Category Archives: Idealist

Idealist, out of the box

Back to the Future

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“The news is being flashed far and wide,
and before our earth has revolved on her axis every civilized community
within the reach of the electric wires will have received the tidings that civic freedom has been granted …”
— Kate Sheppard

Even he had to give in: he had lost.  But wait… he was a politician… Here was a opportunity…

A Horse's Ass: Richard Seddon
“King Dick” – Take Credit When Credit is NOT Due: A Politician’s Motto.

He had fought, blocked, and delayed the women’s right to vote in New Zealand. Only to reverse himself and claim he was trying to help, when the bill was passed finally.

Kate knew he was a hypocrite. She understood the political process. She knew that New Zealand was the first nation to “give the women” the right to vote in 1893. So, by letter, announcing to the world she encouraged her predecessor fellow civic activists in America including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan Anthony to continue the fight. She had seen the future in 1869 because in the relatively new territory of Wyoming, farmers had given their women the right to vote partly as a reaction to outrageous behavior of brazen and politically connected cattlemen lynching an independent innocent single woman farmer.

Social progress thru politics is on the edge of chaos/order. Two steps forward in the future, one step back to the future. One Vote against, two Votes for.

Richard Seddon, though a member of the Liberal Party, opposed women’s suffrage, and expected it to be again blocked in the upper house. Despite Seddon’s opposition, Members of Parliament assembled sufficient strength in the House of Representatives to pass the bill. When it arrived in the Legislative Council, two previously hostile members, moved to anger at Seddon’s “underhand” behaviour in getting one member to change his vote, voted in favour of the bill. Hence the bill was passed by 20 to 18, and with the Royal Assent [Queen Victoria] it was signed into law on 19 September 1893.

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Artisan, Entertainment, Four Temperaments, Guardian, Idealist, Personality, Rational, Teams

Provincial Manor

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Three-time Best Drama Series Emmy nominee Downton Abbey premieres its fifth season in America tonight and has a fighting chance this year to take home the big prize.  Wouldn’t it be loverly.  The critically-acclaimed British period drama won Outstanding Miniseries or Movie in it’s first year (2011), but hasn’t won since it entered the big leagues (Best Drama Series).  It will likely have stiff competition yet again this year including Mad Men, The Affair, Game of Thrones, The Good Wife, and House of Cards, though powerhouse Breaking Bad concluded and will be out of the race this year leaving the category wide open.

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Idealist, out of the box

The Danger of a Single Story

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“Everybody has a story. And there’s something to be learned from every experience.”
— Oprah Winfrey

She would know how hard it is.

She wouldn’t assume the worse or just abandon things.

She warned us of this:  The Danger of a Single Story

Journalism’s weakness:  Hit and run investigative journalism.  Headlines and Magazine Covers.  Money and reflective fame.

Shallow and a single story.  Sometimes good, most of the time irrelevant, sometimes bad…

“Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.”
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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Idealist, In Memoriam, Personality

The Gardener

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The Gardener of “Souls”

“He was such a wonderful human being. He was gentle, not a Hitler-esque cruel director. I never saw him get angry; he wasn’t a tortured human being in any way. Because he’d been an actor himself, he made a gardener director. He knew exactly what the plants were, how much sun and how much earth and water they needed. He let them grow and blossom in their own time. I loved him and I shall miss him like anything.” –Saeed Jaffrey

“Dickie, a one-man entertainment empire, was at least as significant as those humanitarian titans he brought to life on screen. He was also the quintessence of kindness and modesty, and it was a privilege to have known and worked with him.” — Michael York

It took twenty years.  He told everybody that he would do it. 

It took him twenty years of Championing to get the funding and to make it.

Richard Attenborough was able to make Gandhi (1982), which had a fine performance by Ben Kingsley in the title role. The film is dedicated to Lord Mountbatten, Pandit Nehru and an unknown Indian called Motilal Kothari, who suggested the subject to Attenborough in the first place in 1962.

Nehru’s advice to Attenborough was that it would be wrong to deify Gandhi: “He was too great a man for that.” The film won eight Oscars – best picture, best actor, best director, best original screenplay, best cinematography, best art direction, best editing, best costume design – the biggest haul ever for a British movie. In his acceptance speech, Attenborough said: “Gandhi believed if we could but agree, simplistic though it be, that if we do not resort to violence then the route to solving problems would be much different than the one we take.”

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Famous personality, Idealist, out of the box

Ralph at Cato

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You would have never believed it, not ten years ago, or even now.

It must be a fake picture 😉
What is he doing?

What is the Unreasonable Man, Ralph, the man “on the left,” trying to convince those who might be viewed “on the right”?  Left or Right, never the twain shall they meet?

I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

Ralph Nader compromise?  Not chance.  He wants to be Unstoppable:  by joining with the Libertarians and Conservatives in common cause.

Strange Bedfellows?

Maybe the conventional “wisdom” or common bromides used in political and conventional media discourse is badly wrong or hopelessly simplistic?  — Naw!  Can’t be.  It will never happen?

If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears,
however measured or far away.
— Henry David Thoreau

“If I do not want what you want, please try not to tell me that my want is wrong.

Or if I believe other than you, at least pause before you correct my view.

Or if my emotion is less than yours, or more, given the same circumstances, try not to ask me to feel more strongly or weakly.

Or yet if I act, or fail to act, in the manner of your design for action, let me be.

I do not, for the moment at least, ask you to understand me. That will come only when you are willing to give up changing me into a copy of you.

I may be your spouse, your parent, your offspring, your friend, or your colleague. If you will allow me any of my own wants, or emotions, or beliefs, or actions, then you open yourself, so that some day these ways of mine might not seem so wrong, and might finally appear to you as right — for me. To put up with me is the first step to understanding me. Not that you embrace my ways as right for you, but that you are no longer irritated or disappointed with me for my seeming waywardness. And in understanding me you might come to prize my differences from you, and, far from seeking to change me, preserve and even nurture those differences.

The point of this book is that people are different from each other, and that no amount of getting after them is going to change them. Nor is there any reason to change them, because the differences are probably good, not bad.”

Idealist

Did What Is Right

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According to his own conscience.

Which was against his country’s norms at the time.

A Man for All Seasons.

“You want to know about my motivation, don’t you? Well. It is the kind of sentiments anyone would have when he actually sees refugees face to face, begging with tears in their eyes. He just cannot help but sympathize with them. Among the refugees were the elderly and women. They were so desperate that they went so far as to kiss my shoes, Yes, I actually witnessed such scenes with my own eyes. Also, I felt at that time, that the Japanese government did not have any uniform opinion in Tokyo. Some Japanese military leaders were just scared because of the pressure from the Nazis; while other officials in the Home Ministry were simply ambivalent.

People in Tokyo were not united. I felt it silly to deal with them. So, I made up my mind not to wait for their reply. I knew that somebody would surely complain about me in the future. But, I myself thought this would be the right thing to do. There is nothing wrong in saving many people’s lives….The spirit of humanity, philanthropy…neighborly friendship…with this spirit, I ventured to do what I did, confronting this most difficult situation—and because of this reason, I went ahead with redoubled courage.”

Yes, There is the banality of evil.

And, Yes, he probably did pay for his life-saving kindness.  He had a tough life,  but the approximately 20,000 descendents of the individuals who he helped are glad that he did the right thing, in his own mind.

Others could not, and more importantly, did not do the same.  But, it was a natural thing, FOR HIM.  It’s called personality: Character AND Temperament, two sides of the same coin.  You cannot separate them.  It is a whole.

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Dyads, Idealist, Leadership, out of the box, Rational

Wings

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Don’t ask me what I did.  Ask what I did not do.
I did not clip her wings.
— Ziauddin Yousafzai

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Ziauddin Yousafzai, Teacher Idealist, is the father of Malala Yousafzai, a young woman who protested against the Taliban for the education rights of children, especially for Pakistani girls. Originally a headmaster of his school in Swat Valley, he is currently the United Nations Special Advisor on Global Education.

Malala Yousafzai, Fieldmarshal Rational, ( born 12 July 1997) is a Pakistani school pupil and education activist from the town of Mingora in the Swat District of Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. She is known for her activism for rights to education and for women, especially in the Swat Valley, where the Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. In early 2009, at the age of 11–12, Yousafzai wrote a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC detailing her life under Taliban rule, their attempts to take control of the valley, and her views on promoting education for girls. The following summer, a New York Times documentary by journalist Adam B. Ellick was filmed about her life as the Pakistani military intervened in the region, culminating in the Second Battle of Swat. Malala rose in prominence, giving interviews in print and on television, and she was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize by South African activist Desmond Tutu. [Wikipedia, revised]

“I will get my education – if it is in home, school, or anyplace.”
— Malala

As Malala became more recognized, the dangers facing her became more acute. Death threats against her were published in newspapers and slipped under her door. On Facebook, where she was an active user, she began to receive threats and fake profiles were created under her name. When none of this worked, a Taliban spokesman says they were “forced” to act. In a meeting held in the summer of 2012, Taliban leaders unanimously agreed to kill her.
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Famous personality, Idealist, Leadership

Unreasonable

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But not irrational

— not by long shot.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him… The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself… All progress depends on the unreasonable man.” –George Bernard Shaw

He is unreasonable in his consistent integrity of his ideals.

Some say, because of that, he is unsafe at any speed of change.

He has always been Idealistic. THAT’S THE NATURE OF TEMPERAMENT.

He won’t change, he can’t change. He doesn’t compromise.

And he is unreasonable about that. Continue reading Unreasonable →

Idealist, out of the box

Wizard

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“He was frail and drained of energy;
his eyes were dull, his face contorted with pain.

— and I was, frankly, worried about his health.  Was this drawn and ailing man slumped in a wheelchair the legendary healer I had read about? Had I come west on a wild goose chase? ” [The Voice (Kindle Locations 70-71)]

Yes, he was the legendary psychotherapist.  Wild goose chase? — maybe, actually in retrospect, no ambiguity here.

“Dr. Erickson asked to be excused, and then, about an hour later, I was astonished to see him wheel himself back into his study, fully alert and revitalized, cheerful, eyes twinkling, ready to get to work.”  [The Voice (Kindle Locations 72-73)]

“Each person is a unique individual. Hence, psychotherapy should be formulated to meet the uniqueness of the individual’s needs, rather than tailoring the person to fit the Procrustean bed of a hypothetical theory of human behavior.” – Milton H. Erickson

Brian Alman was Milton Erickson’s last student.  The last student to benefit from the personal experience of The Wizard of the Desert.  Brian had terrible back problems, and Erickson invited him to come to Phoenix, and work with him.  Also called “the Mozart of psychotherapy,” and grandfather of modern hypnosis, Milton Hyland Erickson, MD (1901-1980), pioneered hypnotherapy and brief strategic therapy.  He never promoted himself, so not many individuals know about his life, but …

Now there is a full length documentary about Milton Erickson and his life: The Wizard of the Desert: An Alexander Vesely Film.

Noted for his positive approach to the unconscious mind. A humanitarian, teacher, physician, loving husband, and caring father (to eight children), Dr. Erickson was a colleague and friend to preeminent intellectuals including Gregory Bateson, Aldous Huxley, and Margaret Mead.

The film was long and tough in the making.  This documentary explores the personal life and incredible career work of Milton H. Erickson, M.D., founder of Modern Hypnotherapy. This unsung American genius was a pioneer in psychiatry using radical and unconventional hypnotic techniques to cure not only patients, but to control his own debilitating pain and paralysis.

Milton Erickson is a Counselor Idealist.

Other examples of Counselor Idealists include: Ted Sorensen, Aung San Suu Kyi, Vaclav Havel, Carl Jung, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mohandas Gandhi