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On Loving One Another or Dying

2008-11-06 · John, Hank · watch on YouTube · US politics & society · reflection essay

After a Louisville stop where Hank sang his Paper Towns song, John argues that, as Paper Towns' characters see only funhouse-mirror reflections of Margo, political discourse, even among Nerdfighters, fails because people do not imagine others complexly: opponents are not evil but complicated people.

What is said

00:00:00 — Clip of Hank singing his Paper Towns song in Louisville; the song is on the Paper Towns secret collaboration album; John tries to outlast Hank's long note

  • ★★ John opens with 20 seconds of Hank singing in front of many Nerdfighters in Louisville, a song only available on the Paper Towns secret collaboration album. — 00:00:00 · Nerdfighteria
  • ★★ John says it is fun when he makes something up and someone else makes something up about the thing he made up. — 00:00:00 · Paper Towns
  • ★★ John, who says he can't sing on key, sometimes sings along to Hank's drawn-out 'Vaseline' note to try to outlast him; he had consistently failed until that night. (playful) — 00:00:00

00:00:58 — John finally outlasts Hank; reads from Paper Towns; the problem with finding Margo is that the characters do not see her

  • ★★ Afterwards John read from the part of Paper Towns that inspired the song and ranted about the importance of imagining the other with more complexity. — 00:00:58 · Paper Towns
  • ★★★ John says the problem with finding Margo, for Q and the other characters, is not the mystery: they don't see Margo, only a funhouse-mirror reflection of themselves. — 00:00:58 · Margo Roth Spiegelman, Paper Towns, perspective-taking

00:01:38 — Funhouse-mirror Margo; Spiegelman means mirror maker; Nerdfighter political discourse plummets into name-calling

  • ★★ John says Spiegelman is a German word meaning 'mirror maker', the man in a German village who made the mirrors. — 00:01:38 · Margo Roth Spiegelman
  • ★★ John calls the Nerdfighter community one of the most thoughtful and respectful communities he has ever been privileged to be part of. — 00:01:38 · Nerdfighteria
  • ★★★ But in political discourse, John says, the quality of Nerdfighter conversation plummets on all sides into name-calling and oversimplification. — 00:01:38 · Nerdfighteria

00:02:24 — Failure to imagine others; opponents are not evil but complicated; Auden: we must love one another or die

  • ★★★ John believes this results from not doing a good job of imagining what it's like to be other people. — 00:02:24 · perspective-taking
  • ★★★ John says people who disagree with you are not evil, do not want to destroy America, and are neither terrorists nor fascists, but complicated people who contain multitudes. — 00:02:24 · United States
  • ★★★ John closes the argument with W. H. Auden's line that we must love one another or die. — 00:02:24 > «we must love one another or die»

00:02:54 — John's sign-off to Hank; on the road John introduces the Cows game with Katherine

  • ★★ On the road, John says Katherine (Hank's wife) travels with them and they play a cow-spotting game called Cows; she has dominated him, but he went up seven to nothing while the other two slept. (playful) — 00:02:54 · Katherine Green

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