I have a number of readers that comment on the site, some that comment and email, and some, like Joel, who are private people, and just email. All of the comments and emails have made me crack a lot of my own self-limitations. I would say, that now 20% of this site is reader generated, with you all acting as my editors and sponsors. Half of the books and most of the videos and links I review have been given or leant to me by readers—and we are at around 400 book reviews. Joel is a younger guy in his twenties whose call for answers and solutions I answered rudely, and which got some agreement from some of the older readers. I remember being younger and attempting to select people I wanted answers from. Ishmael, in an email reproduced below, did a better job of offering the heartfelt non-answer, so I’m passing it on here.
Also, Joel, thanks for the email, keep them coming, and us old curmudgeons and crackpots are in no hurry to see you jaded, just warning you that it will happen, so it’s not a crisis for you when—as H.P. Lovecraft liked to point out was our greatest psychological risk—you finally correlate the contents of your own mind.
James, some ramblings for you. My computer, somebody tagged it “ass hole,” I looked at them and said, “Is asshole one word or two?”
My wife says I don’t play well in the sandbox with others.
I said, "Eureka, how long did it take you to figure that one out!”
For my fellow reader, Joel:
Leave some blood on the ground.
Piss someone off.
Get a bloody nose.
Live for 60 years, with an open mind, moderately paranoid, skeptical of all answers, hated and loved at the same time.
Be abused.
Get shitfaced, get up and deal with the pain raw.
Fail, win, lose, get fired and get hired again.
Stay awake for three days.
Do something that terrifies you.
Deal with success.
Deal with loss.
Stick your dick in a hornet’s nest.
Read a lot of books, old ones.
Knowledge is painful, knowledge is bliss. It’s been 60 years—still no solutions.....
There you have it James, 10 minutes of free verse, from another crackpot.
Post this if you want.
Thanks for your website.
-Ishmael
"People don't ask questions to get information, they ask questions to show how smart they are."- Scott Adams, "Dilbert". Well said Ishmael. James, I do not believe that you were at all rude in the manner in which you declined Joel's open ended request for "solutions". You were merely honest and straightforward. You were being "frank", as in "speaking as a Frank", a free man. Saying what was really on your mind without fear of reprisal. So James if you don't want to answer you don't have to answer. Period. It has been my experience that most people who will solicit your opinion on social / political issues these days are not really trying to get information or learn a different point of view. Rather they are SJWs trying to smoke you out and find out whose side you are on so they can scold you and bully you into abandoning your position if you are not on the "right side of history". Therefore whenever you suspect such to be the case it is wise to think tactically and refuse to reply to the SJW's inquiry. Another common possibility is that the questioner is seeking to have their preconceived opinions validated and will argue with you or dismiss your opinion if it does not reinforce their own. In which case they are wasting your time and energy. I'll give Joel the benefit of the doubt that he is sincere in his desire for new information. Nevertheless any advice that we old fossils give the young bucks these days is liable to make absolutely no sense at all to them given their current frame of reference. For example my high school general science teacher once told the class, "Remember, you don't just marry the girl, you marry the family". At the time that made no sense at all to me, but some 20 years I knew exactly what he was talking about. Man, was he right! So Joel, MY advice is to be more specific. Being overly general in your inquiries tends to inspire the sort of answer you received, for a whole host of cogent reasons. Solutions to what precisely? Also be prepared to be disappointed by the answer. You are likely to NOT get the answer you want to hear. The real solutions to the problems that face us are liable to be very unpalatable to a "post-modern" young millennial American like yourself. I do not believe it is necessarily a '"red pill- blue pill" sort of analogy. The world is full of suffering and folly. It always has been and always will be. Human beings are flawed creatures. Progress is not a given. The march of history is not inevitable no matter what the Marxists insist. In the Book of Ecclesiastes King Solomon teaches us that no matter what we accomplish in our life at the end of it we are still dead. To go where... "The Life of the World to Come"? It is a great mystery. At the same time there is much to be believe in and to have faith in.
"I believe in one thing only, the power of human will." -Joseph Stalin
“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
"Stick your dick in a hornet’s nest".
I'd do it provided I could keep the swelling but get rid of the pain ...
JL & Ishmael:
My 02 centavos, unadjusted for inflation or omalleyisms- Being an adult is learning to deal with disappointment. Sad, but true.
As to sticking one's reproductive member in a hornets nest, I'm stealing that one! I've had days like that, but I didn't describe them so eloquently or as well.
Best turn of phrase I've seen in along time! I'm jealous.
Best Regards to all,
"Love is an ideal thing, marriage is a real thing; A confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished." - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
“There is a self-hatred in the West that can be considered only as something pathological. The West attempts in a praiseworthy manner to open itself completely to the comprehension of external values, but it no longer loves itself; it now only sees what is despicable and destructive in its own history, while it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure there.” - Pope Benedict XVI, Europe: Today and Tomorrow, 2007
“Nothing would be done at all if a man waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault with it.”-Cardinal Newman
“Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.” - Thomas Sowell
"There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs." - Thomas Sowell
Good point Bernie. Disappointment is definitely built into the program of life on earth. Especially if you are in the habit of confusing the real with the ideal. Right now we are replacing values and ideals that served us well and allowed us to live in relative harmony with Cultural Marxist / Politically Correct ideals that are totally at odds with the realities of human existence. Some of the people who pushed for these PC changes are left wondering why it all isn’t working out the way they imagined it would. While others who pushed for the same changes are overjoyed with the thought that the people they hate are suffering because of them.