Great Silence
Question: Was Albert Einstein really the first person to say, “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity”? Did he say it at all? We expect every great man to be a veritable squirrel stash of koans and kernels, instinctively prefer Churchill’s wit to Washington’s eloquent silence.
J.L. Wall points out in an excellent post that both The Sopranos and Mad Men play on the contradiction between stoic ideals and a therapeutic culture. Tony Soprano’s ideal is Gary Cooper, “the strong, silent type.” Don Draper, meanwhile, is supposed to represent how such a type fares in our contemporary world. Anyone who holds it in ends up on the psychiatrist’s couch. For now, at least, I’m hoping that Mad Men’s writers let Don triumph without or in spite of the help of the therapists. Which I guess is my way of saying that silence still has its value, and that I hope Einstein didn’t say what Phil Davison says he did.
If there are any people who would actually be in need of professional help it would seem to be the mob boss and Don “complicated history” Draper. They have a bit more going on then just living up to a stoic ideal. Each is a persona created, at least, partially by movie and media images. If they have found those ideals inadequate for living their lives its more about the ideals not being grounded on real life and people. Men haven’t always been so caught up in the Stoic idea.
And another thought. Don might be able to deal with his life better if it hadn’t worked out so well for him for so long.Report
@greginak,
Agreed. The point of both shows is not only that those ideals are insufficient, but also that they’re *ideals*. They’re justifications or explanations for very different (non-stoic) modes of living in the world. What I think would be interesting, though, and heighten the conflict in Mad Men is if they give as much reality and grounding as possible to what is, admittedly, just another bit of clever self-invention.Report
When I teach the Cato interns about the use and citation of sources, I always warn them that famous people often didn’t say half the things attributed to them. There’s a long, long list of famous folks who end up dumping grounds for wit: the American Founders, Lincoln, Churchill, Voltaire, Einstein, Gandhi, Wilde, Victoria, and of course the granddaddy of them all, Confucius.
The problem with all of these people is that they have been very, very extensively studied. Every last known scrap of writing that survives from Voltaire has been indexed, and historians (whatever their other faults) usually know how to use an index. What’s true of Voltaire is mostly true of all the rest as well. If they wrote it, we probably know it, and if they didn’t write it, we can probably rule it out. But that doesn’t stop the fake quotes from flowing.
The American Founders are a particularly dangerous lot to cite unattributed. Much of what they supposedly said, especially on the subject of religion, is a pure fabrication. Most who cite them on the subject either don’t realize it or are deliberately perpetrating a pious fiction.Report
@Jason Kuznicki, I strongly disapprove of attributing statements to Voltaire that he never made, but I will fight to the death to defend your right to misquote him.Report
@Jason Kuznicki,
I recently read an article in which a quote from (Leonard Nimoy’s) Spock in the latest Star Trek film was attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. It was alarming, and delightful.Report
@Jason Kuznicki,
And then there’s the non-existent place where Martin Luther King, Jr. said that he opposed Affirmative Action.Report
I’m a real man, so I have nothing to say. (I am going to squint meaningfully.)Report
@Mike Schilling,
For the win.Report
After watching this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKFKGrmsBDk
the first thing to go through my mind was “I’m pretty sure Aristotle never wrote that line about tolerance being the last virtue of a dying society.” Also, you know, I’m not convinced the guy’s up on his Thomas Paine either.Report
@Rufus, I’m at the point where i pretty much assume most quotes by any of the founding father are untrue until proven otherwise. Especially quotes that aren’t written in language from the late 1700’s.Report
@gregiank, I believe that it was Shakespeare who said “Life consists of naught but wenches and currency”.Report
@Jaybird, but it was Thomas Jefferson who said “eat my shorts dude” referring, of course, to the proper rate of taxation 200 years after his death.Report
@gregiank, that was the “Pimp my Ride” speech.Report
@Jaybird, Good ol TJ was a bit shy about his pimping i thought. He didn’t give many shout outs to his prime bitchz like sally hemmings.Report
@Rufus, Wasn’t Paine a deist?Report
@dexter45, Yeah, I’m pretty sure he was. I think he also argued that America was multicultural (arguing against a supposed British-American monoculture) in Common Sense. So there are plenty of issues with that video. The costume is cool. There must be colonial costume rental places that are loving the Tea Party.Report