The real enemies of the poor

Faustine a3495 at cotse.com
Fri Aug 3 12:48:59 PDT 2001


On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, Faustine wrote:
Jim wrote:
> In this context I meant "personality" as in demeanor and attitude, not 
> scholarship and competence.

>Opposite sides of the same coin...

I suppose "attitude" can be ambiguous, but it's hardly relevant! Being 
obnoxious, unpleasant, etc. has absolutely nothing to do with whether or 
not you know enough about a subject to be worth listening to. Not to name 
names, but I've met several brilliant people who literally make me want to 
run whenever I see them coming--but whom I nevertheless respect to the 
bottom of my shoes for their sheer brainpower. (And in case you haven't 
noticed, I'm definitely not a respectful sort in general, so it means 
something.)Thoroughly looking forward to hearing what a person has to say 
and actively, intensely disliking them is not contradictory in the 
slightest... 


> >Your waste of time is somebodies
> >jewel of the Nile (I have these images of Creationist books I've read 
> >flashing through my mind, very unpleasant).
> So do you keep on finding more of the same or have you got on to 
>something of more value to you?
>I keep hoping I'll run across a 'new' creationist theory, but they all
>boil down to the same old same old. I don't remember the last time
>I finished one of the books . Of course the same can be said about most
>books, technical or not. And no, I'm not a creationist of any bent outside
>of the pantheist sort (ie Gaia). I'd say that only about 10% of all books
>are worth reading. Of those 10%, 90% of their content is wrong (and hence
>interesting in the sense of why they are wrong)..which really gets down to
>the crux of the matter for me. Not why they got it right, but why they 
>failed.

Good point. I'm an atheist, but I think Aquinas can worth reading. Marcel 
(the Mystery of Being), Bataille (Inner Experience), Unamuno(Tragic Sense 
of Life), Kierkegaard (Either/Or), Heidegger (Sein und Zeit) Schopenhauer 
(complete works!) also come instantly to mind. I usually have no patience 
for anything mystical, but these authors have been very valuable to me. 
Several orders of magnitude above the usual religious mush.


>Unfortunately most readers focus on what they like, the positive aspect of
>the experience, and not the negative. Which from an analytic/comprehension
>perspective is a stronger viewpoint (or at least seems so to me).

Right--never let anyone do your thinking for you.


> >And there's looking for corroborating evidence... :)
> Well we all do whether we intend to or not: no matter how much you try 
> there's no getting out from under your experience.
>I disagree, see Newtons comments about hypothesis and playing with stones
on a beach.

More on this in future posts.


> but to avoid re-inventing the wheel. "If I have seen further than
> others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants." you know?

>That's not what he meant by that. He was saying that what he did was not
>in and of itself his creation. He was objecting to credit being given the
>'Lion of England' when it wasn't the Lion's due (why in his later life he 
>began to publish anonymously). 

Hm, okay. Nevertheless, I think the point remains.


>Unfortunately this can't be said of most
>people. Most people will take credit for whatever they can and then
>advertise it widely. One of the most popular strategies is to 'let them
>think it was their idea'.

True. But an overwhelmingly large percentage of concepts floating around 
your head and populating your mental landscape (so to speak) came from 
somewhere else: if you're creative and original, you make new ones out of 
the building blocks of the old. But they didn't just pop out of thin air.


> Recommending books, on the other hand, has to do with getting people to 
> share an aspect of your mental context. Like that book I recommended on 
> MOUT awhile back: it's not that I agree with its conclusions or the 
> ideology behind it--it's just that it made a powerful impression on the 
> way  I think about some of the issues that are most important to me, and 
>went a  long way toward providing valuable information I didn't already 
>have. Why  wouldn't I be interested in spreading it around.  
>I'm not saying you shouldn't spread it around. I disagree on your 'mental
>context'. I don't suggest that another person should read a book to
>understand me per se, but rather to escape the singular view point we all
>have. 

Singular viewpoint?? How so! Talk about different mental contexts... 

And then, there's always the even less noble-minded egocentric motivation 
for recommending books: "read as I read, so you may come to think as I do". 
Discourse as narcissistic propaganda: probably a more common motivation 
that anyone would like to admit.


>For me, the best thing that could happen is that somebody else read
>it and comes to a different conclusion. It is the dialog that follows that
>gives the book worth. Something greater than the authors intent, or my own
>personality happens then. 

I think most works that are complex and rich inspire that.. like the ones I 
mentioned above.

>The problem is that many equate reading (even a >lot)
>with understanding, and in actuality too few people question vigorously
>enough to ever really 'understand' anything. 

Couldn't agree more. 


>It's not uncommon in our society to hear people say 'He said ...' but they 
>themselves can't explain it in their own terms and context. They can 
>regurgitate, they can't cogitate. Dogma and pedantry. It's why 'arguments 
>from authority are useless' is such a strong tool with respect to 
>deductive/synthetic analysis.

I'm not disagreeing with that at all; I think the real sticking point here 
gets back to the assumptions which led you to bring up the idea 
of "singular viewpoint" and the relative meaning(s) of subjective value 
judgements. I bet a lot would be made clearer to me if you could just back 
up a little and go into that.

~Faustine.





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