Mistaken for a very beautiful guy, of course.Are you pouting
Im usually mistaken for a guy
... I have known about this label for some time, and have even used it myself. However I was not really all that clear about what it actually entailed until I recently read `The Diary of a Superflous Man` by Ivan Turgenev (1850). This is the very novella that introduced the term to the world and was responsible for making the idea fashionable among Russian novelists at that time. It explains what `superfluous man `means quite clearly. On page 10 of the Alma Classics version (published 2019) we come across this:
As for me -that's all you can say about me: I'm superfluous - that's the top and bottom of it. Surplus to requirments - no more, no less. Nature did not count on my putting in an appearance, and as a result has always treated me as an unexpected and uninvited guest.
...
Hmm....aren't most of us 'superfluous' for the most part..? I would guess that if 'most of us' hadn't been born the world would not be that different. Is that what we take away from this..? ...
EnolaGaia
I agree that no one is completely superfluous.
And I believe in prayer, so I believe I can help make spiritual effects.
Yet there is also the feeling that the daily commute, the daily slog at the desk.....what of my individuality do I contribute to this?
If I left my job tommorow then it would be very easy for someone else to do it.
In terms of the arts, I have done things in my past which have in a small way contributed to other people who have made noticeable contributions to the artistic life of the UK....yet right now, what I do in life, makes me feel very non-individualistic...very much a cog in someone else's machine.
but without that cog where does it leave them?EnolaGaia
I agree that no one is completely superfluous.
And I believe in prayer, so I believe I can help make spiritual effects.
Yet there is also the feeling that the daily commute, the daily slog at the desk.....what of my individuality do I contribute to this?
If I left my job tommorow then it would be very easy for someone else to do it.
In terms of the arts, I have done things in my past which have in a small way contributed to other people who have made noticeable contributions to the artistic life of the UK....yet right now, what I do in life, makes me feel very non-individualistic...very much a cog in someone else's machine
EnolaGaia
I agree that no one is completely superfluous. ...
Yet there is also the feeling that the daily commute, the daily slog at the desk.....what of my individuality do I contribute to this?
If I left my job tommorow then it would be very easy for someone else to do it. ...
...yet right now, what I do in life, makes me feel very non-individualistic...very much a cog in someone else's machine.
I would say that framing the issue with respect to being superfluous automatically means one should ask, "Superfluous to what? To whom?"
There's no such thing as being universally or unilaterally superfluous. If you don't specify the context, you can't make the attribution.
When we consider superfluity, we must also question the whole issue of its opposite, which is usefulness. I am with Lao Tze on this one. Is there anything quite so terrible as being useful? ...
... People are always in a rush for the dubious honor of being famous or of use to other people, despite the fact that such a life often sees them destroyed. So I ask you, what would the sage make of the Kardashian-Wests and Trumps of this world? We all work so very hard to build our own punishment.
Or are you an NPC in your own life?The idea of `the superfluous man` can be found in a lot of Russian literature - and many of the central character of Russian stories from the Nineteenth Century are described as being `superfluous men` (perhaps the best known being Eugene Onegin, the hero of Pushkin's verse, which was also turned into an opera by Tchiakovsky).
I have known about this label for some time, and have even used it myself. However I was not really all that clear about what it actually entailed until I recently read `The Diary of a Superflous Man` by Ivan Turgenev (1850). This is the very novella that introduced the term to the world and was responsible for making the idea fashionable among Russian novelists at that time. It explains what `superfluous man `means quite clearly. On page 10 of the Alma Classics version (published 2019) we come across this:
As for me -that's all you can say about me: I'm superfluous - that's the top and bottom of it. Surplus to requirments - no more, no less. Nature did not count on my putting in an appearance, and as a result has always treated me as an unexpected and uninvited guest.
It continues like that in the same vein for some time (gowoutandbuyitwhydontcha!) Now be honest with yourself. Does that resonate with you at all? If you're anything like me it does.
When I first read it I was instantly reminded of a remark a friend - who was into reincarnation and such like (but not Russian literature) -once made about me many years ago. He said:
`It's as though you're somehow not meant to be here`.
So as superfluous people - I suppose in this day and age women can be superfluous too - we are never likely to lead the charge of any brigade. Never likely to be the male/female lead of a romantic epic. Never likely to be the much loved family guy.... (Or when we try these things we get a slap in the face. Thus Turgenev's anti-hero from the above mentioned story challenges his rival in love to a duel. His rival agrees and our superfluous man only succeeds in slightly wounding his rival - who then calls the duel off as a show of magnanimity. The result: his rival comes out of it looking brave and kind and our superfluous man is shuinned by polite society).
But there are some upsides:
*We are inoccent bystanders who get to observe, and even partake in things, without ever really being held accountable for them.
* We survive things that would fell other people (It's as though, because we are already superfluous `nature` doesn't feel a need to be rid of us).
* We get to be like characters in Nineteenth Century Russian novels and can be `brooding` and `tortured` and `mysterious` in a way that non-superfluous people would pay good money for.
Just thinking aloud.
But people are infinitely replaceable.
Someone can always do your job.
I was trying to make you feel good, but you kinda ruined it with logic ya gitShady,
To take the cog analogy a bit further. Imagine a series production of gears for some everyday machine. They are replacement parts for some machine that is useful, but becoming obsolete.
As the time goes by, the value of the spare parts, which were easily obtainable before, holds a steady price until it is realised that they are becoming rare. The the value increases if, and only if, people consider that machine worth maintaining. It will reach a state where the part has to be individually made as all the replacement stock is gone.
But people are infinitely replaceable.
Someone can always do your job.
No need to keep a heap of spares hanging around taking up shelf space.
And if your job is no longer needed, you had better have some niche value.
There's an interesting - to me, at any rate - irony in this: the superfluous men who as Zeke rightly notes populate a lot of nineteenth century Russian literature were entirely parasitic. They were all scions of the aristocracy, and were able to spend their days in their dressing gowns bemoaning their uselessness (at least, those of them who were prone to introspection) only and entirely because their families owned dozens if not hundreds of slaves (although we tend to call them serfs, in the Russian context) that did all the actual hard work entailed in maintaining a rural estate. I doubt there are many of us that truly understand just how miserable the existence of a nineteenth century farm labourer would have been, and that without the added literal and metaphorical shackles of Russian serfdom.
The human condition. We seem to be the only beings who question their purpose in life.aren't we all just superfluous in the greater scheme of things? what are we here for anyway? wrecking the world, wrecking each other. at the primal level of mere continuation of the species we need men and women to keep the genetic poolflowingfluous, and enough function to keep the spawn alive till they can reproduce, but everything else is just dust on the wind, dude.
and thats all there is. pfft.
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There is an existentialist argument that when someone creates an object — say a knife, or a bicycle, or a flan —the purpose and nature of the object exists before the object itself. There must be an idea of sharpness, cutting, and generally "knife-iness" in the maker's mind before they make the knife. The essence of the knife precedes its existence..
I like it when people or companies don't know specifics, such as sex, about me. I get a snicker out of it. Usually it's because they are reading my name and most people don't recognize the masculine or feminine form.Don't know why it bothers me to be taken for a woman - but somehow it does, a little bit!