nobody cares anyway and if you're lucky you will outlive anyone you care about. Everyone is disillusioned yet think they have the secret key to truth and how to live. Nobody will ever know who you are but No Man is an Island.
Many people live in the box they are put in. The smart one, the caring one, the fun one... and through living in that box and having validation, they lose the willingness to risk change; in fact I'd argue manu people lose access to who they truly are
1) I think an act of self betrayal is bad regardless of whether or not you are compelled into it. The quote from Dostoyevsky implies that we can gain something from self-betrayal. I don't think this is his intent of course, but I'm just reflecting quite deeply on it. A deep moral failing is exactly that, I don't think it is the case that we can gain ANYTHING if we fail in this case. That being said, things we regret and things we wish we could take back are always going to be there, but perhaps we were different people back then. I think of many times in my life where I could use examples to illustrate this point, but the reality is that I was different person with a different moral standard. The retrospective analysis isn't going to help - holding ourselves to a new standard is perfectly fine, is encouraging even. But for us to expect better of ourselves from the past? That's silly. This is a trap I am continually falling into but I'm learning to stop.
2) This reminds me of a quote from Carl Rogers - "You must even let your own experience tell you its own meaning; the minute you tell it what it means, you are at war with yourself." We ultimately discover and found ourselves through the experiences we go through over our life cycles. We can't have it any other way. As soon as we let others or even ourselves tell us what it means, we are at war with ourselves. Why outsource understanding myself? It is sad that modernity mocks this too.
3) I don't think it can. When we sleep we dream and it is our unconscious/subconscious trying to understand things that happen in our modern life and from the past.
4) We should love for love's sake and not for our own sake. Love is the ultimate thing, and it is not serving anything or anyone else. If you are loving someone for the sake of love and nothing else, then this is the ultimate political and philosophical stance you could take.
5) I agree that failing at originality is better than conforming and succeeding. I don't think it needs to be explained.
I take originality to mean pursuing your own goals, being unique, being original, being an individualist.
Think of a spectrum and on that spectrum you have two ends - one end originality in its purest form and then on the other end conformity in all its understood meaning.
I think the question is asking about success as a result of conforming. That is the most pressing point.
Quote 4: was this a hope that Dickens expressed to his poor, downtrodden wife? How dare he suggest that he was somehow deserving in the light of how he treated her!
Appreciate how this edition weaves a tight arc from self-reckoning to self-authorship. Dostoevsky’s rallying cry — Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing — jolts us into noticing every micro-moment we trade integrity for convenience . Achebe then hands us the antidote: If you don’t like someone’s story, write your own, converting regret into creative agency .
Together these ideas sketch a simple loop of liberation: first name the ways we abandon ourselves, then reclaim narrative sovereignty. It is restorative philosophy in two beats, and the placement of these quotes side by side makes the insight land with kinetic clarity .
Grateful for the curation — every new Wisdom Letter feels like a pocket-sized mentor reminding us that small shifts in perspective can echo across an infinity of better choices.
Which of Achebe’s novel do you want us to review for a discussion? Note that my opinions do not represent those of all the members of our physical meetup, although they read all our posts and we constantly watch videos together on Zoom. I will explicitly tag an opinion with something like “xyz is the forums general opionion“ whenever that is the case.
I think that no one can truly know themselves. In fact it may be that others know us better than we do.
Human beings are by nature self-deluded. We are not as good or as bad as we believe. But this idea is not to suggest some sort of balance that leaves us without responsibility for our actions. Morality does not emanate from our being. Morality is external to it. We are created beings and our creation has a purpose. We hypocritically reject that purpose believing that we are not created beings, rather we have formed ourselves or found ourselves apart from that created purpose.
nobody cares anyway and if you're lucky you will outlive anyone you care about. Everyone is disillusioned yet think they have the secret key to truth and how to live. Nobody will ever know who you are but No Man is an Island.
Re, nº2
Many people live in the box they are put in. The smart one, the caring one, the fun one... and through living in that box and having validation, they lose the willingness to risk change; in fact I'd argue manu people lose access to who they truly are
1) I think an act of self betrayal is bad regardless of whether or not you are compelled into it. The quote from Dostoyevsky implies that we can gain something from self-betrayal. I don't think this is his intent of course, but I'm just reflecting quite deeply on it. A deep moral failing is exactly that, I don't think it is the case that we can gain ANYTHING if we fail in this case. That being said, things we regret and things we wish we could take back are always going to be there, but perhaps we were different people back then. I think of many times in my life where I could use examples to illustrate this point, but the reality is that I was different person with a different moral standard. The retrospective analysis isn't going to help - holding ourselves to a new standard is perfectly fine, is encouraging even. But for us to expect better of ourselves from the past? That's silly. This is a trap I am continually falling into but I'm learning to stop.
2) This reminds me of a quote from Carl Rogers - "You must even let your own experience tell you its own meaning; the minute you tell it what it means, you are at war with yourself." We ultimately discover and found ourselves through the experiences we go through over our life cycles. We can't have it any other way. As soon as we let others or even ourselves tell us what it means, we are at war with ourselves. Why outsource understanding myself? It is sad that modernity mocks this too.
3) I don't think it can. When we sleep we dream and it is our unconscious/subconscious trying to understand things that happen in our modern life and from the past.
4) We should love for love's sake and not for our own sake. Love is the ultimate thing, and it is not serving anything or anyone else. If you are loving someone for the sake of love and nothing else, then this is the ultimate political and philosophical stance you could take.
5) I agree that failing at originality is better than conforming and succeeding. I don't think it needs to be explained.
hello! Random thoughts are always welcome!
I take originality to mean pursuing your own goals, being unique, being original, being an individualist.
Think of a spectrum and on that spectrum you have two ends - one end originality in its purest form and then on the other end conformity in all its understood meaning.
I think the question is asking about success as a result of conforming. That is the most pressing point.
Quote 4: was this a hope that Dickens expressed to his poor, downtrodden wife? How dare he suggest that he was somehow deserving in the light of how he treated her!
I always find quotes about being original ironic. I can’t remember the last time I saw anything original said about originality.
Appreciate how this edition weaves a tight arc from self-reckoning to self-authorship. Dostoevsky’s rallying cry — Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing — jolts us into noticing every micro-moment we trade integrity for convenience . Achebe then hands us the antidote: If you don’t like someone’s story, write your own, converting regret into creative agency .
Together these ideas sketch a simple loop of liberation: first name the ways we abandon ourselves, then reclaim narrative sovereignty. It is restorative philosophy in two beats, and the placement of these quotes side by side makes the insight land with kinetic clarity .
Grateful for the curation — every new Wisdom Letter feels like a pocket-sized mentor reminding us that small shifts in perspective can echo across an infinity of better choices.
You are assuming that the act of destruction and self betrayal was intentional. Dostoevsky's hindsight is 20-20.
Which of Achebe’s novel do you want us to review for a discussion? Note that my opinions do not represent those of all the members of our physical meetup, although they read all our posts and we constantly watch videos together on Zoom. I will explicitly tag an opinion with something like “xyz is the forums general opionion“ whenever that is the case.
I think that no one can truly know themselves. In fact it may be that others know us better than we do.
Human beings are by nature self-deluded. We are not as good or as bad as we believe. But this idea is not to suggest some sort of balance that leaves us without responsibility for our actions. Morality does not emanate from our being. Morality is external to it. We are created beings and our creation has a purpose. We hypocritically reject that purpose believing that we are not created beings, rather we have formed ourselves or found ourselves apart from that created purpose.