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Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

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Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#71

Post by larrywright »

aragonite wrote: post #26
larrywright wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I recall, they married quite young and the womanizing didn’t come until he was older. The optimist in me wants to believe that if Arline had not died, the womanizing wouldn’t have happened. Feynman was a brilliant man but it was clear that losing his wife shook him. Perhaps the womanizing was a consequence of that. It certainly doesn’t excuse any behavior of his, but perhaps it explains it.

> Feynman was a brilliant man but it was clear that losing his wife shook him. Perhaps the womanizing was a consequence of that. I'm having a hard time imagining how the cause you posited could conceivably lead to the effect in question. Let's also remember that when a guy "plays the field", it doesn't always have a deep story behind it! :)

It’s certainly possible there was no cause. I’m just imagining that falling deeply in love with someone and marrying them, only to lose them a short time later could cause one to lose faith in the idea of committing to a single person.

I have zero evidence to back this up, it’s just how I felt after reading his books, and the biography by Gleick.

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#72

Post by Scarblac »

watwut wrote: post #37
somenameforme wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The seeming frequency in this thread with which people seem unable to distinguish between love and lust (or how one can lead to the other, and their otherwise complex interworking) is evidence many have yet to experience one or the other. The 'other' being rather self evident. And that's quite sad. One of the few times I'm reminded how much time I spend posting in an online text forum, and oh boy what a bubble we enj…

It is perfectly possible to love one person and have lust to another. Which is what original poster deemed shocking. The complain here is "how it is possible for him to be in love with one woman while also being womanizer in completely different relationship".

It's also possible to love multiple people at the same time, or in different ways. Nothing about human relations is binary.

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#73

Post by yedava »

growingkittens wrote: post #66

Losing his first wife was a tragedy that seems to have led Feynman down a dark personal path. Everybody likes the funny second wife divorce story - "because he did calculus all the time!" His second wife testified in court that he flew into a rage and choked her if she unwittingly interrupted his calculus. [1] She was granted a divorce due to his "extreme cruelty." [1] p. 64-65 of FBI file - https://www.muckrock.com/…

Plenty of people lose loved ones and manage to remain decent human beings. We can admire Feynman's contributions to physics, but when it comes to personal life, he was just an asshole. There's no point in looking up to him in matters of how to love another human being. Your everyday nobody is far more inspirational in that regard.

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#74

Post by the_af »

jimbob45 wrote: post #68
the_af wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to your comment, what I find mind-boggling is how easily people swing between the two extremes of opinion: it seems every public figure must either be adored and admired, or reviled and ostracized. People (myself included, I don't exclude myself from being human!) do not want to contemplate public figures as complex individuals with dark and bright aspects. It's always all or nothing. So Woody Allen went…

Same with Asimov. What did Asimov ever do?

He was reportedly very "gropey": https://the-orbit.net/almostdiamonds/2012/09/09/we-dont-do-t...

Excerpt:

> "It is in this correspondence that we can find how the conrunners of the time treated Asimov’s harassing behavior. To be explicit, Asimov was well known for pinching the asses of women who were unlucky–or unwarned–enough to get on an elevator with him alone."

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#75

Post by fractallyte »

jimbob45 wrote: post #68
the_af wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to your comment, what I find mind-boggling is how easily people swing between the two extremes of opinion: it seems every public figure must either be adored and admired, or reviled and ostracized. People (myself included, I don't exclude myself from being human!) do not want to contemplate public figures as complex individuals with dark and bright aspects. It's always all or nothing. So Woody Allen went…

Same with Asimov. What did Asimov ever do?

https://lithub.com/what-to-make-of-isaac-asimov-sci-fi-giant...

https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2020/01/08/isaac-asimov-p...

https://daily.jstor.org/asimovs-empire-asimovs-wall/

...and those are just the first few that came up on Google. I'm too sad to look for more... :-(

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#76

Post by Spooky23 »

growingkittens wrote: post #66

Losing his first wife was a tragedy that seems to have led Feynman down a dark personal path. Everybody likes the funny second wife divorce story - "because he did calculus all the time!" His second wife testified in court that he flew into a rage and choked her if she unwittingly interrupted his calculus. [1] She was granted a divorce due to his "extreme cruelty." [1] p. 64-65 of FBI file - https://www.muckrock.com/…

I’d say having some experience in the area that extreme grief can really affect someone in profound ways.

Not making excuses for someone whom I don’t know or understand, but the toxic soup and paranoia associated with where and the nature of his work combined with what seems to a hard loss is a recipe for the type of mental anguish that might explain some of those behaviors.

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#77

Post by the_af »

fractallyte wrote: post #75
jimbob45 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with Asimov. What did Asimov ever do?

https://lithub.com/what-to-make-of-isaac-asimov-sci-fi-giant... https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2020/01/08/isaac-asimov-p... https://daily.jstor.org/asimovs-empire-asimovs-wall/ ...and those are just the first few that came up on Google. I'm too sad to look for more... :-(

I wouldn't be too sad though; that was my point.

Asimov made many women uncomfortable with his behavior, yes. He was also an all-around friendly and approachable guy, a bright mind, one of the giants of sci-fi, and also a great science communicator.

He had this flaw. It's on us to deal with it, and not let it mar his otherwise great memory. (It's not like he raped women either, however bad his behavior was. Not all sins are equal).

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#78

Post by rpmisms »

slowhadoken wrote: post #67
jjulius wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: Note that I have no opinion here, just answering someone's request for a source. A cursory Google reveals... > Neither were Feynman's escapades limited to bars; more than one of his biographies have documented affairs with two married women, at least one of which caused him considerable problems.[0] Charlie Munger seems to be a source for claims that he would sleep with the wives of his undergrad students[2]. A…

We alway cut great minds a lot of slack. I have a mental experiment for this: imagine a man beats his wife. Terrible right? Now imagine the same man cures cancer. Well suddenly everyone is curious about the complexities of his marriage. That’s morality for most people.

It's interest balancing. If you do a lot of good, more evil is excusable in the mind of the average person. It doesn't make the bad things less bad, but it makes the person more human, as opposed to them being a virtuous angel, which nobody likes.

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#79

Post by [deleted] »

jimbob45 wrote: post #68
the_af wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to your comment, what I find mind-boggling is how easily people swing between the two extremes of opinion: it seems every public figure must either be adored and admired, or reviled and ostracized. People (myself included, I don't exclude myself from being human!) do not want to contemplate public figures as complex individuals with dark and bright aspects. It's always all or nothing. So Woody Allen went…

Same with Asimov. What did Asimov ever do?

[deleted]

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#80

Post by BigTuna »

growingkittens wrote: post #66

Losing his first wife was a tragedy that seems to have led Feynman down a dark personal path. Everybody likes the funny second wife divorce story - "because he did calculus all the time!" His second wife testified in court that he flew into a rage and choked her if she unwittingly interrupted his calculus. [1] She was granted a divorce due to his "extreme cruelty." [1] p. 64-65 of FBI file - https://www.muckrock.com/…

A long time *ago I read re: Feynman's divorce that false accusations of abuse were common back then because no-fault divorce didn't exist. Couples that wanted a divorce would have to concoct a story in order to get a judge to sign off. I don't have strong feelings either way because it's impossible to know what really happened between them, but I found it an interesting counterpoint.
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