j*n
2 楼
Not long ago, a friend sent me a speech that the great civic leader John
Gardner gave to the Stanford Alumni Association 61 years after he graduated
from that college. The speech is chock-full of practical wisdom. I
especially liked this passage:
“The things you learn in maturity aren’t simple things such as acquiring
information and skills. You learn not to engage in self-destructive behavior
. You learn not to burn up energy in anxiety. You discover how to manage
your tensions. You learn that self-pity and resentment are among the most
toxic of drugs. You find that the world loves talent but pays off on
character.
“You come to understand that most people are neither for you nor against
you; they are thinking about themselves. You learn that no matter how hard
you try to please, some people in this world are not going to love you, a
lesson that is at first troubling and then really quite relaxing.”
David Brooks
Politics, culture and the social sciences.
The Child in the Basement JAN 12
I Am Not Charlie Hebdo JAN 8
The Age of Bibi JAN 1
The Sidney Awards, Part 2 DEC 29
The Sidney Awards, Part I DEC 25
See More »
Gardner goes on in this wise way. And then, at the end, he goes into a
peroration about leading a meaningful life. “Meaning is something you build
into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections
and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you.
... You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern
that will be your life.”
Gardner puts “meaning” at the apogee of human existence. His speech
reminded me how often we’ve heard that word over the past decades. As my
Times colleague April Lawson puts it, “meaning” has become the stand-in
concept for everything the soul yearns for and seeks. It is one of the few
phrases acceptable in modern parlance to describe a fundamentally spiritual
need.
Yet what do we mean when we use the word meaning?
The first thing we mean is that life should be about more than material
success. The person leading a meaningful life has found some way of serving
others that leads to a feeling of significance.
Second, a meaningful life is more satisfying than a merely happy life.
Happiness is about enjoying the present; meaning is about dedicating oneself
to the future. Happiness is about receiving; meaningfulness is about giving
. Happiness is about upbeat moods and nice experiences. People leading
meaningful lives experience a deeper sense of satisfaction.
In this way, meaning is an uplifting state of consciousness. It’s what you
feel when you’re serving things beyond self.
Yet it has to be said, as commonly used today, the word is flabby and
vacuous, the product of a culture that has grown inarticulate about inner
life.
Let me put it this way: If we look at the people in history who achieved
great things — like Nelson Mandela or Albert Schweitzer or Abraham Lincoln
— it wasn’t because they wanted to bathe luxuriously in their own sense of
meaningfulness. They had objective and eternally true standards of justice
and injustice. They were indignant when those eternal standards were
violated. They subscribed to moral systems — whether secular or religious
— that recommended specific ways of being, and had specific structures of
what is right and wrong, and had specific disciplines about how you might
get better over time.
Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue
reading the main story
Meaningfulness tries to replace structures, standards and disciplines with
self-regarding emotion. The ultimate authority of meaningful is the warm
tingling we get when we feel significant and meaningful. Meaningfulness
tries to replace moral systems with the emotional corona that surrounds acts
of charity.
Continue reading the main story
RECENT COMMENTS
Wendy 6 days ago
Meaningfulness is above and beyond the so called moral structures, it is
linked to the intrinsic wisdom of human being. When you do a job...
JB 6 days ago
I completely understand David's point about the relativism implicit in the
definition of meaningful, and agree with many of his points. The...
Mark 6 days ago
The word the Mr. Brooks cannot seem to locate is joy. He correctly asserts
happiness is fleeting and temporary, but misses the truth in...
SEE ALL COMMENTS
It’s a paltry substitute. Because meaningfulness is built solely on an
emotion, it is contentless and irreducible. Because it is built solely on
emotion, it’s subjective and relativistic. You get meaning one way. I get
meaning another way. Who is any of us to judge another’s emotion?
Because it’s based solely on sentiment, it is useless. There are no
criteria to determine what kind of meaningfulness is higher. There’s no
practical manual that would help guide each of us as we move from shallower
forms of service to deeper ones. There is no hierarchy of values that would
help us select, from among all the things we might do, that activity which
is highest and best to do.
Because it’s based solely on emotion, it’s fleeting. When the sensations
of meaningful go away then the cause that once aroused them gets dropped,
too. Ennui floods in. Personal crisis follows. There’s no reliable ground.
The philosophy of meaningfulness emerges in a culture in which there is no
common moral vocabulary or framework. It emerges amid radical pluralism,
when people don’t want to judge each other. Meaningfulness emerges when the
fundamental question is, do we feel good?
Real moral systems are based on a balance of intellectual rigor and aroused
moral sentiments. Meaningfulness is pure and self-regarding feeling, the
NutraSweet of the inner life.
Gardner gave to the Stanford Alumni Association 61 years after he graduated
from that college. The speech is chock-full of practical wisdom. I
especially liked this passage:
“The things you learn in maturity aren’t simple things such as acquiring
information and skills. You learn not to engage in self-destructive behavior
. You learn not to burn up energy in anxiety. You discover how to manage
your tensions. You learn that self-pity and resentment are among the most
toxic of drugs. You find that the world loves talent but pays off on
character.
“You come to understand that most people are neither for you nor against
you; they are thinking about themselves. You learn that no matter how hard
you try to please, some people in this world are not going to love you, a
lesson that is at first troubling and then really quite relaxing.”
David Brooks
Politics, culture and the social sciences.
The Child in the Basement JAN 12
I Am Not Charlie Hebdo JAN 8
The Age of Bibi JAN 1
The Sidney Awards, Part 2 DEC 29
The Sidney Awards, Part I DEC 25
See More »
Gardner goes on in this wise way. And then, at the end, he goes into a
peroration about leading a meaningful life. “Meaning is something you build
into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections
and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you.
... You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern
that will be your life.”
Gardner puts “meaning” at the apogee of human existence. His speech
reminded me how often we’ve heard that word over the past decades. As my
Times colleague April Lawson puts it, “meaning” has become the stand-in
concept for everything the soul yearns for and seeks. It is one of the few
phrases acceptable in modern parlance to describe a fundamentally spiritual
need.
Yet what do we mean when we use the word meaning?
The first thing we mean is that life should be about more than material
success. The person leading a meaningful life has found some way of serving
others that leads to a feeling of significance.
Second, a meaningful life is more satisfying than a merely happy life.
Happiness is about enjoying the present; meaning is about dedicating oneself
to the future. Happiness is about receiving; meaningfulness is about giving
. Happiness is about upbeat moods and nice experiences. People leading
meaningful lives experience a deeper sense of satisfaction.
In this way, meaning is an uplifting state of consciousness. It’s what you
feel when you’re serving things beyond self.
Yet it has to be said, as commonly used today, the word is flabby and
vacuous, the product of a culture that has grown inarticulate about inner
life.
Let me put it this way: If we look at the people in history who achieved
great things — like Nelson Mandela or Albert Schweitzer or Abraham Lincoln
— it wasn’t because they wanted to bathe luxuriously in their own sense of
meaningfulness. They had objective and eternally true standards of justice
and injustice. They were indignant when those eternal standards were
violated. They subscribed to moral systems — whether secular or religious
— that recommended specific ways of being, and had specific structures of
what is right and wrong, and had specific disciplines about how you might
get better over time.
Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue
reading the main story
Meaningfulness tries to replace structures, standards and disciplines with
self-regarding emotion. The ultimate authority of meaningful is the warm
tingling we get when we feel significant and meaningful. Meaningfulness
tries to replace moral systems with the emotional corona that surrounds acts
of charity.
Continue reading the main story
RECENT COMMENTS
Wendy 6 days ago
Meaningfulness is above and beyond the so called moral structures, it is
linked to the intrinsic wisdom of human being. When you do a job...
JB 6 days ago
I completely understand David's point about the relativism implicit in the
definition of meaningful, and agree with many of his points. The...
Mark 6 days ago
The word the Mr. Brooks cannot seem to locate is joy. He correctly asserts
happiness is fleeting and temporary, but misses the truth in...
SEE ALL COMMENTS
It’s a paltry substitute. Because meaningfulness is built solely on an
emotion, it is contentless and irreducible. Because it is built solely on
emotion, it’s subjective and relativistic. You get meaning one way. I get
meaning another way. Who is any of us to judge another’s emotion?
Because it’s based solely on sentiment, it is useless. There are no
criteria to determine what kind of meaningfulness is higher. There’s no
practical manual that would help guide each of us as we move from shallower
forms of service to deeper ones. There is no hierarchy of values that would
help us select, from among all the things we might do, that activity which
is highest and best to do.
Because it’s based solely on emotion, it’s fleeting. When the sensations
of meaningful go away then the cause that once aroused them gets dropped,
too. Ennui floods in. Personal crisis follows. There’s no reliable ground.
The philosophy of meaningfulness emerges in a culture in which there is no
common moral vocabulary or framework. It emerges amid radical pluralism,
when people don’t want to judge each other. Meaningfulness emerges when the
fundamental question is, do we feel good?
Real moral systems are based on a balance of intellectual rigor and aroused
moral sentiments. Meaningfulness is pure and self-regarding feeling, the
NutraSweet of the inner life.
j*n
3 楼
还是那句话，看不懂的是二逼，但自以为懂了的，也是二逼。
j*n
4 楼
大卫布鲁克还有一篇，弱智大妈草原应该好好读读，charlie hebdo并不像草原大妈理
解的那么肤浅。不过我很怀疑草原大妈除了能读懂几句口号外能读懂oped的能力。
解的那么肤浅。不过我很怀疑草原大妈除了能读懂几句口号外能读懂oped的能力。
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