| | Good commentary, Joe.
I've had situations before where store clerks (in Minnesota) felt the need to make some kind of a comment about Ayn Rand. Apparently it's the same in Philly. If you want to mess with their minds, you can do what I did once -- I purchased both The Virtue of Selfishness and The Communist Manifesto at the same time.
There was no special reaction from the clerk when I did that, perhaps because the anti-conceptual mentality just blanks out opposites (because -- in a concrete-bound, perceptual sense -- they would fully cancel each other out). Heh, it'd be funny if I bought two books from Rand and only one book from Marx (or the reverse), it'd be funny if, then, these dolts would then go back to speaking up or out about Ayn Rand (or about the saintly Marx) -- like Pavlovian dogs taught to ignore a specific threshold of perceptual signals. Somebody should run this experiment.*
I want to stress the truism that people live at different heights, Joe. I understand your frustration, but don't let those at the low end bring you down. You could be in the biggest of cities and still be in a pretty small place. And, because of logistics, all people at the lowest point on a spectrum of virtue and value will be found inside cities. The country is a harsh mistress. I'm not trashing cities or even saying that anything whatsoever should be done to change them, some of the best people in the world live in cities -- and cities are one of the best inventions of the world. I'm just talking about the unnatural allowance of perpetually-lowered virtue which only cities afford mankind -- the double-edged sword phenomenon.
If the clerk making the comment had had to be the one to make his living off of writing the material he was selling, then his attitude about a philosophy of personal responsibility and happiness might have been different than it was. But chances are he doesn't live a life where taking responsibility for your own thinking is so crucial. Because of human institutions, he has become partially freed from the responsibility of thinking straight.
Ed
*Example: Walk up to the clerk and raise up a Rand book as if you are going to buy it. Write down the clerk's reaction. Then, raise up a Marx book as if you are going to buy it. Write down the clerk's reaction. Then, raise both books up simultaneously. Write down the clerk's reaction. Hypothesis: Showing the Rand book should bring terror, showing the Marx book should bring delight, and showing both books at the same time should bring a blank stare, instantaneously altered by lowering either one of the books out of the sight of the clerk. It worked for Pavlov.
:-)
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 1/30, 6:53pm)
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