Is it nonsense or is it me?
Bookworm on Jul 27 2009 at 5:41 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
Saw this on my Starbucks cup. Is it me, or is it nonsense:
The way I see it #294
Insensitivity makes arrogance ugly; empathy is what makes humility beautiful.
– Renford Reese, Ph.D.
Author, professor and founder of the Colorful Flags Program at Cal Poly Ponoma University.
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44 Responses to “Is it nonsense or is it me?”
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“When ideas fail, words come in very handy”
–Goethe
Ah, I think I see your problem…try whacking your head on your desk really hard.
BS = Bull S***
MS = More S***
Ph.D. = Pile Higher and Deeper
He just likes the sounds of the words. They are like a mirage. They seem to mean something until you approach them more closely, when meaning disappears altogether.
“An overabundance of empathy leads to arrogance; humility guards the soul from the vanity of itself”- BrianE, 2009
PhD = Pin-Headed Dope. Not only does the emperor have no clothes, but he’s leading about a legion of nudists.
David Foster gives us the appropriate reaction. Bill Smith also captures the essence.
Cogent expression of thought seems to be a fading art.
Thanks for the reality check. The little slogan reminded me of a long-ago rhetoric class at UC Berkeley, when I earned the teacher’s everlasting hatred when I kept asking of the material before us “But what does it mean?”
Renford Reese expresses the type of deep thinking that people are prone to get when they sit in circles smoking joints.
Ah, but it shore sounds purty.
The first clause (re insensitivity and arrogance) appears to have a meaning, although somewhat tautological: arrogance presumes much for oneself with a total lack of sensitivity to the rights and personhood of others.
But empathy and humility have no such connection. More to the point, one can be quite proud and empathetic, and quite humble and not empathetic. Perhaps the gent is trying to say that humility without empathy is ugly and worthless?
The whole bit comes across as being said by someone neither humble nor empathetic — not to mention an insensitivity to the sorts of relationships peole have and exhibit.
BTW, “What does this mean” is how questions in Luther’s Small Catechism are usually translated into English, leading to the inside joke that one can tell who Lutherans are because they’re always asking, “What does this mean?”
That’s pretty funny, cb-ideas. We Episcopalians prefer nodding our heads with a noncommittal “Hmmmm!”. I think that it is, like, supposed to make us seem more intelligent or something.
Danny,
As a baptized and confirmed former Episcopalian, I frequently sing Hmmmmm along with the band in my non-denominational church. Old habits, I guess…
=)
true story – Decades ago, as an undergraduate, I remember reading a passage from the Chinese Classics (translated into English) in one of my general Asian Studies classes. (The passage, cited as a typical example of Chinese Philosophy, involved the master and his student standing on a bridge; the master explained something to the student; the student asked “how do you know this?” The master said “Because I am on the bridge.”) Everyone, including the two teachers who did not read Classical Chinese, thought it was just great – “so deep and thoughtful”, they all said. I just sat there not really getting it. Being a freshman undergraduate, all 18 years of age, I was too afraid to speak up. I didn’t want to be seen as the stupid one in class.
Fast forward to my junior year, I read the same passage in the original Classical Chinese with a teacher in Taiwan. Now I got it! It was a great play on words – something that was totally missing from the English translation. In Classical Chinese the word “He” (pronounced sort of like huh) means many things; what, how, why, and where. So the student meant how do you know this; while the teacher answered from where do you know this. That was the real brilliance of this passage! Translating it into English or even into Modern Chinese (which does have different words for all the “wh” questions) has no meaning; for without this pun the passage really makes no sense.
It was then that I realized that the “wisdom” of so many “elites” was just an illusion. Many are just faking it.
And Book, I suspect that your rhetoric professor got mad because he didn’t really know what it all meant either, and didn’t care for someone tugging at that curtain in the hall of the Great and Powerful Oz.
Brilliant, Charles!
Late one night a Harvard intellectual and a young Marine were crossing the Charles. They stopped in the middle of the bridge to do what comes naturally.
The intellectual said, “The River is cold.”
The Marine thought a moment and said, “And the bottom is muddy.”
BrianE #4′s quote of Renford Reese offers the corroborating evidence that tells us everything we need to know about our coffee-cup deep thinker. Just goes to show what a Ph. D. is worth outside of its subject matter. Or, Good God, in his case, perhaps even inside.
BrianE. #4,
Ok, come clean. You took something off a North Korean website and doctored it. I mean really, am I supposed to fall for this? Reese has a Ph.D and works at Cal Poly Pomona. No way he could fall into the “cult of personality” trap. Too well educated. He is in California and it’s not fly-over country where the rubes live.
Uh oh, to Ariel’s #16,
Brian E’s always been a reliable quoter in the past! That could happen to any of us. We’ll have to see… So I thought I’d dig a little myself. Just a little, gotta get out the door this morning.
The quote shows up at:
http://www.csupomona.edu/~rrreese/nonfla/ObamasVictory.html
This appears to be Renford Reese’s own homepage at the university. Brian’s excerpt appears at first glance to be word-for-word accurate. So count me among the suckered if this is somehow, in some way, fake.
MikeD…I do believe that Ariel was TIC’d off (Tongue-in-Cheek).
I went to Reese’s Piece — sorry, couldn’t resist — and now I wonder why my computer didn’t come with a barf bag. These people are TEACHING an they live in la la land.
Ok, come clean. You took something off a North Korean website and doctored it. I mean really, am I supposed to fall for this?
No, you’re supposed to come to this echo chamber of a website and enlighten all of us on the ‘goods’.
Reese makes it sound like we elected Barney the Dinosaur.
Quisp #21:
(tune: The Barney Song)
—–
Concerning R. Reese, after looking at his website, it appears that the guy means well, but just can not get out of the box in his thinking. Multiculturalism and racial (or, probably more accurately, ethnic) identity appear to pervade his thinking. I did notice that at least some of his work with black male prisoners didn’t have a “blame whitey” approach, but a much better diagnosis (black males using thugs as role models), which would indicate better corrective action.
Many different words have the same sounds in Chinese. Perhaps analogous to our homonyms. Or perhaps even puns.
So those academics were laughing at a pun. Hrm.
I’ve said my piece on empathy already.
There certainly concrete methods to use it. However, I’m not sure whether the good doctor is focused on such methods.
All,
Words are written to evoke; the phrase in question is poorly written and invokes confusion. The author, in a fit of pseudo-intellectual brilliance, sought to impress something. Perhaps it should have been thus -
Without empathy, pride becomes hubris; with empathy, reservation becomes humility.
Note that while this is a pleasant phrase, it shows the relative lack of value for the impact of empathy on reality. Pride/arrogance/hubris are all ego-centric and “active” measures; in general they are signs of energetic activity (good or bad is irrelevant). Humility/reservation is a passive state; again the good or bad is irrelevant – though it is a sign of the thinker’s bias that passive = good and active = bad.
I’ll leave on this note – I am arrogant, often insufferable, and quite irksome; however, most people I work with continue to desire my company, for I am nearly as good as I think I am.
SSG Dave
“It isn’t arrogance if you can DO it.”
Dave,
they should have put this up on the starbucks cuppee
Death is lighter than a feather; duty heavier than mountains. Enjoy life without the presence of duty as long as you have it.
If they have room, they can also put this on the cup. A good drink, after all, requires a good toast.
“‘He either fears his fate too much,
Or his desert is small,
Who fears to put it to the touch,
And win or lose it all.’
-Montrose’s Toast
Btw, i have 6 words in front of the semi colon and 4 words afterwards. The good doctor here has it backwards, 4 in front and 6 in the back.
Which is better in people’s considered opinion? ; )
Y,
You need to add a “?” to replace the “.” if you move the semi-colon. I like both the quotes, they are quite proper for a person of my demeanor.
I would add, though, to the list –
“Theirs was not to reason why, theirs to only do and die.”
SSG Dave
“Yes, I changed it. No, it is better this way.”
You’re right, colon would have been better. Although not perfectly symmetrical then.
Sensitivity makes arrogance beautiful. Arrogance makes humility ugly.
Deeep thoughts at Starbucks….
Heh.
Sensitivity makes arrogance unlikely. Arrogance makes humility impossible.
Danny Lemieux #18,
Thank you. Of course I was TIC. This adulation of Obama has been sickening, did anyone here miss it during the campaign? Not to the level of Stalin or Kim Jong-Il but still quite disturbing. And, I have seen BrianE to be a reliable quoter; I would either ask the source or research before accusing. I have been coming here a longtime, just not commenting.
Ymar #20,
Grasshopper, you must find your own enlightenment. When will you start the journey? A journey far and wide?
Ariel, why do you raise issue of a journey?
I saw this …
STOP DRINKING THAT STARBUCK DRECK!
READ ONLY FROM ENLIGHTENED TEA BAGS.
and
Bill Smith got it right
BS = Bull S***
MS = More S***
Ph.D. = Pile Higher and Deeper
He just likes the sounds of the words. They are like a mirage. They seem to mean something until you approach them more closely, when meaning disappears altogether.
Apologies, Ariel, for missing the TIC.
> Obama embodies the characteristics of all these great leaders plus something. We cannot put our finger on that “something” but we see it in his calm demeanor and we feel it when he speaks. He is both ordinary and extraordinary. He fundamentally understands that you get what you give.
The hyperbole is astonishing. Obama embodies the characteristics of Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and Bishop Desmond Tutu? … plus something even more?
Both ordinary and extraordinary? Only the most spiritual – or even god-like – can carry off such a mystical state.
“We feel it when he speaks.” Why do the ‘highly intelligent’ always get suckered in when someone has mastered cadence, rhythm, tone, and projection? They – the kind of intelligent elite populating universities, for example – have always been suckers for demagoguery. Always. You’d think the constant presence of the teleprompter would have clued them all in by now.
The quote was so over the top that when Ariel threw in the reference to this being a deliberate distortion posted on a Korean website, I fell for it. It is a parody of itself! Chris Matthews’ thrills running up and down his leg, transformed into words.
I suspect this would sell quite nicely on Starbuck cups.
These were euphoric times for the left, so it is understandable the Renford might engage in some rhetorical flourish. And he did add this caveat:
You can almost hear him holding back tears when he says this. If he hadn’t pointed this out, would the left have lost touch with reality during Barack’s magical mystery tour?
Coming soon a theater in your neighborhood: “Barack and Michelle’s Most Excellent Adventure”, one madcap escapade after another where Barack meets with really famous people and does really cool stuff.
Sorry for not including a link to the quote, which I normally do. I had chosen a couple of other quotes of Renford’s picking up on the arrogance and empathy theme, but decided this was too “special”, and in the awe of the moment forgot to.
Brian,
I do youth ministry, and I can tell you that this one, note the change, is absolutely true:
You’re bang on with the rest.
Were you alluding to the massive pass given to our soon-to-be newest Justice of the Supreme Court when one idiot senator called her repeated racist “Latina” outrage a mere “rhetorical flourish?”
Speaking of colons, I get what Chris Matthews would call a tingle running up and down mine whenever I see Obama speak.
My doctor calls the tingle something else and usually prescribes heavy meds for it.
“The quote was so over the top that when Ariel threw in the reference to this being a deliberate distortion posted on a Korean website, I fell for it. It is a parody of itself!”
BrianE., I would have used Stalin and the USSR, but that wouldn’t be timely. I really could use your help on those smileys. You know, a ways back I could modify a script to install software into my old Mac (Motorola RISC chip) running Linux, as well as edit Linux itself, but those damn yellow smileys still elude me. One way I found was just too laborious. Hope you have an easy way to the vast library of smileys. Also, I left a reply to a post of yours here. #12.
Charles Martel #38,
I believe that tingle will be close to or including the rectum by the time this administration is through.
Ymar #33,
Too long to comment here and now, and best done when we have both calmed down, so to speak. I wish I could find my book by Sidney Hook, an old Deweyan social Democrat who detests the new Left, especially on Free Speech and the use of language, and he is quite scathing. My wife and I have 2500+ books between us, but it has never been sorted properly, so I can’t find the title. I will go into reasons when I can find the book. It is late and I still have other things to do.
To all a good night.
Enjoy.
http://www.freesmileys.org/
http://www.easyfreesmileys.com/
Actually, Ariel, we’ve had some problems on this blog with smileys showing up unrequested, so to speak. I think it’s the asterik sign – something to do with the 8 key. I don’t remember what, since it’s one of those things that you don’t have any intention of doing, it doesn’t show up in the reply box, and then when it appears as a comment, lo and behold, there it is! For a moment you know what is supposed to be there so you know how you did it, but then pouf! you don’t really care because you didn’t intend to make it, so you forget it. Most people here, I think, just use the colon or semi-colon with the close parenthesis key.
or 
as a brief form of “I’m just kidding here” thing.
Heh. The first smiley was colon close parenthesis.
Second was semi-colon close parenthesis.
Third was the number 8 plus close parenthesis.
And I didn’t intend for the actual smileys to show up! just did the keys.
Once again I am amazed that so many people who don’t think deeply enough to make simple word associations are gathered in one spot, spewing nonsense about the person whose words they don’t understand and making generalizations about “others like him.” if you criticize what you don’t understand, the lack may just be in you.
Now I’m sure I’m the “liberal fool” once again. But folks it looks like once in a while one of you would understand an artistic phrase. The man is using English words to convey an idea.
“Insensitivity makes arrogance ugly; empathy is what makes humility beautiful.”
Arrogance is ugly, because the arrogant are insensitive
Humility is beautiful, because the humble have empathy.
Not rocket science. Just English words used to convey truth.
Once again, we disagree. Quelle surprise!
Agreed that arrogance is ugly. But insensitive? Maybe. Maybe not. To me, insensitive means not being aware of another’s opinions or feelings. Lacking the ability to discern another’s opinions or feelings. What if the person is _very_ aware, but just doesn’t care – places his/her own opinions or feelings above another person’s in importance? I wouldn’t say that was “insensitive”…but I could understand how that would be a possibility.
On humility, though…total disagreement. I see no connection whatsoever between empathy and humility. I define humilty as the ability to recognize both one’s own failings and one’s own strengths. I consider humilty to be _self_ centered, whereas empathy is _other_ centered. A person is not necessarily humble who says “oh no…I can’t be president of the whatever club – that’s too great an honor for me”. If the person has been an active, working member of the whatever club for some 10 years, and no one else has been in the club for more than 2-3 years, maybe the person is in fact the most appropriate person to be president. Now if one of the 2-3 year persons reelly reelly wants to be president, it would be very empathetic for the 10 year person to say “oh no – not me …let Joe be president” but it wouldn’t really be humble. It might even be just lazy…or vindictive – if s/he thought 2-3 year person would really mess up. One could imagine all sorts of possibilities! but not in any way necessarily humility. I can even imagine the arrogant person having empathy – that is, feeling another person’s pain or joy. And then equally imagine that arrogant person saying to him/herself – “tough. _I_ want that last piece of cake!!!”
It has been said that it takes a great saint to be a great sinner… that is, you have to be capable of strong motivation to be one, and being one, your strength of motivation can be overcome only by an equally strong – even if opposite – motivation. The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.
A sadist can only truly torture someone by knowing what causes another person great pain – that requires awareness, sensitivity and empathy towards the other person’s emotions. The sadist then uses his/her awareness to cause distress and pain with that knowledge.
It would be a wonderful thing if we _always_ used our strengths for good ends, but in fact, not everybody does and most of us don’t succeed _all_ the time, even if we do _some_ of the time.