Little Herr Friedmann by Thomas Mann author of The Magic Mountain http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-magic-mountain-is-classic-that.html included on the list of The Greatest 100 books of All Time, along with The Buddenbrooks, Death in Venice, and other majestic stories 10 out of 10

 Little Herr Friedmann by Thomas Mann author of The Magic Mountain http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-magic-mountain-is-classic-that.html included on the list of The Greatest 100 books of All Time, along with The Buddenbrooks, Death in Venice, and other majestic stories

10 out of 10

 

 

The greatest works of art resist through the ages, even more, they enthuse, exhilarate audiences, albeit there is a trend in our times to dismiss, censor (Cancel Culture it is called) all that makes the cancelling board uncomfortable (they need safe spaces, in universities, speakers that make the public uneasy are rejected) and however sensible it is to  punish ghouls, it is ludicrous to apply the standards of the present to the distant past, it has been said that future generations will have a lot to censor, be disgusted about what we do today…take only the torture, killing of billions of animals that are abused for the pleasure of carnivore humans, a calamity that will surely be (it is already) deplored in the future.

 

The Little Herr Friedmann  http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/12/little-mr-friedmann-by-thomas-mann.html is not just very relevant today, it will remain so, for it explores the difference between the physical deformity (I hesitated and thought to find another word, but then what is politically correct now, as Johnson explained in The Economist, past standards are no longer acceptable, Deaf people would rather have the word Deaf, with  capital letter than anything else and there are others that change perspective, one was homeless, although I forgot what is the new name for that) and the spiritual ugliness (again, that is something to avoid, but one of the advantages of having few, if any reading your scribblings is that you are allowed a lot of [too much surely] freedom) that is on display so often

An example comes to mind, that of Putin, the butcher in the Kremlin, who is supposed to try and compensate for his shortness, with the aggressivity that has now reached a climax with the invasion of the Ukraine, this would be the Napoleon complex, which could be the opposite of the Harding Effect http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/05/blink-power-of-thinking-without.html explained and tested in Blink The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, the paramount magnum opus by Malcolm Gladwell…they deal with different consequences, The Harding Effect is about what people do when they see a tall individual…

 

Little Herr Friedmann is an Epicurean http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/04/learning-from-epicurus-of-samos-his.html for he enjoyed life, the physical aspect having little to do with his ability to savor art, appreciate good books, indeed, it is the mind, the spirit that matter, and albeit we should aim for Eudaimonia, Ataraxia, a balance between the wellbeing of the spirit and the mind, ‘healthy mind in a healthy body’, we may say that the spirit prevails, and the hero is the proof of that, at least up to the point where his appearance may hinder, or even destruct the confidence, the self- esteem that he had had…

 

The Myths of Happiness http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-myths-of-happiness-by-sonja.html are detailed in the book The Myths of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky, and we associate wealth, a pleasant physical appearance with wellbeing, but we have the example of Trump to deny that, this is a fellow that has had a fortune (inherited and squandered to great extent, he has also created numerous scams to cheat gullible folks, university, fake charity, the Organization that has been found guilty of misdemeanors, he is infamous for not paying contractors, or anybody as much as possible) became the most powerful human and still, he is the quintessential grumpy fellow, always moaning, he has been treated worse than Lincoln, he claims

Nathaniel Branden has written one of the Fifty Psychology Classics, The Six Pillars of Self Esteem http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/06/six-pillars-of-self-esteem-by-nathaniel.html and Little Herr Friedmann seems to offer a case study in this field, for he had been quite merry, felicitous as long as he had his self-esteem, an Epicurean, in this age, we have some wrong assumption, saying that the Stoics are those who abstain from everything, and the Epicureans indulge in excesses, which is not what the initial doctrines proposed, the Epicureans were quite decent and moderate, they did not suggest debauchery and addictions

 

The Stoics were also reasonable http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/04/epicurus-versus-epictetus.html perhaps the best argument is offered by one of the most prestigious Stoics, Seneca, one of the wealthiest men of antiquity (indeed, if we transform his riches into the currency of the present, he would still be a fortunate fellow today) he was not one to speak of wealth without knowing what it is, but at the same time, he was aware that material possessions do not make a man, woman or other superior, he said that we must ‘wish for what we already have’, only once we are lucky to have luxury, we must treat it with indifference

Thomas Mann has marked my adolescence http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/01/death-in-venice-by-thomas-mann.html one short story in particular has made me skeptical, at least in what concerns the Big words and pompous statements – in one of his tales, the protagonist speaks of the frequency with which we use the magical formulas ‘I love you so much, there are no words to express it’, the same for friendship, ‘which is so grand for mere words’, however, the character says that the words are too big

 

We find love, friends, only in art, literature, for when we test the feelings and relationships, we find that they are not only much smaller than stated, they no not even satisfy the minimum requirements for the definition – it is not just that ‘till death do us part’ does not work in reality, often the ‘proclaimed adoration’ does not even last the smallest test, and the friends are not there when required to just help with moving the furniture, or some other insignificant act…there is also an inflation in the use of love we love the color, the drink, the lamp and so much more that the word does not mean anything anymore, except liking, which in the age of Facebook aka Meta is also void of a serious sense…now for  a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world  – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

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