Thursday, January 05, 2006
My Strange Way Of Life
Mr. Prairie Dawg, you've tried yourself to get in good with the guy upstairs - and I don't mean Mr. Furley. It's pretty difficult to strive for an ideal when all around you is the message that you're efforts are silly and out of touch with reality. I'm not comfortable yet blogging to my friends about that sort of thing. I'll leave that to those with a more skillfull onetrickpen.
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4 comments:
I'm not sure if anything worth following demands that we "strive for an ideal." There are some modern philosophers who would have us pursue ideals of ideologies - but those things are short cuts to thinking. Those are part of being an "ist" or believing in an "ism." I'm not sure if that's what you are talking about...maybe you mean something else with respect to living.
Changing our minds, being open to reality, the world, pain, pleasure and people and events - when they present themself - to do the right thing for a stranger even if it is only once - these are things worth doing...or in my opinion, these things are worth more than striving for an ideal.
But if the things you strive for or believe in make you seem silly or even perverse and obstinate against the current way of thinking - all the better eh. It puts you in some good company - my favorite example would be Edmund Burke. S. Johnson once said of Burke: "You could not stand five minutes under a shelter during a rainstorm with him, but if you did you'd realize you were with the greatest man in England." Or what W. Pitt (or Charles Fox, I forget) said about Burke: "Much to admire, little to agree with." And Burke understood the future of the modern West better than all those other famous men I just mentioned (sorry fans of S.J.)
Does this sound preachy? I am unqualified to do such things...but I've stolen some of the above remarks from some pretty good preachers...
To quote Larry David w/out a good reason for doing so: "Pretty, pretty good."
The rabbi is right--even if his son called me a "squmpy squonker" during lunch a few minutes ago.
Hey, you only go around once, Old Dog. So you're a bit of an iconoclast? We knew that. Don't be afraid to let it hang out a bit.
(Cha. Take it from the guy who's nuked his own blog twice).
Alex said that to you?!? I'm gonna wash his mouth out w/ a squeeney squneker...
...I don't know what I'm doing as a dad.
In the first post I meant to say "ideals OR ideologies"...you don't need this post to know that I'm an idiot!
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