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Kindness

2016-02-16 · letter vlog · John · 3:11 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Personal life (also: Books & writing) · mode: Personal essay · tags: heavy topic

From a beach vacation John recommends Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and, through two of its lines, thanks Hank for his positive obsession and consoles him that Lemon is dying, arguing that kindness eases change and can undo the world's zero-sum arithmetic.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — The Parable of the Sower: what great books do to John, what the novel is about, its poems about God as change

  • ★ John is on a beach vacation that has been completely consumed by The Parable of the Sower. — 00:00:00
  • ★★★ John calls Octavia Butler's The Parable of the Sower the best book he has read in years. (hedged) — 00:00:05
  • ★★ John says that now and then a book feels like a spell letting him escape the prison of himself, with magical access to worlds outside him, a tremendous consolation. — 00:00:10
  • ★★ When such a book ends, John feels the mysterium tremendum of having seen and been seen, and a sadness, maybe at never reading it fresh again or waiting for another. (hedged) — 00:00:34
  • ★★ John thinks Hank would love this particular book, though the books that floor John don't always floor Hank. (hedged) — 00:00:46 · Hank Green
  • ★★ John says the novel is hard to summarize: a coming-of-age story, a dystopia about the collapse of the United States, about race, class, gender and wealth, and how religions form. — 00:00:53
  • ★ John says The Parable of the Sower is more than 20 years old. — 00:01:03
  • ★★ John finds the novel terrifyingly contemporary. — 00:01:03
  • ★★ The narrator writes short poems about God, whom she defines as change; John usually dislikes the device, but Butler writes so beautifully it succeeds. — 00:01:16

  • ★★ John offers one of the narrator's short poems as magnificent: to rise from its ashes, a phoenix first must burn. — 00:01:21

    “In order to rise from its own ashes, a phoenix first must burn.”

00:01:28 — 'Without positive obsession, there is nothing at all': Hank's unironic enthusiasm versus John's teenage ironic distance

  • ★★ Like The Great Gatsby, the novel opens with a fictional epigraph, which ends: without positive obsession, there is nothing at all. — 00:01:29
  • ★★★ John says one of his favorite things about Hank is his positive obsession, his nerdiness: unironic enthusiasm, and never tearing down without building up. — 00:01:37 · Hank Green
  • ★★ In high school John felt he had to create ironic distance from the world to survive, dismissing bands and authors Hank liked. — 00:01:50
  • ★★★ John thanks Hank for encouraging him to let go of that irony and for being, throughout his adult life, a model of positive obsession, even a guiding star at times. (hedged) — 00:02:05 · Hank Green

00:02:14 — 'Kindness eases change': Lemon is dying, kindness in the comments, kindness against zero-sum thinking; sign-off

  • ★★ As the narrator's life falls apart she writes that kindness eases change. — 00:02:14

    “Kindness eases change.”

  • ★★★ John tells Hank he is really sorry that Lemon is dying: just a dog, but a great dog. — 00:02:19 · Hank Green

  • ★★ John says he saw many people in the comments of Hank's Friday video whose kindness is easing this awful change. — 00:02:24
  • ★★ Lemon was a racing greyhound, often not the best dog life, but after retiring she came into Hank's life, and each made the other's life better. — 00:02:31 · Hank Green
  • ★★★ We often imagine the world as zero-sum, but John believes kindness can change that arithmetic, citing the love Lemon's life brought to Hank and many others. — 00:02:40
  • ★★★ The internet can be a hard place to find kindness, but John believes it is worth fighting for: it makes the world bigger and eases life's inevitable changes. — 00:02:54
  • ★ John thanks Nerdfighters for their kindness. — 00:03:05 · Nerdfighteria

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: kindness · Lemon · Parable of the Sower

Also: Dystopia · greyhound racing · Internet · irony · mysterium tremendum · nerd · The Great Gatsby · zero-sum game

Only in the description or credits: Octavia E. Butler

Also centred on kindness: The New Zealand Five Cent Coin · The years start coming and they don't stop coming!

Also centred on Lemon: Peeing, Pooping, Prescription Drugs, and Ramen Noodle Fires · World's Stupidest Dog · Thanks, Lemon

Also centred on Parable of the Sower: The Best Books Get Better

Replies to

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