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Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”

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Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”

#101

Post by thrwy109 »

The bit about lying really struck a chord with me. I have been a compulsive liar for most of my life (25 now). Just this past Friday I lied to my skip level manager about the progress of a project.

I've lied about the most mundane things to even lying to my family and friends about graduating college. At this point I feel as if I've been struck by a disease. Worst of all is that I lie to myself the most with respect to how much it is affecting my life, and how dangerous it is for me to continue on this path. I've personally ran out of ideas for how to internally fix this.

Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”

#102

Post by wruza »

wiml wrote: post #95
pougetj wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why units should be randomly selected into each groups to avoid confounding factors like the one you mention.

Ah, but a person with preëxisting good luck might be preferentially randomly selected into the nose-touching group, amplifying the effect and making it hard to measure its size.

You throw out min/max results anyway before analyzis.

Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”

#103

Post by whack »

siberianbear wrote: post #2

I am an American living in Russia. When I was studying Russian I read a number of Chekhov's short stories and got a feel for who he was. I later came across one of his quotes: "В человеке должно быть все прекрасно: и лицо, и одежда, и душа, и мысли" (Everything in a person should be excellent: his face, his clothes, his soul and his ideas). I sometimes discussed this phrase with Russians, eventually coming to be beli…

Characterizing a town's inhabitants as being "drunkards" and "dull" doesn't really sound much in keeping with his own first rule...

Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”

#104

Post by gmarx »

burkaman wrote: post #79
gmarx wrote: post #30

This letter appears to be a drawn out detailed set of insults to his older brother. Maybe cultured isn't the best translation. Is this what we in the US would have called "classy" back then?

I might say "gentle criticism" rather than insults, but the beginning and end of the letter do make it clear that he is specifically advising his brother: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6408/6408-h/6408-h.htm#link2H... > You have only one failing, and the falseness of your position, and your unhappiness and your catarrh of the bowels are all due to it. That is your utter lack of culture. >You must drop your vanity, y…

disagree that this is gentle. If you assume that every bit of advice implies that his brother is the opposite it's pretty bad

Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”

#105

Post by hackuser »

avenoir wrote: post #49
siberianbear wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read a bunch of them (in English) when I was a university student: that's where my first exposure came from. When I started to study Russian, I read one or two of his stories in this book [1], which was great because it has English and Russian versions on opposite pages. I got to enjoy reading in Russian because I didn't constantly have to look up every tenth word in a dictionary. Russian is a hard language but the…

Chekhov was very popular in Russian schools up until early 90s because of his writing style. You're absolutely spot on that he writes in very plain Russian. Dostoevsky has some mindfuck-inducing way or getting across to the reader. His writing is difficult even for a lot of native Russian speakers. L.N. Tolstoy also has some easy reading ( Детство. Отрочество. Юность / Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth is my favorite)

What happened after the early 90s?

Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”

#106

Post by gmarx »

jerf wrote: post #37
gmarx wrote: post #30

This letter appears to be a drawn out detailed set of insults to his older brother. Maybe cultured isn't the best translation. Is this what we in the US would have called "classy" back then?

Classiness does not preclude being insulting. It simply calls for a higher degree of skill in the insulting. History is full of classy insults. Diplomacy is nearly made of them. http://allowe.com/laughs/book/When%20Insults%20Had%20Class.h... - just a quick hit on "classy insults" that seems to fit what I'm saying here.

No, I meant "cultured" wasn't what he was describing,

Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”

#109

Post by pitt1980 »

legohead wrote: post #56

I have a set of rules I give my children. I started with them as kind of a joke because they would always flip out about stuff, so naturally, rule #1 is: 1) Be calm 2) Be kind 3) Don't steal 4) Always attempt your best I've always liked the thought that "don't steal" is the ultimate morality lesson. Killing someone is stealing their life away. Adultering is stealing someone else's love or relationship. And of course,…

I've noticed that younger kids seems to take events extremely seriously

One thing that helped me keep this in perspective, is that every event makes up a significantly larger fraction of their existence than that event makes up of my existence

I'm 36, my oldest daughter is 6

occasionally she'll get really upset when seemingly minor setbacks happen (a craft she's working on doesn't turn out the way she wants it too seems typical), while we do try to work on her handling her frustration better

its helpful for us, to remember that 1 messed up craft out of 6 years of life experience, is 6 times a bigger deal than 1 messed up craft out of 36 years

Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”

#110

Post by BeetleB »

komali2 wrote: post #59

I notice this theme again and again in every "change yourself" book, show, class, lecture. Be it weight loss, improving mental health, curing addiction, becoming a better writer/photographer/programmer, the theme all comes down to a battle against yourself. Fighting the desire to snack, fighting the desire to lay on the couch instead of going to the gym, fighting the desire to veg and watch netflix instead of watchin…

>Be it weight loss, improving mental health, curing addiction, becoming a better writer/photographer/programmer, the theme all comes down to a battle against yourself.

Most of them say that, but a few say the wiser thing: Prevention is king. If you don't get addicted to something, it causes fewer problems. This applies to both physical and mental addictions. Don't let your body get used to fatty foods, and there will be nothing to fight. Same goes for alcohol. Or tobacco. Or TV binging: I've been relatively cable-free for well over a decade.

>fighting the desire to veg and watch netflix instead of watching another lecture in the MOOC you're taking.

Amusingly, I have to fight the desire to take yet another MOOC. I'm addicted to information/knowledge. I absorb it easily. Retaining the information, and actually utilizing it takes a lot of work. For me, taking another MOOC is just a way of slacking off to avoid putting in the effort to apply those skills I keep "learning".

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