Edward R Weick wrote:
[snip]
> When we are young we have role-models. As we move on through life and
> succumb to the burdens and afflictions Rand describes, we discard roles
> models one by one or convert them to heroes. I'm at that stage in life
> where I have only heroes left.
Not all children have role models. I had none. I mean that
entirely seriously. I had no childhood heroes, either.
When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, all the other kids and
teachers rushed to the chapel (where there was a television set,
as well as prayer space) but I just stayed in the
classroom and didn't have much interest in it.
This was the response to a very sensitive child to
a social surround which almost never engaged with him in any
appealing way, but *did* try to extract things from
him like him being supposed to tell his mother he loved her and
to mean it, and being continually tested on memorized useless
facts and having to do other meaningless-to-him school assignments,
"or else!"
One of the first "role-models" in my life was, when at about
age 26, I read Hermann Broch's _The Sleepwalkers_, and one
character in the book goes out into the street hoping to
encounter by chance another character: "but, of course
he doesn't meet him". That was a sign that things could be better!
When, at about age 34, a coworker lent me Thomas Kuhn's _Structures_,
and I read that new scientific theories gain hegemony not by the
persons who believed in the previous theory being *converted*, but
because they all eventually *die off without being able to
recruit members of the next generation to carry on their work* -->
Then I saw that, eventually, all my tor-mentors and their
whole so-called "world" with them, might one day all de
dead and be gone.
I went to a "prep school" and graduated from "Yale" in the
same class as George W....
In adult life, I have encountered a few persons who I have
been able to respect and/or to have some constructive and
even pleasing interaction
with. The most admirable of them all is a manager I worked for
about 28 years ago -- the only reason he cannot be called a martyr is
that he is still converting oxygen into carbon dioxide.
Therefore, my take on role models and heroes is
largely (albeit not exhaustively...) summed up in
Bertold Brecht's lines:
Student: Happy the land that breeds a hero.
Galileo: No. Unhappy the land that needs a hero.
Just one person's life experience in this area....
"Never again."
+\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
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