John Adams:
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.
John D. Rockefeller:
I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.
John W. Gardner:
The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because philosophy is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
Mark Twain:
All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten. 1908, notebook
Here we have a few of my best friends gathered to share some of their thoughts.
John Adams, in my mind, could easily replace Thomas Jefferson or Teddy Roosevelt on Mount Rushmore. There is no adequate national memorial to Adams because people just do not know what he did or endured for our country. He was a great servant to our nation, a romantic man who wrote grand, sweet letters to his wife, Abigail (also an intellect) and, when not negotiating with the European heads of state or the Dutch to finance the newly independent and broke United States, he worked on his farm, making the best composted manure, an endeavor that will make a philosopher out of any individual. He loathed the necessity for war, did most of the literary work for George Washington and was our second president. I encourage you to MEET him through biographies and reading his correspondence.
John D. Rockefeller made money. He had money and capitalized on what he had made. He was not the ideal person, but what he said was that he worked and admired work. Getting things done was the mark of his life. Pleasure for the sake of pleasure was ruinous, in his opinion.
John W. Garner wrote the first serious book I ever read, except the Boy Scout manual and the Bible. The title of his book was: Excellence: Can We Be Equal And Excellent Too? That is still a fair question. Our thought process and our plumbing ought to be the best. If we are each and all excelling at what we do, everyone is equal. I have that book and I bet you can find a copy. You'll be better and smarter for reading it.
Mark Twain could cut things right to the chase. We have each and every one bought the pretty basket of berries and found the bottom half rotten. That is part of the learning experience. It does not make all the berries bad and it makes us wiser about future berry purchases.
We have learned to check our food if we use the drive-through windows at fast-food restaurants or we just learn to enjoy getting someone else's order. Some of us go inside to get our food to prevent disappointments and dining disasters.
Let's bring these great minds and others into our own. There is some information on them in the Wiki world. Some is available in the Library of Congress. Some is available in real books in real libraries.
Broaden your familiarity with these thinkers and doers and deepen your thought process as you go. MEET (as Epictetus would have us do, 1st post here) the minds of these people and respond. I am eager to hear what you have to say. (c) Tim http://www.timjohnsonphoto.com/
Thursday, June 11, 2009
MEETING EPICTETUS AND BARACK OBAMA
Epictetus [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epictetus] was a first century Graeco-Roman philosopher[http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/epictetu.htm] . He had been born a slave and had earned his freedom. It is easy enough to find collections of his thoughts, thanks solely to the fact they were written down by one of his students.
If Epictetus had managed a blog, this entry would have been one of his favorites.
He was ranting over the number of people who come and “see” him. Granted, philosophers did have rock-star status in that day and people wanted to meet him. Of course, these visits interrupted his thinking and teaching.
People traveling through his town would “take him in” just like running past the Eiffel Tower for a snapshot or walking past THE WALL in DC just to say, “Been there; done that”.
Epictetus and his teaching were famous and people wanted to say that they had met him, but the great philosopher would not let the public off so easily. His observation runs:
But a man who meets a man is one who learns the other's mind, and lets him see his in turn. Learn my mind--show me yours; and then go and say that you met me. Let us try each other; if I have any wrong principle, rid me of it; if you have, out with it. That is what meeting a philosopher means.
Obviously there is much greeting and very little meeting going on.
I am watching, as are we all, a very intelligent, sincere President Barack Obama attempt to meet (according to the definition of Epictetus) with many people. He is trying to engage fellow leaders of a variety of cultures and countries. I believe his mind and heart are open to them and I believe just as sincerely that his efforts are being met with bull-headed opposition. He is dealing with that opposition in our own Senate and House Of Representatives and in the world forum.
For that I am sorry. People are holding onto their biases, won't budge on their budgets and the walls of ancient bigotry don't seem to crack.
He is past his first few months as our nation's leader. We can continue to pray for him as we have prayed for our leaders in the past. We can also pray that there is another world leader that will rise to begin the process of MEETING our President.
Coming back to earth, just how many people have you met (according to the definition of Epictetus) in your span of years?
In THE DAY we called it FORMATION. Those precious few who we know and have known us and have chipped and smoothed and formed us into useful tools in society are on that short list.
Obviously you can't meet (according to the definition of Epictetus) every acquaintance.
However, don't be satisfied with a book of autographs when you could have met the one or the few who could have changed your life and, through you, perhaps the lives of many others. © Tim http://www.timjohnsonphoto.com/
If Epictetus had managed a blog, this entry would have been one of his favorites.
He was ranting over the number of people who come and “see” him. Granted, philosophers did have rock-star status in that day and people wanted to meet him. Of course, these visits interrupted his thinking and teaching.
People traveling through his town would “take him in” just like running past the Eiffel Tower for a snapshot or walking past THE WALL in DC just to say, “Been there; done that”.
Epictetus and his teaching were famous and people wanted to say that they had met him, but the great philosopher would not let the public off so easily. His observation runs:
But a man who meets a man is one who learns the other's mind, and lets him see his in turn. Learn my mind--show me yours; and then go and say that you met me. Let us try each other; if I have any wrong principle, rid me of it; if you have, out with it. That is what meeting a philosopher means.
Obviously there is much greeting and very little meeting going on.
I am watching, as are we all, a very intelligent, sincere President Barack Obama attempt to meet (according to the definition of Epictetus) with many people. He is trying to engage fellow leaders of a variety of cultures and countries. I believe his mind and heart are open to them and I believe just as sincerely that his efforts are being met with bull-headed opposition. He is dealing with that opposition in our own Senate and House Of Representatives and in the world forum.
For that I am sorry. People are holding onto their biases, won't budge on their budgets and the walls of ancient bigotry don't seem to crack.
He is past his first few months as our nation's leader. We can continue to pray for him as we have prayed for our leaders in the past. We can also pray that there is another world leader that will rise to begin the process of MEETING our President.
Coming back to earth, just how many people have you met (according to the definition of Epictetus) in your span of years?
In THE DAY we called it FORMATION. Those precious few who we know and have known us and have chipped and smoothed and formed us into useful tools in society are on that short list.
Obviously you can't meet (according to the definition of Epictetus) every acquaintance.
However, don't be satisfied with a book of autographs when you could have met the one or the few who could have changed your life and, through you, perhaps the lives of many others. © Tim http://www.timjohnsonphoto.com/
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