“Bob, you really think a lot of yourself, don’t you.”
This strikes me as an odd question.
If you are going to spend your life in the nastiest kind of battles with Communists and anti-whites, just how long would you lsast if you DIDN’T have a high opinion of yourself? How would you DARE take on ruthless powers if you really thought you were just your average Joe?
Your main weapon, your fundamental resource, when push comes to shove, is YOU.
If youa re going to check out your gun before you go into battle, it makes even more sense for you to check out YOURSELF before you commit yourself to a battle.
This srikes me, not as a matter of pride or humility, but as the most practical matter in the world.
I tend to team up with insightful, brilliant people. And their insights really get to me.
I listen.
One ally of mine for years, with whom I had shared a lot of beer and talked a lot of trash, suddenly hit me with, “Well, Bob, you areht most conceited person I know.”
I was stunned.
How could anybody consider me to be conceited?
He clarified: “A lot of people say they don’t care what people think of htem, but you really DON’tT.
He thought about it a bit and said, “No, I don’t mean you don’t CARE. But it never occurs to you to let anybody’s opinion of you make you do what you wouldn’t have done.”
Once I worked that out in my mind, I understood that could be taken as conceit. Or it could be called strubbornness.
I think of it as principle.
I make fun of Tough Guys all the time. Tough Guys say they don’t care what anybody thinks.
I am NOT a Tough Guy.
I get hurt a LOT, all the time.
But I also do as Dennis just said, I go right on without letting the fact that someone hurt me make me lose the trail of my argument.
I am proud of my own bravery in this.
The funny thing is that the Tough Guy doesn’t know that he is saying that he is NOT brave.
Being brave means you have the moral fiber to risk pain and take pain and keep on going. The Tough Guy is saying he has no feelings to hurt.
Take it from me, there is nothing that takes less courage than walking into the jaws of death when you really, sincerely would rather be dead.
A True Tough Guy has no courage. He simply has no feelings.
#1 by kane on 05/05/2006 - 1:50 am
“A True Tough Guy has no courage. He simply has no feelings.”
Well that’s a perfect descripion of kane, learned the world was cold and calculating and decided he had to be even more cold and calculating to fight it.
#2 by Dennis on 05/05/2006 - 4:30 am
A true tough guy is a sociopath.
For those of us who aren’t, we have internal forces to deal with when we are confronted. It is overcoming these internal inhibitions which make us brave.
#3 by Derek on 05/05/2006 - 11:15 am
I get you on this one. I try and act tough, admittedly, however I know that I am not. It is always a front. In reality I what most would consider “sensitive” by today’s standards. I would like to think that it doesn’t make me weak or incapable, just more prone to the nature of reality.
#4 by Bob on 05/06/2006 - 2:28 pm
kane, that is NOT a description of you.
What you said was a cry of pain that no Tough Guy has the sensitivity or the morals to
emit.
#5 by Bob on 05/06/2006 - 2:29 pm
Derek, without feelings there is no courage.