Smallness of Mind

[Philip Coates]

Peter, my largeness of mind is shown (and magnanimity) in the fact that I'm willing for either New England or the Patriots to win it all.

[Peter]

Phil wrote:

Peter, my largeness of mind is shown (and magnanimity) in the fact that I'm willing for either New England or the Patriots to win it all.

end quote

Huh? That is similar to me saying I hope either Dallas or the Cowboys win. Oh. I get it - “largeness of mind” does not extend to sports teams you don’t like. Very perceptive. Sometimes I can get behind an underdog (no joke meant), and I am not like a fanatic Manchester United Soccer fan, but I still cannot root for cheaters like the Patriots or the bad sport Philadelphia Eagles. I will root against Un-Patriotic New England if they make it to the Super Bowl.

Peter

[caroljane]

Phil wrote:

Peter, my largeness of mind is shown (and magnanimity) in the fact that I'm willing for either New England or the Patriots to win it all.

end quote

Huh? That is similar to me saying I hope either Dallas or the Cowboys win. Oh. I get it - “largeness of mind” does not extend to sports teams you don’t like. Very perceptive. Sometimes I can get behind an underdog (no joke meant), and I am not like a fanatic Manchester United Soccer fan, but I still cannot root for cheaters like the Patriots or the bad sport Philadelphia Eagles. I will root against Un-Patriotic New England if they make it to the Super Bowl.

Peter

OK, we now have two certified Large Minds. Peter because he his demonstrated his mind can contain the imponderables of psychology and over-ponder sports at the same time, and Phil because he told us so and it's his thread.

Seriously, as a non and occasional even anti-Objectivist, I would nominate two others here, Stephen Boydstun and Tony (WHYnot) - two of the most Rand-committed participants here.

How imponderable is that?

[anthony]

Seriously, a non and occasional even anti-Objectivist, I would nominate two others here, Stephen Boydstun and Tony (WHYnot) - two of the most Rand-committed participants here. How imponderable is that?

Hmm - whew - I'm sure there's a back-handed compliment in there, somewhere...

if I could only see it.

I will take some childish pleasure in being mentioned in the same breath as Stephen Boydstun - not sure

how grateful he'd be, though! The metaphor of a grass-hopper, to an eagle, comes to mind.

My impression is that he has plenty of respect for Objectivism, and deep knowledge of it, but takes a scholarly over-view which transcends any particular philosophy.

[caroljane]

Seriously, a non and occasional even anti-Objectivist, I would nominate two others here, Stephen Boydstun and Tony (WHYnot) - two of the most Rand-committed participants here. How imponderable is that?

Hmm - whew - I'm sure there's a back-handed compliment in there, somewhere...

if I could only see it.

I will take some childish pleasure in being mentioned in the same breath as Stephen Boydstun - not sure

how grateful he'd be, though! The metaphor of a grass-hopper, to an eagle, comes to mind.

My impression is that he has plenty of respect for Objectivism, and deep knowledge of it, but takes a scholarly over-view which transcends any particular philosophy.

I see the start of my post is unclear, it should read "As a non-O etc" meaning myself, the nominator. I will go back and fix it.No backhanding was intended.

[Brant Gaede]

In 1976 Nathaniel Branden stated he used "social metaphysician"--or "metaphysics"--only as a broad category of no therapeutic or diagnostic value. (Private conversation with a therapy group.) Such terminology belonged to the 1960s pre-break.

--Brant

This doesn't accurately reflect Branden's post-break writings on the topic, Brant.

Branden addressed the topic of social metaphysics once again in Taking Responsibility, published in 1996. His approach is very different from the one he took in The Psychology of Self-Esteem, but it is clear that he still found the concept of value from a diagnostic perspective, as a way of analyzing conventionality and conformity. In My Years With Ayn Rand, he states that his original approach was terribly oversimplified, and that he very much regretted the “lack of compassion” and “inappropriate moralism” of his earlier presentation. But it is clear from what he says there and what he wrote in 1996 that he continued to find this terminology very useful psychologically.

I think he was trying to remove it from the locus of the group once someone--me--had brought it up. It didn't belong there.

--Brant

[Philip Coates]

> Hmm - whew - I'm sure there's a back-handed compliment in there, somewhere...

if I could only see it.

Tony, Daunce often displays so much largeness of mind in her humororistic references and crytpo-canuckostanisms that we smaller minds are unable to keep up the pace or to follow.

Humbly.....abjectly...ignominiously....

[caroljane]

> Hmm - whew - I'm sure there's a back-handed compliment in there, somewhere...

if I could only see it.

Tony, Daunce often displays so much largeness of mind in her humororistic references and crytpo-canuckostanisms that we smaller minds are unable to keep up the pace or to follow.

Humbly.....abjectly...ignominiously....

Phil, thank you for your complimentary explication

Many OLer's seem constitutionally incapable of receiving a compliment, and often they are most deserving of them.

Throwing compliments around would just clutter up OL but sometimes they are spontaneous and unavoidable. One of the many great things about OL is, the compliments are implied and unspoken yet picked up and felt

When I give you an explicit compliment everybody, please do not feel you have to writhe around and try to give the credit to somebody else, or explain the tortuous history of the specific accomplishment or point out that others are as cool as you are. You are individualists for crying out loud! Don't worry about response etiquette. Just a simple "Thank you, Your Majesty" will be sufficient as acknowledgment

[anthony]

> Hmm - whew - I'm sure there's a back-handed compliment in there, somewhere... if I could only see it. Tony, Daunce often displays so much largeness of mind in her humororistic references and crytpo-canuckostanisms that we smaller minds are unable to keep up the pace or to follow. Humbly.....abjectly...ignominiously....

Phil, thank you for your complimentary explication Many OLer's seem constitutionally incapable of receiving a compliment, and often they are most deserving of them. Throwing compliments around would just clutter up OL but sometimes they are spontaneous and unavoidable.

OK, I'm sorry. Only, your normal crystal clarity was missing.

Confusing.

Haven't you noticed, there're some (many) Objectivists who are terribly, wondrously,

innocent in dealing with folks, and cause extra complications for themselves.

(I mean, look at Phil - look at me. Hang in, Phil, never lose it. I sure as hell won't, at this stage.)

Ta, ever so, Your Royal Highness.

[caroljane]

> Hmm - whew - I'm sure there's a back-handed compliment in there, somewhere... if I could only see it. Tony, Daunce often displays so much largeness of mind in her humororistic references and crytpo-canuckostanisms that we smaller minds are unable to keep up the pace or to follow. Humbly.....abjectly...ignominiously....

Phil, thank you for your complimentary explication Many OLer's seem constitutionally incapable of receiving a compliment, and often they are most deserving of them. Throwing compliments around would just clutter up OL but sometimes they are spontaneous and unavoidable.

OK, I'm sorry. Only, your normal crystal clarity was missing.

Confusing.

Haven't you noticed, there're some (many) Objectivists who are terribly, wondrously,

innocent in dealing with folks, and cause extra complications for themselves.

(I mean, look at Phil - look at me. Hang in, Phil, never lose it. I sure as hell won't, at this stage.)

Ta, ever so, Your Royal Highness.

You don't get out of it that easy, Mr Commonwealth Esquire

You have received a compliment, take it like a man We know evasiveness when we see it

Cordially,

HRH

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

When I give you an explicit compliment everybody, please do not feel you have to writhe around and try to give the credit to somebody else, or explain the tortuous history of the specific accomplishment or point out that others are as cool as you are.

Carol,

I shall do like I have done and how I shall continue to do.

I accept your compliments as pleasantly stated facts to which I am entitled.

Michael

[caroljane]

When I give you an explicit compliment everybody, please do not feel you have to writhe around and try to give the credit to somebody else, or explain the tortuous history of the specific accomplishment or point out that others are as cool as you are.

Carol,

I shall do like I have done and how I shall continue to do.

I accept your compliments as pleasantly stated facts to which I am entitled.

Michael

Brother dear , you sure are, as you know.

[Philip Coates]

> You have received a compliment, take it like a man [Daunce]

Funny!!! (That wuz a complimunt....)

[Peter]

edited by author

[Peter]

Sorry for my supposedly comic letter.

If someone gets instant notifications I guess they got to read my possibly offense letter anyway.

On to more pertinent matters.

. . . Consider this

Consider this the hint of the century

Now I've said too much

I thought that I heard you laughing

I thought that I heard you sing

I think, I thought, I saw you try

That was just a dream

That was just a dream

That's me in the corner

That's me in the spotlight

Losing my religion

Trying to keep up with you

And I don't know if I can do it

Oh no, I've said too much

end quote

Reinventing oneself and discarding mysticism is possible with Objectivism, but harder for some. One of the things Objectivists deal with is the issue of family, cultural and personal religious upbringings. I remember someone who was Jewish who could not bring himself to marry outside his religion. One can’t be cold about the issue of losing ones’ religion or marrying who you love. I can’t remember the outcome.

I have heard Christians especially Catholics tell me about the terrible sense of guilt instilled in them from those early years of religious training. I balked at the Episcopalian religion when I was 13 but still went ahead and passed the requirements for receiving communion because of family pressure. Then, on Sundays, I could ingest a small wheat or rice wafer and drink a sip of wine which is the blood and flesh of Christ. What a disgusting cannibalistic religion.

Peter

Notes:

Losing My Religion lyrics

Songwriters: Stipe, Michael; Berry, William; Buck, Peter; Mills, Mike;

Life is bigger

It's bigger than you and you are not me

The lengths that I will go to

The distance in your eyes

Oh no, I've said too much

I set it up

That's me in the corner

That's me in the spotlight

Losing my religion

Trying to keep up with you

And I don't know if I can do it

Oh no, I've said too much

I haven't said enough

I thought that I heard you laughing

I thought that I heard you sing

I think, I thought, I saw you try

Every whisper

Of every waking hour I'm choosing my confessions

Trying to keep an eye on you

Like a hurt lost and blinded fool

Oh no, I've said too much

I set it up

Consider this

Consider this the hint of the century

[From: http://www.elyrics.net/read/r/rem-lyrics/losing-my-religion-lyrics.html ]

Now I've said too much

I thought that I heard you laughing

I thought that I heard you sing

I think, I thought, I saw you try

That was just a dream

That was just a dream

That's me in the corner

That's me in the spotlight

Losing my religion

Trying to keep up with you

And I don't know if I can do it

Oh no, I've said too much

I haven't said enough

I thought that I heard you laughing

I thought that I heard you sing

I think, I thought, I saw you try

But that was just a dream

Try try try try

That was just a dream

Just a dream

[Peter]

Michael just closed a topic from Cortes. Very exciting.

I recently recounted an old conversation to someone I knew when we were teenagers and studying Ayn Rand. It went like this: I said. You said. We agreed. We disagreed. You get the picture. When I looked back at the note to proofread it, it reminded me of dialogue from, “The Big Bang Theory.” The guy I was writing to was definitely the tall, thin, nerdy Sheldon Lee Cooper, BS MS MA PhD ScD from Texas.

And I was nerdy horn-dog Leonard.

Peter

[william.scherk]

Nine pages, 2.2k views, 165 replies. I can't even remember if I have been on this lake before, what fish are biting, what the Lead Topic is ranting about. My gawd, I would ask for a summary, but I think I have to do some homework first.

02:02 PM.

Edited January 4, 2012 by william.scherk

[BaalChatzaf]

Michael just closed a topic from Cortes. Very exciting.

I recently recounted an old conversation to someone I knew when we were teenagers and studying Ayn Rand. It went like this: I said. You said. We agreed. We disagreed. You get the picture. When I looked back at the note to proofread it, it reminded me of dialogue from, “The Big Bang Theory.” The guy I was writing to was definitely the tall, thin, nerdy Sheldon Lee Cooper, BS MS MA PhD ScD from Texas.

And I was nerdy horn-dog Leonard.

Peter

Sheldon and Spock are my heroes

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Jonathan]

Sheldon and Spock are my heroes

Do you ever use the selection method of RPSLS?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I opened that dude's thread, but I'm still irritated with him.

Michael

[william.scherk]

I opened that dude's thread, but I'm still irritated with him.

There might be a real person at the end of his website URL ... in which case you would think he would get his stand and his lemons and his ice cubes ready before he put on his mask of Cortez and snarked at the uncaring passersby.

I admit I admire the spunk that can set up a sales centre/tent, forget the sign, forget to say hello, forget to bring water, brochures, marketing plan ... get a ticket, get a hearing, and finally be allowed to continue setting up his stand.

He will no-doubt self-administer the Ted Keer Troll test, fail to connect his loudspeaker to OL, and retreat to the madness of seclusion.

[william.scherk]

Do you ever use the selection method of RPSLS?

Since I became a hall monitor and torture training intern in a another thread, everything has become both a test and torture/teaching device to me in my fresh new Sense Of Life.

Do you know how long it took me to breach the protective outer protein coat on this humour? (a whole frustrating hour)

I did not even know where I was on my own cognitive map until I looked up Deadpan, and that didn't help much. I thought of asking Carol, but she would probably explain it all succinctly and thoroughly, while letting me down easy, slowing down my heartbeat, easing my sweats, lessening the clenching and the shouting, the frustration, the gawdawful frustration that the Courts have told me I take out in cruelties upon others.

I didn't want peace. Like Phil, I understand that things are said in white hot rage and frustration, right there at the edge of the falls, the barrel teetering, my whole useless fraud of a life about to be smashed to pieces, and if I don't get the joke, then I know it is My Fault. I know it like you would know an axe to the back of your head.

I don't want peace when a mood of mayhem is among us. I like to play hard, like Dr Hardin, tough like Robert Campbell, and even mean and small like Phil, crushing a child in a test of knowledge to prop up my shack of self-esteem, my pitiful Bubbles garden shed home, my own teaching Mission, my need to Instruct and Correct and rap tiny knuckles.

That damned daemon Jonathan lured me using my own habits, tastes, inclinations, my own Lesson Plan. My weakness, I see too late. Again, as with the ninth doctor, I can move my legs. I can squeak, I can ask for water, but I am fixed forevermore on my back by a giant pin. I cannot just scurry away and hope for the best. I have to plead for humanity, use expressions of remorse, convince the jury, appeal to the King. It is over, my freedom, for now. Argh.

My fault. A trap. A trap set by that Daemon Jonathan. He has been stalking my classrooms and torture session training seminars. I do not know what side he is on. He tops out most exams, He never cheats. He looks like a fox. He could be Good. He could be Evul. I don't know. My usual tools have failed, even cheating.

I used TinEye reverse image lookup and I got 64 hits, but most of them were from Cafe Press choices of T-shirts in sizes up to 4XL or from Geek Girl blogs or science or worse (I looked again and vaguely perceived a five point star which made me think of not only heathen, sciency-ish, geekish, Rebecca Watson kind of drone female atheist marauders -- which I love -- but of the kook edge, the Sun Goddess feminist geek sciencey circe-in-the-meadow-shout-and-menstruate crew whom I met in Prince George and who damaged me).

So, there I was on the kook edge, looked at Wicca Star five point feminist sciency stupid Female Wisdom blogbeeyotch symbol a little closer and then, I admit it, cheated a bit by looking at the design with my eyes still and my judgement fork suspended. And then by quickly avoiding the sad fact that I don't know a fucking letter of ASL, let alone CSL or any other, I avoided understanding that these were symbols clearly understood by any five-year-old North American. And then I sort of got it, but only partially. I STILL DON'T GET THE WHOLE JOKE.

There, I spit it out. I get the Rock. I get the Scissors. I get the Paper. I get that I got all the rest wrong, and am feeling angry, frustrated, vengeful, vicious and in a real teaching mood all around.

Like Phil, I ask for Help. Unlike Phil I plead openly, at great risk of public shaming, and I directly address my tormentor in the public square, vexed, humiliated, snarling, trusting, naked and sniveling. I recognize a master. These little traps. These little snared limbs. The gnawing. The starving. The FAILURE of getting it wrong or worse, not getting it at all. If this is a torture learning device, it comes from Olympia and not from its gated suburbs in Florida.

Edited January 5, 2012 by william.scherk

[BaalChatzaf]

Sheldon and Spock are my heroes

Do you ever use the selection method of RPSLS?

That is a very silly game. It is .... illogical....

Ba'al Chatzaf

[9thdoctor]

There, I spit it out. I get the Rock. I get the Scissors. I get the Paper. I get that I got all the rest wrong, and am feeling angry, frustrated, vengeful, vicious and in a real teaching mood all around.

I googled RPSLS and get Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock. I got Rock Paper Scissors without looking, guessed Spock, but didn't get Lizard. I really don't get it though, I mean why does Scissors beat Lizard? Why does Lizard beat Spock? Why does Spock beat Rock? With Rock Paper Scissors it all makes sense, Rock pounds Scissors, Scissors cuts Paper, Paper covers Rock.

[william.scherk]

I got Rock Paper Scissors without looking, guessed Spock, but didn't get Lizard. I really don't get it though, I mean why does Scissors beat Lizard? Why does Lizard beat Spock? Why does Spock beat Rock? With Rock Paper Scissors it all makes sense, Rock pounds Scissors, Scissors cuts Paper, Paper covers Rock.

Well, if I weren't still angry, frustrated, vengeful, vicious and in a teaching mood, I would try to figure this out.

Um, first, I understand that Irony rules here, but as you point out, why does Lizard beat Spock? Lizard eats Spock, I guess, but then how does Spock defeat Rock, while Scissors tops Lizard who tops Spock? It is like the three stooges and I am not laughing.

So Rock takes down Spock, presumably at the hands of an angry ex-wife, and presumably when he did not see it coming, but then why does Rock take down Lizard? Lizard is HUGE. Argh, this is like Wheel of Torture, this heuristic -- I see no egress, Oh that Daemon.

Sometimes Irony does not have the calories I crave, maybe. Maybe that is why I am angry and frustrated and yet still crave to teach.

Edited January 5, 2012 by william.scherk