Conflict is Good (Was Re: [lbo-talk] Film Notes)

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Thu Oct 23 11:22:35 PDT 2003


Former? Who said I'm a FORMER scholar? Them is fightin words, young Luke. I'm a former ACADEMIC, but a current scholar. I have three papers currently ready to go out, and one more more or less in progress, which is probably more than most U-M philosophy professors. I have published as many papers since I left the academy as I did when I was in it.

I'm a _fan_ of competition, so I don't disagree with you if you are saying that I think it would be bad for excellence to suppress competition to be the Best, to be Famous, to be Respected, to be the First. You do, however, underestiamte the desire to Get It Right as a

motivation for creative endeavor of all sorts.

--- Luke Weiger <lweiger at umich.edu> wrote:
> Justin:
>
> > Do we really think that the pain of losing is so
> > terrible and so unbearable that it cancels all the
> > benefits we get by not giving everyone a gold
> star?
>
> No--but it's still pretty awful, and will endure so
> long as we take
> competitive endeavors seriously. (And if we don't
> take competitive
> endeavors seriously, they won't bear fruit: would
> Jordan have been great if
> he didn't _really_ want to be the best? As a former
> scholar, I know you're
> not naive enough to think that the desire to be
> relatively good isn't a
> great source of inspiration in academic and creative
> contexts, as well.)
>
> -- Luke
>
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk

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