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  • Relativism

    Relativism
    2024/11/27
    Relativism holds that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, and/or historical context and are not absolute. I’m not so sure (nor are a lot of other people). Let me speak of relativism today. There is an old Monty Python skit where a one-legged man auditions for a theatrical role as Tarzan. After some awkward movements, the people in the dark of the theater say, “Thanks, we’ll get back to you.” The man plaintively asks, “Do I have a chance at all of being considered?” “Well,” answers a producer, “I supposed we would come to you first before a man with no legs at all.” In Rhode Island, there are two public schools that stand out among all the others in terms of grade-point averages, performance on standardized tests, and admission to colleges. They are hailed as the avatars. Yet neither is in the top 100 of such schools nationally. A great many high school all-stars can’t make the team in college, and most college all-stars never make the pros. Some people snidely point out that a Chrysler or a Genesis looks just like a Bentley. Perhaps, until you place them next to a Bentley. A Campbell’s soup can painting or a banana taped to a canvas might go at an auction for seven figures, but they’re ludicrously considered against the Mona Lisa, The Nightwatch, The Scream, or Guernica. We tend to lose perspective if we don’t open our vistas, widen our interests, travel to new places, and gain new friends. You may well, rightfully, enjoy the view from a ski chalet, but the Grand Canyon is hard to describe adequately once you’ve been there in person. While I was trying to hide at a party, a college professor’s wife mentioned to me that her husband had published four books over 12 years. “That’s impressive,” I offered, looking for an escape route. “Impressive?!” she repeated in a stentorian voice, “It’s more than that! How many people do you know who have done that?”
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    4 分
  • Letters and Columns

    Letters and Columns
    2024/11/18
    The post-mortems from those who did not back the winner in this presidential election seem to be two-fold. On one hand, we have a group of insightful people asking, “What did we do wrong, and how can we improve?” On the other, we have people whose heads are exploding in vitriol and venom. The latter’s basic premises are that those who voted for the winner were fooled, are ignorant and poorly educated, and are “f…ing” morons. The amount of profanity seems to be in direct proportion to the lack of an intelligent argument. The overwhelming number of people who didn’t vote for the Democratic candidate are not misogynistic, racist, or any other epithet. They just did not prefer that candidate. Perhaps “woke is broke.” Perhaps the price of consumer goods, the lack of any cogent immigration policy, and persistent, independent polls indicating that Americans didn’t like the direction of the country shouldn’t have been ignored. There’s too much arrogance around, too much self-illusion that one’s opinion is more than an opinion; it is the “moral high ground.” Maybe. Or maybe it’s something we experienced when we were young and won a game fair and square, but the other side complained that we won the game by cheating. We called them “sore losers.”
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    7 分
  • Friends

    Friends
    2024/11/12
    We all need friends, but not the same ones! Friends need to evolve as we grow, mature, and change. Marshall Goldsmith and I wrote Lifestorming together, and we somewhat disagreed on this, but he wrote the terrific book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, so I think this applies to friends, as well! Your spouse is your best friend? That’s a cop-out. You need people who will push back, tell you the truth, mourn with you, and celebrate with you. I’d prefer an honest critic to a lying friend. We don’t need our egos protected, we need to grow. Long-time friends can poison you with their poverty mentality, “guilting” you about your spending, habits, or lifestyle. They can insist on the same places and the same experiences “for old time’s sake.” “When it’s cold,” said Hemingway, “home is where you go, and they have to take you in.” Fair enough. But with friends, they don’t have to take you in, but they choose to do so. Have you been to school reunions? If so, you’ve found that people are basically the same as they were X years ago, with very few exceptions. It’s nice, perhaps, to see them again, but you’ve outgrown them.
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    6 分
  • The Election

    The Election
    2024/11/03
    This election reflects a totally flawed Democratic strategy: • Painting your opponent as toxic but not having positive policies. • A candidate who cannot speak without a teleprompter and memorized sound bites. • A morally superior attitude that conveys people voting for the opposition are less educated, dumber, and morally inferior. • Rallying celebrity support, media support, Hollywood support, and academic support—which actually was terribly off-putting. • Somehow maintaining the paradox that their candidate was superior in every way yet claiming the election would be close, thereby implying half the population was stupid. • Transgender and DEI focus pales next to prices, immigration, and a sense of security in a turbulent world. • Calling illegal aliens “undocumented” and the homeless “unhoused” is simply disingenuous, like calling rioters “undocumented shoppers.” The overwhelmingly liberal newsreaders on election night were actually grimacing and shaking their heads in disbelief at the results, having previously believed their opinions to be the fact. The real culprit here is Joe Biden, who claimed to be a “transitional president,” i.e., serving one term, and who broke that promise, fell ill with age, and the Democratic reaction to obviously try to hide it until exposed during the first debate. Then, to preserve $160 million pledged to the Biden/Harris ticket, they didn’t hold a true convention but maneuvered an ill-prepared and terribly unsuited Kamala Harris into the nomination. How many heads are exploding this morning at the New York Times and on the progressive talk show The View? Do we have an airport express lane for all those celebrities who will now be leaving the country? We don’t have to “make this country great again,” it IS a great country with free elections and people unafraid to make their sentiments known at the ballot box, sometimes waiting hours to do so. You can now support the country or waste your time castigating people who disagree with you but who may just have turned out to be far smarter, after all, than you are. God Bless America!
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    7 分
  • Little Round Top

    Little Round Top
    2024/10/27
    The turning point in the American Civil War—and probably world history—occurred in Gettysburg on a rise called Little Round Top. At that place, at that time, a Union general saw a vast threat, and a Union Colonel and his regiment averted the threat through the brilliance of a single command. We need more courage in our lives because, unlike Gettysburg, no one is shooting at us. We are too easily placed on the defensive by bullies, the economy, regulations, normative pressure, or simply fear. But we can easily regain control of our circumstances by playing offense instead of defense, by being assertive instead of timid, and by being bold instead of afraid. This is the true story of a relatively few people doing what they were expected to do, under great pressure, and with great courage. I remind you, once again, that no one is shooting at us.
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    6 分
  • Here Comes The Judge

    Here Comes The Judge
    2024/10/24
    We all get the kind of government we deserve. If you voted for the winner of the election, that’s good until such time as you feel promises aren’t being kept. If you voted for the loser of the election, that means not enough people in the right places agreed with you, and you have to submit to the system. However, you’re still free to protest, be surprised by some things that are advantageous to you, and wait for next time. If you didn’t vote at all, then you simply have to accept the government that other people voted for, and you have sacrificed your right to complain about it. If you didn’t vote, you obviously don’t feel strongly about anything enough to try to affect the election. (The US ranks 31st of 50 countries in voter turnout, albeit 22 of them mandate voting, so you could make a case we’re high on the list, but with 40 million not turning out, that number would easily sway an election one way or the other.) To be somewhat cynical, we have no good metrics for politicians because most of them put their own needs (to stay in power) before their constituents’ needs. I love the newsletter you get two weeks before election day, as though the candidate at any level really cares. If they did, why aren’t the newsletters weekly or monthly? And politicians are really like children, trying to take the ball and go home if they don’t get their way. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse up here in Rhode Island honks long and loud about Supreme Court term limits and/or expanding the court to include more justices who share his view. He wouldn’t feel this way if the court had already agreed with his biases. Whitehouse will be elected to his fifth Senate term this year, which is 30 years, and he’s never suggested any term limits on the Senate, which would be a far better system than people holding these offices for life. That’s how transparently hypocritical he is. But so are they all! It’s like the rigged trotting races that took place in the Meadowlands of New Jersey when I was young. Betters simply tried to choose the horse which was rigged to win. Today, we simply try to choose the politician who’s probably lying the least.
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    5 分
  • Pressure

    Pressure
    2024/10/17
    Bill Russell, in Second Wind, defines pressure and performance. For example: - Brady coming back from 25 points down in the second half of the Super Bowl. - Houston, we have a problem (Apollo 13). - Sully Sullenberger landing in the Hudson River. The need is to really stay calm. - Three Mile Island as opposed to Chornobyl. - Bluffing in poker (vs. the “tell”). - Is Mickey Mouse a dog or a cat? - Police overreaction. - The basketball player’s wink. Keep perspective, the world isn’t watching. Most pressure is self-generated. Think of Philippe Petit and the six feet. Use some humor. It’s usually not fatal if you fail. Puncture the pressure balloon.
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    9 分
  • Peregrinations

    Peregrinations
    2024/10/10
    Many people in Rhode Island have never been to Boston, let alone New York. I’ve coached a very successful entrepreneur who has never been to New York and doesn’t wish to go. Most people can’t locate Bolivia or Laos (or Nebraska) on a map. When Americans in a survey were asked the three most famous Japanese they could think of, it was Bruce Lee, Yoko Ono, and Godzilla. Or not? Through my travels abroad, I learned: - To eat “European style.” - People are far more multi-lingual than we are. - Computers in foreign airport restrooms tell you how many stalls are available, and you can rate the cleanliness. - Floating markets of Thailand (and the Cayman). - The immensity of the Great Wall (some of which can’t be fixed today). - The Acropolis uses the same machinery today to repair it as was used to build it. - The exquisite wines of Chile don’t travel well. - The modernized airport immigration systems. - There is better first class (Emirates, Air Singapore). - Some lamps are older than our country. - The timeless artistry (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Rodin, Mozart, Vivaldi). - Bikes, scooters, motorcycles, and trains are used for everyday commutes. - People in the US are stagnantly Americentric. We see the world through distorted lenses: US TV, US papers, US social media friends. If it’s truly a global economy, we ought to be a global people. Diversity goes beyond borders.
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    10 分