You would say that, Carl.
Just back from Italy. (Sigh.) Dante is almost always depicted has wearing a whole head full of laurels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Alighieri
Way too much foliage.
Me, I think we already have too much the problem of Ecclesiastes:
Ecclesiastes 9:11: “Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all.”
So, with proper recognition to the fact that Brunelleschi did not build the Duomo single handed and Michelangelo had a lot of help in painting the Sistine Chapel -- to answer Ravi's charge that I beg the question by appealing to the notion of accomplishment that deserves honor and awe, I say, Lo! Behold! And if you don't see it, go back to school. (What I said to my son, who sneered at St. Peter's, you'll learn.)
I am happy to give genius as many laurels as I have to give. I don't, as I say, pretend to be the kind of egalitarian who thinks we build up the downtrodden by pulling down the brilliant, the talented, the astounding. As far as "nominal" reward goes, I don't think that talent and achievement per se entitle you to wealth and power, but praise beyond measure? Why not for doing what is most worth doing better than anyone has? Yes, I am a cruel and heartless person, because I don't list the efforts of the great liberators among those things? Nonsense, of course I do.
This is a basic conflict of value and I don't think there is a rational resolution of it. Carl, Ravi, many leftists, really do hate, distrust, despise talent, and if they weren't nice people they'd urge on use the advice of the counselor in the proverb who showed his prince how to handle the menace of the great by taking him to a wheat field and cutting down to the common level any stalk that rose above the average height. I don't see it that way. I view genius as a natural phenomenon, to be celebrated. protected, cultivated, and encouraged as one would the Rocky Mountains or the Grand Canyon. I have no delusions about being in that category myself, but I know it when I see it. I had physics with John Wheeler, for one.
Btw I'm not a snob. I like trash too and I liked most of the Harry Potter books and the Sopranos. Man does not live by brilliance alone.
--- Carl Remick <carlremick at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: andie nachgeborenen
> <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
> >
> >Me, I'm a thoroughgoing elitist and inegalitarian.
> I
> >don't think that cornering a market in skill, etc.
> >should give anyone the right to monopolize all the
> >good things in life, much less to pass it on to
> one's
> >undeserving children. But I think that
> accomplishment
> >deserves honor, contribution deserves material
> reward,
> >inequality can be based on desert as well as need,
> and
> >lots of other bourgeois ideology. But I never said
> i
> >wasn't a bourgeois liberal.
>
> The shades of night were falling fast,
> As through an Alpine village passed
> A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
> A banner with the strange device,
> Bourgeois liberal!
>
> As for me, I think accomplishment merits only
> nominal award. Perhaps
> overachievers might be enititled to wear a (small)
> laurel wreath, but that's
> it.
>
> Carl
>
>
_________________________________________________________________
> More photos, more messages, more storage—get 2GB
> with Windows Live Hotmail.
>
http://imagine-windowslive.com/hotmail/?locale=en-us&ocid=TXT_TAGHM_migration_HM_mini_2G_0507
>
> > ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better Globetrotter. Get better travel answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545469