Don't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes. And keep in mind that we're looking at all this from almost a century later and that society has moved on quite a bit. Things that my grandparents would have considered perfectly a-ok would look ridiculous to you and me. Context is everything.
In plenty of places in the world this would be an 'amicable arrangement' even today.
Mote, beam, eye etc.
Without knowing what went on before this it is very hard to judge the list. Maybe they reached a stage of armistice and decided to live like this for the sake of their kids. Whatever it was, it spells out tragedy rather than malice.
Even in a modern context, I do not think this list makes Einstein sexist (or a jerk).
If my girlfriend did not work, I would ask her to take care of all the chores and meals (which would probably be, at most, 20 hours a week of work). Accordingly, I do not see items A[1-3] on the list as unreasonable, given his wife was not employed at this period in their life. I also happen to be very particular about my desk area, given I spend most of my sorry life in front of it. :)
Einstein wanted to stay together for the sake of his children, but had clearly fallen out of love with his wife. If you had a lot of work to do, you probably would not want to be bothered with socializing with a person you no longer loved. He gave her the best options he could - even after she left him, he paid her half his salary and gave her his Nobel Prize money (which was enough to buy three houses, among other things), even though this was not legally required.
Mostly, this just seems like a list by a man who wants to be left alone so he can work, not a bad person.
I find your comment to be belittling. The amount of chores one does is inversely proportional to the amount of money brought home?
"If my girlfriend did not work" is a shorthand for something else. I think it's shorthand for "sit around being lazy all day", which is an emotional decision and not the overt economical one. If your girlfriend is going to school full-time, then that's not work. Would you expect her to put in up to 20 hours of chores and meals on top of her studies? I don't think so.
Ahh, but perhaps you also meant to include potentially income-generating work (like studies) along with income-generating work?
Which then means that if your girlfriend gets disability pay then she doesn't have to do as many chores, right? Since even if she watches the TV all day she's still bringing in some money, as a consequence of work she's already done. (This can be extended to living off of a trust fund, or off royalty income.)
If you had children then would she also need to spend 100% of her time raising the children, on top of the chores? At what point do you start helping? Can you assign a monetary value on that?
Or, if you were making $1 million per year, then would you still request that she do all of the chores and meals? Because then it feels petty, when you could easily hire others to do it instead, and she can pursue her life's dream of developing free online education courses.
In the modern context, the delegation of chores is based on a combination of factors, including available time, interest in doing so, and tolerance of what happens when it isn't done. If you don't like it and can't deal with it, then you break up. In the modern context, breaking up or even getting a divorce is a simple task with little social stigma. Hence you have very little power over your girlfriend. If you "ask her to take care of all the chores and meals" then she can say "no", and leave.
100 years ago there was a much higher power imbalance. The woman couldn't easily say "no" and leave, even if the demands of the man were unreasonable, because it was much harder for her to have a normal life post-separation than for him.
In any case, simply saying "if my girlfriend did not work" is belittling because it assumes that work is the only thing that's important in a relationship, and it's secondarily gender biased because men tend to have higher incomes than women.
This is the kind of reasoning that drives me insane. When most men say "if my girlfriend didn't work, she should do more chores" that is exactly what they mean. That's it. As for studies, nobody was talking about that, so it is irrelevant. This isn't even a man vs woman thing, the same logic could be replied in reverse if I were staying home with the kids and my wife was bringing home the bacon.
And I'm saying that the view should be "if my girlfriend doesn't help maintain the relationship, then I'm leaving, and if I'm too demanding in what I need from the relationship then she leaves." This only works if there's no stigma associated with breaking up, which is the modern view. (Not only that, but I support nationalized health care in part so that each person in a relationship can leave without being dependent on the other person's insurance or other medical coverage.)
Therefore, I do not think it's proper to reduce the issue to a trade-off between working vs. doing more chores, because that provide no insight into the underlying complications of a relationship.
I gave some clear counter-examples for why that simple viewpoint may not be reasonable: non-work based income (e.g., disability pay or trust fund), going to school, or simply that the other person is making enough money that they can easily hire people to do the work. My wife, btw, gets disability from the Army and is going to school full-time, so I can easily relate here.
I can give more examples. Suppose the wife has a take-home pay of $45K and the husband wants to be a concert pianist, but there are no jobs open in the area. So the husband practices 6+ hours a day (in the expectation of a job for the future). Is that non-paying practice "working"? What if that husband also does occasional piano lessons at $15/hour, bringing in $150/week? Are chores now exempt because there is some paying work?
Let's say that the wife has a take-home pay of $88K, which is easily enough to support a couple, only the wife wants a larger house while the husband wants to volunteer full-time at the local animal shelter. The wife could demand that since she brings home the family income then he should do more chores around the house. In that way they wouldn't have to pay the house cleaner to come in, pay for laundry services, nor buy as much take-out, and so save up in order to buy a bigger house (which the husband would then need to clean). That she can demand such is clear.
But it's also clear that the underlying issue here isn't "doing chores" vs. "bringing home the bacon." So saying that "If my girlfriend did not work, I would ask her to take care of all the chores and meals" is a uselessly simple statement. And I don't even think it's true for you or for the original poster.
Suppose you become seriously ill and can't work for a year. Your wife gets a job, while you're unable to do all but the most basic of chores at home. Would your inability to do the rest of the chores be sufficient justification for your wife to divorce you? I didn't think so. Though in truth, it is stressful and quite a few marriages don't survive this sort of incident, I don't think the main reason is that one person couldn't do all of the chores while the other works.
You seem to be inserting a lot of hypotheticals here.
I don't remember the GGP saying anything about "chores will be distributed inversely proportional to % of household income provided".
Since we have no reason to believe that the poster was rich enough to hire somebody to do all the chores and that neither him nor his spouse had a disability that would prevent them from performing chores we can assume that he simply meant "if she would otherwise be idle I would expect her to help with chores".
Of course I am. I don't like the "Even in a modern context". That statement papers over all the details that show why the statement is useless as a means to understand the modern context. My hypotheticals are examples of how that view cannot be applied to many modern contexts.
You complain about hypotheticals. This whole tangent started with the hypothetical "if she would otherwise be idle" so it isn't like I started it. But you'll see that I also gave a non-hypothetical. My wife doesn't work. I do. She goes to school full-time and gets disability money from the army. Should she do all of the household chores because I'm the one who is earning the money? Maybe. If she wants to. But it's not predicated on that I'm the one making the money and she isn't.
The disagreement between me and others here seems to be because there are two issues at play: one is the personal view of the commenter, regarding what that commenter expects from a relationship, and the other the extension of that view to others.
The former I find somewhat crude and distasteful but acceptable because breaking up or getting a divorce has much less of a stigma than 100 years ago. It's the expansion of that view as a generally acceptable cultural goal or justification that I'm complaining about.
I mentioned "chores will be distributed inversely proportional to % of household income provided" as an example how the commenter's view is not a useful guideline. The view is absolute: if the girlfriend doesn't work then she should spend not more than 20 hours a week doing chores. My question - meant to highlight the useless of that guideline - is: if the girlfriend works for 1 hour a month, does that mean she doesn't need to do any chores? Almost certainly not. But the guideline says nothing about how to handle that case, which means it's a rather overly specific guideline.
(Now excuse me. I need to put the next load of wash on the line. It's my turn to do laundry. :) )
I really don't understand your point. Different households are always going to have different arrangements regards things like chores.
I don't think the original comment said anything along the lines of "here is an equation that everyone needs to apply in order to decide who does the dishes".
Just that if you have a situation where one person has significantly more free time than the other it wouldn't seem unreasonable to expect them to do more chores. Of course in real life there can always extra variables that complicate things. These things usually manifest themselves as domestic arguments, so are best discussed up front.
He never mentions money when talking about their pre-seperation life. The post you're replying to is clearly a discussion of time, not money, and you've somehow twisted it into "The amount of chores one does is inversely proportional to the amount of money brought home?". Stop trolling.
s/girlfriend/mother/g and is it still unreasonable? Your widowed mother lives with you, and doesn't have job or enough income to live on her own - do you kick her out if she doesn't make you meals three times a day?
I get the feeling you're reading between the lines and that the original comment was made to be reversible (if his girlfriend worked full-time and he stayed at home, he would expect himself to have 20h of housework as well).
I don't think it is belittling - I would gladly do the same as well. In fact, during the period of time my girlfriend was going to school, I did all of the chores because her degree was very stressful (high cost, high rate of failure) -- despite working fulltime myself.
Respectfully (!), your conclusion relies on a fallacy (perhaps more than one type). This type of fallacy is called an "argument from silence", in which you make an assumption based on a lack of information provided:
Agree with you. Otherwise, it was totally puzzling to me a simplistic, judgmental view calling him a jerk as a top comment.
Don't know how many people have been married a long time here (i.e. > 10 years). Looking at the responses, it seems to me not that many.
Thankfully, my marriage is several orders better than his was. But still I can perhaps see where the conditions are coming from.
Just to take an example - C(3) - you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.
I can see that for whatever reasons any fights between a husband (who works from home) and wife start when the husband is nicely all set to begin the day's work. It may be over a trivia discussion (perhaps because the husband has some work related frustration) or it could be the result of something building up. Now as a husband who is working from home, does not even have the choice to go to work elsewhere, in such a situation. And the argument/discussion/fight won't end until one person leaves the place. And countless hours can get lost, for a trivia thing.
Since I seem to be the target of this comment I'll respond.
Einstein was human. The purpose of using the phrases "womanizer" and "demanding jerk" was emotional -- we think of our heroes in pure terms. To associate them with negative judgmental phrases (such that we might easily use with anybody else in the world we meet) causes us distress.
And from what I understand, Einstein chased women all his life, even during his second marriage. How he and his second wife got along with this is anybody's guess.
But to focus on Einstein or his faults (or my easy judgement of him) is to miss the point. We read this list and we feel disjointed -- cognitive dissonance. How can such a great man speak like this to one who loves him? The reaction shouldn't be to start naval-gazing at our on judgment of others. The reaction should be to realize that we have only a very simple and cartoonish view of the world. People who did a lot of good in the world had some really big flaws. People who did a lot of evil in the world had redeeming qualities. If we really want to understand these folks, we need to see them in their own terms, not how mass media portrays them.
Perhaps some folks want to canonize some and demonize others. I much prefer to live in a world full of folks just like me -- human. The more I start glossing over faults? The more I'm missing out on all the good parts of history.
Look. Einstein was a womanizer. Galileo was a bit of a jerk. Newton was unhealthily obsesses with numbers. Martin Luther King Jr also chased women. Hell Nash was officially certifiable. If the only thing you get out of all my statements is that I'm judgmental, you're missing the point. Worse yet your'e missing all the good stuff, the parts of history people don't talk about. I'm not saying these men are bad; I'm saying they're just like the rest of us.
The problem isn't a judgment per se, it is judging based on evidence ripped completely out of time and place. Context is missing here and without that context you really can't say at all whether this was either a jerk making demands or someone exhibiting the patience of a saint. Even with a biography as a guide you still can't make a call like that.
The private affairs between two people are best left alone unless you get an active invitation from both participants to state what you think, and even then you're going to have to work really hard to figure out what an objective viewpoint would be. Judging is easy, deciding when explicitly not to judge is a lot harder.
I think we are talking past each other. If I knew Einstein, if he were alive today, then certainly what you say is true. Additionally, if I were trying to impeach him or his works, such as the attacks that Thomas Jefferson gets when we talk about slavery, then you would also have a point.
But I'm not trying to slander the man, I'm trying to understand him.
When I was a kid I used to be interested in General Patton of WWII. After a long spell of hero worship, I came to know more and more about the man. Finally I had an epiphany: he was really an asshole. Men who were under his command would have shot him. Many times. The people he reported to could barely manage him. He was an arrogant, self-centered, SOB.
But that didn't make Patton bad. That made Patton interesting. Yes, he was a son of a bitch, but damnit, he was our son of a bitch. :)
Understanding other human beings is the primary goal of biography. Of course one can never live entirely in another's shoes, but humans were then much as they are now, and we can gain much from trying to understand them more fully. A hundred years within the same culture and language is not so vast a chasm.
It would be a mistake to use this one letter to judge this one man through the lens of our times, which is what I think you're objecting to. Certainly that's not good history. But viewed within the context of the other things we know about him, it is much more revealing, and an interesting counterpoint to the hero/villain-narrative we reflexively grant famous people.
You can try to make it ridiculous but I actually was not aiming at anything 'deep' or philosophical, merely indicating that there is a problem with the method used to gain the required level of understanding.
I think you can actually understand others, but you're going to have to interact (like we do right here) with those people that you wish to understand.
Trying to understand people that have been dead for quite a while from (very terse) writings made in a stressful situation almost a century old is a very difficult undertaking. The lack of access to the subject, the distortion of social mores over time and more things like that make this from a practical point of view very hard.
At best this will give you fractional insights into aspects of their character it will never allow you to say 'x is a jerk' or anything to that effect. There would have to be significant qualification of that statement.
No, we can never really know any historical figure or event. The most we can do is try to learn what we can and hope that it has an emotional impact on us. If you really want a historical person to have the most influence possible in your life, you should strive to learn both the good and bad things about them -- not in terms of dates and facts, but in terms of how they thought about things.
Reading about historical figures should be an emotional experience. You should try to empathize and feel the things they felt. This is, of necessity going to cause you some discomfort as well.
Not only is it possible to say "X is a jerk", but it is necessary. Otherwise people from the past are just little cardboard cutouts in a sea of data. Fan of Plato? Then you should not only know his works, you should have a personal feeling of how you view the way he thinks about things. Yes, this is imaginary, but it's also necessary. History is not just a list of famous guys doing things on certain dates. It's something you, personally, should use your imagination to dive into and enjoy.
History is fun. People are complex. We use our imagination and comprehension and passion to drive us towards better understanding of historical figures and their actions. This is the good part.
I'll bow out. Seems like you are making some other kind of point about really knowing what's in the heart of others and judging those we may never culturally understand. That really has nothing to do with anything. I say grab onto somebody in history you admire and dive deep into their personal and emotional life. Make your own judgments, ask yourself how you would have acted in similar circumstances. Learn and respect both the good and the bad. Have passion.
interacting with people in person doesn't remove the context problem
the context in which you interact with someone changes how you know that person
the same person (everyone, you included) will seem like a different person based on whether they are interacting with a collegue, a supervisor, an underling, an employee at McDonalds, a waiter at a fancy restaurant, an old friend, a stranger, a child, a parent etc. etc.
alot of the people you view favorably, you probably do so because the context of your relationship is mutual respect, those people probably have relationships that aren't in those context, and the people in them probably have quite different views of those people.
if "knowing" a person is actually possible, it might be easier to do so from the prospective of 100 years of distance and a biography than from the extreme closeup of personal interaction
>The problem isn't a judgment per se, it is judging based on evidence ripped completely out of time and place. Context is missing here and without that context you really can't say at all whether this was either a jerk making demands or someone exhibiting the patience of a saint.
You make it sound like some mysterious quantum dynamics problem.
There is _already_ plenty of context for making a judgement call in this case. It's not like they lived in another galaxy, in a society with extremely different cultural norms.
We know the norms of the era they lived, we have other people as examples from that time, and we even know (or have known) people that were alive back then. It's not like we're missing some mysterious information that changes all this into something else.
We're not talking about Andromeda. This is planet earth, a western society, a highly educated man, less than a century ago.
Heck, those of us who know History, we can make judgement calls even for millennia before.
The situation isn't [described as] "How can such a great man speak like this to one who loves him?" - it's the situation where the love-marriage has ended, and they are staying together for the kids and for practical reasons only.
Look around at all the exceptional people of our time. Jobs. Ellison. Every gifted, and I mean truly gifted, person I know or know about had a bizarre upbringing or background, and the vast majority of them are complete jerks. To rise above what is normal, it really helps if you are not given normal upbringing and stimuli early in life. And, when that is the case, you will likely step outside the bounds of what normal society views as acceptable behavior. Jobs is the best example from our time. By his own authorized biography, he was a complete asshole, but he did amazing things.
Apple did amazing things, it's somewhat unfair to give all the credit to Steve Jobs. NeXT didn't exactly do very well. There was something magical about the combination of people, from designers, to technologists to the supply chain optimization that made all the fancy ideas reality. It wasn't just Jobs, he steered the ship, he was its figurehead, but he, and his team did amazing things.
I agree re not judging. I made the mistake a very long time ago to assume that I understood someone else's relationship and gave them advice on what I thought was an obvious matter. After a decade my friend is now happily married to that same person with amazing kids and a wonderful life. It's become clear to me that there are two sides to a relationship and no one except the participants will ever understand it.
So I think the important thing to understand when reading this is that we have zero context - and perhaps worse because all we know are Einstein's works.
Without knowing what went on before this it is very hard to judge the list.
On the other hand, the list is perfect to figure out what had happened before: their home was a mess, meals were spotty, there were frequent discussions that prevented him from work and she belittled him in front of their children.
That's not to say that the situation was her fault.
It isn't perfect. It's a list of complaints, and it could be entirely false. The home could have been spotless, but Einstein, besotted with dreams of how much better life would be with his cousin (and future second wife), complained anyway.
I had a relationship once where (and this is my perhaps incorrect, post hoc attempt at understanding what happened) my girlfriend didn't want to be the one who broke up, so she made more and more demands on me until finally I had enough. The demands in the list could be indicative of that sort of behavior, and not a true description of the situation.
As the resident Serb here I should point out a Wikipedia page on Mileva Maric who was a brilliant scientific mind in her own right: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mileva_Maric
There are even some theories that she helped him early on in his career although there is no strong evidence to support that theory. As part of the divorce agreement Einstein made with Mileva, his Nobel Prize money was transferred to her and in trust for their two sons.
I've posted hundreds of comments here on HN but I believe this is the first time I have voluntarily proclaimed my "Serb-ness" so perhaps I am not the typical Serb that is always pointing out their nationality (and I only did it this time because it was the reason I know about Mileva Maric). But I have a few theories as to why you may think we are always pointing our nationality or at least seem to:
1) It is a immigrant thing. When you feel that you are being identified as the "other" you get the urge to preemptively "come out of the closet" as an immigrant in a show of good will towards your native hosts and try to fit in. It's a way of saying "Hey guys, I know I am this scary foreigner, but really I'm just like you so can we be friends?" I've experienced this with people of many other nationalities and ethnicities where the conversation will inevitably turn into them telling me about their country of origin.. which I don't mind since I enjoy learning about different cultures.
2) Maybe you encounter a disproportionate number of Serbian people in your daily life so point #1 is magnified, or perhaps because of your own background or personal reasons you are overly sensitive to the idea of Serbian identity.
3) Serbs do tend to be sensitive about their ethnic identity because many of us feel that we have been misrepresented and not entirely fairly villainized in the media, while at the same time also being victims of long standing ethnic hatred in our native countries, so insecurity borne out of that treatment motivates an exaggerated sense of nationalism in some of us.
Hopefully one of those, or a combination of them, explains why "Serbs are always pointing out their nationality".
They want to be known for something besides being involved in that war Clinton intervened in during the 90s.
If you're from a place that doesn't get a lot of international press, it's natural to feel pride when a person from that place is met with acclaim. My high school teachers probably still talk about the fact that most of them also taught a writer for The Simpsons.
Don't forget the balkans have been destroyed multiple times by nationalistic wars, most recently in the Former Yugoslavia, so nationalistic sentiments may be more prominent.
It tends to be more about ethnicity than nationalism per se, but yes. Your membership in the Albanian/Serb/Roma/Croat/etc. community is central to your personal identity in the Balkans, far outweighing where you happen to live or where you happen to spend your Sunday mornings/Friday afternoons.
They're all interrelated though, so it gets complicated rather quickly. But yes: Serbs are proud to be Serbs.
You guys have got to chill out. You've got beautiful landscapes, mountains, ancient architecture there. Why focus on that divisive ethnic bs? Enjoy your area of the planet.
This makes him sound like a jerk, but man was life tough for couples who stopped getting along back when men did all the income earning and women did all the child care and housework. This actually seems like an OK arrangement when you think about it in that context, they were both holding up their ends of the bargain. It just makes me glad that both men and women are more independent these days.
Differently from most other comments, I didn't see this as Einstein being a jerk. I more feel compassion for him since, to me, this list is like an admission of his solitude.
It must be quite lonely being so unique as Einstein. Most people have a hard enough time finding someone who they can relate to. When you're as publicly distinguished as he was I imagine finding someone to relate to must've felt entirely hopeless. Particularly since she was a bright woman, and 'on paper' should've been a good match and now it wasn't working out.
Einstein's second marriage was with his cousin which could be seen as more evidence of his desire to be able to relate to someone. Having family history probably helped them feel close, and he probably gave up on someone being able to relate to his intellectual pursuits by that time.
Unfortunately I don't have any hard evidence to point to support my ideas. I have been thinking of this since Steve Jobs died and have been wondering how such unique people like him, Einstein, and others dealt with not being able to feel true connection with another human being.
Now way off topic, but I don't think Steve Jobs is comparable to Einstein in the same way. Einstein needed long months of solitude to come up with his formulas, which must have been brutal on his family and friend relationships. Steve Jobs had other people execute his vision.
I think there are two types of 'geniuses'. One type is 'people geniuses'. These are people like Steve Jobs, Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin, Billy Mays, etc. These people are geniuses in the way they were able to understand people and get the to do things (vote for them, buy their products). The other type of genius are the 'systems genius'. These are people like Tesla, Einstein, Newton, etc. The first group are not renown for their intelligence, the second group are not renown for their people skills.
I'm not disagreeing, but I'll add that having "vision" itself is a form of execution.
Sometimes I think we give the impression that having "vision" is like some innate quality a person has, and not the result of intense effort over a long period of time, which is what it actually is.
As a sole breadwinner,married to a woman who belittles me in front of our children, who, despite having full-time domestic help, grudgingly provides me with meals, who swings between extreme emotional neediness and rejection for weeks at a time and who occasionally physically attacks me in rages (she was diagnosed with a psychological disorder, but treatment is blocked by her family), I wish I could produce a list like that.
I don't know if Einstein's marriage was similar to mine. Maybe he was a demanding jerk, but the possibility does exist that he was reacting to the circumstances he found himself in.
Assuming you truly have the desire to change things and that you actually want help, here is some unsolicited advice: go into individual therapy for yourself and if possible try to start couple's therapy too. Look for long-term once-a-week therapy and don't be afraid to shop around for therapists because it's important that you like the person.
If that seems too daunting, order The Emotionally Abusive Relationship by Beverly Engel or get it out of the library. It's a good starting point and in general books written by therapists are a great complement to therapy.
If not for yourself, do this for your children, who suffer as much as you - if only because you and your wife are so important to them - but are helpless to change the situation.
If mental illness is involved, you'll need more than just therapy. Treatment, patience, and...luck? Anyways, this isn't the place for relationship advice, and we are hardly qualified to give it.
When someone makes what I perceive as a thinly-veiled cry for help, I tend to ignore whatever rules there may be and do what I can to point them in the right direction towards getting some. The guy registered the account to write that.
You don't need to be qualified as a mental health professional to recommend psychotherapy. If a man here complained of symptoms that made it sound like he was having a heart attack, we'd all tell him to go see a doctor, and to me this is no different.
And although the wife may need a psychiatrist and medication (I assume this is what "treatment" means), I was writing to the husband here who in my non-professional opinion needs help of his own, simply by virtue of being in the relationship with her. And for this talk therapy may be enough. (Obviously patience and luck are nice.)
Yet your advice is very typical. Its like telling a guy whose talking about the heart attack he had last week to go see a doctor. The guy has probably already done that!
As someone who has some experience here (on the past kid side), results from professional help come slowly if at all, and especially if there are kids involved, drastic hard choices need to be made that we shouldn't talk about here.
The best advice I would give here is preventative: carefully evaluate the mental health of your potential partner, including their family history, you really don't want any surprises later even if you are OK with it. This is in addition to checking for lifestyle compatibility; e.g. if you are a scientist obsessed with your work, make sure your potential partner is really really OK with that. And do you require extreme order in your life to function effectively (e.g. some autism)? Ya, that is something you also need to take up with your partner.
she was diagnosed with a psychological disorder, but treatment is blocked by her family
Sounds familiar. I wonder if her family would rethink their position when they had to suffer her.
Just a little fact: unless you divorce soon, you'll develop some mental symptons yourself, if you hadn't already. And don't be fooled: you're not making any favor to your children staying.
If I can be of any help, my email is in my profile.
I understand the pain (I have been in a similar position, less harsh than yours though, now things have turned out OK). There is one thing that has helped me through: showing unconditional kindness, regardless of the situation. I also read Buddha (I am not religious, Buddha was an exceptional man who understood much and took the time to show how to do relationships well).
If you're the breadwinner, why don't you hire the domestic help to make meals for you and the kids, and incidentally help your wife if there's time left over?
Being the breadwinner does not mean his income is necessarily high enough to hire the domestic helpers.
And if the emotional issue involves, providing the domestic service will not guarantee that she will satisfy with what you did for her. She may complain about other things.
Some people, not necessary has mental issue, will never appreciate what they already have because they always desire to what they do not have right now. They never feel satisfaction.
no appreciation no satisfaction in those people's heart
> Just goes to show that there is usually a huge difference between what we think of historical figures and how they actually were.
It shows that people are complicated and multifaceted. While we have a tendency to either laud or vilify figures (with nothing in between), in reality, historical figures can be both "good" and "bad" in different aspects of their lives... just like the rest of us.
My favorite example of this is Helen Keller[1]. Almost nobody these days knows anything about Helen Keller beyond the age of 18 - they know that learned to communicate despite being deaf and blind, but the nearly 70 years of her life after that are almost buried in history.
Which is a shame, because Helen Keller would have been a notable figure in her own right even if it weren't for her disability[2].
But because she was a member of the official Socialist party, we can't use her story as an inspirational lesson and mention that she held political beliefs that we may or may not agree with. Instead have to make a judgement call as to whether her "good" or her "bad[3]" side is more important to teach, and then forget about the rest.
Worse, this principle is applied in reverse to dehumanize people whom history has classified as villains. The result is that our history is filled with monochromatic caricatures, and we forget that, were we to see the complete picture, our modern-day "villains" may not look so different (for better or for worse!)
[2] Naturally, this presumes that you either disagree with socialist politics or think that history lessons should be politically neutral, which is the predominant belief in the USA.
It is more complicated I think even in the case of Einstein. The period of strained relationship mentioned coincides with the period during which he was building up General Relativity (which he published in 1916). Given the intensity of work that would've been needed for that (all that gorgeous new math and physical insights!) with wrong turns to avoid in every move, it is well conceivable that his marriage was placed at risk. This list might even have been his way of expressing that his life priority is finding a unified theory of everything.
Now when I write that, does our welcoming of his great contributions need to make us guilty of also endorsing morals we perceive behind this "list of demands" he made of his wife?
I'm glad I searched before posting something similar. General Relatively is one of the greatest individual efforts in the history of science. I do think there is something noble about the self-isolation and dedication to his work that Einstein is reported to have had. While the list demonstrates somewhat anti-social behavior, espessially by today's standards, its unfortunate that the context is missing from the article.
Whether it is an individual effort or joint effort that Einstein took all the credits fro later, it is still not 100% sure. See the page[1] about Mileva Marić.
It wouldn't be the first time in the history of science that one man was recognized for something just because he was louder in self promotion (see Tesla vs Edison).
I don't claim that Mileva Marić is of Tesla caliber, but treating woman that is as educated as her husband, and who also participated and contributed highly in his early work as a mere home service says a lot about person doing it.
I agree that his Special Relativity work was probably worked on with some contribution of Marić, but I think his later work was more individual. Others may deserve credit for some of it though http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_priority_dispute
History has a way of attributing contributions to the foremost scientist of the era. For example, "Newtonian" physics implies and is often taught to have all been first discribed by Newton, when in reality it was a joint effort of him, Galileo, Kepler, Descarte, Hooke, Leibniz, and others.
I like to think of it backwards; If I knew that I had a contribution to make to humanity as great as Einstein's, would I willingly sacrifice my relationship with my family to make it?
That's an extremely difficult moral problem. It's akin to asking yourself if you would rather rescue the child on the left or the 3 people on the right when given the choice.
And then with various permutations for the child being yours or a stranger and/or the people on the right being your parents and / or strangers.
It is a tough moral problem, but one that societies of old have recognized and formalized. For example, most all religions have some formal structure where a person with a "higher calling" can take up a monkhood of some sort. Formal induction into monkhood made their severance from family ties public and contractual, much as the formal wedding ceremony publicizes a man-woman relationship.
We just don't have a socially accepted notion of "scientific monkhood" yet I suppose.
Well, the stereotype of the absent minded professor has existed for a long time now, as well as the hermit inventor/philosopher.
Perhaps not monkhood, but as an eccentric removing himself from society is a common occurrence.
And for sufficiently levels of ability and talent, people are willing to forgo social convention.
I forget who it was, but one of the great ones long gone was extremely uncomfortable around people. To the extent that people were told that they should casually walk up to him, and without addressing him directly, talk to the air about the problem they were facing or had come up with.
Why do you automatically assume he is a jerk? Do you know more about his personal life than what was mentioned here? How do we know she wasn't a horrible person and this is actually a gracious response?
I really have no idea, but I think it's pretty unfair to make character judgements from a single note out of context. Human relationships are complex.
The OP is making a judgement based on the evidence he has, not on the evidence he doesn't. You on the other hand are attempting to counter his argument with no evidence at all.
If you want to counter the argument, present contrary evidence.
He wanted to remain together just for the children. It's pretty safe to conclude he would not have done so if he had no children and that her presence is detrimental to him in some fashion. The terms listed are harsh, but they reflect his priorities quite well. Calling him a jerk is a bit out of line when he's prioritizing his children highly enough to try being a father when that isn't his most important goal.
What a horrible way to argue. So the thought "the evidence might not be sufficient" never comes to your mind? Uncritical thinking like this ("knee jerk reactions") are one of the banes of humanity.
I have to say, I didn't really come away with the "demanding jerk" impression at all.
She wanted him to stay for the kids and continue to provide for the family. In return, he wanted some help around the house and to ensure emotional disconnect from the relationship that was already dead by this point. I expect couples today would form similar arrangements in the same situation.
So he was doing her a favour? Isn't he a father as well who should think for the best of his children too?
So in other case he would just leave her with the children?
Demanding 3 meals every day served or else is kind of disrespectful to someone you used to love.
3 meals a day might benefit the children, too. Not fighting in front of them is probably also a good idea. What does he propose that is bad for children?
Well, poster above me was implying that his demands were reasonable, as he is staying with her and children. If she wouldn't agree to him, he would leave and left her with children, that is not exactly unconditional love for his children and also sexist/macho.
You are right from today's perspective. But you have to keep in mind that was early 19th century, maybe seperation than was harder for wife and children.
EDIT: I meant early 20th centory...
That is how it reads. I certainly wasn't there to know what really went on, though I think we can assume these are the issues that caused the relationship breakdown in the first place. It wouldn't be very fair for her to live in the lap of luxury while he solely provides for the home and does all the housework on top, even if they had a prior love for each other.
Keep in mind that this was in 1919, when the accepted roles of men and women in marriages were very different. It's important, when reading historical documents, not to judge those discussed within by modern standards.
The position of women in society in 1914 is in no way comparable to today. We have come a long long way since then, and we still have a long long way to go.
Cultivated men are still jerks today, as a general rule. It's just that we are too blind to see (just like Einstein was in his day) that. Give it until 2110 to tell you just how much.
In 1914 it was totally normal for women not to have the vote, not to have a say in the family finances and to be given consideration only after the sons in the family (but before the daughters). They were not considered capable of higher education (exceptions allowed, sometimes these dressed as men to get around the limitations) and so on.
Cultivated men made those rules and whole pile of others, and decades of erosion by activists and others have restored the balance. Partially. Einstein was - as far as I can see here - not much different than what I know about how life was back then in general. Plenty of his peers would have done much worse than this, and only an extremely small (vanishingly small maybe) portion of society would have done much better.
The fact that we have Einstein on a pedestal today does not mean that (a) he wasn't human and hence bound to make mistakes and (b) that he wasn't a product of his time.
> Cultivated men are still jerks today, as a general rule. It's just that we are too blind to see (just like Einstein was in his day) that. Give it until 2110 to tell you just how much.
Same with women, and we'll have to wait just as long to see it.
IIRC, he cheated on his wife with his cousin. I don't have web reference. I went to an Einstein exhibit (at the OMSI) that had a bunch of hand-written letters and such by him (in addition to attempting to make his theories more accessible). Though 'cheated' might be a little relative. I think that he may have just been spending a lot of time with her and writing her love-letters rather than just sleeping with her.
Here are some quick links I turned up on the exhibit:
The Flickr link has a bunch of photos of the documents, but I don't none of them are labelled, so it may be a bit time-consuming to search for anything specific.
Well this was also a different time. You can hardly expect the early 1900s relationships between men and women to be on the same ground as the early 2000s ones. The world has (culturally) changed a lot since then. Do not judge people from the past with today's eyes.
The man was highly intelligent. Often intelligence and social skills seesaw (obviously not always.) What he did was wrong by what we know now, but I don't think it came from malice.
I agree that this isn't enough to judge Einsteins morality, but it is interesting the tendency to want our heroes to be noble people. James Thurber wrote a wonderful short story about this -- The Greatest Man in the World.
I see lots of people commenting how Einstein was a jerk, etc. But somehow, I think that list (if it's real) just shows that he wanted order (and control?) in everything he did, which doesn't resonate as bad to me. We have no idea what kind of relationship he had with his wife, so I think it is unfair to judge him like that solely based on that list, more so, because his wife accepted it!
That people cope with emotional abuse in different ways does not justify emotional abuse. As plenty of people mentioned in the thread, this was a different time when women had less possibilities and support systems for themselves.
She couldn't really expect him to be the sole breadwinner for the family, and do all the housework, and be always there for her emotional needs. There has to be some give and take. I'm not sure why his request for a reasonably equitable partnership would be considered abuse?
These are, most likely, the issues that lead to the demise of the relationship in the first place. It is the only way their living arrangement would be able to continue at all.
Oh yeah there are a lot of children accepting labour conditions in the East of Asia with which we get scandalized and the. this is ok: she accepted! come on....
It must have been really hard to clean up the room and prepare three meals a day. I wonder how the women of the time did manage at all? Clearly the asian child laborers should let themselves be inspired by their example.
I don't really understand the fuss. At the time it was a normal arrangement in marriage for women to take care of the house. That arrangement in itself is not belittling to women, it is simply division of labor. Household chores are not less worthy than other labor (if you believe they are, see what feminism did, apparently it belittles women even more). The letter says nothing about his wife not being allowed to pursue other options. Even today some people voluntarily choose such arrangements. And it is merely his conditions, she is free to not accept them.
Most of these demands relate in some way to staving off a meaningful emotional connection, keeping things "all-business" etc. There's significant evidence that Einstein had a form of high-functioning autism (likely Asperger's). A signature symptom of Asperger's syndrome is discomfort with emotional intimacy and a lesser capacity for empathy.
I can't say if that's true or not, but if you combine these symptoms with the state of women's' rights at the time, this really isn't surprising at all - and in any case, there are far more explicit examples of sexism from this period.
This reads exactly like an employer/employee relationship. [1]
-- Whether ironically or obviously ... is harder to tell.
________
[1] eg, no sexual expectations of a colleague (ie, harassment), no disturbing a colleague's work/space, no insulting in public manner (of a colleague in front of clients, etc).
Also, the only way she would give him a divorce is by him offering her the Nobel Prize money he knew he would one day win for his work in physics. She took a gamble and gave him the divorce.
His second wife also happened to be his first cousin. Interestingly, they shared the "Einstein" surname (their fathers were also first cousins) and would have shared it at the time they married, but Elsa had already married and divorced by that point.
Not necessarily; their mothers were sisters, and their fathers were cousins on their father's side (so both Albert and Elsa had the surname "Einstein").
The actual consequences of inbreeding are overblown by most. First cousins have a 12.5 percent chance of passing on a set of recessive gene expressions, which is about the same chance as an ordinary mother in her 40s.
This doesn't seem too out of character for Einstein when you think about it. Great scientists are't married to their ideas. As soon as a better theory comes along, it is reasonable for a scientist to abandon the previous theory for the newer one. Once he found a better wife, he dumped here for a better one. Great scientists don't just do science when they're in their laboratory. Great scientists rewire their entire brain to think of everything scientifically.
I had same reaction. It looks unerringly similar to Sheldon Cooper's relationship agreement. May be writers of Big Bang Theory might have referred to this letter to draft that.
What's to reconcile? You will find character flaws and chronic bad judgement in the most successful/accomplished people–it will just be in some other area than what they're known for.
John Calvin had a man burned at the stake. Henry Ford was an anti-semite. 8 of the first 10 US presidents owned slaves. And, no, I don't think it's a matter of shifting standards. Look at Bill Clinton, Martha Stewart, etc.
Perhaps reconcile was the wrong word . . . I was looking at it more from the "here's a perfect person" image that some historical figures seem to have, versus the fact that everyone (no matter how history makes them out), is still just a flawed human like everyone else.
He may have been one of the most brilliant minds in the last 100 years, but apparently he had a love life that was just as messed up as the rest of us =)
Considering Einstein didn't kill anyone...he did OK. No one is a saint (except for maybe a saint, but then I've heard crazy things about Mother Teresa also).
Agnes Bojaxhiu aka mother theresa is one of the worst media scams out there. Portrayed as a saint, she was actually an extremist religious nutjob. I happen to have visited her hospice in Calcutta and was shocked to see its condition given the significant amount of donations being sent. Victims (not patients, they were poor uneducated rural folk being collected for display) were denied painkillers and modern medication because Agnes believed in the theology of suffering. A quick google will show you that Agnes managed to get most of the donations funnelled back to the Vatican, hence her beatification by the pope. I found the whole thing utterly disgusting and will never trust generic media representations of individuals.
I think this is a rational thing to do -- after all, he was fearful of what would happen should the Germans have completed their nuclear program first.
Sure, but there's a big moral weight on using your fame and influence to get your government to built atomic bombs. Though this was before the advent of strategic bombing, so I'm not sure how obvious it was to Einstein exactly how such a weapon would ever be used.
No he didn't. He understood the science - and wrote a highly-public letter to the president arguing it would be better for the US to build one than to have it dropped on them by the Germans - already at work. But he had no hand in building it. Keep in mind, Einstein would have been in his mid-60s during the war, and a German at that.
I could see if their relationship had completely fallen apart by this point, but that they both wanted to stay together even though they were no longer in love, that a couple could come up with ground rules like this.
These aren't 'prenup' demands, these are no-love separation demands. What points exactly feel mean to you?
Requests for lack of intimacy are understandable, given the no love situation.
It is strange that the household chores are described - at the time it would be 100% understood that it would be so even if it wasn't written down; apparently it was a problem in their past. I mean, at that time and place, wife not cooking for you would be reasonable grounds for divorce.
The "no belittling before our children" is natural as well.
i mean, i don't see what's wrong with it, even by today's standards. she probably didn't work, so it's practically just a relaxed maid contract. i mean, hiring a woman you shared kids with solely as your maid would be weird by today's standards, but bigoted? don't see it.
Maybe I am missing something but since when was Einstein considered as a "popular folk hero" ? I have never heard of him portrayed as anything but a renowned scientist (with controversial political views).
I do not question the popularity of Einstein, I just wonder why the term "hero" is applied to him in the parent post. Why would Einstein be considered a "hero" compared to other scientists ?
Without making this about judging a specific person in a certain context, what are the implications today?
(Some) folks seem to suggest that since Einstein was working on something as significance as GR, the solitude prioritized over family made sense. If Einstein's work had not succeeded, would the justifications still hold?
Actually... the question on my mind is: every person trying to do something on their own believes in their heart that it is the most important thing, something that will change the world. How far should one take that conviction/belief as justification to forego responsibilities of being a spouse or parent?
Doesn't a person have the right to demand solitude either way? He presented his conditions for getting on with the marriage. The alternative is to simply get a divorce. If what he needs is solitude, what is he supposed to do? I mean I don't see where the guilt comes from?
People are naturally manipulative, especially in relationships, and people naturally play mind-games without necessarily knowing they are.
A quarrel ending in a door-slam can have damaging effects on the psyche, as a common example that most of you have experienced. It can make it difficult to concentrate.
This just seems to me to be a typical negotiation tool during a relationship gone wrong, trying to prevent further emotional distress. Nothing to see here.
F × S = k. The product of Freedom and Security is a constant. To gain more freedom of thought and/or action, you must give up some security, and vice versa. These remarks apply to individuals, nations, and civilizations. Notice that the constant k is different for every civilization and different for every individual.
You know after reading the comments on here I was expecting something really horrific. It was pretty short and not all that ludicrous when the time period is taken into account.
His goal was to create a sustainable relationship with her, and therefore he proposed a new set of expectations of her in consideration of his household cash flow. She consented to them; she wasn't forced to. This resembles a typical "live-in servant" relationship. The only strange part is that this falls out of a prior arrangement/agreement that was considered a "marriage" relationship. It's obviously no longer marriage in spirit, so why all the judgment of it that way?
Probably because it was after his divorce we got the famous quote ( which applies so well to entrepreneurship ) - "A person who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
This is one of those rare HN posts that would be better to discuss on Reddit. I doubt the community here would do anything but downvote the most appropriate/interesting comments.
To the individuals who are defending Einstein's behaviour towards his wife, I'm sorry to inform, you'll be ripped off of everything you have in a messy divorce. If you really think that's the right way to treat a person, please do a favor to humanity, marry your hand.
Now that aside, looks like Einstein was human after all. And one full of behavioural defects for that matter. He could've handled that in a much more civilized, and I dare to say, adult way by just having a honest conversation with his wife.
It's very easy to explain your goals, and why you need cooperation from your family to achieve them. If you can't, you have deeper problems than not being able to work properly.
To the downvoters, I meant it as a personal advice. However, your disaproval yield two things:
Firstly, I'm right. Down voting what I said doesn't alter the truth embedded within. Unless you change your mind and grow your heart, you're gonna get screwed by a divorce lawyer.
Secondly, it's just a freking integer on my screen, I like better floats! No mater how much that counter gets decremented you're still looking at it from the wrong perspective.
Don't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes. And keep in mind that we're looking at all this from almost a century later and that society has moved on quite a bit. Things that my grandparents would have considered perfectly a-ok would look ridiculous to you and me. Context is everything.
In plenty of places in the world this would be an 'amicable arrangement' even today.
Mote, beam, eye etc.
Without knowing what went on before this it is very hard to judge the list. Maybe they reached a stage of armistice and decided to live like this for the sake of their kids. Whatever it was, it spells out tragedy rather than malice.