RoR: Forum

Charles, I know exactly how you feel. Thank you for your incredible support and encouragement. :)

Post 41

Tuesday, June 7, 2005 - 9:00pm

Charles, I certainly don't think you went on too long. Usually the people who worry about such things are not the ones who ramble or repeat at too great a length. And your posts that I've seen are packed with insights. A very high wheat to chaff ratio :-)

Post 42

Tuesday, June 7, 2005 - 11:02pm

Charles,

I finally got around to reading your Post 37. Dayamm you're inspiring!

Looking for the good in people is most definitely in our best interests. Call it Christian (like your neighbors would) or Objectivist (like you would) or whatever else you want to. It is a proper and beneficial thing to do.

You have a magnificent soul from your writing.

Michael

(Edited by Michael Stuart Kelly on 6/07, 11:04pm)

Post 43

Thursday, June 9, 2005 - 12:16am

Jennifer, you always make me smile.

Philip, thanks for your encouragement. It may just be that I have an advantage of having saved up what I think are insights for a very long time and have not until now had an audience of great minds like yours to share them with! Or am I being presumptuous in assuming that anyone who agrees with me must have a great mind? Hmmm. I think you have many posts under topical Objectivist issues and I shall have to make a point of reading more of them. I am looking forward to it.

MSK, wow!!! What a wonderful compliment. Thanks. It sure helps the soul's health to be among so many intelligent and unique individuals with great souls of their own. Yours is one of the greater souls I have found, so I am proud to have earned your recognition.

Other Objectivists have criticized me for being excessively tolerant and therefore being bereft of standards. I do not agree, I simply believe that some Objectivists have a tendency to be inaccurate and unfair in their evaluations of others. It is great to stand up for our values and to argue strongly for them, but we should not lose the context that in order to live, most people do many of the tasks of their lives fairly rationally and many of them have more life-affirming values than they should according to what they think their philosophy is. They suffer in consistency. We can use this as a fulcrum to convince many of them that Objectivism is a philosophy more consistent with what they actually recognize as life-affirming values. It is not useful in this trade of ideas to fail to give people the respect they have actually earned in many ways. If we are consistently ungenerous or worse yet, unfair, they will notice and our ideas will be given less than a fair hearing. And, of course, one of the better ways to get people to improve themselves is to praise them when they are good. So, if we want more people to value productive work, we make a point of praising the productive work they do. This commonly works well with my employees, for instance.

Speaking of which, thank you all for encouraging me to try to become better. I hope my soul manages adequately to reflect the life radiating so abundantly from yours.

Post 44

Thursday, June 9, 2005 - 12:41am

Philip, your earlier comment about the use of examples rather than just floating principles is worthy of more comment. I think that one of the problems found in some Objectivist circles is that there is a tendency to fly straight into very high level abstractions with paying constant attention to the roots of those abstract concepts in the particulars of reality. An Objectivist should be in a constant mode of examining those pathways between reality and their theories for organizing and integrating mind-boggling particulars into a framework that lets us deal with it all. We have to be willing to acknowledge complexity in reality and to acknowledge the individuality of people, which is a huge task. Over-simplification, while easy, is an evasion of reality.

When I was a sophomore at Brown, I was talking to a professor who was a high-energy physicist. He asked me what area of physics was I interested in and I told him materials physics. I told him that among my interests was the complexity of materials, including such things as their deviations from perfection and how that allowed one to design many new properties into a material. His response was that only single crystals had the beauty of perfection and that what I was interested in was just dirty engineering. My response was that I loved the complexity and the individuality of real materials. I still do. A few years after this conversation, there were a number of Noble prizes awarded to physicists for their work on amorphous materials and other disordered or imperfect materials! Then there was also more interest in chaos theory. Well, if complexity in materials is important, it is only more important for our appreciation of the individual human being and for the interactions of real people.

(Edited by Charles Anderson on 6/09, 12:43am)

Post 45

Thursday, June 9, 2005 - 6:27am

Charles, there's much wisdom in your post #43 that we should all take to heart....er..."mind." Whatever.

By wisdom, I mean reason applied through the filter of life experience.

Post 46

Thursday, June 9, 2005 - 11:56am

Robert,

Post 43? Much wisdom?

I'll buy that. I especially liked the following part:

[MSK] Yours is one of the greater souls I have found...

Charles is a fucking guru.

//;-)

Michael

Post 47

Thursday, June 9, 2005 - 5:51pm

Robert, my much esteemed friend, thanks for your support for my Post #43. One of the characteristics I have come to value more and more and to look for more longingly in people is wisdom. It is, as you say, "reason applied through the filter of life experience." It is also a recognition of the complexity of reality, an understanding of the individuality of people, the ability to distinguish what one knows from what one does not know, the ability to establish priorities rationally, the ability to distinguish the essential from the non-essential, the careful and conscientious keeping of context, and the willingness to offer recognition and praise for the good. Perhaps you can add some things to this list.

Post 48

Thursday, June 9, 2005 - 6:15pm

Michael, is it a bit shameless to point again at my praise or is it simply that you know you are worthy of praise and you are really offering me a compliment by recognizing that I have the wisdom to recognize that you are a good man? It must be the latter!

I sure am glad that you said "fucking guru". I absolutely do not want to be one of those ascetic gurus! Wisdom is great, if it includes the wisdom of enjoying the finer things in life. Come to think of it, one could not be wise unless one did. There is no such thing as an ascetic guru, there are only fucking gurus!

Post 49

Thursday, June 9, 2005 - 6:26pm

Charles,

LOLOL...

I don't want to disillusion you, but it was completely shameless self promotion on my part.

The implied compliment to you was purely accidental.

I'm glad you are fucking though...

Michael

Post 50

Monday, August 8, 2005 - 8:41pm

This is a gem, Barbara. Thanks!

--Brant

(Edited by Brant Gaede on 8/08, 9:11pm)

Post 51

Thursday, September 18, 2008 - 7:23am