Joe says,
“Happens to be that I am a fanatic also when it comes to freedom of speech. I believe you are too because I expected you to kick me off your blog quite awhile ago. I have to give you top respect for permitting people to “speak” on your blog. The past 3 or 4 pieces have been very informative. ”
MY REPLY:
I read every comment over and over AFTER I approve it. But if somebody has
NO SPAM.
NO SPAM.
I don’t even bother to read it BEFORE approving it.
When you write
NO SPAM.
NO SPAM.
It means that you are a member of this seminar and you said something. Today a grad student is just an undergrad who has to make a B. I keep talking about what a real seminar WAS. If you WERE inthe seminar it was not up to the Old Prof to decide whether what you said made sense or not.
Joe, you are a smart old bastard and I am a smart old bastard. You have something to say and I have something to say.
I am the Old Prof. That means I LEAD. But I don’t TEACH.
In a truly intellectual situation, one LECTURES the undergrads. They are undergraduates.
But if I, as a professor, give someone a DEGREE, they are supposed to fall into a different category. The whole point of giving them a degree is supposed to he that I put them in a different category.
The word Doctor, as you damend well know, comes from Latin doceo, docere which means TEACH.
A doctor teaches the undergrads. But REAL seminars are in a category the modern “Doctor” cannot understand. The modern “Doctor” is a Wordist. He helps you to repeat the Final Truth and you help him repeat the Truth.
There is no difference inthis process between a teacher and a grad and a neophyte. You are all together in trying to learn to repeat the word of the True Faith.
So the concept of someone who is not trying to repeat the True Faith, but who is trying to explore truth, no matter where it leads, is totally alien.
Ayn Rand gave is the Truth, Karl Marx gave us the Truth. William Buckley and the Pope give us the Truth.
Bit what if you are l ooking for what is simply true?
To get back to your point, a good solid Wordist Doctor, a good sound Wordist teacher, would correct your deviation from the Truth. That is his job.
I don’t believe in any Truth.
Ole Bob USES you. Bob really couldn’t care less about what you consider Truth. To me, the idea that some BOOK needs to be studied endlessly is, to use a word you hate, just plain silly.
If you think that is very tolerant of me, please continue to do so. I don’t think I am being tolerant. I just want to stop being silly and make myself a part of a group that is using its frontal lobe. This is not idealistic.
I cannot anything more BORING than using my brain to learn to repeat something some clown who wrote a book said. I want to THINK. As a social animal, I need some others to stop drooling and repeating the Old Testament or Mein Kampf and SAY SOMETHING.
For social animal with a huge frontal lobe, listening to people repeat crap doesn’t just make me feel lonely, it makes me DESPERATE.
So in contrast to what is normally called Idealism, my motives may seem a bit selfish. An “Idealist” is someone who is fanatical about a BOOK.
Joe, I USE you. In the seminar you make me THINK. If you are practical, you will get a lot from this nut Whitaker because he’s very smart and has things to say you can benefit from. That’s YOUR problem.
What really scares me is BOREDOM.
All I ask is that you don’t BORE me. How does that fit on the ego scale?
I think I’m bragging, big time. Demanding that you don’t BORE me takes more ego on my part than lecturing does. If you say something I don’t like, I assume that Ole Bob can handle it. Tell me that doesn’t involve a strong ego!
Budarick climbed all over me. But with my iron ego, I figured that I, the Heroic Bob Whitaker, could handle any point he hit me with. If I couldn’t, then my Hero, Bob Whitaker, had better start learning HOW.
My seminar group is a bunch of iron wills. If the average professor had them in his class he would panic.
I am not your average professor.
I don’t want anybody here who would not cause the average professor to dirty his trousers.
Can you imagine how anybody could make a bigger brag than I just made?
Can you imagine anyone making a bigger brag about you, my collection of nutcase, than I just made?
You fit right in, Joe.
That last sentence should make you ashamed of yourself. That last sentence should make any member of this seminar think twice about being here.
But it won’t.
We are either absolutely superior or absolutely out of it.
You know where I put my chips.
#1 by Shari on 07/28/2006 - 8:38 am
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The problem with not accepting the TRUTH and looking for what is simply true is this, while your in crisis and thowing out so many things you still have to keep a few things from the TRUTH. I could never think at all just starting from nothing and I don’t think that anyone is SOOO smart that they can. The sad thing is that most never make any real attempt to find what is simply true no matter how many things they suffer.
#2 by joe rorke on 07/28/2006 - 6:48 pm
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Bob, I finally realized halfway through your piece that you were talking to me personally. In front of the whole class. Just when I was getting very tired of sparring with you. This is not normally my type of thing. I don’t want to continue with it. I don’t think it’s doing your blog any good. I could argue with you till the end of time and then that’s all this blog would be and there would be no point to it. Unless you can tell me what the point would be. I don’t see any sense in it.
I have to admit this piece has me laughing too. I don’t know how you do it, Bob, but you get me to laugh. Almost nothing and nobody can get me to laugh but you manage to do it. Hey, this is not meant to be an insult! I’m serious. I find so much of what you are saying in this piece has me laughing my ass off. I know it’s serious but it’s funny too.
Maybe you better deal with Peter for awhile, Bob. He looks like he needs a little help.
Whatever happened to Antonio Fini? He had good stuff to put on this blog.
And Dave. Cheese and Rice. Dave hits hard. My kind of guy. He puts up with no nonsense.
I don’t hate anything, Bob. Not the word “silly” or people or anything else. I just don’t get into hate. In my world view it’s not a good thing to hate.
I’m not going to defend myself on this blog, I’m not going to go over and over things that I have already said and defend those things and argue with you about what I said and what you said. That is so much nonsense that I am not going to get involved in. I’ve never tried to upstage you or in any way play any kind of oneupsmanship game with you. It’s not part of what I do.
Whoops! You’ve got a word back there in one of those paragraphs in your piece that I think you meant to be “intolerant.” But you used the word “tolerant” twice where I think you meant to use the word “intolerant.” I’m not sure because you’re the writer but the sentence doesn’t make sense to me. So I’m stuck in outer space trying to figure out what you meant. Or is that part of your strategy? It is, isn’t it? You cunning rascal you. It’s a result of being around all those politicians on the hill, isn’t it? Honesty is the last thing that gets into the equation, isn’t it? Screw around with words so your reader has no idea what you’re talking about. Look ashamed, Whittaker!!! Remember how Milton Berle used to say that, Bob? “Look ashamed!” C’mon, it was the early 1950s. You were there. You had a television set. Even if you did live in South Carolina.
I notice that you have worked your way into the concept of Truth which I brought up many pages back. And you say that you don’t BELIEVE IN any truth. Which means what? It certainly doesn’t mean that truth doesn’t exist. It just means that you don’t acknowledge it. The laws of physics presumably contain truths. You don’t believe in these truths. So what? That doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. Jump out of a plane at 30,000 feet without a chute and see how things turn out. You may defy the truth of the law of gravity buy there will be certain consequences that may not be in your favor as a result of your belief. You said you don’t believe in any truth.
Come to think of it I guess I am on a roll. There are people who have written books that are well worth studying for a lifetime. Seriously, Bob, what is your game? Burn the books? You can’t be even close to stupid enough to suggest that there haven’t been many books well worth paying attention to and even living one’s life according to the information in that book. People have been doing that for many years and I know a few of them. Without the information in that book their lives would not be the same and I am referring here to the negative sense of not being the same. So if your function is to burn the books maybe it’s time we took a closer look at that idea.
Flash! Everybody whoever wrote a book is not a clown. You are showing your contempt for your superiors. So you don’t like books. Fair deal. People have to become informed somehow. There’s folks in ghettoes all over the USA being informed. You like that idea better than some kind of literature?
Bragging on your part, Bob, I expect. I rather look forward to it. That’s when I know you’re becoming insecure. That’s when I know that there is no substance to your argument and that it’s time to call in some allies to defend you and I look for them on the horizon. I’m used to the bragging. It’s part of your job description.
You know Joe Rorke’s not going to bore you, Bob. At least not in the literary sense of that word. Hahahahahahahahaha!!!!! I promise not to bore you. Hahahahahahahahahaha!!!
If you had a “strong ego” nobody could hurt your feelings on this blog. I have heard you say on numerous occassions that people on this blog have hurt your feelings. Next case.
Speaking of your “ego” and the Truth I don’t subscribe to the existence of an ego as anything but an imaginary entity. It is a mental formation. So. In Reality it doesn’t exist. Hey, you’re the thinker in this movie. Don’t tell me I went over your head. You keep talking about something that doesn’t exist except in your imagination. The “ego.” Specifically, “your” “ego.” There’s a truth you won’t want to suck in. Oh, I forgot. You don’t accept any truth. You can, therefore, write this one off as “silly.” But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Don’t tell me I caught you bragging, Bob. Didn’t you learn better than that in the Fellowship? Bragging comes from pridefulness. For shame! Pride is one of the seven deadly sins. If your works can speak for themselves that is enough. Didn’t the Fellowship that you claim to be associated with, the one you suggested I know nothing about, teach you about the desirability of humility?