
How to Know Everything About Everything: Laura Riding’s Letters to an 8-Year-Old - fern12
https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/02/20/laura-riding-four-unposted-letters-to-catherine/
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natecavanaugh
I dunno, I'll play the crank here and say that writings like this really make
me question the kinds of life that could be lived with this ideology. People
tend to already focus on themselves as the locus of creation, do we really
need more of this? I know there are people who claim to live better lives
because of views like this, but I've seen how many of them live, which is
often in the moment, selfish and a waste of others time.

If the highest intellectual, moral and emotional goal you can achieve is to
know yourself, hour can anything be too selfish?

Yet, I hear far more often about what these people think of their lives, and
far less about the actual benefit to others.

Maybe my moral compass is tuned differently, but the whole focus on "self"
seems to be the most shallow when it comes to a happy life, but it sure is
convenient ;P

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Flozzin
I never interpreted her saying focus only on yourself and maximize your own
happy. But rather know yourself. To me there is a big differences in
understanding who you are vs only doing what you want at any expense.

This is too simple, but knowing I want a piece of cake does not mean I should
or will eat one.

She is railing against the types of people that are so goal driven to a point
where it becomes an obsession. She seems to think that over doing(which is
what that is) stems from a poor understanding of who you are, and/or
surpassing your own needs. For instance opening a local store. It's
successful, makes enough money, but instead of being happy(your needs are met)
you open a chain, take over the state, then the country and so on. Or the
empty nester that now has no children to focus on has nothing to do, no skills
to do anything, and no idea what they actually like to do. Since their entire
world was built around someone else.

Also, never let the worst of a group define that group. If they are the worst
they probably aren't following the actual ideology.(clearly this thinking
fails with Nazi's or other extremists)

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natecavanaugh
Okay, I can accept that. I do have a knee-jerk reaction to posts along this
line, but I can see the difference between pleasing yourself and knowing who
you are.

I guess my only criticism remaining is that I think one doesn't and shouldn't
preclude the other, so when I see posts like this in isolation, in the current
culture, it runs so aligned to the "please yourself" pop culture that it's
hard not to see it as part of that. But I agree, knowing who you are is
incredibly important. I personally believe that you can't truly know yourself
unless you also invest in others so you know them well enough to contrast who
you are and are not.

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hmwhy
The way I interpret the writing is that if one understands who she is then the
act of pleasing herself is meaningless "doing" that would never cross her mind
in the first place.

I really don't think there is anything in the writing that promotes/suggests
the "please yourself pop culture" you mentioned; in fact, I don't think there
is anything in the writing about pleasing oneself at all.

The closest thing that I can imagine is consider that you are on a hike alone
and all of a sudden you feel the urge to play a tune. You take out your
ocarina and just naturally play a tune. When you are done you simply continue
hiking. You didn't play the tune to please yourself and you didn't play the
tune to please an audience—you simply played because it felt like the most
natural thing to do that moment, and it's good because of that.

> I personally believe that you can't truly know yourself unless you also
> invest in others so you know them well enough to contrast who you are and
> are not.

I tend to disagree with this. I personally think that you can't understand
yourself through contrast with who others are (not least because you can never
understand others better than they understand themselves)—that way you are
simply creating an image yourself based on the opinions you have on other
people, not because you are just being you because you understand yourself.

~~~
natecavanaugh
The reason I read it that way was because of the whole "knowing yourself is
the most important goal in life" aspect, which is a _summum bonum_ type
statement, and one I disagree with. I think there are lots of good honorable
things in life that are more important than knowing who you are.

> I tend to disagree with this. I personally think that you can't understand
> yourself through contrast with who others are

I don't mean you should only or even primarily base your self-awareness in
relation to the contrast, but that any view of yourself that doesn't at least
have an understanding of your needs vs another person's will always be an
incomplete one.

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Flozzin
While at some times she seems to be rambling or making no sense(she over uses
the words doing, everything), her point rings true to me. You need idle time
to understand yourself.

I have seen other sources say that kids need downtime. To just use their
imagination. Constantly having your eyes glued to TV or your phone does not
make a healthy person.

She also mentions that people make the mistake of 'over-doing'. Which I also
agree with.

While I feel like she could have made her case clearer and cleaner(although
she was writing to a child so maybe this is perfect), I agree with her.

~~~
dang
Riding was a modernist poet with a bunch of radical theories about language so
it's not surprising she was using words in an unconventional way, even with an
eight-year-old.

IIRC she was Robert Graves' partner for many years, and later in life was
something like a spiritual teacher seeking truth in language, of all places.
Martin Seymour-Smith, who single-handedly wrote a great big encyclopedia of
20th century literature, regarded her as the best 20th century poet in
English.

~~~
QAPereo
My knowledge of American poetry is abysmal, but this sounds intriguing. Do you
know of any good starting points to read about her work, and her life?

~~~
thyrsus
I have a 1973 edition of the "Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry", which
includes six of her poems. I think the volume serves its purpose well, and
includes a nice balance of British and American poets.

From the brief biography included: "After 1939, when she returned to the
United States, she renounced poetry and wrote no more poems: she came to see
poetry as obstructing the dedicated use of words for truth that it invited."

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jpatokal
Written in 1939 by an author who died 26 years ago, yet still not in the
public domain, so you need to fork over $11 if you want to actually read the
damn letters. Thank you, Sonny Bono and Disney.

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pattisapu
I wonder if she would have thought of structured games as the "wrong" sort of
play, making "work" out of play.

