking at all this from almost a century later and that society has moved on quite a bit. Things that my grandparents would have considered perfectly a-ok would look ridiculous to you and me. Context is everything. In plenty of places in the world this would be an 'amicable arrangement' even today…
I agree re not judging. I made the mistake a very long time ago to assume that I understood someone else's relationship and gave them advice on what I thought was an obvious matter. After a decade my friend is now happily married to that same person with amazing kids and a wonderful life. It's become clear to me that there are two sides to a relationship and no one except the participants will ever understand it.
So I think the important thing to understand when reading this is that we have zero context - and perhaps worse because all we know are Einstein's works.
Re: Einstein's list of conditions for staying together with his wife
#100Lots of judgments in this thread. Don't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes. And keep in mind that we're looking at all this from almost a century later and that society has moved on quite a bit. Things that my grandparents would have considered perfectly a-ok would look ridiculous to you and me. Context is everything. In plenty of places in the world this would be an 'amicable arrangement' even today…
The biography by Walter Isaacson puts this into context.