Comment on Feynman rules

ClassIsOver@hexbear.net ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• QuietCupcake@hexbear.net ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  He was something of an idol to me for a while when I was young. “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman” was one of my favorite and most often read books. But the chapter where he spoke of his experiences at bars, infamously referring to women who would accept drinks from him but not sleep with him as “bitches” always really bothered me. I remember being shocked by it and trying to rationalize it with things like “well, he came out of it realizing they weren’t and that he was in the wrong,” (yeah right, that’s a stretch) or “when his wife died so early when they were both so young it broke him, damaged him emotionally, and he lost the ability to relate to women,” (non-sequitur garbage excuse). But no, he was just deeply infected with misogyny like so many other shitty men.

  It also bothered me, not as much then, but a lot more now, how involved he was in the creation of the nuclear bomb for the US and his cynicism about humanity (fully expecting we would all die in a nuclear armageddon). On the one hand, he expressed some modicum of regret, and if I remember right, spoke of feeling only sick when his coworkers were celebrating its use in “ending the war,” on the other hand, he never actually tried to understand let alone criticize US imperialism and the role he played in cementing its dominion over the world (hegemony).

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  • ClassIsOver@hexbear.net ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Yep, I’ve got my copy of Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman too, and the bar part was so gross, and the fact that people tell their story like that and don’t have the shame to either leave it out or make it sound less predatory speaks volumes about who they are.

    As for his part in the Manhattan Project, it seems as if he got his karmic return in the end. I just wish he’d lived long enough to see him speak in person. He died a few months before I was born.

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