Comments on: A Wise Bear http://www.unlikelywords.com/2007/06/27/a-wise-bear/ A blog with delusions of grandeur. Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:33:34 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: matt http://www.unlikelywords.com/2007/06/27/a-wise-bear/#comment-3835 matt Wed, 27 Jun 2007 18:32:51 +0000 http://www.unlikelywords.com/2007/06/27/a-wise-bear/#comment-3835 A failure of imagination seems like a likely diagnosis a lot of the time. I meant "scorning the dirty hippies" ironically, of course. That said, I think I recognize (in myself at least) the potential to discount a message because I have something invested in keeping myself at a distance from the messenger. That's the parallel I was getting at. A failure of imagination seems like a likely diagnosis a lot of the time.

I meant “scorning the dirty hippies” ironically, of course. That said, I think I recognize (in myself at least) the potential to discount a message because I have something invested in keeping myself at a distance from the messenger. That’s the parallel I was getting at.

]]> By: I don't pay http://www.unlikelywords.com/2007/06/27/a-wise-bear/#comment-3805 I don't pay Wed, 27 Jun 2007 14:08:36 +0000 http://www.unlikelywords.com/2007/06/27/a-wise-bear/#comment-3805 Guess I'm kind of suprised the issue presents itself to you in this form. We always have mixed feelings about what we know to be sensible policies being the stock-in-trade of "fringe" candidates. I always take the bit about "dirty hippies" to be ironic dig at conventional thinking, that we all accept that the excesses of the counterculture were minor considering the big issues it got right, ant that the smear campaign against it was just that. It doesn't occur to me that there are younger people in my circle who harbor genuine aversion to hippies, as opposed to knowing how impossible certain associations are for strictly political and conventional reasons. About AWB's point, I always think of it as a failure of imagination. Sympathy, empathy require a certain projection beyond what we can actually see and feel, and not everybody has it. I can't handle the violence in many movies, which almost everybody cool regards as harmless release, obviously unreal, warranted by artistic purpose. While we shouldn't shrink from looking things, real things, in the face, I think that simple coarsening, or failure to cultivate imagination, if you like, is part of why this inhumanity exists. And maybe always has and will. Guess I’m kind of suprised the issue presents itself to you in this form. We always have mixed feelings about what we know to be sensible policies being the stock-in-trade of “fringe” candidates. I always take the bit about “dirty hippies” to be ironic dig at conventional thinking, that we all accept that the excesses of the counterculture were minor considering the big issues it got right, ant that the smear campaign against it was just that. It doesn’t occur to me that there are younger people in my circle who harbor genuine aversion to hippies, as opposed to knowing how impossible certain associations are for strictly political and conventional reasons.

About AWB’s point, I always think of it as a failure of imagination. Sympathy, empathy require a certain projection beyond what we can actually see and feel, and not everybody has it. I can’t handle the violence in many movies, which almost everybody cool regards as harmless release, obviously unreal, warranted by artistic purpose. While we shouldn’t shrink from looking things, real things, in the face, I think that simple coarsening, or failure to cultivate imagination, if you like, is part of why this inhumanity exists. And maybe always has and will.

]]>