About
Content
Store
Forum

Rebirth of Reason
War
People
Archives
Objectivism

Post to this threadMark all messages in this thread as readMark all messages in this thread as unreadPage 0Page 1Forward one pageLast Page


Sanction: 3, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 3, No Sanction: 0
Post 0

Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 5:00amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
I wish you luck in discovering maturity during your college years. All I discovered was whiskey sours. However, it was a different time. When I was in college, everyone was still abuzz over the recent discovery of fire...

And be careful with the concept of maturity these days. Most people use it to explain why the fire has gone out in them..

Post 1

Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 5:37amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
All,

Regarding the "social conditioning" we see in today's schools, how much of the blame for this structure and the resulting destructive attitudes can we lay at the feet of John Dewey and his fellow Progressives and Pragmatists?  Would the values that teens expressed in the hallways and gymnasiums of, say, Montessori schools be noticeably different?  Can anyone comment?


Luke Setzer


Post 2

Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 6:46amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
I met a delightful young lady at the TOC conference who said that she had not encountered the kind of social bullying in her Montessori school that is prevalent in most high schools.  I'm not sure if that is the norm.

What I find interesting is that the phenomenon seems to be getting worse with each generation.  There is a savagery that seems to be loose in the younger generations now, with girls fist-fighting in the hallways and violence far worse than what it used to be.  I guess that officially makes me old ("These kids today...").

If I had ever raised my hands to another human being (aside from self-defense), my parents would have seen to it that I received a similar fate.  Violence was simply not an acceptable form of self-expression.  What the hell happened?


Post 3

Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 6:46amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Jake:  Cool!

Post 4

Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 9:44amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
I came into my freshman year 6'2", 285 lbs, and a basketball player,
What's your height and weight now, Jake? Myself, I'm 6' 2" and 210-220 lbs. I never fit in with the bodybuilding crowd back in high school, as I lacked the mesomorphic drive; the most I ever bench-pressed, thanks to a basic weight set I got when 15 or so, was approx. 130 lbs. So I can't say that I ever pressed my own weight - far from it, in fact.

If everyone is interested in a general comment: as the world becomes metricized and people as a whole get taller, I suspect that "tall" in men will be redefined from the old 6-foot standard to 2 m - about 6'6"-6'7".


Post 5

Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 11:29amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
If everyone is interested in a general comment: as the world becomes metricized and people as a whole get taller, I suspect that "tall" in men will be redefined from the old 6-foot standard to 2 m - about 6'6"-6'7".
Oh, great.  I have to wear heels as it is.  Now I'm going to need stilts.


Sanction: 4, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 4, No Sanction: 0
Post 6

Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 12:23pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Nice article, Jake. Human beings need visibility from others. The saddest thing is a person genuinely trying to live a good life only to have their virtues stomped on by bullies.

Being cool is an attempt to gain visibility. Being cool wouldn't be so necessary in a rational environment because there would be plenty of visibility to go around.

Individualistic education is the answer. What we have now is a babysitting industry run by Comprachicos.


Post 7

Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 1:44pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
I'm 6'5", and about 285 lbs again (I say again because after Freshman year of college I was up to around 320!)
 
And yes, college helped me mature a lot. (I'm in my 5th and final year)
 
Thanks for all the comments on the article.


Post 8

Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 2:16pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
I'm 6'3" 225lbs. Through my 40's and early 50's I was about 250. I am seriously considering 180 to 190 now that I am in my 60's, but I know it will be a real struggle to get there. But it could be a matter of life and death, so I am getting ready to at least try.

Post 9

Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 3:01pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
James,

A good program to build fitness and burn fat is Beach Body Power 90.  I posted my progress here and you can read more at that site.  As I say there, my progress would have been better had I been more consistent.  I finally am getting serious about the diet part now that I have the exercises under control.  Although my strength and endurance has improved considerably, my constant snacking has blocked me from reaching my ideal.  To quote Tony Horton, "Don't screw around with the diet!"  If you browse the many success stories, you will find adequate evidence that this program works for those who work the program.


Luke Setzer


Post 10

Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 3:20pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
A related web article that I found quite interesting:

http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html


Post 11

Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 4:23pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
James, Luther,

Congrats, Luther, on finding a program that works for you. Please don't forget that every human is different, and that your personal "right program" might well be wrong, or right, for someone else.

James (and others):

Whatever program you choose, I recommend the following steps:

1. Get a COMPLETE physical (mine took a week at Mayo Scotttsdale) and go over the bloodwork with your doctor. Determine what changes are crucial. Ask the doctor to recommend a program that is likely to work in view of your bloodwork scores, your history, your ancestry, and most of all in view of what you really love to do and eat.

2. Go on the first program. Get bloodwork done again after six weeks. Review the results with your doctor. If the first program is working well, continue. If not, switch to a different program, guided by feedback from the results of the first. Repeat until you find a program that works for you.

In my case, I needed to reduce my triglyceride levels. Because my ancestry is more from nomads and hunters than from grain-eating agriculturalists, it was likely that Atkins (with 35 minutes of exercise every day, which I was already doing just to feel good) would work, and it did: at the six-week checkpoint, my triglyceride level was half of what it had been. Note that with Atkins, weight loss can be slow - mine averages one pound per week; one needs to chart it, since the trend is often obscured by short-term variations.

If Atkins works for you - and if you are descended from wheat farmers or rice farmers it probably won't - it is fun. I especially love the look on waitresses' faces when I have pate', a well-marbled rare steak, salad sprinkled with chicharones or gribenes, mushrooms in butter, and finish off with a plate of several rich cheeses. They look like they expect me to drop dead right there in the steak house, and I there I am, just keeping myself healthy.
(Edited by Adam Reed on 10/19, 4:26pm)


Post 12

Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 7:23pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
to get back on topic:

I am a high school junior, and a new poster (yeay!).  The article that Kernon Gibes posted earlier ( http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html ) speaks to me.

School is a near-constant source of grief for me.  Like the 'nerdy' author of the essay, I constantly experience a total isolation from my peers that I have dissected since my childhood.  I'm sure many of you can relate to the wonder at the idiocy of the common person, and then the anger and isolation with which one is met when trying to rebel, or act on external cirumstances, or withdraw.  I am long past this stage, however; my passion for a better school experience has led me to want to change it for future children like me.  I hope to facilitate educational reform when I grow up (!).

These days, however, school for me has changed, or is different from, the experience detailed in the essay.  Bullying is not a huge problem (but it did exist) and popularity is popularly touted as overrated.  Nonetheless, school is worse than the details outlined in the article.  Imagine if all the contradictions and flaws and the mindless thought-loops used to perpetuate the pointlessness of school were exposed to nearly everyone, and then imagine the desperate mental scramble to find justification for a continued subscription to the system of weakness, obedience, pointlessness, and corruption that is public education. 

I see this scramble, this doublethink, in nearly every one of my fellow students, and it sickens and endlessly frustrates me.  I try things, like rejecting these concepts, and continually burning to show this, and granting fellowship to the few who truly need it, and constantly seeking a glimpse of strength and vision in my peers.  But a sad thing is that there are none. 
The article's author said that kids experience a massive schism from reality that can impair their judgement for life.  For the extremely perceptive, this is not so; through the worst in people (at school), I have gained an insight into reality that has led me to turn towards only the best in them. 
Now I am sort of sleepy and tired of writing, so I will leave with a quote by Nick Drake, a masterful folk musician who lived during the 60s and commited suicide at the ripe old age of 22.  From writings on his life (of which there are an abundance online) I find that he had an amaranthine sense of dignity and a heart that was too fragile to withstand the ugliness in the world.  I like to fancy that he would have loved Ayn Rand's philosophy.  anyways:

[School is] "where the sensitive experience a horrified dissociation from reality that can sometimes never fade away."
 
PS:  I appreciate this SOLO community.  It is a signpost, of sorts. 

-Michael


Sanction: 3, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 3, No Sanction: 0
Post 13

Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 10:11pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Oh, great.  I have to wear heels as it is.  Now I'm going to need stilts.
Jennifer, you crack me up!

This thread has gone weird with all these big macho guys talking about going on diet!  Of course if it is directly related to heath, it is then a serious issue.

But as young Michael said, to get back on topic about tormented teenagers at school. Well, you probably can predict who will do well 10 years or 20 years after graduation. They are usually those who work/study hard and stay focused, in another word, nerds.


Post 14

Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - 12:44amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
There seems to be 2 types of "smart" people.  The "nerds" are one type, but then you have the good-looking smart jocks who seem to be good at everything.  That second type makes it even harder for "nerds."

Post 15

Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - 5:52amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Jake Moore wrote:
There seem to be two types of "smart" people.  The "nerds" are one type, but then you have the good-looking smart jocks who seem to be good at everything.  That second type makes it even harder for "nerds."
This is why we need government to meddle in our intimate affairs through the Americans with No Life Act so we can assure equality of all social outcomes.

Just kidding!

I had the good fortune to attend a residential magnet high school called the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics during my last two years of high school in 1982-84.  Entrance criteria included high academic performance, rigorous testing and strong motivation to master the disciplines of science and mathematics.  We definitely had the range of people you describe there.  Our sports teams performed well in competitions and so did our academic teams in competitions such as Odyssey of the Mind.  There remained some of the traditional antagonism between "jocks" and "geeks" but I never saw those erupt into violence.  I know of very little actual physical violence that ever took place there, and that got handled swiftly and fairly every time.

I think much of this distinction comes down to values choices and our acceptance of responsibility for those choices.  I chose not to pursue sports or serious physical fitness at that age and I remain responsible for those choices and their consequences.  To a certain degree, a failure to evaluate oneself by objective standards of wellness, grooming and hygiene results in the self-inflicted condition of being a nerd.  Not all of this comes from honest error.  Some of it comes from evasion and a highly defensive mindset that employs sophistry to justify bad value judgments that bring harm to oneself.

As you noted, the attractive and intelligent athletes set a high standard to which the nerds get compared in social settings.  The challenge remains to raise one's own standards and then to hold oneself to those standards consistently.  This demands hard work and explains why so many choose not to take that high road.


Luke Setzer


Sanction: 3, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 3, No Sanction: 0
Post 16

Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - 8:24amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
"but then you have the good-looking smart jocks who seem to be good at everything."
 
Trust me, good-look and smooth-talk alone will not get you far both in life and in career if you don't have the substance.
 
 


Sanction: 4, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 4, No Sanction: 0
Post 17

Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - 1:50pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
I'm also young enough (25) to remember school with accuracy, and I vaguely shudder at the memories; I too was a nerd in school.  I remember well the carnivorous zebra stampede of the "in" crowd... until intermediate school, I was one of their prime targets.  There are some memories there that I am quite glad the changed light of hormones and the prism of an escort's decentered personality make uncertain and unreal.  But I can still remember the taunts, the threats, the air of a pack about to be let loose... and I was on the highest tracks in a wealthy bourgeois suburb of Washington, D.C.
 
I survived school by girding on battleship armor of intellectual superiority, and learning to use words to cut people down in preemption against declared hostility in strength and numbers.  I carried Thoreau, Rand, Nietzsche, and a scarlet anarchist armband on my sleeve; my idol was a variant of Faust.  Sigh... things which in hindsight I wish I had not had to do.  But being a nerd, and transgender in denial, I had little choice; I hung out with teachers and a few of the intelligent students; otherwise, I felt like I was traveling trough a desert of slaver caravans.  I haughtily disdained the 'masses' and 'mensch', as I thought of them, in someways deservingly, but in other ways I think in serious error.  I taught myself to disdain popular music, laughter, fellowship, celebration, and sexuality along with the mindlessness and anti-intellectualism... and I wonder how many unnecessary wars I provoked in my terror at the natives.  Now, I think under better circumstances the nerds and the beautiful people could learn from each other.  But I don't think that's likely somehow.
 
I was a weird child, half teacher's pet, half civilized troublemaker.  Teachers really brought me up more than anyone else; I was a libertarian who preferred government schools to the so-called civil society of family life, as the upbringing I received from my family was something I had to tear out of me and then hack until the damn thing finally died.  I loved many of my teachers who cared about intellectual passion and curiosity when others did not...  I  would stay after class talking with teachers until 60 seconds before the bell... my watch was synchronized... and then tear up and down stairs to the next class.  But I also hated authority; I wrote for an underground zine, passed around Matt-Groening style attack cartoons at unwise times, taped quotes from Voltaire over a PC teacher's classroom window... plus a few other things I think I'll keep quiet about here.  But I didn't drink, smoke, or sleep with anything until college (and even then little). I very much regret it.
 
Something I've since wondered at is that everyone else could sense there was something 'strange' about me... the herd could always somehow smell it, evidenced by repeated insults far more viciously accurate than my own self-concepts.  I have since concluded that those whose identities exist in social matrices have a crude but effective intuition attuned to modes and senses of lives.
 
Oh dear... I'm getting into nostalgic reliving of the past.  ~Sigh~... empty pages for the no longer young.
 
Jeanine Ring
stand forth!
 
P.S.  An ancient authority, speaking on schooling:
 
"Sheep are wise enough not to vomit up grass, but to digest it and produce milk and wool."
 
Epictetus.

(Edited by Jeanine Ring on 10/20, 2:00pm)


Post 18

Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - 3:13pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Jeanine, you're 25 and you don't consider yourself young?  I'm 25 too and I think I am young, at least physically.  Speaking of which, I am surprised to hear that so many Objectivists are not in shape, especially since many of Rand's heroes are ideal physical specimens.  I believe a sound mind and a sound body go hand-in-hand.

Post 19

Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - 3:25pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
From "Why Nerds Are Unpopular":

Merely understanding the situation they're in should make it less painful. Nerds aren't losers. They're just playing a different game, and a game much closer to the one played in the real world. Adults know this.
There's your answer. The average teenager, I am sure, enjoys the social scene, but the typical nerd, according to this quote, sees it as a distraction on the way to adult responsibility.

This attitude is actually a form of subtle snoot. I suspect that the smart guys and girls in high school who achive real popularity are the guys who have, or cultivate, a "take it as it comes" attitude wrt adult-like goals.


Post to this threadPage 0Page 1Forward one pageLast Page


User ID Password or create a free account.