Ha ha, I love reading 1-star reviews for books I'm reading, which in this case is "Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America."
I was just listening to the audiobook, wanted to do a post about one thing I heard, needed to get an Amazon link, and just could not resist clicking into the 1-star material.
Anyway... here's the quote from the book that I wanted to share:
I often observe people who desperately want to win political arguments but can’t escape from their own ego jails. People want to be 100 percent right while painting their debate opponent as 100 percent wrong. Sometimes that leads to absurd positions that defy both reason and facts. The need to be right (driven by ego) crowds out the opportunity to be persuasive, which is the whole point of debate. Choosing ego over effectiveness is classic loserthink.Adams has an idiosyncratic way of talking about "ego":
The productive way to think of your ego is to consider it a tool, as opposed to a reflection of who you are on some core level. If you think your ego is a tool, you can choose to dial it up when needed and dial it down when it would be an obstacle.Notice how the subject is not what ego actually is or anything deep or real at all. It's just: On the assumption that you want to be successful, here's how think about ego. Cogitating about who you are on some core level is for losers. The question is what works.
I'm looking at all this from a cool distance. I don't desperately want to win political arguments myself. I don't like argument, I don't like politics, and I never feel at all desperate when talking about politics, and I feel no temptation to characterize myself as 100% right and others as 100% wrong. If anything, I have work up from a natural inclination to say that everyone is sort of right and sort of wrong and that at heart we don't even disagree at all. That's not loserthink in Scott's book, but I'm pretty sure it's also not winnerthink.
The word "winnerthink" doesn't appear in the book. In fact, the word "winner" only appears twice. Scott's last book was about winning. From that book, "Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter":
Brand yourself as a winner. If people expect you to win, they will be biased toward making it happen.Oddly enough, these Scott Adams quotes are making me think of literature's biggest loser, Hamlet: "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
I took that out of context. Like many lines from Shakespeare, it's remembered as a free-standing aphorism, but I went into the text, somewhere in Act 2, Scene 2, here's the relevant part:
HAMLET: What's the news?Ha ha. Fake news!
ROSENCRANTZ: None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest.
HAMLET: Then is doomsday near: but your news is not true.
HAMLET: Let me question more in particular: what have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune, that she sends you to prison hither?That made me think about Trump's slogan, "Make America Great Again." If Denmark was a prison to Hamlet because that's the way he thought about it, each of us has the power to make America great if we only think of it as great. It's harder to make America great again, because that's a 2-step process. First, you've got to believe that it was once great, and that can be hard when they're teaching you in school that the world is a fiendish place in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons, America being one o' the worst.
GUILDENSTERN: Prison, my lord!
HAMLET: Denmark's a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ: Then is the world one.
HAMLET: A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst.
ROSENCRANTZ: We think not so, my lord.
HAMLET: Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison.
Posts
99 comments:
...seems to be a manual on how to argue with people who don't share your opinions...
This 1-star review author likes to argue with people who share his opinions?
Maybe it's a 'guy thing'. For me, political arguments have nothing to do with ego. I'm more concerned about the issue at hand than about being right.
What about arguing with a leftwing machine that spreads lies?
Recap:
"NBC killed story on Harvey Weinstein, saying it didn't meet their editorial standards.
ABC spiked story on Jeffrey Epstein, saying same.
Both orgs (& rest of media) went wild running uncorroborated stories about Brett Kavanaugh being a gang rapist."
&
Testimony Transcript Shows William Taylor Never Talked To Trump, Wasn’t Even On July 25 Phone Call. “A top anti-Trump witness for House Democrats admitted he wasn’t on the July 25 phone call and had never even spoken with Trump about Ukraine military aid.”
link
Your ego exists only inside your head, and therefore it’s whatever you choose to make it. Therefore, you can let it control you, or not.
This is a life-changing realization and it’s part of a bigger pivture: our attitudes and reactions to other people and events in our lives are always under our control, that we can change to the extent we allow ourselves to be uncomfortable to grow and escape the mental prisons we all build for ourselves.
You are missing the point by pondering “what ego actually is”, It’s not actually anything but what you choose to make it and so of course there’s nothing “deep or real at all” about it.
Ah, yes, Milady. Tis posts like this that lead the wayward here right regular.
Or you could go to the source material “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”
One of Dale Carnegies best maxims was that “You can’t persuade if you are yourself unpersuadable.” or something like that.
Of course if one is a mathematician then one is always right. Or at least I am.
The productive way to think of your ego is to consider it a tool, as opposed to a reflection of who you are on some core level. If you think your ego is a tool, you can choose to dial it up when needed and dial it down when it would be an obstacle.
In other words, pointing out what is right as opposed to claiming to always be right. Trump already has that tool in his kit, when he chooses to use it.
The need to be right (driven by ego) crowds out the opportunity to be persuasive, which is the whole point of debate. Choosing ego over effectiveness is classic loserthink.
Advice from Adams to Trump on suburban women?
I don't like argument, I don't like politics,
Then why the Hell did you become a professor of Con Law?
and I feel no temptation to characterize myself as 100% right and others as 100% wrong.
Libertarians, Jessica Valenti and splooge stooges everywhere disagree.
I’m gonna buy both books using your link. I trust it means you and Meade get your kickbacks!
Is Hamlet really “literature's biggest loser”? Well, at the end of the play he’s dead and so is his girlfriend, and the stage is littered with corpses. But I would nominate King Arthur as a bigger loser. At the end of his story his wife has cuckolded him with his best subordinate, his own son has killed him and he has killed his only son. And the Saxons are coming back.
Meanwhile, a professor who fled Romania in 1999, has resigned from Columbia U because it is going full communist.
Those who lived under communism can spot it.
It is perfectly possible to be tolerant and project a measured humility (usually feigned) and be right 98% of the time. Unsurprisingly, the former is a tremendous aid to the latter, because it serves as an mental brake-tap before opening your mouth and pulling into traffic
"It is better to give than to receive" could be the all time positive thinkers' slogan. Trump says make me an offer and watch me walk away.
China must be going insane by now.
Adams’ larger points about people and how they are hostage to their irrational, emotional sides has been proven beyond any doubt with the reactions of the anti-Trump types since 2015. Adams even predicted the exact types of reactions that would arise, and in the right order.
He nailed it on this particular issue, and that is a comment not about what a genius he is, it’s a comment on how wrong our current understanding of people’s behavior is. It’s confirmation bias and cognitive dissidence every day, all day, for probably 80-90% of the population.
Shakespeare was a genius. Just reading (re-reading since I taught “Hamlet” in the past) this passage reminds me how much the man, whoever he was, understood the human soul. The first words in “Hamlet” are “Who’s there!” And that is indeed the question Shakespeare puts before us in this examination of the heart of the thinking man. Hamlet’s last words were, “ The rest is silence,” a fitting coda to this man whose life was “ Words, words, words,” a man who decided against suicide because of his fear of the “undiscovered country” of death.
Pure genius and way more illuminating than anything Freud said ... and Freud was a genius too.
Adams gets lots of one-star reviews because the trolls/leftists attack books that are popular. As Adams said, if your book only gets five star reviews, its because no one cares.
The reason I hate political discussions is I am always pressured to take aside when I don't think I have enough information, or to agree with someone when I think they don't have enough information.
About the only thing I support in politics is that "left-right" is a broken, useless division that can't describe any thoughtful person. As a result, most liberals I discuss politics with think I am a conservative and most conservatives think I am liberal.
Since nearly everyone in my life is hard left, I avoid talking politics as much as possible and let them conclude that I am also hard-left (because most political partisans assume that you agree with them unless they've decided that you are the wrong sort of person).
The most ego driven discussions I've had relate to Military History. For some reason, many of them regard discussions of WWII or the civil war as a "Battle" and even when they are ignorant idiots, they will keep fighting to the last man rather then admit they are wrong.
Skylark observes: One of Dale Carnegies best maxims was that “You can’t persuade if you are yourself unpersuadable.” or something like that.
And isn't that a corollary to W.C. Fields' "You can't cheat an honest man"?
Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" was apparently Charles Manson's favorite book. True story.
Heh. Amazon's has a "verified purchaser" box for reviewers. This is literally the opposite, a reviewer reviewing a product he admittedly hasn't bought or read. A 100 Percenter, and proud of it!
"I haven't and won't read it, but..." tells you all you need to know.
The ego is the tool people use to meditate between aminal instincts and spiritual morality. Trump feeds the right combo of I'd and Superego that keeps his deplorables in his open air prison of the mind.
Being right does feel pretty good. But knowing what's actually right is not always easy. Ultimately I'd prefer be wrong sometimes but be willing to learn something than believe I'm always right and be unwilling to change.
When people get in debates, it seems like sometimes people don't know what their goals are or lose sight of them. Is your goal to persuade the other person? Or is it to humiliate them, to "win"? Or is it to find out whatever the truth is?
Some people seem much more interested in portraying their interlocutors as bad and/or stupid than in actually persuading them to their side of the argument. I know I've been guilty of this in the past. It's especially difficult when someone starts of by blanketly insulting an entire cohort of people. I've definitely done that, but in my defense it's usually in response to a ve been guilty of this in the past. It's especially difficult when someone starts of by another blanket insult of a cohort that I consider myself a part of.
So no laughing in their faces and calling them morons then?
Then making your point and telling them to look it up on their cell phone?
Is this a pre-holiday arguing guide?
I am active in local and state politics, and the inability of politically active people to 'persuade' - indeed, their lack of interest in it - can't be overstated.
I know a guy who has photos of himself with Nixon from 1960 and most presidents up to and including Trump (near Trump, at his rallies, anyway.) Passionate political views. I've seen him interact with moderate fence-sitters and drive every one to the other side of the issue.
My regular question to self-professed activists is "Who did you persuade today?"
I worked with Adams when he was the right-hand-man of one Tom Edrington, VP of Pacific Bell's Science and Technology Department... it was at this point when he began writing/drawing Dilbert, which ran in the company newsletter. I remember him as a quiet, keep his own counsel sort of man. He's certainly made the most of his talent and has been proven right in his prognostications and analysis at a very impressive rate.
and I feel no temptation to characterize myself as 100% right and others as 100% wrong.
Libertarians, Jessica Valenti and splooge stooges everywhere disagree.
For someone not tempted to be 100% right, funny how she always is. She says she doesn't lie, too. Probably if you asked at thw right time, she would say she is a virgin. I'm thinking:
The truth is not an obstacle to someone such as me, she said,
Because you see, we all create our own reality!
In the same way, if RH shuts his eyes hard enough and prays hard enough that this is the same country his forefathers made, it will be so.
I haven't read it and won't read it. I bought Titania McGrath's book, and Campusland, though.
DailyKos came up with “winnerism” that was never about truth. I am pretty sure that our trolls who never engage in discussion, which might, you know, advance understanding, are plying that vein, probably in a response to some Kos “Call to action” to comment on blogs and repeat the talking points.
I have been on Twitter a little bit since Alhtouse cut back the back and forth, and there are people there who simply have zero interest in anything but “winning" the argument, even if it means ignoring that their argument has been eviscerated. It’s kind of a wasteland and after a while you just feel like having fun tweaking them. Which is, as Scott Adams says, counterproductive. But I think that they are under strict “non fraternization” orders.
I was having what seemed like a reasonable conversation with one guy, but when I quoted the NYTimes, he called me a Russian bot, and I guess, blocked me. It’s amazing how many embedded tweets I can’t see because “big time” NeverTrumpers have blocked me. But I am sure they have right on their side!
"Cogitating about who you are on some core level is for losers."
Is that in the book? It certainly isn't in the quote you posted. There is nothing loser-like about thinking about who you are at some core level as long as not the sole (soul?) subject of your thoughts. We need to embrace the healing power of "and". Know thyself, and thy purposes, and thy means, and thy ends. That last sentence is me, not Shakespeare.
When I think of the effect of cogitation in Hamlet, I think of Hamlet's line after he has encountered the Norwegians off to contest a little patch of ground in Poland. He asks himself if he is constrained by
"Bestial oblivion or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on th' event—
A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward."
You can think about things too much, as is evidenced by most law review articles.
"Meanwhile, a professor who fled Romania in 1999, has resigned from Columbia U because it is going full communist.
"Those who lived under communism can spot it."
This guy seems like a real dolt. For one, how is political correctness having to do with gender identity or racial balancing in any way "communism," which is strictly an economic system? Political correctness can become tyrannical when "right thinking" (sic) becomes socially imposed, but tyranny is not, by definition, communism.
More confounding, how can a professor of theater be so obtuse as object to considering transgender actors to play Juliet, given that, while Shakespeare was alive and writing his plays, all parts, including the females, were performed by men?
Adams is talking about something similar to what Richard Hoststadter talked about: the 100% mind.
Quick gut check: do you respect that 1 star reviewer?
"I've seen him interact with moderate fence-sitters and drive every one to the other side of the issue. “
Like the guy who wants his kid to play baseball so much that he makes his kid hate it. I have seen that one.
Blogger Howard said...
The ego is the tool people use to meditate between aminal instincts and spiritual morality. Trump feeds the right combo of I'd and Superego that keeps his deplorables in his open air prison of the mind.
Howard does not believe in the "side" of reality. All the transgenders and Climate alarmists are on your side, Howard. Does that make your id feel good ?
The common theme of the 1 star reviews appears to be none of those folks actually read the book.
Man, I really need to proofread my posts more carefully before hitting "Publish". The last sentence of my "11/7/19, 8:59 AM" post was supposed to be:
I've definitely done that, but in my defense it's usually in response to another blanket insult of a cohort that I consider myself a part of or just characterizing an extremely powerful cohort (like "The Elite", "The Swamp", "The Deep State" or the "Main Stream Media") who I believe are abusing their power.
"whoever he was,”
He was William Shakespeare of Stratford. There are only a couple of plays that have a couple of passages that show different authorship.
The 100% right 100% wrong attitude is especially craziness inducing in the era of Trump. People on the left who argued for years that the US should not be the world's policeman now take the opposite view in order to avoid agreeing with Trump. People on the right who argued for years that large budget deficits were harmful now take the opposite view in order to avoid disagreeing with Trump.
M. Jordan above said that Shakespeare was a genius. I'll not disagree. Harold Bloom wrote a book "Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human Being". Bloom's thesis (disagree with it) was that before Shakespeare humans did not examine their internal emotional and intellectual life. Shakespeare's characters taught us how to do that.
It's a pretty idea--but I think many people--both pre and post Shakespeare knew how to do it on their own.
The ego is the tool people use to meditate between aminal instincts and spiritual morality. Trump feeds the right combo of I'd and Superego that keeps his deplorables in his open air prison of the mind.
Only if you listen to him.
Others may take a wait-and-see approach then read articles how this is the lowest black unemployment in 50 years.
One doesn’t have to listen to Trump to observe the economic chains being thrown off our economy.
My gas WITH a gas tax increase is $2.33.
People don’t have to listen, they just have to fill up and know who is president.
They get up out of bed with a job to go to.
Drill, BABY DRILL!
Notice how the subject is not what ego actually is or anything deep or real at all. It's just: On the assumption that you want to be successful, here's how think about ego. Cogitating about who you are on some core level is for losers. The question is what works.
A scientist thinks about "understanding." Engineers think about "what works."
Most of what is called "science" today is more mental masturbation, than anything else.
IMAO, Adams is right here. If it doesn't work, then your understanding is a best worthless, and at worst clearly wrong.
I like the new normal Howard. It feels productive.
"Denmark's a prison."
No wonder it is Lizzie's model.
"I've seen him interact with moderate fence-sitters and drive every one to the other side of the issue."
Uh, drive from the middle to the other side he's arguing for? I mean, it happens, but your point is taken, if I understand it.
When you're knocking on doors you'd better be ready for that occasional challenge.
Trump has clearly segmented the market and is trying to persuade a majority of the voters by a combination of candor, bluster, humor, mockery, and insults to his enemies. Far from occupying the moral high ground, his position seems to be that there is no moral high ground except America and Americans first.
His enemies are so feckless that they rage and fume, and completely lose their composure and their ability to persuade.
People who are in the middle agree with Trump on many things but they are reluctant to embrace him because of his style and manner.
The most enthusiastic Trump supporters I know are business owners/operators who have been suffocating under the attentions and pretensions of of the pseudo elites.
"has been proven right in his prognostications and analysis at a very impressive rate. "
And yet, I look through "The Future of Work" and see he's been wrong at a very impressive rate.
He's written about owning and running restaurants that have failed. He also counseled a cartoonist who had a workplace strip set at a gym, using Adams' six sources of humor (clever, cute, bizarre, naughty, cruel, and recognizable). That failed, too.
A lot of Dilbert wasn't his, either. Someone else came up with the name. Someone else also named Dogbert, and he realized he could follow the pattern with the rest of the strip.
Not to say he hasn't been a big success. I love his strip (I have his page-a-day desk calendar on my desk), and he's created strips in which each panel is hilarious (the one in which Wally is cooking popcorn and Alice is yelling at him, for example).
He's also made claims in his books that I find difficult to believe (I mention this only so you know where my bias is founded).
He won a big bet on Trump, however, and he'll ride that through his future failures. But he's not a genius, except at throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall and seeing some of them hit.
I don't like argument, I don't like politics...
Didn't you say you used to record and watch all the Sunday morning political talk shows? I do enjoy arguments and politics, but I'd never subject myself to that garbage. (Maybe I'm misremembering what you wrote. It's hard to believe anyone outside of professional politics/media would waste their time like that.)
https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/06/testimony-transcript-shows-william-taylor-never-talked-to-trump-wasnt-even-on-july-25-phone-call/
People who are in the middle agree with Trump on many things but they are reluctant to embrace him because of his style and manner.
That's my general thought too. A lot of swing voters really dislike Trump's personal style despite generally approving of the results. Logically, if results are really more important than style, Trump should easily win reelection. But humans are irrational, illogical beings, so there's no guarantees. People make emotional descisions that are against their own interests all the time.
And obviously the Democrat party relies heavily on emotionality and short term thinking. One need look no further than their current crop of candidates. All of them promise the moon. All of them promise free healthcare, free college, the punishing the wealthy, and the undoing of damge to out climate throught the miracle of policies. A cautious, reasonable person may be a bit skeptical of all these promises. Are they really achievable? Unfortunately, a lot of people don't want to look too hard at the feasibility of all these promises. They choose to believe rather than question or research.
Remember Trump is a big fan of Prosperity Evangelism, the Power of Positive Thinking. He is a Normal Vincent Peale Devotee, plus his religious adviser in the White House, Paula White, is known as one of the most prominent televangelists who teach a prosperity gospel.
If you believe it, it will happen. If we Believe we can Make America Great Again, our egos will point us in that direction and we could fulfill the wish.
Cookie @ 9:30AM: I think the connection is the totalitarian aspect of these two issues. Most totalitarian, including communist, states impose a right-think, right-speak behavior on their citizens. Re-education camps during the Cultural Revolution in China were much like our universities today. The only significant difference is that our students have to pay to attend universities.
Just another way of looking at things
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/impeachment-through-the-looking-glass?utm_source=WEX_News+Brief_11%2F06%2F2019&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WEX_News+Brief&rid=12167&fbclid=IwAR02kNe7rPWGvRyMlORUdEu0ornSX1IWj36EvGI49yACfyEXUJNqtujrwiQ
What did the Romans call the ego.
If you travel, ego trips are always good.
This blogpost is exactly why I make Althouse my first read every morning.
There's egophobia but no idphobia, except as confused with I.D.
"Remember Trump is a big fan of Prosperity Evangelism, the Power of Positive Thinking. He is a Normal Vincent Peale Devotee, plus his religious adviser in the White House, Paula White, is known as one of the most prominent televangelists who teach a prosperity gospel."
"Prosperity evangelism" has no basis in Christian doctrine. It's a sham, a con, a heresy, (as Chris Hedges calls it).
"at heart we don't even disagree at all"
Said Tony K to deplorables who thought substantive due process had nothing to do with SSM.
And why can't we all get along?
It's so sad. It's terrible.
He's written about owning and running restaurants that have failed. He also counseled a cartoonist who had a workplace strip set at a gym, using Adams' six sources of humor (clever, cute, bizarre, naughty, cruel, and recognizable). That failed, too.
...
Not to say he hasn't been a big success. I love his strip (I have his page-a-day desk calendar on my desk), and he's created strips in which each panel is hilarious
He also gave bad avice to cartoonist Scott Meyer about his often-workplace-set webcomic "Basic Instructions". Or at least it sounded bad to me, and Meyer didn't take the advice. Of course there's no way to know what would have happened had he taken it.
Meyer has since quit the comic to work on (decent) SF novels, but your comment on a joke in every panel made me think of Meyer since he started as a stand-up comic, and multiple punchline concept was very much the format of BI.
I still think How To Figure Out What Someone Said may be the funniest comic I've ever read.
Considering how Amazon actively curates book reviews these days, how is it a review from someone who literally says he hasn't read the book, and won't, isn't deleted?
tyranny is not, by definition, communism.
********
But communism, by definition, is tyranny.
Disagree?
Reading terrible reviews of any thing you love is super fun. It makes all these online reviews worthwhile to me
“ Then why the Hell did you become a professor of Con Law?”
You assume that a person studies only things she likes?
Apply that to a cancer researcher or a historian who studies wars.
I think my attitude is a plus for a professor. I wasn’t a hack. I was never dishonest.
Its an incorrrect emphasis, that dettacts from the main message.
Ann Althouse: "“ Then why the Hell did you become a professor of Con Law?”"
Because the Copyright Programs for Recording Artist Representation was full up?
"I haven't read this book that I am reviewing" is even worse than "I've only read the first 50 pages but this book is awful/wonderful."
My husband loves Scott Adams. Just ordered the book for him. I consider Adams a tool, so I won't be reading it.
Vicki from Pasadena
“ I’m gonna buy both books using your link. I trust it means you and Meade get your kickbacks!”
Yes and thanks.
“Is Hamlet really “literature's biggest loser”?”
If you think of the bigness in terms of how big he is in literature as opposed to how much as a lose he lost, I think the answer is yes. What’s the competition?
You say Arthur. Could say Satan in Paradise Lost.
But what makes a character a loser? Are Arthur and Satan losers?
One thing that Trump has going for him is the inability of those who dislike him to explain why. There are a few residual NeverTrumpers at Ricochet and they go on and on about how terrible he is but never can explain why.
The lefties will rant about his "crimes" but have no answer when asked to list them.
The one "Conservative" at Ricochet will write a page explaining how 8 years of Hillary will "cleanse the party but does not address the result if she had destroyed the country.
Then we have the budget hawks who have no answer to the AOC Congress.
I'd rather be Hamlet (especially the Branagh incarnation) defeated than many if not most of the people society holdsup as "winners."
AA quotes:
Adams has an idiosyncratic way of talking about "ego":
The productive way to think of your ego is to consider it a tool, as opposed to a reflection of who you are on some core level. If you think your ego is a tool, you can choose to dial it up when needed and dial it down when it would be an obstacle.
Notice how the subject is not what ego actually is or anything deep or real at all. It's just: On the assumption that you want to be successful, here's how think about ego. Cogitating about who you are on some core level is for losers. The question is what works.
______
My take on this: as Adams coming at the age-old distinction between passion and reason - often set up by philosophers - which filters down to elites [intellectuals and academics and scientists] and deplorables [every one else] - as dilemma/problem/choice between passion vs reason.
Ego is both your "passionating" (psychology) and "reasoning" (acting to achieve life-goals in reality)capacity. We need to understand appropriate time for both.
I would be interested to see you compare with your framework for Cruel (without passion?) and Neutral (reason?)
What did the Romans call the ego?
Freud actually called it das Ich, the I. But that didn't sound scientific, so James Strachey translated it into English by translating it into Latin. "Id" was originally das Es, the it. And super-ego was das Uber-ich, the over I.
Cookie, without taking sides in what is essentially a religious conflict, I can see why statists would hate "prosperity evangelism." (Never heard it called that, but what the hey.) State-cultists would object to any teaching that encourages self-sufficiency and wants us not to be wards of the State. Would you say it is more or less of a heresy than Christian socialism? ("Thou SHALT covet thy neighbor's goods.")
What I've never comprehended are secular Statist Prosperity evangelicals, such as Marianne Williams and Oprah. On the one hand, "you can do it all by yourself," "you can manifest your own reality, including a more prosperous one;" but on the other hand, "We need Big Brother to take care of us! Help us, Big Brother, help us!"
they know a few passages, like Leviticus 20, they assume the commands in the mark are meant to be government policy,
I'd peg Titus Andronicus as Shakespeare's biggest loser. The mandates of honor force him to kill two of his own children. Then two of his other children get sentenced to death. He is told that if he cuts off his own hand, then their sentence will be lifted. That's a lie. After he cuts off his hand, the two severed heads of his sons are delivered to him. We've all had days like that, but what makes him such a loser is that he doesn't get to deliver any deathless poetry on the human condition. He doesn't get to suffer in a quotable way......Titus does get a measure of revenge. He kills the Queen's two sons and serves them to her in a pot pie, but that is poor recompense for the griefs he has suffered and the paucity of good lines that Shakespeare has given him.....Incestuous cannibalism used to be a thing in classical literature. GOT made use of it in one episode, but it hasn't caught on. Still, I think this form condign punishment deserves re-consideration. Perhaps if El Chapo was served one of his sons, this could serve to inhibit the brutal impulses of the cartels. It's worth a shot. Just make sure the son is served up in a pot pie and not a taco. It would be racist to serve him as taco meat. That would be an unforgivable crime.
Are Arthur and Satan losers?
I already told you that Arthur’s is a huge loser at the end.
I put the reviews from people who have not read the book in the same category as blog comments from people who hate the topic but feel compelled to tell everyone how stupid and wrong it is to blog on that topic.
If I don't want to read a book, I don't, but see no need to tell everyone else that they shouldn't read it either. If I don't like a blog topic I don't read it but see no reason to rain on everyone else's parade.
It is interesting though that Amazon removes reviews from non-readers for some books but not others. There seems to be a pattern as to which books receive review massaging. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to discover that pattern.
Unknown, that's the guy I was thinking of. And, yes, "How to Figure Out" is hilarious.
"One thing that Trump has going for him is the inability of those who dislike him to explain why."
Many of them are globalists - sometimes sincere, sometimes bought and paid for. Or like Bill Kristol they're Neo-cons. They can't tell the truth, "Hey, I hate Trump because he's against wars in the middle east and/or open Borders" - so we gibberish about how "vulgar" Trump is and we need 8 years of a classy Democrat.
OTOH, if you're only a conservative because of your "Conservative Temperament", and don't care about policy - then the gibberish might be the truth.
Hamlet avenges his fathers death. He's a winner.
A bigger loser is Brutus in Julius Caesar. Kills his friend Caesar and ends up dead. All for nothing.
Bloom's thesis (disagree with it) was that before Shakespeare humans did not examine their internal emotional and intellectual life. Shakespeare's characters taught us how to do that.
I respect Bloom, but this is rot. Marcus Aurelius? St. Augustine? St. Thomas Aquinas? Cicero, for heavens’ sake, who translated the entire corpus of Greek philosophy into Latin and added immeasurably to it?
Think about Adams' idea of the ego as a tool from a Freudian perspective, not because that perspective is necessarily correct, but because it provides a tool for opening up Adams' own thinking.
If the ego is simply a tool for getting what you want, then how do you know what you want?
Either you want what you think you ought to want or what others want from you (superego) or you want what your aggressive and sexual drives seem to want (id).
Thus, in Adams' account, there doesn't seem to be any role for the psyche in taking account of and making sense of all the different messages about what one wants.
That's kind of a creepy and disappointing view of the self, even if it can't be falsified.
Consistent with my sense of Adams, though.
Many of them are globalists - sometimes sincere, sometimes bought and paid for.
I think most people are motivated by money, especially if they deny it.
There is a massive fortune held by each of two forces for evil. One is the drug cartels, which have branched out into human trafficking. The other is the Climate activists funded by billionaires who got the money from "green " subsidies like solar and windmills. There is an enormous fortune, billions, maybe a trillion, behind the climate scam. It's not limited to the usual suspects. Big Business is into it, too.
"I consider Adams a tool, so I won't be reading it.
Ah, but will you review it?
Freud is a fraud.
Freud is a fraud.
He marketed his theories as scientific psychology at the time. LOL!
There are still many true believers. I once took a course from a Freudian adjunct who marked me down (from A to B+) for writing that current Freudian "researchers" used post-hoc methods in attempting to support aspects of his theories.
My advisor told him I was a straight A student who would be insulted, so he offered to let me rewrite the paper. I offered to show him how that the research was in no way scientific by modern (and Psychology department) research standards. He was gone after that semester.
Like modern Progressives, it is a cult-like beef system that cannot withstand objective scrutiny. That is why the leftists oppose Free Speech.
"I think most people are motivated by money, especially if they deny it."
I think that's especially true of our current Republican US Senators. But no one wants to blow the whistle on their corruption. How many have relatives on some foreign companies board like Joe Biden, how many are looking forward to well-paying Goldman Sachs or foreign lobbying jobs upon retirement, and how many are being straight bought-off by Big Donor $$ is unknown.
No one wants to print the details - although we get lots and lots of hints and glimpses.
Just read the View stuff, and Adams nails it.
well, so far I am up to chapter 3, and what I learned is not to be ashamed that I am shy in restrooms, because many other people are too.
Presumably I will read all that political stuff dreamed up by the reviewer later in the book.
Hamlet was not a loser. His goal was to avenge his father, retain his own honor and reputation, and return Denmark to legitimate rule. The avenging of his father required killing Claudius. But not even a prince can do that and retain his honor and reputation, so it needed to happen before an audience (at the duel), where Claudius would be revealed as a murderer (which Gertrude did). Hamlet sensed he would need to die to accomplish his goals, and this made him a bit, you know, despondent. But through the entire play he is crab-walking toward his goal, which he achieves.
Freudian methods can help a certain class of patients. People whose torments are caused by patterns of thinking developed in their early childhood before their thinking is fully developed, but who are otherwise healthy.
A bigger loser is Brutus in Julius Caesar. Kills his friend Caesar and ends up dead. All for nothing.
Brutus wasn't a loser. Yes, he and his party lost the subsequent political debate/battle as well as the ensuing civil war — but no one could have predicted the outcome of such a struggle in advance. He gave it the good college try; it didn't work out.
Even after Brutus's defeat, however — the point of it all, Julius Caesar, still remained dead. The latter, after winning his earlier civil war for control of Rome, had blithely had himself proclaimed “Dictator for Life” — thereafter going on to willy-nilly tamper with a seemingly an endless number of aspects of Roman life (revamping the calendar, for instance, after thoughtfully renaming the 7th month after himself!). The Greeks had a word for this sort of personally and politically blind overreach: hubris. Many people feared this kind of behavior, and feared for their Republic.
Then, suddenly, as a result of the actions of Brutus and his allies, expansively hubristic Julius Caesar was gone most dramatically from the scene.
Caesar's successor, Octavian (nephew of Julius), who afterward renamed himself “Augustus” Caesar — observing Julius's bloody demise — most carefully did not declare himself “dictator,” chose the unassuming title “first citizen among equals” under which to present himself to the Roman people, and otherwise went to great pains to interfere as little as practicable with the traditional way things were done in Rome and the Empire at large. Indeed, in theory the Republic continued on afterwards with hardly a hiccup.
As a result, rather than being struck down after a relatively short time by a posse of Senators on the steps of the Senate — as Julius met his untimely end — by the end of his life Augustus had achieved basically the longest reign in European history; which by itself largely assured the smooth continuation post-Augustus of the originally newfangled Empire. By the time of Augustus's death, indeed, hardly anybody not already extremely aged even remembered the Republic!
Such consequential events speak to Brutus's success not his failure — the fact that post-the-assassination Octavian acted as Brutus's bitter enemy notwithstanding. It's difficult to say what subsequent history would have been like had Julius Caesar not perished at that moment and thereby continued for far longer along the hubristic, dictatorial path that he was on — but it seems safe to say that history at least in the West would have been drastically different.
Ann Althouse said...
“ Then why the Hell did you become a professor of Con Law?”
You assume that a person studies only things she likes?
Apply that to a cancer researcher or a historian who studies wars.
I think my attitude is a plus for a professor. I wasn’t a hack. I was never dishonest.
Sooooo...cancer researchers want to end cancer. Historians, presumably, want to end wars. You want to end the constitutional government of the United States? You have done very well so far.
I don't argue out of a motivation just to be right. I want people to see what I see, because it's amazing: opportunity, freedom, love, joy, respect, truth. I assume that the more people who see that, the better off we all will be. I want a better world with happier people, who respect each other's rights. Ego? Or just wanting to be right? Those motivations aren't even worth waking up in the morning. I do want to be right, but only because I want the world to be the better one that is dependent on people seeing things as I do, and when people see it that way, I'm not happy just for me. I'm happy for them and everyone else. It wouldn't be worth caring about if it just made me feel good. Hell, I can do that with drugs, getting some chores done, or a brisk hike. I truely believe that the people who oppose my views would create a sadder, less free world, becuase they have over and over through history.
BL@11:55, sometimes I suspect that logic is not her strongest trait.
" logic is not her strongest trait."
When did logic become a "trait?"
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AA: and I feel no temptation to characterize myself as 100% right and others as 100% wrong.
Gahrie: Libertarians, Jessica Valenti and splooge stooges everywhere disagree.
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Assumes at least 3 facts not in evidence.
When did logic become a "trait?"
Logic is both a field of study and a trait. Application of logical reasoning to a problem can be learned but the ability to infer logic from an argument cannot. Thus sprake mockturtle. ;-D
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