Branden's High Points (misleading title by OP)

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I haven't read anything memoirish of yours past this last year, and if you feel like reproducing the older ones I know I would like to read them.

Carol.

The three below are my best from before.

I must say I'm a little embarrassed about the first, though ("Like a Lamb to the Slaughter"). While it is true and it happened as I said, I ended up framing it with way too much good and evil sauce. This was my first real work of substance and how it happened was as follows.

I used to have a very (and put very very very on top of that) active email correspondence with Objectivist Liar and Hater, Lindsay Perigo. (I didn't call him that back then, of course.) I told him of something that happened to me and he pushed me to write it up to protest against "those evil people."

When he said that, I chuckled. I had never thought of those people in that manner before. Also, I never wrote anything like that before and I'm a primate. I learn by imitation like all primates do. What can I say? I allowed the "evil" frame from dunderhead's prodding to creep in against my better judgment. Still, it's a good work. I'm going to redo it later to reflect my more nuanced feelings more accurately.

The other two works speak for themselves. While there is some minor editing that needs to be done, I'm quite proud of them.

Like a Lamb to the Slaughter

(Originally published here.)

Letter to Madalena ... An Homage to the Value of Valuing

(Originally published here.)

A Hunting Story

(Published directly on OL.)

Enjoy.

(btw - I fully agree with William that Phil's best stuff has come in the form of memoirs. It is quite good and well worth reading.)

Michael

[william.scherk]

Don't start yelling at me but I think it's possible, just possible, that Phil might conceivably have been just making a joke here

What is almost interesting is that the whole conception and implementation of lese-majesty laws is fascinating. And yes, Phil was no doubt joking. Whew.

Anyway, in an uninteresting digression, I should point out what a potent thing was lese-majesty. If you could fuse the personality of th eking with his minions, you could come up with a class of laws that would last a thousand years. In Syria there are about 5 lese-majesty laws. Most are of the standard Insulting the Dignity of the State varieties, but Syria's suite is quite sophisticated. Symbols of the states include its head, its judiciary, on and on to Catch-376.

Thus you get things like a former high judge charged and jailed for fifteen years for Lese-Majesty. In my many researches this year, I tried to understand the criminal code offences that webbed free expression guaranteed by its constitution. What the one hand giveth, the right hand taketh away. In France recently a farmer who insulted Sarkozy in his face was charged with a code offence. Luckily not tortured and jailed.

Phil, it is an interesting digression for particular folks, so I won't quibble no more, but hey, all I meant to say was that this wasn't my focus, nor my message. Lese-majesty, lovely lese-majesty, lovely majesty that must not be wounded.

For those whose religions forbid dictionaries, lesion is the word-cousin to lese in lese-majesty. Lesion is a fancy way of saying wound.

Onward, onward, to the drain!

[Brant Gaede]

lese-majeste conscious (note the preferable spelling: two *French* words, not one French followed by one English - talk about anarchy!

I am so, sooooo sorry Phil. I curtsy, I bow, I watch you slog back your drink and smack your lips and then watch you go down to the pit below the bar, again.

Ugh, this is un-freaking bearable. First of all, dumbass, you need an accent grave on the first e, and an accent aigu on the last. As in, lèse majesté. Don't lecture anyone about French if you don't know that, if you don't just hear it in your head that way, instantly know that that's how it is, and see it as a mistake without the accents in place. There's no fucking way you passed a college level French class, you poseur. Second, WSS didn't bother to give a link, here it is.

http://en.wikipedia....ki/Lese-majesty

Why do you need them? Wikipedia didn't.

--Brant

[caroljane]

I haven't read anything memoirish of yours past this last year, and if you feel like reproducing the older ones I know I would like to read them.

Carol.

The three below are my best from before.

I must say I'm a little embarrassed about the first, though ("Like a Lamb to the Slaughter"). While it is true and it happened as I said, I ended up framing it with way too much good and evil sauce. This was my first real work of substance and how it happened was as follows.

I used to have a very (and put very very very on top of that) active email correspondence with Objectivist Liar and Hater, Lindsay Perigo. (I didn't call him that back then, of course.) I told him of something that happened to me and he pushed me to write it up to protest against "those evil people."

When he said that, I chuckled. I had never thought of those people in that manner before. Also, I never wrote anything like that before and I'm a primate. I learn by imitation like all primates do. What can I say? I allowed the "evil" frame from dunderhead's prodding to creep in against my better judgment. Still, it's a good work. I'm going to redo it later to reflect my more nuanced feelings more accurately.

The other two works speak for themselves. While there is some minor editing that needs to be done, I'm quite proud of them.

Like a Lamb to the Slaughter

(Originally published here.)

Letter to Madalena ... An Homage to the Value of Valuing

(Originally published here.)

A Hunting Story

(Published directly on OL.)

Enjoy.

(btw - I fully agree with William that Phil's best stuff has come in the form of memoirs. It is quite good and well worth reading.)

Michael

Michael, I think your own judgment is right about #1, the Lamb. The title is wrong unless you did simply want to write it as a tale of deception, and to do that you would have to rework somewhat. But it is more than that, and as you have learned, marriage customs and human motives are about more than good and evil as Rand (or Perigo) defined.

It is a strong and true story.I have not read the others yet, but I look forward to the reading.

Carol

already breaking my NY resolution to stop spending waaay too much time on OL

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

That is interesting to hear, "Identify, then judge." I am trying to think through what I do when I read, but I really can't. As far as I can tell, I just react.

Carol,

Obviously our minds automate many things, so you don't have to make a point of stopping to identify everything before reacting--not even most of the time. But if you want to use your mind according to your will (i.e., control your thinking by conscious choice to the extent you can), that is the only method I know of to rationally deal with new situations and ones where you are in doubt (or if you want to recheck something you believe, which I think is healthy to do periodically).

How can you judge something correctly if you don't know what it is correctly?

The answer is you can't. It's a crap shoot.

We all have prewiring and we can react automatically due to that, I suppose, but we can't call that rational--or even reliable a lot of the time.

We can, also, let ourselves go and just feel, like in reaction to a work or art or a story, but later we will inevitably want to think about why we felt what we felt. If we want true insight, we want our analysis to be as accurate as possible. That's when we have to identify. Afterward, depending on what we identified, we realign our judgment.

When my warning bells go off, the identify first then judge method of thinking sure keeps me out of a lot of trouble these days.

Ironically, it also gets me into a lot of trouble when collective scapegoating is around me and I think it is unfair or inaccurate. Then I just sigh and go into hardhead mode. I know what's coming....

I'm stuck with me and that's that. Even if one day I wanted to change my way of thinking, identify first then judge is a hellishly hard habit to break. Once you start forcing yourself to do it consciously, it automates really easily.

I'll never want to change that, anyway.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

I haven't read anything memoirish of yours past this last year, and if you feel like reproducing the older ones I know I would like to read them.

Carol.

The three below are my best from before.

I must say I'm a little embarrassed about the first, though ("Like a Lamb to the Slaughter"). While it is true and it happened as I said, I ended up framing it with way too much good and evil sauce. This was my first real work of substance and how it happened was as follows.

I used to have a very (and put very very very on top of that) active email correspondence with Objectivist Liar and Hater, Lindsay Perigo. (I didn't call him that back then, of course.) I told him of something that happened to me and he pushed me to write it up to protest against "those evil people."

When he said that, I chuckled. I had never thought of those people in that manner before. Also, I never wrote anything like that before and I'm a primate. I learn by imitation like all primates do. What can I say? I allowed the "evil" frame from dunderhead's prodding to creep in against my better judgment. Still, it's a good work. I'm going to redo it later to reflect my more nuanced feelings more accurately.

The other two works speak for themselves. While there is some minor editing that needs to be done, I'm quite proud of them.

Like a Lamb to the Slaughter

(Originally published here.)

Letter to Madalena ... An Homage to the Value of Valuing

(Originally published here.)

A Hunting Story

(Published directly on OL.)

Enjoy.

(btw - I fully agree with William that Phil's best stuff has come in the form of memoirs. It is quite good and well worth reading.)

Michael

In the Lamb story you simply got caught between two cultures. If you had been born and raised in that country you'd have been a lot more knowledgeable about what was happening around you and played the whole situation differently. You'd have had your own family to advise you. Etc. The essential vulnerability is aloneness. That's for anybody anywhere.

--Brant

[Philip Coates]

Michael,

I really like the first memoir and look forward to reading the second. It's has a great authenticity and your stylized names for the three women is much more effective than simply their given names. However, I suspect that if you are sinking into alcoholism and drugs you are going to have very understandable hostility and disenchantment toward you from your wife and relatives. This memoir only blames them not yourself for deteriorated relationships: Were you a good husband and father in your opinion?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This memoir only blames them not yourself for deteriorated relationships...

Phil,

You begin to see.

That is one of the things that embarrasses me about that memoir.

Even after going through all I did in life, I still had that blame-others-but-never-me-for-the-important-stuff attitude deep within me and it flared up when I first encountered my online Objectivist "family" on SoloHQ. Dunderhead was a master at encouraging it, too. When you add that to the insecurity I felt during my beginning efforts at writing, I simply let it all gush out according the noble victim recipe.

Blaming others and not looking inward to see your own character issues is the plague and boobytrap within Objectivism. It starts with the example Rand gave in both the prevailing attitude in her her works and in how she conducted herself in public. All James Valliant did was prove--by publishiing her journal entries--that she was that way in private, too. She is our role model, like it or not.

The boobytrap always goes boom, too, since reality cannot be denied. The result, ironically in light of Rand's explicit message, is a feeling of paralyzing guilt. Or you turn into an insufferable asshole. One or the other--usually both in an emotional seesaw that feels more like a roller coaster to nowhere. (Actually it leads to frustrated despair and weariness of spirit, but that's for another time.) The ironic part is that the guilt actually is unearned. It comes from not wanting to hurt and imitating the wrong things from the source of moral instruction (i.e., falling into the boobytrap when you are vulnerable).

As to your question, I was an OK father and husband. I'm a good guy at heart, even when I'm an asshole. I was not abusive, but I was distant. Also, I regret how I acted and reacted back then. You're not supposed to say that within the Objectivist culture. My problems are supposed to be the fault of the bastards and the Irrational Ones. But I had my share of the blame and my part was nowhere near noble or innocent. To be fail and balanced (like the slogan goes), I learned that I actually was crucified as in my romanticized view of my situation, but I also did some really shitty things.

Flipping it around, I did some really good things back then and so did the people I blamed for all my woes. Welcome to the human race, everybody.

It takes a lot of effort--painful effort--to identify which is which. The blame others attitude always makes me want to overlook the bad things I did and the guilt makes me want to overlook the bad things others did to me. And both make me want to overlook the good. Now, after a few years of reflecting and writing about such things, I don't feel any of these urges very strongly. A good dose of correct identification works wonders in defusing toxic emotions.

(When I talk about these things in what you write, I know of what I speak.)

Also, forgiveness is a hugely underrated virtue in our neck of the woods. It's not even a contest between Objectivism and Christianity on that score. They mop the floor with us and that's one of the main reasons I believe Objectivism does not grow as a movement in the world at large and Christianity does. People need a way to forgive themselves and forgive each other so they can move on--so they can let go of guilt... so they can avoid turning into insufferable assholes... so they can allow themselves to be good instead of gritting their teeth and forcing themselves into a moral mold.

But I still regret what I did back then. I hurt myself and I hurt others, even as others hurt me, hurt themselves and hurt each other. (Roark and Ragnar didn't hurt anyone, though. They were the true blameless victims.)

There is one thing I do not regret. Now I have Kat and the kids and they mean the world to me. If I had not lived what I lived, I would not have them.

Michael

[william.scherk]

Letter to Madalena ... An Homage to the Value of Valuing

(Originally published here.)

A Hunting Story

(Published directly on OL.)

Enjoy.

(btw - I fully agree with William that Phil's best stuff has come in the form of memoirs. It is quite good and well worth reading.)

Here's an excerpt from Phil's standalone "The Objectivist Psychologists and Me."

I came down from the north to New York after exiting grad school to take Peikoff’s courses and meet other Objectivists and be around people, all kinds of people. I had missed NBI, it had been closed for years. I quickly got involved in all the “psychology” that was going on and which was the main form of activity in the Objectivist universe centered in Manhattan. In retrospect, that was an enormously healthy thing. Psychology is a good real world complement to all the philosophy course. Very grounded.

Unfortunately, I was not very grounded. In the decade of my twenties was a little Platonist in many ways. With an enormously high IQ, and great academic and theoretic and logic-chopping abilities, the highest SAT scores in years? decades? at my small public high school, I could grasp a blackboard full of equations in an instant. Unfortunately, again, I was dumb as a mudflap when it came to people. All the brilliance in academic issues, but extremely almost retarded in understanding what a glance meant. I often couldn’t have told if a woman was interested or what a remark meant unless I sat down and reflected on it laboriously for hours. Or if someone was hostile or wanted to be my friend.

An idiot savant, the most obvious common sense things would totally escape me.

Phil: “I saw her at the Peikoff lectures. We had been so close and had had such a great date, but now she was grimacing and seeming preoccupied during the break. She didn’t really want to talk and kept on throwing a little rubber ball up the escalator and watching it come down. I’ve thought of different possible explanations for her odd actions, but haven’t been able to come to a conclusion. Maybe someone was sick in her family...”

Lonnie Leonard: [interrupting] “Why didn’t you ask her?”

Phil: “Oh!! . . . I never thought of that!!

Lonnie Leonard: “Phil, the answer to questions is out there. It’s not in your head. If you want to know what is going on, your source of information is often right in front of you . . . . . .”

I have the sense that there were dozens of similar occasions in which Dr. Leonard or Dr. Blumenthal or Edith (I felt closer to her, not a distant authority figure, so I use her first name ... I also knew her much longer, and she seemed more like a friend, which is nothing against the two men) patiently explained the obvious to me, tried to make me into an empiricist, someone ‘in the moment’, not in my own head, not a Platonic theorizer or deducer.

As far as the actual therapy is concerned, as far as curing my neuroses or improving social skills and helpint me to introspect, go back into my childhood and who I was and what I thought and my self-image then before reading Rand, their success was limited.

I think the fault was largely mine.

[caroljane]

Michael, I previously read your Hunters Story which you published here and will not add to the comment I then made.

I have read your beautiful Letter to Madalena, and cannot add to what the first readers said.

I will only say, that your Letter is also a song, and I felt the music so strongly while I was reading it. I don't know the melodies or the orchestration, but you do.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Carol.

Song?

What a lovely thought.

Thank you.

Michael

[caroljane]

Letter to Madalena ... An Homage to the Value of Valuing

(Originally published here.)

A Hunting Story

(Published directly on OL.)

Enjoy.

(btw - I fully agree with William that Phil's best stuff has come in the form of memoirs. It is quite good and well worth reading.)

Here's an excerpt from Phil's standalone "The Objectivist Psychologists and Me."

I came down from the north to New York after exiting grad school to take Peikoff’s courses and meet other Objectivists and be around people, all kinds of people. I had missed NBI, it had been closed for years. I quickly got involved in all the “psychology” that was going on and which was the main form of activity in the Objectivist universe centered in Manhattan. In retrospect, that was an enormously healthy thing. Psychology is a good real world complement to all the philosophy course. Very grounded.

Unfortunately, I was not very grounded. In the decade of my twenties was a little Platonist in many ways. With an enormously high IQ, and great academic and theoretic and logic-chopping abilities, the highest SAT scores in years? decades? at my small public high school, I could grasp a blackboard full of equations in an instant. Unfortunately, again, I was dumb as a mudflap when it came to people. All the brilliance in academic issues, but extremely almost retarded in understanding what a glance meant. I often couldn’t have told if a woman was interested or what a remark meant unless I sat down and reflected on it laboriously for hours. Or if someone was hostile or wanted to be my friend.

An idiot savant, the most obvious common sense things would totally escape me.

Phil: “I saw her at the Peikoff lectures. We had been so close and had had such a great date, but now she was grimacing and seeming preoccupied during the break. She didn’t really want to talk and kept on throwing a little rubber ball up the escalator and watching it come down. I’ve thought of different possible explanations for her odd actions, but haven’t been able to come to a conclusion. Maybe someone was sick in her family...”

Lonnie Leonard: [interrupting] “Why didn’t you ask her?”

Phil: “Oh!! . . . I never thought of that!!

Lonnie Leonard: “Phil, the answer to questions is out there. It’s not in your head. If you want to know what is going on, your source of information is often right in front of you . . . . . .”

I have the sense that there were dozens of similar occasions in which Dr. Leonard or Dr. Blumenthal or Edith (I felt closer to her, not a distant authority figure, so I use her first name ... I also knew her much longer, and she seemed more like a friend, which is nothing against the two men) patiently explained the obvious to me, tried to make me into an empiricist, someone ‘in the moment’, not in my own head, not a Platonic theorizer or deducer.

As far as the actual therapy is concerned, as far as curing my neuroses or improving social skills and helpint me to introspect, go back into my childhood and who I was and what I thought and my self-image then before reading Rand, their success was limited.

I think the fault was largely mine.

I disagree. I don't think there was fault involved, except by those who who failed to encourage you in positive efforts to improve your life, and harped on nonexistent outside forces.

Why should a person in their 20s need to introspect their early childhood? The point of becoming adult is to reconcile with your childhood, through what you do and learn from doing, and when you are adult, if you are still unhappy and confused, then is the time to worry about why you can't be reconciled.

I spent a fair amount of time trying to recast my childhood in Objectivist mold, and this was at age 19. It was a serious waste of time..

[Philip Coates]

> Why should a person in their 20s need to introspect their early childhood?

Carol, that's a really interesting question. I've never thought about in that way and I've been blaming myself for years that I didn't put enough of the right effort into therapy at that age. Yet for everything there is a season and perhaps on some level I had other things to concern myself with then and that was the time more for exploration, experiment, growth and less for trying to get in touch with things well in the past deposited under sediment that I didn't connect to till many years later.

[Philip Coates]

Michael I'm very impressed with your post 183. (I was probably expecting anger and outrage at the challenge of my post 182.)

> Even after going through all I did in life, I still had that blame-others-but-never-me-for-the-important-stuff attitude deep within me...It takes a lot of effort--painful effort--to identify which is which. The blame others attitude always makes me want to overlook the bad things I did and the guilt makes me want to overlook the bad things others did to me. And both make me want to overlook the good. Now, after a few years of reflecting and writing about such things, I don't feel any of these urges very strongly. A good dose of correct identification works wonders in defusing toxic emotions....But I still regret what I did back then. I hurt myself and I hurt others, even as others hurt me, hurt themselves and hurt each other. (Roark and Ragnar didn't hurt anyone, though. They were the true blameless victims.)

It takes a large person to admit that they have to share any blame in such situations. Most people won't or can't.

> Flipping it around, I did some really good things back then and so did the people I blamed for all my woes.

It's also unusual (and a sign of being willing to look at reality) to see any good whatsoever in the persons who have deeply hurt you.

> Blaming others and not looking inward to see your own character issues is the plague and boobytrap within Objectivism.

I agree. (Or at least it's certainly an important one of them.) For example, Rand's idea that she never had a major emotion she couldn't account for was not possible to a human being. (Maybe the 'major' was a qualification - I don't have her exact quote.)

> As to your question, I was an OK father and husband. I'm a good guy at heart, even when I'm an asshole. I was not abusive, but I was distant. Also, I regret how I acted and reacted back then. You're not supposed to say that within the Objectivist culture.

People think they don't make mistakes or act irrationally because they read a few books and are suddenly transformed into paragons. With no struggle. With no effort. With no transition.

> Forgiveness is a hugely underrated virtue in our neck of the woods. It's not even a contest between Objectivism and Christianity on that score. They mop the floor with us and that's one of the main reasons I believe Objectivism does not grow as a movement in the world at large and Christianity does.

That was one of the points of my posts in "Spreading a New Philosophy - The Founding of Christianity". One of several things we can sometimes learn from the Christians.

It's part of the wider issue of benevolence - putting things in perspective, proportion, and context and then moving forward is an aspect of benevolence toward yourself as well as toward others.

[anthony]

For example, Rand's idea that she never had a major emotion she couldn't account for was not possible to a human being. >

It's part of the wider issue of benevolence - putting things in perspective, proportion, and context and then moving forward is an aspect of benevolence toward yourself as well as toward others.

Phil,

I strongly agree with your benevolence statement here.

I definitely disagree with the "not possible to a human being" one.

One has to give Rand some credit: she could have evaded some issues - outwardly - but

I have little doubt she privately knew it, and felt it.

Ongoing extrospection and introspection do equip one to gain increasing knowledge of where

emotions "come from". Or so I have recognized quite late in life.

Could she do it? hell, yes, why doubt it? Give her some due, and benevolence. ;)

[anthony]

Slightly by the by - but, it does say "Branden's High Points" top of the page.

An interesting quote:

"Often, you are most intolerant in your lover of those qualities you have disowned

in yourself..."

It was most useful to me in that context.

Then I got to playing round with substituting "lover", for "friend", "compatriot", and even for "fellow Objectivist", and so on. Hmmm.

All those feelings of impatience, intolerance, irritation, and sometimes anger, we can

bring about, or experience, from those closest to us..

The quote continues : "...So paying attention to what angers you, or makes you impatient, can be a doorway leading to deepened self-awareness." [NB]

Tony

[PDS]

Letter to Madalena ... An Homage to the Value of Valuing

(Originally published here.)

A Hunting Story

(Published directly on OL.)

Enjoy.

(btw - I fully agree with William that Phil's best stuff has come in the form of memoirs. It is quite good and well worth reading.)

Here's an excerpt from Phil's standalone "The Objectivist Psychologists and Me."

I came down from the north to New York after exiting grad school to take Peikoff’s courses and meet other Objectivists and be around people, all kinds of people. I had missed NBI, it had been closed for years. I quickly got involved in all the “psychology” that was going on and which was the main form of activity in the Objectivist universe centered in Manhattan. In retrospect, that was an enormously healthy thing. Psychology is a good real world complement to all the philosophy course. Very grounded.

Unfortunately, I was not very grounded. In the decade of my twenties was a little Platonist in many ways. With an enormously high IQ, and great academic and theoretic and logic-chopping abilities, the highest SAT scores in years? decades? at my small public high school, I could grasp a blackboard full of equations in an instant. Unfortunately, again, I was dumb as a mudflap when it came to people. All the brilliance in academic issues, but extremely almost retarded in understanding what a glance meant. I often couldn’t have told if a woman was interested or what a remark meant unless I sat down and reflected on it laboriously for hours. Or if someone was hostile or wanted to be my friend.

An idiot savant, the most obvious common sense things would totally escape me.

Phil: “I saw her at the Peikoff lectures. We had been so close and had had such a great date, but now she was grimacing and seeming preoccupied during the break. She didn’t really want to talk and kept on throwing a little rubber ball up the escalator and watching it come down. I’ve thought of different possible explanations for her odd actions, but haven’t been able to come to a conclusion. Maybe someone was sick in her family...”

Lonnie Leonard: [interrupting] “Why didn’t you ask her?”

Phil: “Oh!! . . . I never thought of that!!

Lonnie Leonard: “Phil, the answer to questions is out there. It’s not in your head. If you want to know what is going on, your source of information is often right in front of you . . . . . .”

I have the sense that there were dozens of similar occasions in which Dr. Leonard or Dr. Blumenthal or Edith (I felt closer to her, not a distant authority figure, so I use her first name ... I also knew her much longer, and she seemed more like a friend, which is nothing against the two men) patiently explained the obvious to me, tried to make me into an empiricist, someone ‘in the moment’, not in my own head, not a Platonic theorizer or deducer.

As far as the actual therapy is concerned, as far as curing my neuroses or improving social skills and helpint me to introspect, go back into my childhood and who I was and what I thought and my self-image then before reading Rand, their success was limited.

I think the fault was largely mine.

Phil: do you still have the chalkboard/equation capacity? Very interesting.

[Philip Coates]

> Phil: do you still have the chalkboard/equation capacity? Very interesting.

Tony, no, not much of it remains.

Least of all the speed and fingertip recall, although I have been able to do a good job of tutoring or classroom teaching anything from algebra thru calculus and some differential equations and intro. physics. But I've needed prep time/recall time -- especially for the more advanced of those topics. In the sciences and technical subjects: software and computer programming skills are probably still half-there.

But if I were asked to teach high school chemistry (as opposed to general science/middle school chemistry), that is almost totally gone: I don't remember how to "balance" chemical equations at all. And my best recollection of the periodic table is that it is an annual chart of when a woman is most fertile and least cranky. Am in the ballpark on that one?

[Philip Coates]

But, as compensation, this has gotten a lot better since I emerged from Plato's cave :

"almost retarded in understanding what a glance meant. I often couldn’t have told if a woman was interested or what a remark meant unless I sat down and reflected on it laboriously for hours."

[anthony]

> Phil: do you still have the chalkboard/equation capacity? Very interesting. Tony, no, not much of it remains.

Thanks, Phil - but not me - PDS asked.

However if you are in responsive mood, you could reply to my comments.

I seem to be talking to the walls, lately.

[PDS]

Slightly by the by - but, it does say "Branden's High Points" top of the page.

An interesting quote:

"Often, you are most intolerant in your lover of those qualities you have disowned

in yourself..."

It was most useful to me in that context.

Then I got to playing round with substituting "lover", for "friend", "compatriot", and even for "fellow Objectivist", and so on. Hmmm.

All those feelings of impatience, intolerance, irritation, and sometimes anger, we can

bring about, or experience, from those closest to us..

The quote continues : "...So paying attention to what angers you, or makes you impatient, can be a doorway leading to deepened self-awareness." [NB]

Tony

Tony: thanks for this quote. Very insightful. Substitute the word "co worker" and you have some serious information on your hands as well, I think.

Where did this quote come from, by the way?

[anthony]

Slightly by the by - but, it does say "Branden's High Points" top of the page. An interesting quote: "Often, you are most intolerant in your lover of those qualities you have disowned in yourself..." It was most useful to me in that context. Then I got to playing round with substituting "lover", for "friend", "compatriot", and even for "fellow Objectivist", and so on. Hmmm. All those feelings of impatience, intolerance, irritation, and sometimes anger, we can bring about, or experience, from those closest to us.. The quote continues : "...So paying attention to what angers you, or makes you impatient, can be a doorway leading to deepened self-awareness." [NB] Tony

Tony: thanks for this quote. Very insightful. Substitute the word "co worker" and you have some serious information on your hands as well, I think. Where did this quote come from, by the way?

PDS, Yes, indeed! It loudly rang bells for me - in all areas, work too - when I came upon

the quote (I believe on NB's web-site) 5 or so years ago.

My guess is, from The Disowned Self, one of several of his books I haven't read.

Tony

[Edit: Stretching the point, could we go past the level of family, to society and country? Think of vicious family feuds; the nastiest of wars - civil war; (the close proximity of Palestine and Israel, and the cultural similarity of the peoples.) Those "disowned" emotions can also include contempt and hate, I think. Sort of reverse Stockholm Syndrome.

Am I going too far?]

T.

[PDS]

Slightly by the by - but, it does say "Branden's High Points" top of the page. An interesting quote: "Often, you are most intolerant in your lover of those qualities you have disowned in yourself..." It was most useful to me in that context. Then I got to playing round with substituting "lover", for "friend", "compatriot", and even for "fellow Objectivist", and so on. Hmmm. All those feelings of impatience, intolerance, irritation, and sometimes anger, we can bring about, or experience, from those closest to us.. The quote continues : "...So paying attention to what angers you, or makes you impatient, can be a doorway leading to deepened self-awareness." [NB] Tony

Tony: thanks for this quote. Very insightful. Substitute the word "co worker" and you have some serious information on your hands as well, I think. Where did this quote come from, by the way?

PDS, Yes, indeed! It loudly rang bells for me - in all areas, work too - when I came upon

the quote (I believe on NB's web-site) 5 or so years ago.

My guess is, from The Disowned Self, one of several of his books I haven't read.

Tony

[Edit: Stretching the point, could we go past the level of family, to society and country? Think of vicious family feuds; the nastiest of wars - civil war; (the close proximity of Palestine and Israel, and the cultural similarity of the peoples.) Those "disowned" emotions can also include contempt and hate, I think. Sort of reverse Stockholm Syndrome.

Am I going too far?]

T.

You are not going too far, or, at least, you are going no further than Jung did in this regard.

Being from South Africa, you might like a biography of Jung that indirectly addresses these issues, written by your countryman Laurens van der Post , Jung and the Story of Our Time (1976). This is one of my 10 favorite reads of the last decade or so.

[James Heaps-Nelson]

> Phil: do you still have the chalkboard/equation capacity? Very interesting.

Tony, no, not much of it remains.

Least of all the speed and fingertip recall, although I have been able to do a good job of tutoring or classroom teaching anything from algebra thru calculus and some differential equations and intro. physics. But I've needed prep time/recall time -- especially for the more advanced of those topics. In the sciences and technical subjects: software and computer programming skills are probably still half-there.

But if I were asked to teach high school chemistry (as opposed to general science/middle school chemistry), that is almost totally gone: I don't remember how to "balance" chemical equations at all. And my best recollection of the periodic table is that it is an annual chart of when a woman is most fertile and least cranky. Am in the ballpark on that one?

Phil, one of the things I am most frustrated with high school education today is the emphasis on continuous function mathematics to the exclusion of discrete mathematics, probability and statistics. These are the most useful topics for non-physicists, non-econmists and non-engineers and they rarely get taught in high school.

Jim

[Philip Coates]

Good point. I didn't learn essentially any of them myself in school at any level and I have a Master's in Math. (Of course, it was Pure Math, not Applied.) Perhaps the only one normally classified in that category was a course on set theory in grad school.

Feeling the gap in discrete math and meaty applications after grad school, while sitting in on Peikoff and Rothbard at Brooklyn Poly, since I was already on campus, I took a course on Probability and Statistics. Also, when I was no longer a math student, I had a tiny exposure to Operations Research (simplex method, traveling salesman problem, etc.), but not even a complete course in that area...I seem to recall I browsed a textbook and did some elementary problems.

I wish I knew a bit about game theory. The topic in discrete math that I most regret never having been exposed to is: Number Theory. (Fascinating subject, especially issues related to integers such as prime sieves and Fermat's last theorem...I tell myself that someday I may buy an elementary book on number theory and try to work through it.)

,,,,,,,,,

Of course as I mentioned before, all that stuff is largely forgotten now; I only remember parts of the more traditional subjects in math --algebra/geometry/calculus/d.e.'s-- because I've tutored them on and off.