
Switching Off: Joseph Brodsky and the moral responsibility to be useless - lermontov
https://thepointmag.com/2018/examined-life/switching-off
======
forapurpose
Brodsky was a Soviet dissident and a very original, innovative, creative
thinker.

One of several things I remember is him writing about the torture and
imprisonment he suffered. All he said was that he didn't talk about it,
because it only served his abusers to do so. They tortured him to terrify
others - as an act of terror. By torturing one dissident, they intended to
subdue all who spoke to him and read him. If he repeated it, then the act and
its power were magnified, repeated over and over. If he said nothing, they
were powerless; it was just one act at one moment and in small room.

~~~
nbabitskiy
Brodsky was by no means a dissident, at least in the Russian sense of the
word. He was vocally and arrogantly apolitical. He didn't know politburo
members' faces, and disliked both Soviet and anti-Soviet activists.

Also, no sane Russian of his generation would consider writing self pitiful
account of inprisonment and torture, consisting of about a month in prison and
3 weeks in a psycho asylum. He personally knew dozens of people that have
served 10-20 years without even a legal trial.

~~~
forapurpose
The parent brings to mind Steve Jobs responding to the email of a critic: And
what have you done? What have you created?

------
wollw
I mentioned it in the comments of a post the other day, but the English
Speaking World can at least trace this kind of thinking back to Thomas Cranmer
and the Articles of Religion of the Church of England--in particular, Article
XIV. Of Works of Supererogation.[1] Given the Non-Conformist origins of the
Colonies (people who immigrated to get away from the Church of England in
part) I have to wonder if the whole "American Dream" and its fetishization of
work for work's sake (or even, as an Artist myself, Art for Art's sake) is a
reaction against this. The accusations of "Amotivational Syndrome" so often
levied against Cannabis use seems related too; there is nothing wrong with
being content with less and, at least in my mind, it sets a _good_ example to
be satisfied with less. Less _is_ more.

[1] [http://anglicansonline.org/basics/thirty-
nine_articles.html](http://anglicansonline.org/basics/thirty-
nine_articles.html)

 _Voluntary Works besides, over and above, God 's Commandments, which they
call Works of Supererogation, cannot be taught without arrogancy and impiety:
for by them men do declare, that they do not only render unto God as much as
they are bound to do, but that they do more for his sake, than of bounden duty
is required: whereas Christ saith plainly When ye have done all that are
commanded to you, say, We are unprofitable servants._

~~~
paganel
I’m not an English native speaker, and as such it always seemed interesting to
me that the money a person owns is expressed as “X is worth $amount” (ex:
“Bezos is worth $131 billion”). It’s like it doesn’t matter if that person is
good or bad, if he/she is actually interested in being more on the “good” side
of things instead of the “bad” one, all it matters when judging a person is
his/her bank account.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
It's a reflection of the mindset we hold about wealth, part of how we justify
why one person deserves more than another.

For instance, why does some billionaire have significantly better health care
than I do? Because they're _worth_ more. Literally, they are more valuable to
society than I am.

If you phrase it the other way: "because they have more money than I do", the
justification isn't there and you'll have to question your societal model.

~~~
Maybestring
It's a quirk of English that we copied over our general words for amounts from
our language for morality.

We might have chosen mass as an anlogy, and Jeff would weigh $100 billion. A
very heavy man.

~~~
wollw
We could also honestly say he's talented and be pretty sure he weighs at least
75 pounds[1]. It occurs to me that part of the problem is the analogous
thinking in the first place, but even I (someone who was planning to take a
vow of poverty at one point) have to admit that monetary worth is _supposed_
to indicate how valuable/good of a person we are in normal circumstances; it's
the reason to reward. Where it loses meaning to me is where there, like sjk
alluded to, isn't even money but the assumption of it. There is nothing to
actually show for it as stock options, money in the bank (unless it's really a
vault), even Federal Reserve Bank Notes if you want to invoke the significance
of them historically as essentially checks that could be cashed for silver and
gold: it's all imaginary and kind of delusional to think it is really Wealth.
As a result one of the more interesting things happening in the Financial
sector to me right now is the Royal Mint's introduction of Royal Mint Gold as
it challenges the entire idea of Fiat Money by using blockchain tech like a
deed for gold ownership. It makes me think of Gringotts.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talent_(measurement)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talent_\(measurement\))

edit: I'm inclined to add that I view gold and silver as actually valuable in
part because they're physically useful in production of at the very least
Artwork, which is what a coin is. There is an interesting division in the
United States between the Mint and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing that
draws a line between the purification of metal and the printing of bills that
carries a lot of significance: purified metals represent purity whereas
printed paper money is always being thrown out and burnt as it falls apart and
has little material worth. One is timeless Art in that it is an actual
indication of purity and the other is a mashed up pulp of cotton and flax with
ink strewn over it that absorbs our human filth (oils and such) until it falls
apart.

------
StanislavPetrov
Depending on your assessment of society, being merely useless isn't good
enough. If you estimate society to be generally harmful (whether through wars,
environmental destruction, causing mass-exinction, ect), then its morally
desirable to be parasitic and drain some of the "power" of society from
engaging in harm-producing activities.

~~~
obelix_
Wow that's some pretty imaginative thinking. Have you tried that on your
family?

~~~
StanislavPetrov
I'm not supported by my family (or anyone else). If, however, I was supported
by my family, and they were a bunch of serial killers who used their money and
power to murder people, then it would be morally desirable to drain them of
their resources and deprive them of their ability to kill and slaughter.

~~~
goldenkey
Wouldn't it be more morally desirable to change their use of resources to
saving stray dogs or well..something with a positive context? Why throw work
away when it can be used for positive acts instead? Transformation over
destruction. A moral imperative

~~~
5DFractalTetris
Labor-driven ideologies are poisonous, they require that you consider another
person as useful, therefore exploitable, to some end not their own; then, to
call some work positive, some negative, as the ideology sees fit.

Instead, uselessness and leisure must be engineered to nullify with machine-
like precision, the notions that labor is a commodity with any attached value
and that the imposition of any belief, through labor or violence, has any
corresponding uselessness or usefulness.

Distraction must be perfected in our lifetime. A person born in 2050 should be
dazzled by endless fireworks displays and snackfoods until at last they are
disintegrated by the simple side-effects of their own cellular respiration.

Indeed, everything recognizable as human being, or a soul, or a similar
metaphor for the idea of the self, owes it to all other such entities that it
wishes for them nothing but complete and lifelong sensory saturation with
mutually harmless novelties and comforts. This is the core manifestation of
self-preservation of the social animal.

------
andyidsinga
this:

"I had been raised in the multicultural, bubblegum Nineties. Like many other
children of the upper-middle class, I watched Captain Planet, went to cross-
cultural friendship camps and joined social-justice youth groups. Our
generation was told that difference was only skin deep, that in America you
could accomplish anything with enough hard work, that we could be the change
we wanted to see. Like good campers, we marched to protest the invasion of
Iraq, wrote letters against NAFTA and for human rights, voted for Obama, went
vegetarian. At a certain point it occurred to us there was no evidence any of
this was working. The market crashed; the gap between rich and poor yawned
into an abyss. Congress was paralyzed, and racism, far from diminishing in
Obama’s presidency, seemed to become more visible and virulent. What is to be
done? we wondered. All the progressive values we had been taught, when
knocked, sounded hollow. So our protests got smaller, cheekier and more
digital. We made nihilistic jokes, followed meme accounts, started therapy. We
talked about TV.

All of this is to say that Brodsky’s strategy of switching off made a perverse
kind of sense to me, even as it brushed up against my inculcated optimism. And
yet, I thought: Shouldn’t I fight that impulse?"

------
chrisallick
“Your so-called ‘memes’”

------
kristjankalm
the full transcript of the trial of Joseph Brodsky:

[http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1954-2/whats-a-woman-to-
think/w...](http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1954-2/whats-a-woman-to-think/whats-
a-woman-to-think-texts/trial-of-joseph-brodsky/)

so absurd and surreal at times it's hard to believe it's not fiction

\---

Grudinina: The difference between a parasite and a starting-out poet is that
the parasite eats but does not work, while the poet works but may not always
eat.

Judge: The court does not appreciate that remark. In our country, a man earns
according to his work.

------
severine
posted by Lermontov :)

~~~
lermontov
Who better? Unless, that is, there is an HN user named Oblomov ;)

~~~
severine
Not very active, but...
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=oblomov](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=oblomov)

