Resenhas - It's Been a Good Life

Moitta 16/10/2014


"How did you learn all this, Isaac?"
"From you, Pappa," I said.
"From me? I don't know any of this."
"You didn't have to, Pappa," I said. "You valued learning and you taught me to value it. Once I learned to value it, the rest came without trouble."

As a matter of fact, I still write my fiction in that manner-making it up as I go along-with one all-important improvement. I have learned that there's no use in making things up as you go along if you have no clearly defined resolution to your story

All of that, however, is probably simple rationalization designed to resign me to things as they are.

The horizons in science fiction were limitless, and the excitement of outer space, of time travel, of the far future seemed a continually unsurpassable delight. It was the pleasure of magic combined with the discipline of science. It was just enough of a slipping of bonds to give freedom, and not enough to seem folly and anarchy.

"If my eyes do not disqualify me, sirs, then I don't think that there is anything in my intelligence or in my educational background that could possibly disqualify me. However, as I am certain you all know, it takes far more than intelligence and education to make a good officer. It takes initiative, courage, and a stability of character, which, to my regret. I don't think I possess. It is embarrassing to have to admit it, but if I lied on the subject in order to become an officer, the army would discover the lie quickly enough."
They didn't ask me anything more, and I was relieved. I didn't want to be an officer under any conditions and that in itself was a character trait that disqualified me, so that my statement was true enough. I had phrased it in such a way, however, as to leave them flattered to ecstasy.

In fact, could I even double the rate at which I earned money if I spent full time at the typewriter? It wasn't writing time that was the bottleneck. You might remain at a typewriter hour after hour after hour, and yet produce very little. What one needs is thinking time, and that can't be rushed. You have to think up your plots and your complications and your resolutions, so that most of your time is going to be spent thinking and not typing.


I did not actually ask for advice since I have always had a reluctance to load anyone else with responsibility for my decisions,

To me it seems to be important to believe people to be good even if they tend to be bad, because your own joy and happiness in life is increased that way, and the pleasures of the belief outweigh the occasional disappointments. To be a cynic about people works just the other way around and makes you incapable of enjoying the good things.

The whole world seems to live under the banner: "Freedom is wonderful-but only for me."

it is a mistake to think that because a group has suffered extreme persecution that is a sign that they are virtuous and innocent. They might be, of course, but the persecution process is no proof of that. The persecution merely shows that the persecuted group is weak. Had they been strong, then, for all we know, they might have been the persecutors."

The point is not where the people started, but where they ended. Goneril and Regan grow more frozen in villainy steadily to the very end. Lear, however, CHANGES. That is the heartbreak and the glory of the play; that at the age of eighty, he is still capable of redemption through suffering. It is the only play I have ever read that makes it clear and understandable that suffering can be a good thing if through it you attain a new view of the universe and of yourself, EVEN IF ONLY FOR A FEW HOURS.

Knowledge is not only power; it is happiness, and being taught is the intellectual analog of being loved.

However, this feminist viewpoint breaks down in the case of true love. TRUE love can't be very common, it suddenly seems to me; particularly when combined with sensitivity, articulateness, and philosophic seeking after truth. Submergence of the woman is all right then, for the man submerges too and a greater unit DOES exist

But the capacity to be good, to make someone happy, is a creation of yourself; a very difficult thing to create; a very rewarding thing.

I refuse to consider myself to be anything more sharply defined than "human being," and I feel that aside from overpopulation the most intractable problem we face in trying to avoid the destruction of civilization and humanity is the diabolical habit of people dividing themselves into tiny groups, with each group extolling itself and denouncing its neighbors.

The same line of argument that takes individual credit for the real or imaginary achievement of an artificially defined group can be used to justify the subjection and humiliation of individuals for the real or imagined delinquencies of the same group.

It seems odd, or perhaps significant, that the Big Three are all technological optimists.

Since I have had a good life, I'll accept death as cheerfully as I can when it comes, although I would be glad to have that death painless. I would also be glad to have my survivors-relatives, friends, and readers-refrain from wasting their time and poisoning their lives in useless mourning and unhappiness. They should be happy instead, on my behalf, that my life has been so good.

Fighting to stay alive is fighting the inevitable. The good fight has its own values. That it must end in irrevocable defeat is irrelevant.

them-for to weep over what is gone is to have had something prove worth the weeping."

and death, he said it wasn't so terrible to get sick and old and to die if you've been part of life completing itself as a pattern. Even if you don't make it to old age, it's still worthwhile; there's still pleasure in that vision of being part of the pattern of life-especially a pattern expressed in creativity and shared in love.

The brotherhood of science is one of the few ideals that transcends national boundaries and points the way to possible safety amid the dangers that threaten us.

science can't ever explain everything and I can give you the reasons for that decision ... I believe that scientific knowledge has fractal properties, that no matter how much we learn, whatever is left, however small it may seem, is just as infinitely complex as the whole was to start with. That, I think, is the secret of the universe.

Uncertainty that comes from knowledge (knowing what you don't know) is different from uncertainty coming from ignorance.

My thesis, in case you've forgotten, is not doubt-for-doubt's-sake, but doubt as a necessary barrier which the valid can overcome and the nonvalid cannot.

Every single child born in this age should have a rough idea of what scientific method is, so that their thinking runs along-at least vaguely-lines similar to those used by scientists when confronted with hypotheses, new data, new questions, etc. Not that scientists aren't prey to emotionalism and other forms of distorted thinking, but at least they have the tools of thinking which they can use if they are not too anxious and frightened. My cousin doesn't have these tools and there is no use arguing with him, because he has no adequate means of appraising your reasoning or his own.J

I sometimes think my articles are a vast scheme of self-education. It works, too. There is nothing like writing an article on a subject for forcing yourself to think that subject through clearly.

Franklin quite well realized that the search for knowledge (of the universe by scientists, of man's senses and emotions by writers and artists, of man's ethics and behavior by psychologists, philosophers, and-ugh-theologians) was mankind's highest purpose in life and was what made man man and not merely another animal. Most of all he realized, and made the American government realize, that it stood even higher than purely national interest.

We're living in a time when science has made "purely national interest" completely obsolete, only not enough of us realize it.

It is my theory that the type of mind which is today drawn to science, which in ancient tines was drawn to philosophy, in medieval times to theology-is not only the best mind but the goodest mind. (Which, of course, does not mean that there are not rats in the ranks of science.)

In other words, in order for arrangement, order, interrelationship, and all such abstractions to have meaning, there must be order and arrangement of certain material objects. And you will never truly understand order and arrangement until you know what it is you are ordering and arranging.

The study of life will remain fuzzy and mystical until we know exactly what the fundamental basis of life is.

But every-time we found out a little more about what was being organized, we found out a great deal more about the organization.

if at times we veer apart in the comparative stress we lay upon Heart and Mind, I know we will find our way back to the common battle of Good (of Heart and Mind) against the Evil (of Indifference and Ignorance).