Tag Archives: INTJ

A Man for All Reasons

He is a man of an angel’s wit and multiple learning. I know not his fellow. For where is the man of that gentleness, strength, and resolve? And as time requireth, a man of marvelous modernity and reasoned enterprise, and sometime of as sad gravity. A Man for All Reasons.

fridtjof_nansen

“His greatness sprang first and foremost from his moral qualities.”

“He was what might be termed a moral genius, an upright and noble personality, a practical idealist, independent, incorruptible, and indomitable, uncompromisingly self-sacrificing, a man devoid of guile and to whom the concept of self-indulgence was entirely foreign.”

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Are you Vivek?

It was an unreported event.

A woman came out of one little home … and looked him over wonderingly. The boy and the woman gazed at each other for a long moment, and then the woman finally said in astonishment: “Are you Vivek?”

The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The woman had been trying get her children out of a brothel for years: ever since she had escape the brothel that had enslaved her and her children (a boy and a girl) who were born in the brothel.

“Journalists tend to be good at covering events that happen on a particular day, but we slip at covering events that happen every day.”  — Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn.

meena_and_vivek

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Education re-thought

Only the educated are free.
Epictetus

Think of it.  A free education.

He is thinking of it.

Not for him; no, he learns by teaching.  Bill Gates has seen to that.

No, Sal is going to try to teach the world, for free.

salman_khan

Unfortunately, most will not listen, at least most adults, for they are stupid and not curious.  But maybe some lucky children and some adults will listen.  And learn…

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Not For Ourselves, Together

“Non nobis solum nati sumus” 

“Not for ourselves alone are we born.” — Cicero

They never saw the day.  But they knew it would happen.

Their herculean efforts had a purpose.  They knew that — the women of a newer generation, and the nation and the world, would see the fruits of their labors.

They were an unbeatable team: a pair that was much bigger than the sum of their parts: Die Gestalt.

And their idea was bigger than them too.

It was audicious idea at the time.

The Declaration of Sentiments.

declaration_of_sentiments

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It Stands to Reason

“It is my nature to be what I am.”

No, she didn’t say that, Emma Goldman did, but she could have said the same.

And, she knew much of what Goldman said was good, but not all.  You see, she could learn from Goldman  — and Rand, Milgram, Harman, …. and from Voltairine de Cleyre.

— NO, THAT AIN’T VOLTAIRE.

… she could decide what ideas were good, and bad, from each of those individuals who she read from, for herself. Yes, for …

Only the Self-Educated are Free…

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In Memoriam: Thomas Szasz

Thomas Szasz died September 11th 2012. In Memoriam.

Dr. Szasz wrote “The Myth of Mental Illness,” a book that questioned the legitimacy of his field and made enemies of many fellow doctors.

Szasz first presented his attack on “mental illness” as a legal term in 1958 in the Columbia Law Review. In his article he argued that mental illness was no more a fact bearing on a suspect’s guilt than is possession by the devil.

The Contenders

‘The Putin regime, like all such regimes, is a pyramid. And what the protests are doing is dismantling the bottom rungs of this pyramid…..I have thought of leaving, and I have even made plans to leave. The truth is, I don’t want to. I love my home, my friends, my job, my life. And if Putin doesn’t like me, he can leave.’

There is a contention here.  Who is going to win in the end?

Well, it depends on the time frame.

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Wandering towards the Enlightenment

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost.

Nomad – synonym – wanderer.

She titled her book, “Nomad.”

For that was her ancestral origins — misleadingly put as “her genetics”  —  supposedly her “inheritance” and her culture.

But she was different.  Something deep inside was different.

She had always read books, from the beginning as a child.

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Me!? Arrogant..

Although most people do not take glee in being perceived as being “arrogant,”  however, many male Rationals will admit they are not particularly bothered as being perceived as arrogant – well, because they are arrogant. No sense in denying the facts. Female Rationals sometimes get a moniker (deserved or undeserved – depending on your political religion) such as the Iron Lady, because of this perceived arrogance. With that arrogance, I suspect political religion was why Hollywood did such a hatchet job on Margaret Thatcher in the now playing biographical movie.

Rationals are wont to think of themselves as the prime movers who must pit their utilitarian ways and means against custom and tradition, in an endless struggle to bring efficiency and goal-directness to enterprise, an attitude regarded by many as arrogant” [Please Understand Me II, page 169]

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A Brilliant Mistake

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. – Issac Newton

isaac_newton

Isaac Newton was a reasonable man as long as he didn’t have to suffer fools.  This attitude made him appear as both an arrogant man and a humble man at the same time.   This is not surprising, for he is one of the iconic examples of the personality temperament, called Rational, in particular a Mastermind.  Masterminds are not concerned with ideas, for their own sake, as much as the Architects, but rather are interested in ideas for their use and utility in reality.  And Newton had no use for useless or wrong ideas, and for those people who could not see what was obvious to him.  However, Newton saw far — farther than anybody else in his age. But he did make a mistake, a brilliant mistake in a form of simplification, and with that, he, and notably his followers, opened up the world to reason and the scientific revolution.

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