Tag Archives: personality

Did What Is Right

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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The Ghost of Khan

You can’t find where his corporeal body is buried. And it certainly isn’t buried in Russia.  He, personally, never stepped a foot in the Rus’ lands.

History is Baroque!
Will and Ariel Durant

But what about his Zeitgeist?

ghost_of_khan

Yesterday and Today?

If we curse the past, if we blank it out of our memory as my father did, nothing will get better.
Our history is both cursed and magnificent. Just like the history of any state or people.
It is fitting Russia, the tragedies;
these contradictory strands of history are woven so tightly together. 

Boris Yeltzin

Zeitgeist (Zeit –Time, geist –Ghost)

It’s a tale of Black Gold.

Ah, but what kind of Black Gold are we talking about?

The Black Gold of the Earth: that Good Earth: Land and Power of Mother Russia.


The Black Gold of the Earth: that Good Earth: Oil and Gold of Mother Russia.

On the Wealth of Nations.
Who owns the Rents — Economic and/or Political?

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Just the Way You Are

“I like you — Just the way you are.”

fred rogers and little boy

Yes Fred, you have got it.  It’s called Temperament.

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. — David Keirsey [Different Drummers, Please Understand Me II]

“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”
Nelson Mandela

play

Fred Rogers would say it in some way, “I like you just the way your are” every day of the week on his children’s TV show.

“He was basically a very shy man. He wasn’t the sort of fellow who got up and made bold statements about what we should be doing for children’s television. He did it in his own way and did it very effectively.”
—Bob “Captain Kangaroo” Keeshan

Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood began airing in 1968 and ran for 895 episodes; the last set of new episodes was taped in December 2000 and began airing in August 2001. At its peak, in 1985, 8% of U.S households tuned into the show.

fred_rogers_quote

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Extraordinary Ordinary Part II or Be Prepared.

‘I just saw what was going on and did what I could to help.’

Survivor Vera Gissing said:

‘I owe him my life and those of my children and grandchildren. I was lucky to get out when I did and having the chance to thank Nicky was the most precious moment in my life.’

As far as he is concerned, his actions weren’t anything extraordinary.

Continue reading Extraordinary Ordinary Part II or Be Prepared.

Boots First

These boots are made for walking… 
And that’s just what they’ll do.
One of these days these boots
are gonna walk all over you.

She was a Maverick — she had to be.

Those good old boys had the rules and the “code.”  Women need not to apply.  She was rejected nine times.  But this cat had ten lives.

And she wore boots.

She changed the rules.

muriel-siebert-book-cover

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We Proceed..

lessons_of_history“Since man is a moment in astronomic time, a transient guest of the earth, a spore of his species, a scion of his race, a composite of body, character, and mind, a member of a family and a community, a believer or doubter of a faith, a unit in an economy, perhaps a citizen in a state or a soldier in an army, we may ask under the corresponding heads–astronomy, geology, geography, biology, ethnology, psychology, morality, religion, economics, politics, and war – what history has to say about the nature, conduct, and prospects of man. It is a precarious enterprise, and only a fool would try to compress a hundred centuries into a hundred pages of hazardous conclusions. We proceed.” – Will and Ariel Durant

Those who fail to learn from history will repeat it.

History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.
Mark Twain

“As his studies come to a close the historian faces the challenge: Of what use have your studies been? Have you found in your work only the amusement of recounting the rise and fall of nations and ideas, and retelling “sad stories of the death of kings”? Have you learned more about human nature than the man in the street can learn without so much as opening a book? Have you derived from history any illumination of our present condition, any guidance for our judgments and policies, any guard against the rebuffs of surprise or the vicissitudes of change? Have you found such regularities in the sequence of past events that you can predict the future actions of mankind or the fate of states? Is it possible that, after all, “history has no sense,” that it teaches us nothing, and that the immense past was only the weary rehearsal of the mistakes that the future is destined to make on a larger stage and scale?” – Will and Ariel Durant

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Pistike

“Those with Trustworthy Convictions.”

A public career that would span 7 decades.

A radio and television icon of her time, an author of self help books, and a columnist, who wrote a daily newspaper advice column from 1960 to 2013 .

By 1958, the host of her own self-titled show on local television (which became so popular NBC syndicated the program nationally).

An excellent mind for memorising finite details.

Direct, down to earth, gaining great satisfaction from helping others, but also able to convey practical help to people, she described herself as a mother, wife, and psychologist last.

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I, too, was once a Human Being, Revisited

No ashes, no coal can burn with such glow.
As a secretive love of which no one must know.

She was.

But, “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…” [Charles Dickens, Tale of Two Cities]

She began her dark journey into light at the age of seventeen.

In that darkness, he had beaten her ‘on her bare buttocks’ in a ‘special room’ away from the family. In the light, she eventually confessed that she had felt sexual excitement when her father beat her. Her mother had raised her ‘in complete sexual ignorance.’

Suffering – both physical and emotional – with love.

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Of Complex Character, Revisited

Gaia is a tough bitch.

Hot Cold Passion: a passion for science.

She was a Scientist, first.

And she was a Character — a very interesting, and complex character.

Having entered the science community as a woman, when men still dominated science, and being charmed by a huge scientific ego, Carl, she luckily had to explore the backwaters of evolutionary biology at the time, bacteria, not getting much support from him or her male contemporaries.  Of course, like all good science, that estuary of knowledge contained biological riches totally ignored by well established conventional scientific community.  Like Darwin before, she was sui generis: a driven, feisty, no holds barred, idea brawler — an intellectual maverick — by necessity and choice.  Initially ignored, she generated a fair amount of hostility from the conventional scientific community when they were challenged.

And intellectual mavericks, with persistence, are the only type to challenge the major ideas of conventional science, and win — somewhat.

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