#tim lott

[ya-no-la-quiero]

“Si lo supiéramos todo, sería terrible. La vida son sus misterios. Quienes tratan de terminar con los misterios, en realidad acaban con la vida”. Cómo hacerse invisible / Tim Lott

[shakespearenews]

The Best Books on Brothers | Tim Lott on Five Books

Fratricide is clearly a theme in Hamlet. Tell us more.

...I don’t think Hamlet is purely about ambition and power, I think it’s about the hatred of a brother for a brother. The phrases that we use about brothers – “brotherly love”, “brotherhood of man” – and the idea that it’s a very close and tender bond are also shot through, I think, with veins of real hatred. And that’s something Shakespeare is very clear-eyed about.

[sumpix]

The best form of self-help is … a healthy dose of unhappiness | Tim Lott |

Booksellers have announced that sales of self-help books are at record levels. The cynics out there will sigh deeply in resignation, even though I suspect they don’t really have a clear idea of what a self-help book is (or could be). Then again, no one has much of an idea what a self-help book is. Is it popular psychology (such as Blink, or Daring Greatly)? Is it spirituality (The Power of Now, or A Course in Miracles)? Or a combination of both (The Road Less Travelled)?

Is it about “success” (The Seven Secrets of Successful People) or accumulating money (Mindful Money, or Think and Grow Rich)? Is Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman self-help? Or the Essays of Montaigne?

Self-help – although I would prefer the term “self-curiosity” – is almost as broad a genre as fiction. Just as there are a lot of turkeys in literature, there are plenty in the self-help section, some of them remarkably successful despite – or because of – their idiocy. My personal nominations for the closest tosh-to-success correlation would include The Secret, You Can Heal Your Life and The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – but that is narrowing down a very wide field.

(via The best form of self-help is … a healthy dose of unhappiness | Tim Lott | Opinion | The Guardian)

[don-simon]

Untruthfulness

Lying, untruthfulness, mendacity – whatever you call it – is human nature writ large. It is a system we live in. It isn’t just capitalism. A state-run or communist economy just throws up different kinds of lies. But do we teach this in our schools? Is there a module for children called “Lying: How Mass Society Works”? There is not.  Some things are so ubiquitous you fail to notice them anymore. Fake news is the topic of the moment, but fake information has long underpinned our society. We are bringing up our children in a world of half-truth and then telling them to be honest. No wonder they are confused.

Adapted from an article by Tim Lott published in The Guardian newspaper.

[don-simon]

Apart from anything else, people who don't have children are, according to numerous surveys, consistently happier. The moment you have children, you are burdened with worries and responsibilities for the rest of your life. You are only ever as happy as your unhappiest child. So, what is the motivation? The answer to this, as far as I'm concerned, is pretty much: 'Well, what else are we going to do?' For me, life isn't the pursuit of happiness. Life is the pursuit of meaning.

Tim Lott

[boxcarwild]

Hating men is counterproductive. Hating men is not going to advance the cause of gender equality. On the contrary, if you tell someone that you hate them, simply because they have a penis, they have two basic alternative responses (other than ignoring you, which is probably the most sensible response). They can cringe and apologise – as many liberals do in the face of such onslaughts, hoping in vain for rehabilitation. The Maoists and their show trials did a lot to reveal the intrinsic human propensity to confess to imaginary sins. Alternatively, and more dangerously, you can respond with, “If you are justified in hating me then I am justified in hating you.” Therein lies the hazard.

Tim Lott, Why It’s Not OK to Hate Men

[boxcarwild]

Since anything men utter is tainted by their place in the power hierarchy and their implicit desire to maintain that power – a homeless man at Grand Central station may be surprised, even delighted, to learn that he occupies a ‘privileged’ position in this hierarchy – nothing a man says can be taken at face value because, consciously or unconsciously, it is imbued with patriarchal values and language. Whether they realise it or not, all men are engaged in a struggle to consolidate and extend their power, particularly over women. This is doubtless why, according to this theory, rape is considered a manifestation of male dominance – of the patriarchy – rather than an expression of sexual desire. Power is everything – which tells you something, perhaps, about the status anxiety of this theory’s most fanatical adherents. Thus it is okay to hate all men – they are all infected by the canker of patriarchy which, unlike individual thoughts and motivations, is a kind of all-powerful super-organism, a hive mind controlling its male worker bees. Men as individuals are simply tokens of something deeper – structural misogyny embedded in institutional power. If you’re a man who thinks you are not a misogynist, who in fact thinks you like women perfectly well, you are deluding yourself.

Tim Lott, Why It’s Not OK to Hate Men

[sensiblephilosophy]

Why It's Not OK to Hate Men - Quillette

Is it okay to hate women? Obviously not. It’s not only stupid and immoral but impractical given how many of them there are and the marked differences between each and every one of them. Is it okay to hate men, then? Again, obviously not, for the same reasons. Except – it’s not so obvious. Because such sentiments are again entering the mainstream.