Re: thorn
Originally posted by h. von bingen
during our o so long conversations and many many many evenings of intimate discourse in which we prolongingly discussed a myriad of eventful and current issues and which you were instructive of the numerous baroque and mundane matters i feel that there was indeed a juncture of minds and that loss can only be described as one of a computer crashing.
HvB, I would be lying if I said that our past discourse was anything other then enlightening. Exchanges with others, particularly our intellectual betters, force the mind to expand and make room for new enrichments.
I thank you, as I thank a number of others present here with whom I have exchanged impressions over the years, for synapsis formed that I might not have had otherwise.
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In a discussion among friends recently we felt our way though a series of intellectual tunnels to a spot in that labyrinth that had specifically to do with what we have been discussing here. What I commented to them on the topic I will paraphrase here, now:
I have never claimed to be anything other then a barbarian who lucked upon the idea that erudition could feed a man the same way the sweat of his manual labors might. "Gladly would he learn and gladly teach.", has not been the aphorism I've chosen to build my life around. Knowledge I have sought has always been a means to an end. If I have attempted to gather more unto myself it is simply the act of a man hoarding resources so as to be a better match for those with whom I am in competition.
However I noted that when one attempts to acquire knowledge, for whatever reason and contines to use it, thus passing it though the filter of experience, one can not avoid picking up a little wisedom here and there. And a little, perhaps very little, I have managed to come across in my travels has smoothed rough edges and added a patina of civility.
As much as I am sure I don't know, I have learned this much though. There is a class of people, whether they come about though nature, nurture or both I have no idea, that are true thinkers. Intellectual men and women who have a gift for taking the raw material of information and turning it into knowledge and, perhaps, even wisedom. I have a great deal of respect for these people for, as I see it, they hold the future of the world in the palm of their hand. Great science, philosophy, works of literature, what have you, are the domain of these individuals. The ability to create patterns of thought that might move an entire civilization down a particular path rest with those that don that mantle.
Because I hold people such as these in such high regard I, perhaps unfairly, also hold them to a higher standard. I expect them to have a certain amount of humility that must surely come with possessing knowledge, and wisedom, beyond that of others not similarly gifted. They are not allowed to be, at least not in my eyes, simply little bits of protoplasm bumping aimlessly about, careless in how what they do effect those around them.
So similarly as Judeo-Christian concepts teach that those who profess to testify in the name of the Lord must expect serious consequences should their testimony be false; so certainly must that concept and their penalties contrast, within the secular world, to those who make utterences while holding themselves out to be "intellectuals".
Just something to chew on.