
Love in the Time of Numbness; Or, Doctor Chekhov, Writer - Hooke
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/love-in-the-time-of-numbness-or-doctor-chekhov-writer
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two2two
"Anger, like false news, is cheap and easily digestible; it is the fast food
of the indignant."

and

"Today, and especially today, as the threat of desensitization—and the
accompanying seductions of detachment, outrage, revulsion, indignation, piety,
and narcissism—looms over all our lives, we might need to ask ourselves the
question that Chekhov asked himself in the spring of 1890: What will move me
beyond this state of anesthesia? How will I counteract the lassitude that
creeps over my soul?"

At first I was "withdrawing from engagement altogether," but now I find myself
with more compassion and an urge to help myself and others move forward.

~~~
breatheoften
I've come to see the desire for positivity in the face of overwhelming reasons
for a negative outlook to often be accompanied by an implicit co-attribution
of blame on to those who hold a negative outlook. I'm starting to perceive
this misattribution of blame as part of the whole post truth machinery -- an
attempt to dissipate the will to topple the worst actors. Let the rulers
pillage, they try to say, and some of us will be better off.

I'm coming to see it for what it is: cowardice.

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theprop
Chekhov's short stories are one of the great accomplishments of any human
being ever.

His plays also began the modern theatre.

