The
Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-importance-of-being-earnest-by.html
9 out of 10
Oscar Wilde
was a flamboyant, brilliant, amusing, inspired and for at least part of his
life an unhappy, unfortunate intellectual, albeit an example comes to mind,
mentioned in the ravishing The Science of Happiness – How Our Brains Make Us
Happy and What We Can Do To Get Happier http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-science-of-happiness-how-our-brains.html by Stefan Klein- involving Rosa
Luxembourg
As far as I
can remember – or imagine I do – Rosa Luxembourg wrote some letters, or maybe
in her diary, about the joy, bliss she felt, how the flowers were wonderful,
the sun shining or words to that effect, expressing felicity, but she was writing
that in…prison and the message is that we can be happy, even in the most
adverse of circumstances, and indeed, one of the lessons of happiness is “Happiness
Activity No 6: Developing Strategies for Coping-practicing ways to endure or
surmount hardship or trauma”
We find
this in the fundamental, inspirational, life-changing The How of Happiness http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-how-of-happiness-by-sonja.html by Sonja Lyubomirsky and surely,
Oscar Wilde knew something about that, having to cope with trauma, because he
was alas born in an age when homosexuality was not just frowned upon, it was
punished with jail and the playwright was imprisoned.
‘Ignorance
is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone…The whole
theory of modern education is radically unsound…Fortunately in England, at any
rate, education produces no effect whatsoever…If it did, it would prove a
serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in
Grosvenor Square…’ in other words, Oscar Wilde was not just writing excellent
comedy, he was also serious
The comedy
also looks at falsity, the need to keep appearances, the flimsy snobs that
would only have their offspring marry money and status – Lady Bracknell tells Gwendolyn
that the young woman will be ‘informed’ when she is to marry, Jack Worthing
could not marry just like that, he has to have a fortune, an important
position, and with that lacking, there is no way that any marital plans could
come to fruition…
One of the
most influential books now is Capital in the Twenty first Century by Thomas
Pickerty, and a documentary on that explains that the literature of Jane Austen
http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/11/emma-by-jane-austen-10-out-of-10.html and so much else does not reflect
reality, in that a man from the aristocracy would never (well, perhaps there
was a one in a million chance of that happening) cross paths with a woman from
a lower class, or vice versa, never mind have them marry…
Oscar Wilde
was evidently preoccupied with the veracity of appearances, the continuous
lying that took place in society – indeed, it is of great concern today, as ‘fake
news’, have invaded the internet, and you have billions of people immersed in
conspiracy theories, voting for gruesome ‘leaders’, because they buy into their
narratives, from Putin to Trump, Lula or Bolsanaro, Modi, Maduro, MBS, Xi, the
list is long
The writer
had to hide his sexuality, albeit he was such a dazzling character that he gambled
at one point, and lost badly in court, one of a series of bright minds that had
to suffer because of their gender – Alan Turing comes to mind as another outstanding
example, but we also have Marcel Proust, Somerset Maugham and so many others – now
we find from a book like the Co-Winner of the 2019 Booker Prize Girl, Woman,
Other http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/06/girl-woman-other-by-bernardine-evaristo.html - by Bernardine Evaristo that
‘gender fluidity’ is the thing and gender a great lie of civilization
Both John
Worthing and Algernon (which is the name of the company where I am a junior
partner by the way, buy with abandon from us) Moncrieff lie, the former to get
away to the countryside, and the latter to travel to the city, but Algernon is
unsure of his origin, and because of this ambiguous state (which would surely
have a connection with Oscar Wilde, in that he has had to act as a
heterosexual, to seem to obey the law, while he was actually a ‘sex offender’
for the times) he could not marry the woman he wanted
Other works
of Oscar Wilde have impressed this reader, one would obviously be The Picture
of Dorian Gray http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-picture-of-dorian-gray-by-oscar.html a dark, horror story, a meditation
on age, art, the dedication of the artist, the way we can rejuvenate ourselves
through Flow, by plunging into activities that absorb us, that we do because we
love it, that get all our attention, for which we have clear goals, that offer
constant, immediate feedback, where challenges meet skills
You find
the whole strategy in Flow http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/10/flow-by-mihaly-csikszentmihalyi-this-is.html a classic of psychology by the
co-founder of the new science, Positive Psychology, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
who has studied what brings people to The Zone, Peak Experience, and found that
it is challenging, autotelic, testing experiences, where nothing else matters
and time is changing, just like Einstein has explained ‘Put your hand on a hot
stove for a minute and it seems like an hour…Sit with a pretty girl for an
hour, and it seems like a minute…’- a book that can bring an epiphany…
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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