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Notes -
So I read 89 books last year (details can be found in the wellness Wednesday thread). Many people here and more so in real life seem to pretty surprised, and impressed. I'm not sure if this is me being a time (or hobby) snob, but I'm a little dissapointed in this kind of reaction. In the real world this makes some sense: TV and scrolling are much more appealing than a book after a long day at work, but I was hoping to see more serious readers in a place that's as text and argument heavy as the motte.
Reading a lot of books isn't as hard as it seems. The average american spends something like 4+ hours on the internet+TV. If you take 1 of those hours and convert them into reading every day you get 365 hours a year. At 50 pages/hour, that's 15k pages a year, or about 50 300-page books. I read slightly faster and slightly more, but also a significant amount in Spanish, which is slower. So probably 2 hrs/day at an average of 50 pages/hour. That's about 30k pages. If I look at my goodreads, I read 33,885 pages total. I keep more detailed stats for Spanish. Looks like I read for a total of 227 hours for a total of 11k pages, which is about 45 pages/hour. Of course these numbers vary from person to person, and book to book. All very do-able for the average Mottzian. It just means largely giving up other forms of entertaininment, like video games or TV, and perhaps more importantly, not being a workaholic.
So are my expectations for this place off? Am I overestimating the importance of books to the average Mottzian (and in self-cultivation in general)? Underestimating people's daily time commitments?
There's nothing that inherently elevates fiction books over other forms of entertainment. In fact (multiplayer) video games are intrinsically social and communal in a way that books are not. I've done a lot of traveling and met a lot of people because of video games.
Of course this conversation is predicated on a distinction between "higher" and "lower" entertainment, and a distinction between "entertainment" and "work" in general. This distinction is dubious:
Imagine some guy lays this on you after you ask him about his hobbies. What an extraordinarily annoying and pretentious thing to say. Adorno’s dripping contempt for the “barbarous”, “horrifying”, “mock-worthy” common man, what he enjoys, how he talks, and what he thinks. All rooted in Adorno's resentment that the rube has again and again rejected marx’ bullshit.
“people are unaware of how utterly unfree they are, even where they feel most at liberty“ - thought bubble of guy in corner at party meme.
I think he's simply correct, and the view he outlined in the passage I quoted is something to be aspired to. Why would you not want to live an integrated life where everything you do is meaningful?
At any rate, even granting that he does have "contempt for the common man", this is certainly not an attitude that's unique to Marxists:
No, he’s not right. Even if we lived on a tropical island before capitalism, when two strangers would meet, among the first questions they would ask would be ‘so what do you do to eat?’, and ‘what do you do when you’re not fishing/hunting/gathering?’ . And when Old Theo would answer ‘How dare you imply my non-work activities are mockworthy and meaningless? I do everything passionately!’, the other man would hit him over the head with a stick, just like in real life.
The negative implications of ‘hobby’ that adorno is incensed about, he put there himself. People do not think their hobbies are meaningless and worthy of mockery.
But Adorno already said that he has no problem with simply listing the activities he does outside of his working hours. He already said as much in the passage that I quoted. His criticism is directed towards the modern concept of the hobby specifically, as something that is distinct from "things you do when you're not working for sustenance".
Now to be clear, I'm not a Marxist. I'm not even sure that this thing they call "capitalism" actually exists, and even if it does, its power to introduce radical discontinuities in human thought are surely overstated. A concept that is at least analogous to the concept of the hobby undoubtedly predates the written word. But nonetheless, I'm sympathetic to Adorno's argument that there is a certain ideological constellation surrounding the modern concept of the "hobby" that can and should be criticized, and we can and should imagine the division of our time being governed by a different conceptual regime.
I imagine that it varies from individual to individual. But regardless, people can be mistaken about what's meaningful and what's not. It's possible that someone might think that they're doing something meaningful, but in reality they're not. So the individual's conception of their own activity is just one data point to consider.
Oh, he has a problem with it, it’s his whole problem. He worries that he doesn’t come off as cool when he tells people what he does with his time:
So when he reads, he reads ‘with all his attention’(as opposed to normal people, who supposedly read distractedly. The point is, he’s better than them, at reading) . And he doesn’t have hobbies, he has a meaningful, holistic life. Please.
We’re all nerds with nerd hobbies here, but this one unloads his inadequacies and frustrations in the most petty, passive aggressive way possible.
This is clearly just a rhetorical gesture on Adorno's part to illustrate the attitude he's criticizing. His actual motivation for thinking the way he thinks doesn't have anything to do with fear of being labeled an eccentric.
Is reading not something that can be done well, as opposed to poorly? Is it not possible to read thoughtfully and carefully, and equally possible to read thoughtlessly and carelessly? (e.g. a student rushing through a novel to cram for an exam, vs someone who chooses to give his full attention to the novel out of genuine interest?)
Adorno was literally paid to read, so ceteris paribus, we'd expect him to be better at it than average, if for no other reason than that he had lots of time to practice.
Do you think that it's possible to lead a meaningful and holistic life, as opposed to one that is not? Maybe it's possible, but not particularly valuable either way, and thus not something to be aspired to? Or do you think that it's both possible and something that is proper to aspire to, but you just have specific issues with Adorno's presentation?
Is "nerd" meant to be a term of self-deprecation here? Do you think that the hobbies you spend your time on are meaningful, or no? (Not that I think that this is the sort of question that could be reduced to a binary choice; but we have to start somewhere.) If you don't think they're meaningful, then that raises the question of why you would persist in doing something that you think is meaningless.
I apologize for the rapid succession of questions, but I want to understand how much of your criticism stems from a disagreement over the object-level points of contention, and how much of it stems from a personal grievance against Adorno.
I only knew adorno by reputation, which in my circles wasn’t great. Now having read these few pages of primary source, I feel I understand him much better, and despise him far more. He’s a bitter, spiteful man, utterly devoid of what one might call, generosity of spirit. Just this morning I was reading about postmodern art, and I came upon one of his quotes “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.“ – That fucking scold, I thought. People have never needed poetry, and art in general, as much as after Auschwitz. Adorno’s chief purpose in life seems to nag and make others miserable.
But you’re right of course, all that is a little ad-hominem-y. Let’s get to what he says, as opposed to the how and why.
Sure, that can happen. But he implied that those who read 'as a hobby' , ie most people, always read carelessly, while he never reads carelessly. That is an unproven, absolute and pointless claim of superiority. It would be like claiming he’s a very good driver, therefore he should never be fined for speeding. While trying to erase the conceptual regime that discriminates between work and not-work, he invents new conceptual distinctions (his reading versus normal people reading) which make far less sense.
Holistic is a bullshit term, as in holistic medicine, holistic science, holistic nutrition, holistic shower gel. I believe people’s lives are meaningful already.
Sure. Take this place. On a very modest level, I think exchanging ideas is potentially helping the world. Even in my most cynical moments, when I think it has no "redeeming social value" and is just for fun, I find that meaningful, too.
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