Skip to content

Category Archives: Personal Observations

Unsung heroes

Monday, July 13, 2009

The heroism of so many may be unsung, un-noted by wider society. It may even slip away – as, in truth, it so often does – into the sands of time, leaving no apparent impression whatever. But their legacy is not in their fall to a mortality which they never presumed to scornfully rise above . . .

Also filed in | | Comments (6)

Independence Day

Thursday, July 2, 2009

The evolving debate over the difference between us and the animals proceeds apace. Animals are now regarded as having true communication ability including language, generationally transmitted culture, even a wide range of what we had previously imagined to be solely human emotions.

My personal favorite has always been . . .

Also filed in | | Comments (0)

Blind arrogance

Thursday, May 28, 2009

The star academic, part of the galaxy of high speed intellectuals at a prominent university, had gotten hold of what was being presented as a “big idea.” He professed, with the peculiarly misplaced condescension that this sort often affect, only to the most profound humility, but he knew he had this right, and that those who disagreed with him had it wrong. But, then, there was the problem of why they disagreed with him. . .

Also filed in Book Reviews | | Comments (2)

Worth remembering

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Some years ago I worked with a fellow who came from a reasonably privileged background, had enjoyed a fashionably elite education, and who was clearly on – and viewed himself fully entitled to be on – the fast track to dizzying heights in his career. For all that, he wasn’t a particularly unpleasant guy – just unabashedly self-aggrandizing. And he plainly thought that everyone was that way – or, at least, everyone who mattered.

Sometimes, we all make this error . . .

Also filed in | | Comments (2)

The all-knowing

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

We saw, Friday, how self-styled intellectuals maintain a prickly sensitivity to who may, or may not, be esteemed as worthy of their “rank” in society. This would be harmless enough – but for their not-so-hidden ambitions and agenda. Intellectuals feel inherently entitled to rule – and to a privilege that extends to them freedom from the constraints they would (for the latter’s good, of course) impose on others. Consider our traveling intellectual’s chilling revelation of these during a discussion . . .

Also filed in Individual Leadership | | Comments (0)

The all-seeing

Friday, March 20, 2009

The overseas visitor travels about the United States, recording his impressions, examining them to divine the very meaning of the country, to psychoanalyze its current condition. But like many psychoanalysts, he reserves to himself – not to his subjects – the right to determine what constitutes psychological health. For you see, as he does not hesitate to make abundantly and repeatedly clear, he is an intellectual . . .

Also filed in | | Comments (0)

The overseers

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

There is a rising debate about the role of intellectuals in modern society. Some decry the attack against intellectualism as arising in populism. It’s an odd idea, which presumes that intellectuals are solely possessed of rational enlightenment, and that the rest of us are merely the ignorant, drooling mob vulnerable to manipulation by any passing unenlightened, anti-intellectual demagogue. But the truth is that populism isn’t a state of intellectual development . . .

Also filed in Individual Leadership | | Comments (2)

Bad Behavior has blocked 723 access attempts in the last 7 days.