Xanthippa's Chamberpot

One Response to “Paul Graham: essays”

1. Derek Says:
   November 30, 2009 at 22:43

   Ironically, I just read many of Graham’s essays recently. 90% of them are about computers, but his essays about his views of life totally worth reading. Here is a list of which ones I recommend others to read, with the first two being my favorites:

   Why Nerds Are Unpopular
   What You’ll Wish You Had Known
   Good And Bad Procrastination
   Lies We Tell Our Kids
   How To And Not To Disagree
   Two Types Of Judgment

   For those who don’t know where to find them, just google “Paul Graham Essays”.

   Xanthippa says:
   I linked the essays in the post itself, but, just to be sure, I have added the link to the ‘websites’ in my blogroll.

   The ‘Lies We Tell Our Kids’ is such a powerful essay…. I, too, had been told lies and been made a fool of – simply for the amusement of the adults who thought my naivite was ‘cute’. When I figured out the truth about these particular lies (and, I had to ‘figure it out’ the hard way), all I learned was that my mother and grandparents could not be trusted to treat me with respect and care for my feelings. As I grew up a child of a political dissident, whom parents would not permit their kids to play with out of fear that it would diminish their chances of being accepted into high school, I already knew that I could not trust any person outside my immediate family circle. To learn that they would betray this trust, simply for their amusement, crushed me and I don’t think I have never ever fully recovered from this betrayal of trust….

   …and, I don’t think I am guilty of any of these lies to my own kids. If I thought something was beyond their level of understanding, I told them so: explaining that their brain and life-experience at this point meant they were not ready for this concept but, when they were, I would explain it as completely as they wished. Since I did this so very rarely (perhaps two or three times in each one’s life), they accepted this, knowing I will not lie to them or keep things from them. And, to the best of my knowledge, I have not abused this trust – or committed the multitude of ‘convenient lies’ that parents tell their kids. (Yes, I asked them about it – they confirm that, to the best of their knowledge, I have not lied or misled them on any topic they could think of.)

   Another one of the essays I would highly recommend is ‘Be Good’.

   Actually, when I ran my business, that was the underlying philosophy I went by, and it turned what could have been a very frustrating venture into a very rewarding one! Without disclosing the field I was in, I was the only woman-run company in this field in the world….yet, by trusting my customers’ word (even when I knew there was room for doubt), I earned a reputation for honesty and good-will which made most of my customers highly protective of me: competitors did not wish to attack me directly because doing so would have meant alienating a very vocal core of THEIR customers….

   Without this good-will, I, an outsider, would never have been able to break into the field. But, that is not why I did it- it was not a calculation on my part to hope to manipulate anyone into anything: I just figured out that if some people scammed me, that was the price of doing business and it should not cause me to treat my honest customers as if they were bad, until proven otherwise. To me, that seemed ‘common courtesy’….after all, without customers, where would a business be? So, treating them ALL as ‘cheats’ just because SOME of them were seemed disrespectful, if you know what I mean!

   I cannot understand why so many businesses – even whole industries – seem to think that treating their customers as thieves and criminals first and asking questions later is acceptable! It is a wrong mindset – and these industries are just powerful enough to subvert our laws to erode our freedoms: just because they presume the worst of their customers.

   They live in a very, very sad world – one I would rather not be forced into joining!

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