In an effort to educate myself, I am reading The Oxford Book of Essays, chosen and edited by John Gross. [copies for sale here] There’s 142 of the blighters, so it will take me all year. To make this “stick” I am going to blog each essay.
This essay is online (mostly – not the version in my book)
Who was the author:
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (22 September 1694 – 24 March 1773) was a British politician, diplomat and writer.
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield – Wikipedia
What happened the year they were born (and the C02 ppm): 1694
The Big Events they were alive for: Seven years war. Er…
What happened in the year they died (and the C02 ppm): 1773
My awareness of/appreciation of this author (if any): Basically zero, which is a crime
What’s the essay?
The essay is called “Upon Affectation.” It’s 4 pages long. For me, the key take-aways were that there are many ways to be an asshole and a man’s gotta know his limitations.
Best line(s)
Most people complain of fortune, few of nature; and the kinder they think the latter has been to them, the more they murmur at what they call the injustice of the former.
I make no doubt but that there are potentially, if I may use that pedantic word, many Bacons, Lockes, Newtons, Caesars, Cromwells, and Marlboroughs, at the plough-tail, behind counters, and, perhaps, even among the nobility; but the soil must be cultivated, and the seasons favourable, for the fruit to have all its spirit and flavour.
- Vygotsky and scaffolding…
The blockhead who affects wisdom, because nature has given him dullness, becomes ridiculous only by his adopted character; whereas he might have stagnated unobserved in his native mud, or perhaps have engrossed deeds, collected shells, and studied heraldry, or logic, with some success.
The pardonable affectations of her youth and beauty unpardonably continue, increase even with her years, and are doubly exerted in hopes of concealing the number. All the gaudy glittery parts of dress, which rather degraded than adorned her beauty in its bloom, now expose to the highest and justest ridicule her shrivelled or her overgrown carcass. She toters or sweats under the load of her jewels, embroideries, and brocades, which, like so many Egyptian hieroglyphics, serve only to authenticate the venerable antiquity of her august mummy.
“Self-love, kept within due bounds, is a natural and useful sentiment. It is, in truth, social love too, as Mr. Pope has very justly observed: it is the spring of many good actions, and of no ridiculous ones. But self-flattery is only the ape or caricature of self-love, and resembles it no more than to heighten the ridicule.”
Ego is not a dirty word
“But self-flattery is only the ape or caricature of self-love, and resembles it no more than to heighten the ridicule. Like other flattery, it is the most profusely bestowed and greedily swallowed where it is the least deserved.”
Jupiter, to wipe off this aspersion, declared another lottery, for mortals singly and exclusively of the gods. The prize was FOLLY. They got it, and shared it among themselves. All were satisfied. The loss of WISDOM was neither regretted nor remembered; FOLLY supplied its place, and those who had the largest share of it, thought themselves the wisest.
Dunning Kruger, innit?
Stuff I had to look up
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Stuff worth thinking about.
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Stuff to look up
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Connects to (watch this space – if there are later essays that resonate with this one, I’ll come back and add a link to the post for that essay).
marchudson.net 
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