[HN Gopher] Goethe's "Sorcerer's Apprentice" - power over wisdom
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Goethe's "Sorcerer's Apprentice" - power over wisdom
Author : andsoitis
Score : 83 points
Date : 2025-01-26 17:49 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (wilderutopia.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (wilderutopia.com)
| maxweylandt wrote:
| It's a good poem. I learned the original off by heart two months
| ago to recite it to my sleep-averse child as part of their
| bedtime routine. It definitely benefits from recitation, which
| really unearths the lovely wavelike rythms.
|
| (edit: this translation does a good job of matching the syllable
| count, almost perfectly. It does mean it strains a bit in places.
| But compromises always have to be made!)
| cainxinth wrote:
| The rate of technological change is accelerating because
| technology begets technology. Meanwhile, the rate of growth in
| wisdom is linear at best (and occasionally stagnant or in
| retreat). Frankly, it doesn't bode all that well.
| pavlov wrote:
| Mankind seems to forget every lesson after two generations.
|
| Holocaust survivors are still with us, but the kind of
| nationalism that put them through that ordeal is on the rise
| again and is gaining popularity with teenagers.
|
| Technology could help, but right now it seems to be working the
| other way.
| retrac wrote:
| > Technology could help, but right now it seems to be working
| the other way.
|
| If history does teach us anything, the moral ambiguity of
| technological progress is surely one of the lessons of the
| 20th century. I think it might be one of those lessons we're
| forgetting again after a couple generations!
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| It may be because there are rarely such simplistic rule-based
| lessons. To your example, nationalism could be a great
| emancipatory force in one century and an instrument of great
| suffering in another. If there is some takeaway, then it must
| be more subtle than "nationalism=evil".
| pavlov wrote:
| You'll notice that I qualified it with "the kind of
| nationalism that..."
|
| I don't have a problem with the kind of nationalism that
| gave European minority languages pride in their own culture
| and literature in the 19th century, for example.
|
| I do have a problem with the kind of nationalism
| exemplified by lots of 20th century European leaders from
| Kaiser Wilhelm II to Milosevic.
|
| The latter kind is sadly on the rise again. And the former
| isn't endemic to nationalism. Everyone can have pride in
| their identity, it doesn't need a state apparatus.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| Wisdom doesn't need to grow, it is eternal. It needs to be
| learned and accessed.
|
| Key to understanding is to work to understand rather than
| redefine these concepts in the light of the same modernity that
| gave us domineering technological prowess at all costs.
| meristohm wrote:
| Yeah, feels like we've largely lost touch with the Wisdom of
| a reciprocal existence within this ecosystem, the "Garden of
| Eden" through a Christian lens, or the way the Haudenosaunee
| Confederacy lived pre-Columbus.
| twojacobtwo wrote:
| > Wisdom doesn't need to grow
|
| This seems to imply that we've gained all the wisdom there is
| to gain. Do you believe that's true?
| pithanyChan wrote:
| Top down & middle-out disruption of information flow impedes
| acceleration of wisdom.
|
| Ponzis and lesser people* at work.
|
| *those who can't score without harmful sabotage
|
| Sparring, cumulative competition, is a thing that drives the
| evolution of all parties and has the potential to rebalance the
| scales over and over again, but consumer culture and portfolio
| capitalism failed to capitalize on that and monetized the
| opposite instead: envy and sabotage.
|
| Some people were too afraid of natural human convection and
| ruined the game. It still works, of course, but
|
| > it doesn't bode all that well.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Oh god this poem. It's like generational trauma in German
| speaking countries. At some point during junior high every
| student is tasked with learning to recite it by heart. Of course
| it's not too hard, but there are a million things a thirteen year
| old kid would rather do.
| inanutshellus wrote:
| My high school's version of this was the Middle English version
| of Canterbury Tale's prologue. We'd then have to recite the
| first stanza or two in front of the class, one at a time.
|
| https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43926/the-canterbury-...
| ta2112 wrote:
| Dukas should get a mention alongside Disney. Paul Dukes wrote the
| symphonic poem L'Apprenti Sorcier (1897) based on Goethe's poem,
| which was later animated by Disney for the film Fantasia.
| GnarfGnarf wrote:
| This is about the root of humanity's problem: the inability to
| avoid misusing knowledge and technology. All our inventions are
| but improved means to an unimproved end (Thoreau)
| _glass wrote:
| I started my PhD thesis with the poem. Because I love the tech
| angle.
| neom wrote:
| funny this is here, two Sundays ago I was sitting looking out the
| window just letting my mind wander when I thought "genesis isn't
| being interpreted correctly". I went for to church for a couple
| of years as a kid but I can't say I know much of religion, I put
| the thought aside and carried on my day. Later I thought again "I
| wonder why I was thinking about Genesis being incorrectly
| discussed, what does genesis even say?". Again I put the thought
| aside but a few hours later found myself researching genesis...
| and then the bible, vedicism, laozi, thoth, gnosis, and then and
| then and then...all the extra hours till a couple of days ago I
| spent researching and reading. Along the way I ended up producing
| 3 documents, this was the first of the 3:
| https://s.h4x.club/JruQOrjy (it's a bit weird, and not really
| sure why it came out)
|
| According to my friends who i've shared the above with because I
| felt like I was going a little...nuts...I'm "at that period of my
| life where these type of things are going to happen" -\\_(tsu)_/-
| bloomingkales wrote:
| Do you get scared when you find yourself believing? Because I
| was never spiritual like this either until somewhat later in
| life.
|
| There's a real element of "holy shit I believe in God". I never
| thought I would.
|
| It is very new for me to accept that we were probably always
| here, and probably always be, in various forms.
| neom wrote:
| Well a) I don't know where it came from and b) it was quite a
| lot of work, I really did hours and hours and hours of
| reading and research very quickly. So scared isn't quite
| right, also because I guess I don't know what I "believe" yet
| as there are so many layers. I've spent a lot of the time in
| the last few days focusing on 15 or so events throughout
| history, unbound to time or geography, beating any form of
| truly spiritual path out of us and at every single step it
| seems to be deeply analytical thought relegating spiritual
| exploration not even to a couple of classes a week in high
| school but to "fun stories and myths" - I'm sure I've
| discussed this intellectually somehow over the years but only
| very recently did it become a part of me. The second document
| I wrote was basically focusing on compounding societal,
| natural and spiritual crisis all coalescing at some point in
| the fairly near future. The 3rd thing I produced is this
| kinda intense, long, very technical outline of everything I'd
| learned in the form of a "podcast from AI" heh:
| https://s.h4x.club/X6uGEpRG
| bloomingkales wrote:
| I'm going through something like this too with zero
| religious background. Lately I'm of the belief that if you
| take a look at your life, you'll see that most of it wasn't
| really a coincidence. Tough thing to share but it's my
| overall underlying feeling.
|
| Not me:
|
| https://medium.com/machine-cognition/objective-reality-
| doesn...
| neom wrote:
| In the first pdf I linked the part I keep coming back to
| is
|
| "Our relentless quest for knowledge drives us ever
| outward, probing the endless void of space and the
| puzzling emptiness of quantum realms, finding nothing but
| more questions, more mysteries, more void. Digging into
| dead rocks in space, landing on Mars, with each step
| further from Earth - our garden, where we need to be -
| the light of that original truth grows dimmer. We risk
| becoming cosmic wanderers who have forgotten why we began
| searching in the first place, so far from home that the
| very memory of simple being has faded to ash."
|
| When you think about the universe, ever expanding,
| infinitely complex, probably devoid of observable life
| yet ever in observance, it really is built like an
| amazing game of "once we introduce 'the arrogance of why
| VS the awestruck wonder' bet you there is 0% chance they
| can collectively merge with nature at large no matter how
| much we warn them" - I wonder how much we are missing out
| on.
| computerthings wrote:
| The poem "Blight" by Ralph Waldo Emerson comes to mind,
| too: https://emersoncentral.com/texts/poems/blight/
| neom wrote:
| "And night and day, ocean and continent, Fire, plant, and
| mineral say, Not in us, And haughtily return us stare for
| stare. For we invade them impiously for gain, We
| devastate them unreligiously, And coldly ask their
| pottage, not their love, Therefore they shove us from
| them, yield to us Only what to our griping toil is due;
| But the sweet affluence of love and song, The rich
| results of the divine consents Of man and earth, of world
| beloved and lover, The nectar and ambrosia are withheld;"
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| Quite interesting. After being raised fundamentalist /
| evangelical and quite strongly so, in my late 40s I had a
| "holy shit, I NO LONGER believe in God" moment.. That was
| quite a thing, and I never thought I would think that way..
| It was quite some time to get there, and not one specific
| thing that triggered it, just a general acceptance of the
| randomness and meaninglessness of life..
| bloomingkales wrote:
| Opposite. I had a militant level of anti god, and believed
| that it was all random. Something was given to me where I
| don't accept it anymore.
|
| Do you believe in the universe? There could be a balancing
| act here lol. But each their own, we both understand each
| others side at least (which should be the case, we've lived
| as opposites and then opposites again, more or less living
| the same spiritual life in some sense).
|
| I don't know, you sure you don't believe in it?
|
| You ever wonder why there's always one democrat for one
| republican? How is everything so 50/50 and balanced?
|
| :shrugs:
| glial wrote:
| I really loved your essay! It reminds me of the discuss in
| Genesis of Call Me Ishmael. Thanks for sharing...and I'd love
| to know if you post the other 2.
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