Why is shattering this illusion a good thing? Especially if a 'false', heroic impression of someone inspires you to achieve great things, or act more virtuously, that you otherwise wouldn't have done.
There's a difference between 'hero worship' and 'hero inspiration', IMO. The difficult part is getting rid of the former while not destroying the latter in the process.
Imho it can be very misleading to think of Instagram feeds, or any social media for that matter, as "private life".
Many social media users are very self-conscious and calculating with the "image" they are building with particular accounts.
It's all feeding into this idea of perfect infallible human beings, as supposedly showcased on social media, but in reality, such humans simply don't exist.
Particularly in the context that often it's our flaws that define us as humans, not being able to admit to having any does not strike me as a healthy and rational attitude.
For instance, musicians one really likes, one projects them into images of saints. Then they're out their putting selfies on, sharing insipid quotes or just generally seeking validation, and the mirage crumbles a bit.
Real heros exist. But only children believe they are infallible.
As the pretend hero, Malcolm Reynolds, said "It's my estimation that every man ever got a statue made of him was one kind of a son of a bitch or another."
For what it’s worth, I thought Andy Serkis really captured some of the complexity of Einstein’s character in the movie “Einstein and Eddington” — contrasts with the typical characterization of Einstein as the cuddly goofball of pop culture, and paints him as a human with flaws.
I'm not sure why we should care. The private lives of Freud, Jung, and perhaps Russell may be of interest because their work was bound up in telling others how to live. Einstein did a certain amount of that--though I think more in the large than in the small--but he did not achieve fame for his thoughts on peace, socialism, etc. Rather his thoughts on matters of conduct became interesting because of the fame earned through physics.
But...the real (big) Question was: "Why is there no spaceship with 'front-drive'?", and speaking in terms of "Reisegefühl" (um in other words, something like the feeling you have during traveling) heck - damned Einstein - Why does it need mass for acceleration #=!*%?? (-:
i read these rules he had for this 1st wife years ago "A. You will make sure:
1. that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order;
2. that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room;
3. that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.
B. You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, You will forego:
1. my sitting at home with you;
2. my going out or travelling with you.
C. You will obey the following points in your relations with me:
1. you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way;
2. you will stop talking to me if I request it;
3. you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.
D. You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behavior."
This is taken out of context somewhat, so I'll offer it just to try to keep things balanced. This appears to come from Walter Isaacson biography on Einstein. At the time, Einstein's first marriage had deteriorated and they were already living apart. This was an offer to move back in together for the sake of their children. His wife didn't accept these terms and they divorced in 1919.
Also we're talking about 100 years ago in Berlin. It's a bit perilous to judge their relationship by our modern standards. I would say things have changed vastly for the better. I shudder to think how people in 100 years would view my lifestyle.
Not sure I agree. There were a couple of books I picked up as presents, they were reprints of a book ~100 years old, called something like 'advice for husbands' and 'advice for wives', something like that. They were ~2/3rds the same advice, and of course, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and frankly most if it was surprisingly sensible and relevant today (some still has the assumption that the man is in the superior position, and some is a bit painful, but perhaps not as much as you'd think).
Don’t interpret too literally the ‘obey’ of the Marriage Service. Your husband has no right to control your individuality.
Don’t let your husband feel that you are a ‘dear little woman’, but no good intellectually. If you find yourself getting stale, wake up your brain.
Don’t keep your sweetest smiles and your best manners for outsiders; let your husband come first.
Don’t grumble because his idea of work differs from yours. If he works hard at anything, let him do it his own way, and be satisfied.
Don’t refuse to see your husband’s jokes. They may be pretty poor ones, but it won’t hurt you to smile at them.
Don’t allow yourself to get into the habit of dressing carelessly when there is ‘only’ your husband to see you. Depend upon it he has no use for faded tea-gowns and badly dressed hair, and he abhors the sight of curling pins as much as other men do. He is a man after all, and if his wife does not take the trouble to charm him, there are plenty of other women who will. [Ouch!]
Advice for Husbands
Don’t refuse to get up and investigate in the night if your wife hears an unusual noise, or fancies she smells fire or escaping gas. She will be afraid of shaming you by getting up herself, and will lie awake working herself into a fever. This may be illogical, but it’s true.
Don’t be surprised, or annoyed, or disappointed, to find, after treating your wife for years as a feather-brain, that you have made her one, and that she fails to rise to the occasion when you need her help.
Don’t belittle your wife before visitors. You may think it a joke to speak of her little foibles, but she will not easily forgive you.
Don’t refuse your wife’s overtures when next you meet if you have unfortunately had a bit of a breeze. Remember it costs her something to make them, and if you weren’t a bit of a pig, you would save her the embarrassment by making them yourself.
Don’t chide your wife in public, whatever you may feel it necessary to do in private. She will not easily forgive you for having witnesses to her discomfiture.
Don’t call your wife a coward because she is afraid of a spider. Probably in a case of real danger she would prove to be quite as brave as you.
This "advice" makes me want to barf, but probably because I hold convictions about gender and sexuality that would have been extreme or unheard of 100 years ago. For me gender, is a flexible construct and sexuality is fluid and this "advice" reinforces abusive gender stereotypes.
So I am not claiming that Einstein's demands were normal 100 years ago (We can surmise that they likely were not given that Maric asked for a divorce instead). I'm not saying that we should look to their personal life as any kind of positive example. I'm only saying that I know they were working on an incredibly different set of cultural assumptions than I am. In their time, I don't know if they would have been judged by their peers as progressive or regressive. I judge them regressive, but what the heck is that worth?
I'm not discussing Einstein but saying that decent behaviour towards spouses evidences itself, up to a point I agree, back then. That's all I was getting at.
"Your husband has no right to control your individuality // Don’t belittle your wife before visitors // Don’t call your wife a coward because she is afraid of a spider. Probably in a case of real danger she would prove to be quite as brave as you"
This makes you want to barf? I mean, this is as good advice now as it ever was, and there are plenty of men & women who fail to follow it today. Other items are poor by today's terms, but you're dismissing it all as barf-making.
> I judge them regressive, but what the heck is that worth?
It's worth lots. Those who don't judge permit bad stuff to happen. Keep on judging, and change the world for the better.
To me it was almost all patriarchy disguising itself as benevolent wisdom and all the more insidious because it dresses itself up in father knows best clothes. Every bit of it is heavily gender stereotyped. It's not clever manners to refrain from controlling your spouse's individuality! Yikes.
Anyway I'm not offering this in the spirit of debate but in sharing. As a minority myself, I understand that we all stew in the pot of the majority and the powerful. In order for someone to extend an olive branch and offer you back your humanity, it had to have been taken from you first.
I don't get you. You want perfection and aren't willing to give any leeway to a book that is over a century old. Things were very, very different back then and I'm not sure you recognise that, or seem willing to recognise that.
My entire point is that we need to give people from centuries past some leeway and make an effort to view their lives through the lens of their time. And we should view them through our current lens as well but we're not likely to learn anything but that we think our morality is the best morality.
My chain of responses is meant to highlight this tension. That I can personally find something reprehensible in 2020, but taken in it's cultural or historical context, also find it enlightened or inspiring. In the USA we have an increasingly militant progressivism and we close ourselves off to our own history if we can only judge things by one set of standards.
Nah, it was not normal by standards of 100 years ago either.
Edit: the "it was different time" is popular retort, but it rarely takes into account actual customs and realities of the time back. People just tend to assume that whatever someone else criticizes was unopposed standard back at the time, because it would feel good and was convenient. Societies back at time were as complicated as ours, often had strong standards of behavior - which just like in ours was often not followed in practice or lead to problems.
They were not "just like us except worst". Case in point, even if intra-family violence was way more common, both against kids (I don't mean light spanking I mean actual sever abuse) and women, it was criticized and seen as wrong too (and as such meant to be in-family secret).
Its in bad taste, but I don't get the downvotes in this thread. Are people eager to hold an ego measuring contest against our ancestors?
The only things I know from my own experience: people resort to violence more quickly when stressed, and when its easier to hide. This doesn't really seem to have changed over the years. Its just easier to suppress yourself and others with the abundance of toys, media and tools available today, and its easier for people to find out you're mistreating others. Heck, if the current crisis is showing anything, its how tons of families can't stand being together for a long time, from complaining about kids to complaining having to share your room with your spouse. Culture has changed, but we're still the same animals we were 100 years ago.
Similarly, when it comes to emotions and social skills, what made a good spouse back then still makes a good spouse today. Treating each other like people, being supportive, allowing the other to excel instead of setting them up for failure, stimulating joy instead of frustration and sadness. The same goes for being a good parent, in supporting your children and stimulating positive reinforcement instead of negative reinforcement. Sure, our understanding on an academic level has increased, but that doesn't explain the similarities between then and now.
And frankly, I don't need a comparison between "the worst then" and "the worst now" to realize you should do your best for someone you share your life with a majority of the time. That 'best' has barely changed.
The fact he had to make a rule for her not to belittle him in front of the children makes me think I wouldn't want to be married to his wife either. We're only seeing one half of the picture here, but she doesn't sound like a saint.
High intelligence and educational achievement has nothing to do with morality. Some of the worst human beings I have ever encountered were very successful and competent engineering professionals.
Not only was he abusive to his first wife, he then got married to his cousin, and almost proposed to her daughter. Beyond that, he had a great deal of affairs.
Einstein may have been smart, but he was a really awful person.
Being shitty about commitment and affection in your romantic life does not by default make you an awful person. It makes you bad at strong romantic relationships perhaps. There are however many other metrics of what makes someone good and bad in a moral and human sense. So please, lay off the "if you ever cheat on your wife you must be a piece of human garbage" nonsense.
Why is the relationship sphere separate from the moral sphere? How do you decide what belongs in the moral sphere? Does the relationship sphere overlap with the moral sphere in other areas just not in fidelity? Why doesn't it intersect there?
Saying someone is boolean "good" or "bad" is of course complex - perhaps beyond utility. But to the extent a moral evaluation is being made of a person (unless your point is no such evaluation can or should ever be made?) I don't see how their conduct in their romantic relationships could be exempted?
I did not say it shouldnt be exempted, only that on the scale of moral judgments insofar as we are equipped to make them, cheating is and should be far down the list compared to many other acts that individually or in summary could and in many cases should make someone worse than a "good person" by the normal standards of moral judgement that most of us accept and live by.
Being shitty about commitment and affection in your romantic life does not by default make you an awful person.
Yes, it does. Abusing your spouse is one of the worst forms of abuse, especially during that time, because they can't really get themselves out of that situation. Cheating's a more intense version of any other breaking of commitment. A person who consistently breaks commitment is absolutely an awful person.
There are however many other metrics of what makes someone good and bad in a moral and human sense.
Sure. A child-beater can donate millions to charity. An anti-consumer monopolist can donate billions. A rapist can volunteer at homeless shelters. None of these are good people: their worst aspects are inexcusable.
So please, lay off the "if you ever cheat on your wife you must be a piece of human garbage" nonsense.
Do it multiple times to multiple wives, you're definitely human garbage.
You can't magically compartmentalize away being a terrible person solely because you're only terrible to a single person who has very little power. If a person who tortures someone—just a single person—has good actions outside of the person they have locked up in their basement, they're still a bad person.
I think you've gone well off the reservation with lack of perspective. In most modern western societies your spouse that you cheat on can indeed very easily leave you any time she or he wants to, and they're certainly not powerless in either a legal or practical exit sense. If we're talking about a non-legally binding girlfriend/boyfriend relationship, even easier for them to walk away. And no, cheating on someone sexually or romantically is not the same as abusing them in any legal sense, and it's definitely far removed from being a child beater, torturer or rapist. Drop the absurd hyperbole please. These are literal criminal acts of violence against another person, whereas the former is an act of dishonesty to one consenting, adult who understands basic fidelity risks in life and sexual license with another consenting adult. Neither of these is enough to get someone classified as "human garbage" in such denigratory terms in my view, and certainly not enough to put them on par with the genuinely vicious acts of coercive predatory behavior you're comparing cheating to. Your view is absurdly emotional and outside reasoned analysis of moral comparisons dude.
In most modern western societies your spouse that you cheat on can indeed very easily leave you any time she or he wants to, and they're certainly not powerless in either a legal or practical exit sense.
Not during the early 1900s, which is what's being discussed here. Also, "any time she or he wants to" is a complete misrepresentation of today's situation, as well.
And no, cheating on someone sexually or romantically is not the same as abusing them in any legal sense,
I didn't claim it was abusive, I claimed it was a terrible thing to do. I claimed that his abusive behavior was abusive, which is true.
Your entire argument is based around strawmanning against an argument that wasn't being made.
